Starting a New Service

Our church is in the process of starting a new service. It'll begin this fall, but preparations are already in full swing. Jill and I are a part of the team establishing it, a team of over 100 people. churchmarketingsucks.com discussed this very type of thing yesterday. They were commenting on the need for establishing a dedicated team before ever starting a new church (in our case, a new service). We're doing exactly what they talk about. By starting with a good sized team, it will make it much easier to grow right out of the gate. As their site says, this does not impact the working of the Holy Spirit. It exposes as many people as possible to how the Holy Spirit is working within a group of people. If the Holy Spirit isn't there, it will become pretty obvious pretty quickly.

At the same time, Jordon Cooper was commenting on how terrible churches are at using technology. I was reading a report on just that topic this afternoon. While it was no surprise that larger churches are more likely to see the need for technology, I found it highly ironic how different denominations viewed technology. Working in a Lutheran organization, I wasn't surprised to see that Lutheran pastors do not view email as a necessary means of communicating with missionaries, nor do they see much need for putting their sermons online for people to download, nor do they see much use in using Bible study software, whether online or offline. What I found surprising was that NO denomination seemed to place much importance on communicating with their missionaries via technology. And here I am reading blogs by missionaries that I don't support financially because its a great means of communication. In fact, I cannot imagine being a missionary and NOT communicating via email and a blog. Its really too bad. We're not just missing out on an opportunity to reach people we know, we're missing an opportunity to reach people we don't know!