On his blog Jesus Creed Scot McKnight has been asking pastors what advice they’d give a new pastor knowing what they know now.
In today’s post Scot asks my friend Rose Madrid-Swetman that question. Here’s part of Rose’s response
I would focus on “growing a church big rather than growing a big church.” When I first began as a pastor, I was taught to focus on buildings, budgets, and butts in seats. Those three words were, and in many cases still are, the measure for success. Today we (I don’t lead in a vacuum) focus on the other words: conversations, connections, and collaborations.
When one moves down the alphabet from buildings, budgets, and butts to conversations, connections, and collaborations, one counts success differently. Here are a couple of examples: We count how many people we have served rather than how many people attend our Sunday morning gathering (yes, we have one). We count how many people we are developing, encouraging, and partnering with to be practitioners, who are leading personal, local, and global expressions of God’s goodness and justice.
Growing a church big is a great adventure.
05-12-2008 |
3 Comments »In the last few years my question about theology has shifted from “Is it true?” to “What does it do to people?” Does it help them be the best possible human being they could be? Does it set them free from fear or give them new things to be afraid of? Does it help them be more loving or make them more legalistic (rules-based)?
I’ve also found that of the two relational emphases in the Bible, I very much go along with one (the horizontal: human to human) but don’t know what to do with the other (human to God and God to human).
For these two reasons I don’t read many theology books by Christians. They tend to be too much about the vertical relationship and not enough about the horizontal for me. Also, they don’t focus on “What does it do to people” because you aren’t supposed to choose a theology that way. You’re supposed to believe it because it’s true, not because of what it does to you or for you.
I made an exception for A Community Called Atonement because it has a neat title invoking the horizontal relationship and it’s by Scot McKnight, whose thoughts often make a lot of sense to me. Moreover, he’s careful - so I knew I wouldn’t get frustrated by comments based on inadequate research; and he’s kind, so I knew I wouldn’t run into any unpleasant rants or write-offs of other people or theologies in his book. Read the rest of this entry »
10-02-2007 |
39 Comments »I thought this was interesting - and the comments might be also.
08-14-2007 |
4 Comments »