Programming Team and Youth Ministry

Programming Team working great so far
We've been able to meet now for three weeks, and today we knocked out the first three weekends in November. I was very pleased with the dialogue and process today. Everyone had some great ideas and we were able to craft three distinct services that will complement the theme fo each day.

We're in the middle of our 40 Days of Community campaign. And the three Sundays in November are Worship, Missions (World), and Celebration Sunday, respectively. We moved elements around, such as the offering, or the greeting time (which I'm not a great fan of personally, but the folks here enjoy it for the most part) so the flow of each service made sense for the theme. In fact, we canned the greeting time for Worship Sunday so we could ensure all elements placed the focus on God. No message on Missions Sunday will allow a couple of missionaries to share. And a four-song opening set (coincidentally all in E Major) will set the stage for an exciting time of congregational sharing on Celebration Sunday.

The next step in this transition to the Programming team ministry is to invite the worship leaders on board so they can help shape and own their specific services. Before we can do that, however, I must spend some time devloping their ministry philosophy and training them in the new approach to services. For a long time, they have served more as emcees, walking people through the printed bulletin as if they couldn't read for themselves, announcing each song ("Now we will sing...") and coming across as mere adjuncts to the senior pastor, who monitored and controlled everything from the piano bench.

We also will try to establish a worship team (instrumentalists, vocalists and technicians) so they can be part of the rehearsals. Right now, the band and choir rehearses on the same night. Of course, half the current band members also sings in the choir so this has worked so far. But we'll eventually need to split rehearsals over different nights, I think, especially as we add more people to the mix, and look at more than the coming Sunday's music.

Student Ministry doesn't look like last year's
The senior high meets almost every week for service projects, group activities or just to just chill at the leaders' home. Parent's of junior high kids will take turns hosting/coordinating a monthly activity for their kids. I'm out of the picture leadershipwise. Yay! It's actually been great to see things take off. I still hope God will raise someone to take the leadership reigns for Junior High, but at least there's something (I still teach the JH Sunday School class).

And with neither group using the chuirch building every Sunday afternoon and evening, we are now considering educational options for parents and adults, which we haven't heretofore.

Now I need to focus on the church's website, which is woefully out-of-date, and hosted by a company that won't even return phone calls. So we need to look at a host, content-management software, and then build dynamic content. Yeah, that'll be easy. :)