I Refuse to Lead a Dying Church

That is the name of the conference that I went to yesterday. It is based on the book by Paul Nixon and he led the workshop. Over the years I have been to a lot of these conferences and they often give me good ideas about what to do in leading the church. They also can leave me with a sense of frustration. They are usually led by men and often they speak of the need for radical change or organization. Sometimes you get the sense that the church needs to move forward for the next generation and too bad for those faithful ones who have literally built the church.

Saying all that, this conference was a good one for me. We purchased the book and I am going to read it with the plan to possibly have the board and elders read it next year and to review each of the chapters every month from January to June.

Karl Road Christian Church is not a dying church and we are definitely moving in the right direction. I am so glad that we have come through what we have come through - in terms of discerning our core values, bedrock beliefs and have our motivating vision. This has been foundational.

His thesis is that the church has choices that move us either into life or death. The six key choices:
1.Life over death
2. community over isolation
3. Fun over drudgery
4. bold over mild
5. frontier over fortress
6. now over later.

We have work to do in each one of these but thank God the church is not stuck and we do not have opposition to trying new things. I know that I need to get out of the office and into the community more. I am going to be tutoring at the library up the street which should be helpful.
He suggested that we go to coffee shops on a regular basis so that we strike up conversations with people and become kind of a known quantity. We don't have coffee shops in our neighborhood, but we do have MacDonalds - and God knows I like to drink coffee.

So, I keep learning and trying new ways to stretch myself and pray that God will guide me to people who need a relationship with Jesus Christ.

One other aspect that really spoke to me in this conference was having a sense of urgency. I have that as time seems to just zoom. Four years have passed here in a blink and I have a finite amount of time left in this parish. I pray that God will give me courage to really reach out.