Unleashing the churchs lay leadershipA churchor any organizationcan only go as far as its leaders can take it. Research from George Barnas newest book, Building Effective Lay Leadership Teams, describes why team leadership is superior to solo leadership. It also outlines common barriers to using lay leadership teams and a process for transitioning from solo-based to team-based leadership.
Research for the book found more than three-quarters of senior pastors dont believe
they are gifted as leaders. Pastors who are leaders are actually less likely to rely on teams of lay leaders to help lead the ministry forward than is the case in churches where the senior pastor is not a leader.
Only one out of every 10 churches uses any viable form of teams in leadership. Most churches rely solely upon individual leaders working in isolation to make things happen, the book reports.
Churches using lay leadership teams experience dramatically better results in terms of life transformation than do churches without leadership or those using solo-based leadership.
Source : The Barna Update e-newsletter, January 16, 2001
Childless marriages on the riseBe fruitful and multiply? More married couples arent thinking along those lines. An estimated 24 million married couples in the United States dont have children, according to American Demographics magazine, which predicted there will be 30 million couples without children by 2010.
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Increased career choices for women, birth control, the expense of raising a child and concern for overpopulation and the environment help explain the child-free trend. Other child-free couples say they dont want their own children because they never have had parental feelings or dont think they would make good parents. Organizations such as the ChildFree Network and No Kidding! promote not having children, and others have a militant dislike for children, describing parents as breeders that spawn offspring, the magazine reported.
Source:Crosswalk.com, October 11, 2000.
Real men do live for Christ. It is important to make your peace with Christ while the opportunity exists. Life is so fragile that you never know when its going to be over. It could be over in the blink of an eye, and then its too late to accept Gods gift of salvation.
Walker, Texas Ranger star and eighth-degree Black Belt Grand Master Chuck Norris
Source: New Man, July/August 2000
Even 250 years after his death, the intricacy of composer J.S. Bachs music intrigues scholar Patrick Kavanaugh. But Bach doesnt offer complexity for the sake of complexity, stressed Kavanaugh, who leads the Christian Performing Artists Fellowship in Haymarket, Virginia.
A recent Gallup poll shows that 37 percent of Americans read the Bible at least once a week.
Source: Gallup.com, October 9, 2000.
It sounds almost ridiculous to have to say it, but Bach didnt just write complex, difficult music. He wrote gloriously beautiful music, some of the most beautiful music ever composed by anyone. His music is cerebral, its spiritual, and its gorgeous. He did it all.
Most scholars secular and religiouswould even agree on why Bach wrote what he wrote. From all indications, the composer was a devout Christian and frequently annotated his manuscripts with initials such as J.J. for Jesu Juva (Help me, Jesus), and ended them with S.D.G. for Soli Deo Gloria (To God alone, the glory). An attitude of prayer obviously energized Bachs compositions. Many of his masterworks were based on scripture, hymns and classic Christian poetry.
Bach was astonishingly busy, especially when he was a civil servant charged with overseeing the music in four Leipzig churches. He was married twice, losing his first wife through death, and he had 20 children. He taught music lessons and Latin classes. He rehearsed and performed his own organ works and directed the local boys choirs. Yet the Bach-Gesellschaft company has published 65 volumes of music, even though experts believe at least half of Bachs works are missing.
Many scholars have asked: When did Bach find time to compose? But Kavanaugh is fascinated by another question: When did Bach find time to pray?
Source: Scripps Howard News Service, Terry Mattingly, August 23, 2000.
Question: What percentage of the American public rates the state of moral values in this country today as somewhat weak or very weak?
Answer: 70 percent (30 percent say they are very weak,) while 40 percent say somewhat weak. On the other side, 26 percent say moral values in America are somewhat strong, and just 2 percent think they are very strong.
Source: Church Planting Canada, 3rd Quarter, 2000.
Good news!!!At least 451,301 new believers were baptized on mission fields around the world last year, a 24% increase over the previous year, according to The Commission, International Mission Board (IMB), SBC, April 2001 issue.
The 6,525 new churches started were a 37% increase over the year before. Many new churches, and a large number of the 3,682 new mission points, were among people groups gaining access to the gospel for the first time. We praise God for these manifestations of His providence and powerand for allowing us to join Him at work around the world, said Jerry A. Rankin, president, IMB.