For many who experienced an energetic youth group as teens, that experience did little to connect them to the larger community and mission of the community as adults. The youth, Mark Senter argues, are typically “spectators in a middle-aged church,” relegated to their own youth lounge. Seeking to change this reality, the Strategic model “creates a community of leaders to establish a new church”. Senter’s definition of the strategic approach defines youth ministry as “a community of leaders and youthful Christians that enables a parachurch or church-based youth ministry to establish a new church to maintain a theological continuity while expressing faith in a community relevant to both Christ and culture…It calls upon the youth ministry to be and become a holistic intergenerational church that is relevant to the world in which it lives.” Senter proposes the Strategic approach as necessary because the other three methods represent more of the status quo, which he thinks unworkable because he …show more content…
“The Strategic approach creates a community of leaders and youthful Christians that enables a youth ministry to establish a new church to maintain a theological continuity while expressing faith in a community relevant to both Christ and culture.” Church planting strategy can be witnessed throughout North America, usually in large cities. Well-established existing churches are sponsoring new congregations based on successful youth ministry programs. Churches with ministries to athletic kids have planted sport churches. Congregations with services designed for Gen Xers have birthed Gen X churches. Some of the new churches meet on the same campus as their parent church but at alternate times. Others relocate to entirely different
The thesis of the book Deep and Wide by Adam Stanley is simply put as making a church that the unchurched can’t resist to attend. This book may cause controversy in some Christian circles by leaving a traditional church view of the church’s purpose being for the churched, however, in this paradigm shift Stanley presents that the church’s purpose should be to reach the unchurched in order for people to receive the Gospel that would never step foot into a traditional church. Stanley has shown results with this mission and method by North Point Churches growth from its start with him as a church planter and senior pastor. Deep and Wide challenges the pastor to refocus and seriously convict them
Mead, Loren B. The Once and Future Church Reinventing the Congregation for a New Mission Frontier . The Alban Institute, Inc., 1991. Kindle eBook file.
This part is adapted from “Developing Programs for Senior Citizens—A Handbook for churches,” produced by the Delaware County of (PA) Services for the Aging, and is included here with their permission. We gratefully acknowledge the editors: Judy Oerkvitz, Louis Colbert, Norma Thomas and Verne Dalton.
Secondly, the Church can insist on its identity as an inter-generational community. It can do this structurally, by refusing to segment congregations by age, and temperamentally, by recovering a biblical respect for maturity and rejecting popular culture’s infantilism, thereby offering to children a goal of growing up. Popular culture exalts perpetual adolescence.
It is apparent that the issues are similar at Willow Creek and New Hope, as both have experienced great growth. They are addressing these issues by adding additional services and by assignment of small groups or small ministries to meet their congregation's needs. They have been successful in addressing the issue based on each church's individual needs. Willow Creek has added services to accommodate the service seekers or the un-churched. New Hope attempts to match congregation member's needs through joining auxiliaries or other ministries of the church.
“Reaching Out without Dumbing Down” seems to be constructed for the church leader, elder, or pastor who is considering altering their current, historic worship style for a more modern one that may attract greater numbers of unsaved people. She provides excellent standards to help Pastors and Worship Leaders plan, execute, and evaluate worship services. These same standards provide a great opportunity to educate the church family on the reasons behind the use of certain worship elements. Although written for church leadership, the everyday church member would also benefit from understanding the very concepts that Dawn is directing at God-empowered leaders.
There are various approaches towards a certain problem or strategy. Some approaches could fit in a given situation and not in another. Analytical/planned and emergent approaches have some differences as well as benefits and drawbacks. Analytical approach is that in which the vision, objectives and intentions of a firm are clearly stipulated and made known to the actors or staff as a way of realizing a certain outcome. It requires a clear vision, plans as well as formal controls aimed at enforcing them in a predictable environment. In this approach, external factors such as advancement in technology and change
...tial ideas and theologies that are absolutely the cornerstone to having a healthy ministry. Ideas like community, grace, love, and forgiveness could all have their own paper written for them individually, but acceptance is absolutely essential to any ministry. To accept someone into your family, just like the father in the story of the prodigal son, is to share all of these values listed above. By accepting them we are showing them grace, love, forgiveness and belonging, that each and everyone one of them so desperately desires. If we as youth pastors can embrace acceptance and also use it genuinely and not as a technique for recruiting, then surely our ministry will grow both in numbers and in depth in the knowledge of the word of God. By doing exactly what God does for us, we can show His love, His grace and His mercy by simply accepting others into our family.
Young, D. S. (1999). Servant Leadership for Church Renewal: Sheperds By the Living Springs. Scottdale: Herald Press.
God does big things through small churches. The reality is that opportunities for ministry and evangelism are actually enhanced by the fact that congregations come in all sizes. People are internally wired with differing combinations of temperament, experience, culture, education, personality, giftedness, intellect, and preferences. The differing blends create a variety of needs. Some people’s needs can best be met by a smaller congregation while others can be addressed more effectively by larger
Bolger, Ryan & Gibbs, Eddie. Emerging Churches: Creating Christian community in postmodern cultures (Grand Rapids, MI) Baker Academic, 2005
Sonnenberg looks at the various different components that make up the bigger picture in the community aspect in a youth worship setting; these components are looked at systematically. In the article Sonnenberg and her fellow researchers addresses four aspects which are discussed theoretically which are the following: physical presence, empathetic and emotional equality, the opportunity to cross social and ecclesiological boundaries and sharing faith (Sonnenberg, Nel, Kock, & Barnard, 2015). In the quest to address the question the importance of these four aspects the researches firstly presented the importance of each of these aspects individually, by analysing previous research and looking at the background regarding these aspects (Sonnenberg, Nel, Kock, & Barnard, 2015). Additionally the researchers observed these four aspects in a practical manner by using various methods to collect data; the data was collected through pictures, videos, field notes, small group and individual interviews and conversations and through email correspondence (Sonnenberg, Nel, Kock, & Barnard, 2015). The leaders of the different organisations and youth groups were also interviewed (Sonnenberg, Nel, Kock, & Barnard, 2015). A study such as this is of great importance when it comes to a Church context but not only is relevant for the Church but for youth leaders and even how one goes about one’s daily
His church is a “good sized” suburban church that has been around for 295 years. He describes the parishioners as having a “broad tent” of theological views. This congregation is open to new ideas and re-visiting the old. They appear to be carrying out intentional missional work in their community
My dream of planting a church was given to me my first year of Highlands College at the ARC All Access Conference. I want to plant a life-giving local church on the coast and reach the unchurched and the broken. The Lord has given me a heart to reach people of the ‘beach culture’. These people have such a unique way of looking at the world. They see the ocean and the land as something to be praised and that the earth is our provider. I want to reach them and love them by showing them God is our creator and our provider and that Christ died on the cross for our sins and to bridge the gap between God and
The following questions are based on Chapter 3 in Yount’s The Teaching Ministry of the Church: