A Report from Alabama

This weekend, I traveled down with a group from my church to Frazer Memorial UMC in Montgomery Alabama. I must say it is warmer here than it is in TN. Much more humidity. I had the pleasure of being woken up at 1:15am by the fire alarm at my hotel. It was a false alarm but it added a tired feeling for the rest of this day. I went to several meetings/seminars today and it gave me several things to think about when I return home. I will process this outloud through this blog. Here are a few insights I learned:

1) How much do we want to grow?

I bumped into a staff person who had been at the church for over 30 years. He was a lay person who when he retired, joined the staff in a part time capacity. As we looked over the buildings over the years, I asked him to remember when it was only one or two buildings and when the church was much smaller. One of the things about that church was a willingness to try new things and inconvenience themselves for the sake of growth. For example, they had Sunday school at 10 and Worship at 11am. They decided to add an additional worship service for 9:30, change Sunday school to be at 9:30, and launch and additional Sunday School at 11am. This meant Sunday Schools had to split and leaders had to be raised up. But they were willing to be inconvenienced for the greater mission.

My church has services at 8:15, 8:50 and 10:45am with Sunday School at 9:30am. One of the things we have to do in September is to change my contemporary service to an hour length. This weekend I detailed 10 possible options. All of them involve change. For the most part we don't like change. We want things convienient for ourselves. As we explore these changes, I pray that our church will make decisions based on our mission and not on what is convenient for me.

2) How important is prayer?

I went to a prayer ministry training today. It was good but made me think, How am I praying as a pastor. I am a leader in prayer or is prayer assumed. Am I seeking to be an example of prayer? Am I inviting others to join me in prayer? I know for sure that I need to grow in this area as a Christian and as a pastor. Will my church support me or is that seen as "waisting time"? These are questions I wrestle with.

Guess what, the fire alarm has just gone off again and the fire truck is arriving. I must go outside to see what's up.