Over the last few years we have chosen to provide training opportunities for our churches and pastors based on feedback from surveys and personal conversations with them in order to be truly helpful and good stewards of the resources you give us.  I want to personally thank Jerry Tharp, pastor of Lone Jack Baptist and chairman of the personnel committee, for producing a survey to discern the greatest needs of our pastors and for catering the meals for this year’s Williams-Farmer Preaching Fellowship and Leadership Training event.

Our pastors continue to express a desire for training in four basic areas: church revitalization; preaching; leadership; and encouragement/fellowship.  We have invited pastors to help us design these ministries and events and have offered the following exceptional opportunities:

  • E3 Pastors Lunches
  • Legacy Cohort Meetings
  • Williams-Farmer Preaching Fellowship
  • Leadership Training Events
  • VBS Training

Additionally, through our conversations with pastors we have learned that there is still confusion and a desire for information about how the church can protect itself from litigation and harassment in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage.  We have been working with churches individually and referring them to good resources for amending their constitution and bylaws to address this threat.

Finally, we consult individually with several of our churches and pastors each year providing requested information and guidance in areas such as:

  • Conducting an effective pastor search process
  • Helping pastorless churches find a quality interim pastor
  • Giving advice on how to implement an effective outreach or discipleship ministry
  • Resolving church conflict
  • Intervening to help pastors dealing with personal crisis to find healing, personal assessment and professional counseling to restore them to fruitful ministry when possible
  • Helping churches self-assess and consulting to bring about a healthier church
  • Helping struggling churches find stronger partner churches to come alongside them for support, encouragement and greater kingdom impact upon their community

We are here to serve you and your church and we are honored when you reach out to us for assistance. Please let us know how we can serve you.

 

by Gregg Boll. Originally published in the November issue of our Missions & Ministry newsletter.