Your local church's weakest point and why?

[Shellie]

What is your church's weakest point, IYO, and why?

What do you think YOU would do to improve it? Please don't just vote. Tell us what you think is the solution to the problem.

[Gerald Creasy]

All of the above?

[dbserv]

Our size.

Because we are so large, it is soooooooooooooooooooooo easy for people to hide in the crowd. Our pastors, and us lay pastors, spend a lot of time encouraging, cajoling, bribing, etc. people to CONNECT in small groups for accoutability.

Without that, we will lose the effectiveness that God has blessed us with and we will cease to be effective for the Body of Christ.

We are constantly on the lookout for people who are not connected in our conversations, through our computerized tracking software, etc.

There is a team of us who spend several hours each week calling people to see what their interests are so we can attempt to match them up with people of similar interests, backgrounds, etc. so they can get together and be accountable to each other. Teachers with teachers, law enforcement with l.e., hunters with hunters, etc. and etc.


It is a HUGE part of our ministry and focus as a church. In fact, we see it as the MOST important part of the ministry for our pastors and the "church" to do. The "work of ministry" (evangelism, outreach, etc.) is the responsibility of each of us as members. The pastors and the "church" are to prepare us and to provide training for us.

[Kenya]

Ours is same as Dan's. We lose some out the back door because it is big. That's why we are focusing more on the small group ministries.

[RamboPreacher]

it's my fault. whatever the weakest point is.

[Pastor Gary]

Definitely programs. In our history we were so programmed we gagged at the word, and threw the baby out with the bathwater, but we are relaunching several things we had allowed to die.

In January we will relaunch a Men's Ministry using Men's Fraternity; the interest so far has been encouraging.

We are in the planning and praying stages of rebooting our youth program under new leadership. It fell apart under a leader who had... issues.

[Ilovebigcats]

How am I suppose to answer this???

[PastorDaniel]

keeping people...we've had a lot of visitors...but they come in...see that we are very small and never come back...I've even had them to tell me how much they liked me and my wife....but they want the "programs"...I feel like that they are afraid that they'll be asked to do something...

[Billy n NC]

How am I suppose to answer this???

Very carefully ...

or you can start the answer off like

At a friend of mine's church there weakest point is ..............

[Shellie]

How am I suppose to answer this???

Honestly. A good pastor appreciates his members views and takes them into account.


Note to Dr. Ron.....prove me right.

[dbserv]

How am I suppose to answer this???

Create a new user name and do it anonymously.




Nah, let 'er rip. D.R. is mature and I know he'll appreciate the input.

[Jennifer Smith]

NO weaknesses... (we are in the honeymoon period.)

The only weakness is the church's location and they are changing that by the end of December, merging with another local church that has an awesome facility but few members. The other church is being absorbed by ours.

[paul]

the latest statictic I recently heard was that the average church only retains about 5-15% of new people who come to the church.

The biggest problem for our local church seems to bear this out. We are not really set to assimilate new people into the body. We have exceptional, preaching, youth & children's ministry, musical talent that one dreams about. Every week we have new families ( every week) but we have a hard time retaining them.

Personally I shy away from the term programs. So I am meeting with our pastor and leaders this week to help impliment a process where by we can overcome this obstacle.

[Pastor Bill]

Outreach definitely, for a couple reasons that I see, we just aren't reaching our local area in the way we should. Some of that has been past problems (past splits and extreme legalism has left a bad rep for those that have been in the community a long time) for awhile we were spread too thin, trying to reach too broad of an area instead of focusing locally, which caused some disconnection with the local community, and currently we have a lack of prepared, trained leaders and workers, that is an area that we are focusing on, and I believe God is giving us a time of preparation to get ready, then we will be able to turn this area of weakness around.

[EagerBeaver]

For my local church, the outreach portion is our weak point IMHO. The preaching, teaching and worship across the board are solid, but the outreach is sorta lacking for reasons in and out of our control.

In our control, is just the fact we have a group that as a whole tends to be more socially withdrawn. That is just a personality trait, but I believe with work we can get past that hurdle. That is relatively easy to overcome.

Secondarily in our control, I wouldn't necessarily term our church as "seeker sensitive" or even completely conducive to visitors at this point -- there is a lot of spiritual warfare going on in our church and I also think with the way the Spirit moves on Sunday nights, it may make some visitors or newbies to the works of the Spirit uncomfortable. I think if we brought some visitors in, creating a seeker sensitive environment would help out, but that opens up a huge can of worms...

Beyond our control is (of course) the economy. For a church that doesn't rake in a ton of cash, it's not necessarily easy for us to fire up the church van at will and head out to different places.

Also beyond our control (or is it?) is the fact we are in an economically depressed area of Springfield. Need I say more? Too many COGOP churches are in the same boat in their towns.

I think outreach is vital to a church and I do know we do some individually (I use flag football gatherings on Sundays to just talk about the church whenever people show interest) and we've done some corporately but we (as every church) need to ramp it up a bit IMHO.

On a note of equal importance, I also think our church needs to be more excited about its worship. Our worship team is comprised of very faithful young people who give their best, and I look in the crowd and I see people treat the worship as if it were hymns. Yes, the music is a bit loud and I do think some of the songs turn into Pink Floyd progressive rock styles without words every now and then, or get repetitive, but the Spirit is there in the worship and people need to be reactive to it.

Corporately, our church is huge on prayer and spiritual warfare. Man do we have some people who know how to pray...but if we went into the community and did some outreach with that same passion and fervor we'd have some good crowds on Sunday (and though crowds aren't the indicator of everything, you can't survive on 20 people in your sanctuary consistently).

I love my church and I'll do what I can to help it!