Tag Archives: Church

Posted on

Opening Up After Quarantine

A Cautious Approach To Regaining Equilibrium As A Church

The past several weeks have been difficult for our nation, and even our entire world. COVID-19, the Coronavirus, has brought us to our knees and complete disrupted our lives in almost every single area. And finally, it seems like it may be time to start opening things back up. To that end, here is our proposed plan for Parkview.

Opening Up After Quarantine

We heard it from every avenue: the Center for Disease Control, the federal government, the state government, our own county health officials and city leaders. Stay home. Close down anything that isn’t essential. Stop the spread. Flatten the curve.

As a church, such restrictions are extremely difficult. The church is designed to be in community, not isolation. And we have been apart for almost two full months. That has been hard.

Now, with Missouri’s governor opening things back up, albeit slowly, and our own local authorities doing the same, we have a plan for how we will reestablish our physical services, with a strong eye towards the safety and security of everyone.

In doing so, our leaders have weighed three equally important truths: the call from God to meet together (Hebrews 10:25), the requirements given in Scripture to obey our government (Romans 13:1-7, 1 Peter 2:13-17), and the safety and security of those people under our watch (1 Peter 5:2).

To that end, we have developed a plan for reopening and meeting together as the body of Christ. Our target date is this Sunday, May 24th. But in order to make sure our services are as safe as possible for those who are at a higher risk, or for those who are more worried about the state of the pandemic at this time, we are taking every possible precaution and safety step that we can, and we are asking a few things from our church as well to help us out.

Posted on

Resource Review: Samaritan Ministries

Christians Helping Christians With Health Care

Health care is one of those issues that sparks a lot of stress and anxiety in people. Insurance is costly. Medical care is costly. When you have a need, how do you afford it? Where can you turn for help? Insurance may not be the best option, so what do you do?

Samaritan Ministries

Several years ago, my wife and I were becoming more and more frustrated with the rising costs of insurance. In order to keep our payments in a reasonable financial range — which was becoming more and more unreasonable — we had to keep increasing the amount of our deductible. We eventually got to the point where our deductible was so high, I was beginning to wonder if the costs of insurance were even worth it.

So we started doing some research. A good friend of our had just joined a ministry oriented, medical share program. I was a bit skeptical, but we sat down with them and discussed their experience with a medical need not long after they joined. It sounded too good to be true, but the more we talked, the more I realized this might be just what we needed to look into.

Not long after this conversation, we discovered that many of the mainstream insurance companies used the premiums that came in — my premiums — in ways that we didn’t approve of. Many of these companies used this money to pay for abortions and to provide for various other medical procedures that we were uncomfortable with. So we decided to step out on faith and give this new option a try.

The ministry we chose to work with was Samaritan Ministries, although there were a few other options we considered. We talked with several people who had had very positive experiences with Samaritan Ministries, so we submitted our application, and in 2010, we jumped into the world of Christian medical sharing.

Posted on

The Surprising Advantage Of Gratitude

Thanksgiving is tomorrow here in the United States. This is the day of the year when we take the time to be grateful for the blessings that God has given us. However, gratitude should be practiced more than just this single day each year.

Church In The Mountains

A thankful attitude has several tremendous benefits. There are ties to health and physical benefits. Some studies indicate that thankful people are less stressful people. Others suggest that gratitude benefits the emotional realm, and that negative emotions are reduced or eliminated when thankfulness is practiced.

Still another benefit of being grateful is the impact on our relationships. Thankful people are fun to be around and your relationships will benefit from surrounding yourself with those people.

However, there is one advantage of gratitude that supersedes all of these and more. Gratitude carries a benefit far greater than each of these. A thankful heart has one effect upon people that cannot be matched.

Grateful people have learned to rely completely upon the Lord.

You can do a study of the word thankful and all of its derivatives and find out that the Bible has much to say about the idea of gratitude. You will find out that being thankful is an example for us to follow, that thankfulness is a benefit for our spiritual lives, that it is, in fact, a part of God’s will for us.

Posted on

The Value Of Reading Biographies For A Leader

As a leader, I find some of the most incredible resources in some of the most unlikely places. Most of the time, I find encouragement and new ideas in a variety of the usual ways: conferences, books on leadership, discussions with other leaders. But over the past several months, I’ve discovered a whole new treasure trove of leadership resources.

Reading Biographies

Biographies.

That’s right. The stories of other people and their lives. I am amassing quite a collection of biographical resources in my personal library.

Several years ago, one of the ministers at a church I worked with in Indiana encouraged me to read biographies. He specifically encouraged me to take a look at a certain biography of Thomas Jefferson. I can’t remember which one, or who it was by. I shrugged off his suggestion, wondering what I could possibly learn by reading about the life of someone else, other than a new perspective on history.

I wish I had paid a little more attention to his suggestion. I would be ahead by several years.

Since I stumbled into reading biographies a few years ago, my pace has picked up, and I read a half a dozen a year now, easily. I could probably state that biographies are quickly becoming my favorite genre of book to read as a leader.

Posted on

4 Negative Results Of Jealousy

Jealousy leaves a pretty bitter aftertaste. It really doesn’t mater who you are or in what capacity you experience it, jealousy never results in positive growth.

Jealousy

Jealousy can be referred to as envy, and leads to frustration, anger, resentment, and bitterness. Jealousy results in all kinds of things in our lives that we would be better off without.

Jealousy is labeled as an emotion, and as such, it can rear its ugly head pretty quick. However, I’m not so sure that the term “emotion” aptly describes this. Jealousy is more of an attitude or a decision than it is an emotion, and as such, the Bible instructs us to guard against it frequently.

That can be hard. When the church down the street experiences a growth spurt, or builds a new building, it’s easy to question why it hasn’t happened here yet. When another ministry sees giving increase dramatically, we start to dream about what we could do with that money in our own roles. When good things happen to others, we wish it was us, or at least not them.

Posted on

Developing A Life Plan (ESD)

Spiritual Disciplines Banner

A personal Life Plan is perhaps one of the best ways to help keep your life on track, and is a tool that can help you become the person that God created you to be. Developing a plan for your life is a critical aspect of spiritual growth, because it lays our a tangible blueprint that can help you achieve the goals that God has for your life.

Unfortunately, most people never stop to accomplish this simple task.

Blueprints

I’ve maintained a personal Life Plan for several years now, initially starting to develop my own after reading about it on Michael Hyatt’s website. Once I got my plan in place, I wrote a blog post detailing it slightly. You can read that post here.

However, over the years, I’ve tweaked my plan to fit my life like a glove. And the more I utilize this tool, the better it becomes. This one simple activity can be traced to a significant portion of my personal and spiritual growth over the last few years.

Creating a personal Life Plan is simple, but it’s not easy. It’s simple because it’s your life. You already know your plans and goals. You know yourself better than anyone else and what you want to accomplish in life, how you impact the people and things most important to you, and where you’d like to see yourself in the next few years, and longer.

But it’s not easy. It takes some work. It requires some effort. However, it is well worth the time invested.

Posted on

4 Keys To Spiritual Health

Recently, I started an ongoing series of posts called Establishing Spiritual Disciplines. In this series, I’m looking at several key disciplines that you and I need to develop in our lives if we want to grow spiritually. These are individual disciplines, but the same holds true for church growth as well: If you want your church to grow, there must be certain healthy key characteristics present. If they aren’t there, the options are simple; either you grow these in your church, or you don’t grow at all.

Stethoscope

Church growth is a funny animal. It seems like everyone is an expert and every book you read has a different strategy for success. In order for the church to grow, quite simply, the individuals in the church must be growing. But that’s only a part of it, too. There are things that must be in place at a corporate level as well.

Every other “expert” has an opinion on what those things are, and they may list a dozen different ideas, all of which are different from the next expert’s advice. Even so, I think there are a few essential keys that must be present in the life of the church, just as they are in the life of the individual, if you want to see some significant growth.