CDM Archive

Discipleship Ministries of the PCA

Church Leadership

Piggybacking

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By Susan Spradlin. Good behavior of the children in the classroom makes such a difference. Would you believe me if I told you that someone else has already laid most of the groundwork for the management of your classroom and the discipline of your children in your Sunday school class? This same someone has already trained your children in classroom management procedures! Who is this person? The schoolteacher.You can “piggyback” by letting her training benefit your ministry. Piggyback by taking the child’s familiarity of the school classroom into the Sunday school to provide a more effective learning environment.

Where do you start?

Talk with the Christian Education person who oversees your Sunday school and let him or her know what you’d like to do and why. Understand that, probably, the schoolteacher will not be a member of your church and will have a relationship with God different from yours, but still functions as the primary educator of the child. You will be looking to integrate some of his methods with your own Christian worldview in the Sunday school classroom.

Your next step is to spend time in prayer.

Finding out who the students’ teachers are and making your initial contact will be next on your list. Invite a parent to introduce you to the teacher. The parent might explain that she thinks it would be beneficial for her child’s Sunday school teacher to know about the classroom-learning environment. After all, that’s where most of the learning is taking place. The parent could even accompany you to the classroom. Don’t forget other people who might know the child’s teacher such as other schoolteachers who go to your church.Remember, that you and the teacher have a lot in common-the most important thing being that you both love and care about the student you are teaching!

Make an appointment to visit the classroom. Let the teacher know who you are, share your common interest in the child, and explain that you are interested in finding out classroom management and procedure techniques, and exploring what could be duplicated in your Sunday school class

Helpful Tips:

  • Teachers are legally bound by right to privacy laws regarding the students so be careful to not infringe upon these laws in your questions or discussions. If your visit with the teacher takes place without the child’s parent present, let the teacher know up front that it is not your intention to discuss any student’s behavior or academic standing.

  • Teachers experience massive time constraints and demands. Let the teacher know that this won’t be a long, drawn-out visit

Suggested Questions:

  • What are your classroom rules? Notice where they are posted.

  • What consequences are given for inappropriate classroom behaviors? What kind of validation is given for reinforcement of positive behaviors?

  • What non-verbal communications are used with the students for appropriate and inappropriate behavior?

  • Ask about the attention span of the age group.

  • Ask about transition procedures, changing from one activity to the next.

  • Ask about procedures for going to the bathroom, getting drinks, etc.

  • What kinds of classroom management techniques are used?

  • What method is used in giving verbal directions?

  • How does the teacher gain and maintain the attention of the students?

After visiting with the teacher, remember to follow-up with a note expressing your gratitude for the time and help she gave to you. She would appreciate a brief description of some of the ways you plan to piggyback onto their efforts.

The Shepherding Ministry of Elders

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By Donald J. MacNair. For the church to be healthy, it needs healthy leadership. In my experience, leadership is one of only a few keys to being a church that God blesses. But what counts as “good leadership”? Is there a kind of leading that conforms to the Bible’s vision of a healthy church (as over against a kind of leading that does not)?

Emphatically, yes: there is a kind of leading that both conforms to Scripture and increases church health. The Bible gives two complementary directives that together imply a rather definite leadership structure. The first of these two biblical directives is that the church is a group of believers, each of whom should be exercising his or her gifts for the spiritual good of the group. [Paul] exhorts the Roman congregation: “We have different gifts, according to the grace given us…” God wants us to treat other members’ gifts with integrity.

Many leaders don’t treat members’ gifts with integrity. In many churches with “strong leadership,” the church’s elders are perceived as a board of directors, as leaders who tell the people what to do. Such an attitude indicates to me that this church has failed to implement the Bible’s commitment to the integrity of members’ gifts.

Often a church exhibits a double imbalance. On the one hand, it views its elders as a board of directors, telling everybody what to do. On the other hand, incongruously, it believes that the congregation has a right to vote on everything-something near and dear to the hearts of Americans!

The Bible’s other directive is this: regard a church’s leaders as accountable to God for its members. “Obey your leaders and submit to their authority.” (Heb. 13:17). The elders oversee the church’s life and ministry in order to give an account to God of the people He has entrusted to their care. Does that mean that the elders are supposed to tell everybody else what to do and how to do it? I believe that Scripture in no way supports that interpretation.

But how can church leaders exercise accountability and at the same time treat members’ gifts with integrity? [They must] realize the difference between accountability and responsibility. To be responsible for something means that it is included in your job description. To be accountable means that God looks to you to see to it that it gets done, whether by you or by someone else. To state it positively, the elders must find a way to delegate to ordinary members the responsibility for key decisions in the life and ministry of the church, while at the same time maintaining accountability for the affairs of the church.

If the congregation perceives the elders as dictators, it will perceive itself as those who are dictated to. If it perceives the leadership as nonexistent, it will perceive itself as on its own, probably bereft of focus and unity. If it perceives the elders as shepherds along the lines of the biblical model, members will see themselves as sheep (in the best sense!): cared for, nurtured, following not by coercion but free to serve creatively in an orderly context. As elders strive to develop a shepherding relationship with members, that church’s infrastructure develops into one that both allows divine directives (use of members’ gifts, elders’ orderly accounting) to be implemented, and allows God to work through it.

Whatever else an elder says or does, whatever jobs he carries out, whatever words he utters, programs he administers, visits he pays, or decisions he makes, the orientation of his life and the heart of his ministry before God consist in shepherding the people whom God has entrusted to his care. I became convinced that when sacrificial love and care motivate elders to enable the saints to grow in Christ, not only do those elders become in fuller measure the leaders God meant them to be, but also the congregation grows and serves in the way God meant them to. Caring, loving, equipping-these three words express the essence of Christ’s lesson about shepherding. A good shepherd is one whose care for the sheep drives him to equip them for doing what sheep do best, even at the cost of his own life.

In the church, members should follow the lead of elders, not because the elders tell them what to do, but because the elders have cared for them. What the members should feel is not compulsion, but care. As they experience the depth of his commitment to them, they know him and trust him completely.

It is important to see that all these wonderful benefits do not do for the sheep what the sheep are meant to do for themselves. Rather, they furnish an optimal environment in which the sheep can grow and flourish. Shepherds provide the safe environment. Secure sheep are sheep that produce wool, lambs, and meat. In other words, elders nurture church life, but cannot produce it. Their goal is the spiritual growth and ministry of their members, and this they can encourage and enhance, but cannot program.

Building this mind-set requires the same activities as maintaining it. This means that all elders, at every stage of shepherd maturity, must be doing the same things. Simply stated they are:

  • Mediate, individually and as a session, on this model of Christ’s.

  • Pray, individually and as a session, for the Holy Spirit to actualize the shepherd model in all aspects of your life and ministry.

  • Develop a strategy to hold one another accountable to think and minister like shepherds.

  • Devise and implement plans that actualize this kind of mind-set and ministry. For example, devote regular meetings to these activities.

  • Devise a way to assess your efforts. Your session must devise a practical way to listen regularly to the sheep for their testimony as to your shepherding them.

I have made my case that the shepherd model shapes the elder’s ministry from the roots of his being to the things he says and does, and that the session should fashion an optimal environment for the congregation’s spiritual growth and ministry.

I utilize the acrostic G-O-E-S to help elders identify and group their responsibilities as guardian, overseer, example, and shepherd. Guarding the sheep. Positively, the elders ensure that members are growing in Christ. Negatively, the elders discourage members from pursuing sinful practices. This coincides with church discipline.

Being an elder consists almost by definition of overseeing. Some elders confuse power with authority. Being determined not to exercise “raw power,” they avoid authoritative leadership, or at least fail to lead with any confidence. Others, determined to account properly to God for their charges, muscle them into obedience. The confusion between authority and power parallels the failure to distinguish between accountability and responsibility, which we discussed above.

Possibly the most effective ministry an elder can give to his church is his own [example of] Christlikeness. Plus, a Christlike elder is one who shepherds according to Christ’s model.Shepherding also refers to the concrete activity of looking after individual church members, monitoring their spiritual progress, and encouraging them on a person-to-person basis to grow in love and obedience to Christ.Perhaps you feel overwhelmed by the task, especially by the prospect of shaping your whole life to fit the shepherd model, on top of everything else you have to do! Of course, by now we can see that the shepherd’s heart in principle is not an add-on, but rather the fountainhead.

In this fallen world, not every man who now serves as an elder meets these qualifications (I Timothy 3:2-7; Titus 1:5-9). Over the years, I have seen biblically qualified elders, I have seen men in office who fail to meet these qualifications, and recognize this fact, I have seen men in office who fail to recognize their lack of qualification, and I have seen men in office who don’t qualify, who don’t recognize it, who don’t know what it means, and who don’t care!It is also important to develop procedures to insure that those who are chosen to be elders do meet the biblical qualifications. I recommend the following plan to this end, which I have practiced in my own pastoral ministries and which I recommend as a consultant:

  • Have members nominate men to be elders.

  • For a period of several months, train these candidates, give them field experience, and pray together as a church for God’s leading in the upcoming election.

  • Conclude the training period with a gracious but careful evaluation by the session (which is the complete group of elders currently installed to serve) of each candidate’s qualifications and maturity. Offer for the congregation’s approval only those candidates whom the session evaluates positively.

  • The congregation, with no power to make additional nominations, elects elders from among these trained and qualified candidates.

  • This system effectively provides leadership that conforms to God’s own qualifications.

I have no chapter on the pastor and more than one on elders! Paul exhorts Timothy: “The elders who direct the affairs of the church well are worthy of double honor, especially those whose work is preaching and teaching” (I Timothy 5:17). His words indicate that God intends there to be a plurality of elders, those officially entrusted with the spiritual oversight of the church, among whom are numbered elders whose work is preaching and teaching.

Thus on the one hand, we need to avoid the error of conceiving of elders as insignificant; on the other hand, we need to avoid the error of conceiving of the pastor as distinct from, and superior to, the elders. But everything I say about elders in these chapters applies without distinction to the pastor, who is an elder among elders. The pastor does not minister alone: he shepherds as part of a team, and he shepherds among a Spirit-gifted flock.

Questions for Discussion:

Gauge your own church’s shepherding outlook:

Do members perceive that they are being shepherded?

Do elders believe that they are shepherding?

What evidence can you supply to support your assessments in question 1?

What factors currently prevent your church from developing a richer shepherding ministry?

What steps can you take to follow God’s call to shepherding ministry?

Effective Leadership

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Welcome to the July/August issue of Equip for Ministry. We believe this issue contains helpful articles, reviews, tips, and news items that will inform and encourage you in your local church’s ministry. I have asked Dick Aeschliman to develop the lead article which highlights some excellent thoughts of the late Dr. Donald J. MacNair in The Practices of a Healthy Church. Dick is CE&P’s Resource Coordinator and a trainer and consultant to local church leaders. He has been working with us in training elders and deacons for a number of years and is sensitive to the challenges and opportunities that God has set before those leaders.

The chapters selected from MacNair’s book demonstrate the tendency, especially among elders, of falling into one of two extremes: “lording over the people,” or being so laid back the church lacks direction, mobilization, and coordination. Finding the right balance for the leadership needed by a particular church at a particular time is not always easy. Our experience over the years is that effective leaders need the right attitude about their role but they also need training. This is consistent with Paul’s instruction in the book of Ephesians.

Having the right tools for training and knowing how to use them effectively requires much prayer and commitment. Regular check-ups of our leadership skills are a must if we are to be effective “under shepherds.” We need to be sound in the faith but we also need to understand people in order to come along side, encourage, and care for them. It is much easier to follow trusted, respected, and competent leaders. The best way to build that trust relationship between leaders and followers is for the followers to know that the church leaders genuinely care for them.

We hope that the summary of these chapters will challenge you to study MacNair’s book, and that those who do not hold a leadership position at this time will be challenged to pray for and encourage your church leaders. I have found that congregations who regularly uphold their leadership in prayer rarely come to cross-purposes with them. The mutual commitment of leaders and followers is necessary for the church to minister strategically and effectively.

The Equip Tip by CE&P Regional Trainer Susan Spradlin regarding an effective classroom learning environment will be particularly valuable for teachers of children. Susan’s experience as a teacher, trainer, and consultant comes through clearly in this helpful Tip.

“In Case You’re Asked” deals with a topic that we hope has not noticeably infiltrated the PCA. “Open theism,” present in some evangelical circles, is causing confusion and discussion. It was a “hot topic” at the annual Evangelical Theological Society meeting last fall. We need to be aware of what it is and how to respond if the opportunity presents itself.

The five books featured in the review section were carefully chosen, as usual, to encourage your reading in several different directions and levels. A Family of Faith will take you through some important topics as they relate to evangelicalism. The Connection Gap will encourage you to think more intentionally about relationships, an important topic for ministry in today’s fragmented culture. The Communion of Saints is also connected with the importance of believers in their interdependent relationships in the church. Finding the Will of God is a topic that has concerned Christians from the beginning. This book will be extremely helpful to those who take the time to read it. The Pocket Dictionary is a helpful resource tool for teachers and students.

We have also highlighted some of CE&P’s activities during the spring months. These are for your information as well as items for prayer. The ministry of Christian Education and Publications is totally dependent on the churches and individuals that God raises up to support this ministry, financially and with prayer. We are increasingly aware that “it is not by might nor by power but by my Spirit says the Lord of hosts,” (Zechariah 4:6). Equip for Ministry is one of our main resources for communicating with individuals and churches. If you would like an extra copy for a friend please let us know. You can also visit our website, (www.pcanet.org/cep) and link to our Bookstore, Video Library, and other helpful resources.

Praying the Psalms

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“Whoever prays the Psalms earnestly and regularly will soon stop those other light and personal little devotional prayers and say: Ah, there is not the juice, the strength, the passion, the fire which I find in the Psalms.” Martin Luther[i]

By Archie Parrish. God blessed my wife and me with three children. From the moment of their births we talked to them. Daily we did everything we could to get them to repeat what we said. At first only Jean and I could understand the sounds they made. Day after day, we continued talking to them, and after a while they began echoing our words back to us. Single words grew into short sentences. Because we continued to talk to our children they learned to talk to us.

In a similar fashion God teaches His children the language of prayer. The Holy Spirit prays for us and helps us learn to pray. The Holy Spirit inspired the whole Bible; and He uses all Scripture to help us pray. But He especially uses the book of Psalms. As we pray the Psalms, the Holy Spirit helps us commune with the Father, conform to the Son, and combat the devil.

Only men and women set free from sin through faith in Christ can successfully fight spiritual warfare. As sons and daughters in a conscious vital relationship with our Father and with His family in a local church, we can properly serve as soldiers in Christ’s army and gain victory in battles with the world, the flesh, and the devil. Leaders in spiritual warfare need not be brilliant; they cannot be self-confident. They are to be humble servants, who are courageous because they are confident in the Lord. They lead by example and are people of prayer who multiply after their kind. Soldiers in spiritual warfare are humble followers of Jesus who maintain their morale by a steady diet of psalms and basic Christian truth, especially Scripture. They boldly engage the enemy. Spiritual warriors know their enemies and believe God is sufficient to defeat them. Spiritual warriors believe kingdom-focused prayer is their super-weapon.

The Calvinist reformers were led by a militant aristocracy and financed by wealthy bourgeoisie. They put up long and frequently successful battles. Yet the leadership and finance could not have won the day had the individual Calvinists not possessed, to quote Cromwell, “a conscience of what they were doing.” In many cases, they won their battles or retrieved those they had lost, not through generalship nor through greater economic power, but because of superior morale. In building up and maintaining this morale, the battle hymns of the Psalter played a conspicuous part.[ii]

The psalms owed their importance in this connection primarily to Calvin himself. Usually when thinking of all his influence on the resistance movements, we tend to stress his teachings, his organization, and his personality. Yet at the grass-roots level these perhaps did not have all of the impact which we usually attribute to them. The thing that really “grabbed” the common man, the ordinary Calvinistic soldier, was something much more mundane: his catechetical training[iii] and the congregational singing of the psalms.

David said, “I give myself to prayer” (Psalm 109:4). Literally the original Hebrew reads, “I prayer”, i.e. “I am prayer.” The Holy Spirit desires to help us become prayer. Here is how He is helping me. I begin every day with the book of Psalms. I divided the book into thirty almost equal portions and I spend about thirty minutes prayerfully reading aloud one portion. I use the English Standard Version because it is an accurate translation and it is easy to read.

This daily discipline has been so rewarding that I am now trying to learn all 150 Psalms by heart. It was not unusual for devout Jews in the time of Jesus and His Apostles to know by heart the “whole of David,” i.e., the entire book of Psalms. It is probable that our Lord Jesus had all the Psalms memorized. They certainly were the very fabric of His life. In His most painful moments, as He faced death on the cross, He instinctively cried out, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?” (Mark 15:34; Matthew 27:46). These are David’s words recorded in Psalm 22:1.

Jesus’ last words from the cross were, “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). As soon as their children began to talk, devout Jewish mothers taught them to pray, “Into Your hand I commit my spirit” (Psalm 31:5). Each night before going to sleep the children prayed these words. To this childhood prayer, Jesus adds the personal address, “Father.” Concerning His atoning work on the cross, Jesus declared, “It is finished” (John 19:30), then He prayed to the Father as a little child turning in for the night.

Paul urged earlyChristiansto “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God” (Colossians 3:16). Praying the Psalms built the early Christians into an army of kingdom intercessors. New Testament writers quote more verses from the Psalms than any other Old Testament book.[iv] Praying the Psalter shaped the life of early Christianity into a militant kingdom focus.

Martin Luther relied on the Psalms to become a man of prayer. Said Luther:”When I feel that I have become cool and joyless in prayer because of other tasks or thoughts (for the flesh and the devil always impede and obstruct prayer), I take my little Psalter, hurry to my room, or, if it be the day and hour for it, to the church where a congregation is assembled and, as time permits, I say quietly to myself and word-for-word the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and, if I have time, some words of Christ or of Paul, or some psalms, just as a child might do.”[v]

The Secret that unlocks the Psalter is the fact that it is the prayer book of Jesus, the Messiah and Mediator. He is the Head; the Church is His Body. And Head and Body are one; so the Body should join in the prayers of the Head. With this perspective we can pray all the Psalms, even when the writer protests his innocence or invokes God’s judgment, or goes through infinite depths of suffering. Jesus Christ Himself is praying here and in the whole Psalter.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer observes:”This insight the New Testament and the Church have always recognized and declared. The Man Jesus Christ, to whom no affliction, no ill, no suffering is alien and who yet was the wholly innocent and righteous one, is praying in the Psalter through the mouth of His Church. The Psalter is the prayer book of Jesus Christ in the truest sense of the word. The Psalter is the vicarious prayer of Christ for His Church. This prayer belongs not to the individual member, but to the whole Body of Christ. In the Psalter we learn to pray on the basis of Christ’s prayer.”[vi]Ask the Father to show you the praying Christ in the Psalms and teach you how to use the Psalms in your prayer life.

A Significant Question

One question that often is asked concerning praying the Psalms is: How can I pray a Psalm when it does not express exactly what I feel in my heart at the moment? Anyone who is truly honest will admit the need to pray against our own heart in order to pray rightly. After all is said and done, it is not what we want to pray that is important, but that for which God wants us to pray. Jeremiah warns, “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9) If we only follow our hearts, we would probably only pray for “our daily bread,” God wants us to pray that His will be done, not our will. As you pray the Psalms, begin by praying, “Father, enable me to pray not from the poverty of my heart, but from the richness of Your word.”

Making the Psalms yours

Let me close this plea to pray the Psalms by sharing with you a few practical suggestions. Below is a thirty-day schedule for praying through the Psalms. Each section requires about fifteen minutes, depending on how much meditation I do.

Before reading pray: “Open my eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of your law…. Give me understanding, that I may keep Your law and observe it with my whole heart” (Psalm 119:18, 34). “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts; and see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23, 24).

  • While reading turn the words of the Psalms into prayer.

  • Read aloud, in a normal voice if possible but at least in a whisper. (This helps concentration and avoids distraction.)

  • Read on your knees, when possible.

  • Read daily-I usually do this when the Lord awakens me early in the morning.

  • Read frequently during the day–Carry the Psalter with you and refer to the day’s portion frequently.

Let us join Luther in the following prayer:”Our dear Lord, who has given to us and taught us to pray the Psalter and the Lord’s Prayer, grant us also the spirit of prayer and grace so that we pray with enthusiasm and earnest faith, properly and without ceasing, for we need to do this; he has asked us for it and therefore wants to have it from us. To him be praise, honor, and thanksgiving. Amen.”[vii]

[i] Foreword to the Neuburg edition of the Psalms, 1545.

[ii] W. Stanford Reid, The Battle Hymns of the Lord-Calvinist Psalmody of the Sixteenth Century, p. 36.

[iii] The use of question and answer instruction used in Catechisms was part of the Passover celebration. See Exodus 12:25-27: “When you enter the land that the Lord will give you as he promised, observe this ceremony. And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.'”

[iv] Nestl

Prayerful Ministry

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Welcome to this issue of Equip for Ministry. We believe we have included materials that will interest you and benefit your Christian life and ministry. Our main theme is prayer. Could there be a more vital and essential need in our lives than prayer? The author of the lead article, Archie Parrish, a PCA teaching elder on staff with Mission to North America, has worked with us on numerous occasions. His emphasis on the relationship between prayer and renewal or revival hit the mark. He has helped many individuals and churches to become more involved in active praying. He is also partly responsible for the 50 Days of Prayer that you will read about in this issue.

His thoughts in “Praying the Psalms” are challenging and his suggestions for application are right on target. He naturally chose the Psalms as the format for prayer and his thirty days of prayer ideas and sequence will be workable and helpful to those who want to develop a more consistent and disciplined prayer life.

This issue contains some unusually valuable and helpful book reviews. You will not only want to read the reviews but you will be challenged to read the books. Teaching for a Change by Norman DeJong is a vitally important book for those involved in discipleship or Christian education. The Power of Team Leadership presents some of the most practically helpful ideas and applications on that topic. Each pastor and church leader will want to read it. Preaching in a Postmodern World will also challenge every preacher and teacher. The challenge to communicate clearly with today’s world cannot be overstated. For personal growth, reading through The Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin, would prove to be a valuable exercise. The Analysis of the Institutes will encourage you in that endeavor. The review of Os Guinness’s The Journey offers an unusual experience for the reader. It can help you in your personal life and witness. Finally the book Disciplines of a Godly Woman will be something that every Christian woman should read.

The “In Case You’re Asked” article is another attempt to look at the basic doctrines of the faith in light of today’s world. God’s special revelation in the Scriptures is our foundational point. There we start and there we end or we will run off track.

You will also appreciate reading the Equip Tip as it focus on the importance of relationships and the obstacles to developing good relationships. It is a timely topic for the postmodern world that is crying out for meaningful relationships.

The articles on CE&P activities including the conferences will keep you aware of some of the ministries that CE&P coordinates. They can also serve as a reminder to pray for us, that we might “Serve the Lord with gladness” and “Serve His purpose to this generation.”

You might have a friend that needs encouragement in his or her prayer life, or you might want to be sure your church leaders read the content contained in this issue. Pass your copy on them or help them acquire a copy of their own.

As we develop each issue of Equip for Ministry, our purpose is to include materials that will challenge you to think and edify you that process. In each issue we attempt to highlight some aspect of our ministry in order to keep you informed and aware of our need for prayer as we implement those ministries. We try to focus on a broad range of topics and issues, which is characteristic of Christian Education and Publications’ whole ministry. We do attempt to be as audience focused, as humanly possible, and it is interesting to see how the Holy Spirit leads us in each issue. The personal words of testimony and encouragement mean much to us.

Do I Know You?

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Most everybody talks about relational ministry. Yet relationships are so easy to miss because our agendas call for more important things.I’m embarrassed that I don’t know the names of some of the people in our little church. That creates an awkwardness that inhibits any attempt to go further. Think of the people in your congregation, your Sunday school class, people you see regularly, whose names you don’t know. It’s one reason why the church can seem so impersonal.

Consider the visitor-or is she a regular attendee you’ve simply never met? Do you introduce yourself? I never will forget the time I introduced myself to a woman at church. I asked if she was visiting and she informed me that she was a charter member. That sort of response can be a big inhibitor to saying, “Hi, my name is _____.” But if you don’t the visitor might leave saying, “I attended that church and no one spoke to me.” And knowing a person’s name is just the beginning.

A Session or Deacon’s meeting might start with a conversation about what’s happening in everyone’s life and a time of prayer for each other. It could take a half hour or more, and it could be the most important thing you do. It will help everyone come together for the business at hand. It could surface some significant information, and it will add a little more glue to the bond that solidifies each one’s commitment to the others.

A Sunday school class ought to be about more than increased understanding of a biblical text. To be effective it must rub that passage against our lives. One way to do that is to help people talk to each other about ways they think the Spirit might want them to respond. A class could break into groups of three to five for exercises that help them get to know each other better, know the Bible better, and listen to God apply the Word to their hearts. Variations on this theme work in almost any age group. For instance, take an egg timer to a children’s class and let everyone have one minute. While the sand falls each one in turn can talk about the most fun he ever had, his favorite toy or best friend, or describe his mother or father. As the teacher, don’t forget to take your turn, too.

Many of us live in metropolitan areas where most everybody is from some place else. Often relatives live a considerable distance away, and neighbors seldom know each other. Houses are empty during the day and closed up during the evening. Many times I’ve heard neighbors say, “People will be out when it’s warmer.” But summer comes and, “People will be out when it gets cooler.” The reality is people don’t come out much at all. Relationships in the neighborhood, at the office, or at school are important. But if they don’t extend beyond the confines of that environment they have limited value. And the same is true of relationships at church. Hopefully, the believer will have friendships with some that extend beyond the confines of a church program.These relationships are necessary for us to not simply survive, but thrive in this Christian pilgrimage.