Ministry Advantage

1. FAMILY MINISTRY = CHILDREN’S MINISTRY: Unfortunately, when church leaders hear “family ministry” they typically limit their thinking to “children’s ministry.” As a result, very few develop high-level strategies to drive marriage or parenting intentionality.

2. MARRIAGE MINISTRY = ANNUAL EVENT: Similarly, when church leaders hear “marriage ministry” they tend to think of an annual retreat or event rather than an ongoing strategy for building God-honoring marriages.

3. BEST CASE = SECONDARY PRIORITY: Most church leaders acknowledge that family-oriented ministry is a second or third tier priority in their church.

4. COMMONLY = OFF RADAR SCREEN: Many churches don’t even have a value statement about the home, so programs driving family intentionality are completely off the strategic radar screen for the senior leaders.

5. NEEDED = INTEGRATED STRATEGIES: While many churches have created isolated programs for families – often in the form of life-stage classes that separate rather than integrate family faith experiences – what we need are integrated strategies that will create an ongoing culture of intentional families.

“Honor one another above yourselves.”
Romans 12:10

Approach your spouse in humility, embrace God’s plan for their differences, and seek to understand them instead of judge them.

Differences divide people today as never before. More than three out of five pastors admit they "have few close friends." What started as a call to serve God and people somehow morphs to seemingly inevitable conflicts. Christian couples in ministry are not immune. 84% of Christians get married, but they are just as likely to get divorced (33%) as those who are not Christ-followers (34%). It is not unusual for pastors and wives to feel as if they are on an island, fighting for survival... whether exiled there by a staff, a congregation, a spouse, a family, or themselves.

Our eight-step process for creating successful change:

1 - Establish a Sense of Urgency
2 - Create a Change-Leadership Team
3 - Develop a Compelling Vision
4 - Effectively Communicate that Vision
5 - Empower Broad-Based Action and Involvement by the Organization
6 - Actively Communicate Short-Term Wins
7 - Respond to the Ripple-Effect
8 - Anchor the New Vision into the Culture

How have you seen change successfully implemented?

Although change may be inevitable, it doesn't have to be destructive. There are ways that you can bring about reforms in your church without blowing it apart. Before you initiate a proposed change, it's important to understand the impact of different types of people.

Innovative Leaders - These leaders are inventive, creative, and a source of new ideas and paradigms. Because they come up with so many new ideas, unless they temper themselves they tend to make some people a little nervous.

Opinion Leaders - These leaders are usually very concerned with maintaining the respect of others and tend to be discreet regarding which innovations they pursue. They invest time and energy studying innovators and sifting through ideas.

"Fall-in-line Followers" - These followers want to know what the opinion leaders are thinking. If the opinion leaders buy into a proposed change, so do they.

"Hesitant Hanks" - These followers are often skeptical. For them, security is knowing that they are in the majority. Once a proposed change has reached 50 percent adoption, they will quickly follow—but don’t expect them to buy in before then.

"Resistant Robs" - These followers make decisions based upon how things were done in the past. In relation to an innovator, "Resistant Rob's" outlook and temperament is at the opposite end of the continuum. He can work against change just as passionately as an innovator works for it. It’s likely there are as many resistant types in an organization as there are leaders.

Helping them adopt change requires time and effort, but is well worth it in the end.

Change doesn’t happen in the absence of leadership. The process of implementing change can be very challenging and require enormous forethought. If change isn’t handled properly, people get hurt.

Ministry Advantage is looking to partner with church planters! If you are in the prelaunch - five years post launch and are interested in partnering follow the link and let us know. Ministry Advantage has over 20 years experience in church planting, pastoral coaching, and resourcing churches. We would love to work with you and help make your ministry vision a reality.

https://ministryadvantage.org/church-planting/

It is important to communicate change in a positive way. Pastors who succeed at bringing about significant change in their churches usually express change in terms of progress because in the final analysis all effective change is progress! Be creative as you vision cast the benefits of change.

Churches must decide whether they want to devote resources to being intentional about change or not, in which case they will likely become a victim of the inevitable change going on around them. Effective change is never accidental, and assuming that the same old system will be adequate for God’s new work in your church is a mistake.

Jesus said, "And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. If he does, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, he pours new wine into new wineskins." -- Mark 2:22

When the old ways no longer work—whether it is the way in which we communicate God’s truth, methods of organizing people to express dissatisfaction, means of raising funds for good works—new solutions must be sought. When these new solutions are applied, change occurs in profound and sometimes unexpected ways.
"When the Lord talks about a new agreement, he means that the first one is out of date. And anything that is old and useless will soon disappear." -- Hebrews 8:13 (CEV)