Leaders
Helping people become willing participant in what God is doing in our community and world is so important that we need to increase our capacity for ministry and leadership on a constant basis.
Here’s a link to a pdf version of the Leadership Application Form. You can print it out and bring it by the church. Since God equips all believers for ministry, it’s appropriate to have a copy for each follower of Jesus in your family.
Here are some resources we’ve found helpful as we grow.
Officer Training Videos: For years each district in the Texas Conference has offered annual events where new leaders could come and receive training for their jobs. While these events are often full, they almost never include all - or even most - of the leaders from area churches that would profit from the training. The Houston South District has made the wise move of recording these trainings and has made them available to all comers at this site.
The Holy Spirit is God’s presence living in all who have faith in Jesus. The Holy Spirit is God’s down payment of eternal life, our living connection to God. As partof the Spirit’s transforming work in our lives, we are equipped with Spiritual Gifts to enable us to take part in accomplishing God’s agenda in the church and the world. Gifted2Serve offers an online gifts assessment tool that you might find useful. In the long run, the best way to identify your gifts is to spend time developing your relationship with God, look for service opportunities around you, then listen for feedback from the people around you and from God when you pray.
Unleash: If you’re happy being a traditional Christian in a traditional Church, failing to reach outsiders in the traditional way of not reaching them (I’m thinking of the story of when a lady came up to William Booth and said, “Sir, I don’t care for your methods of doing evangelism.” Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, replied, “Madame, I don’t care for your methods of not doing evangelism.”), then by all means do not go to this site. In fact, pretend you never heard of New Spring Church in Anderson, South Carolina. They may be Baptist, and we may be Methodist, but their passion to reach people for Jesus would get John Wesley’s applause any day. At this link you can find video teaching from New Spring’s Unleash conference, presented by their pastor Perry Noble.
Tom Wright: We’ll learn not only from a South Carolina Baptist. but also from a Church of England bishop. Sometimes in our effort to lead the church we get lost in methodology, thinking that’s all there is to it. When we read our Bibles we see the first few acts of God’s drama. If we’re going to do a faithful job playing our roles in the current act, it is to our advantage to spend much time in God’s word, and understanding the previous work of God and how it impacts our current work. At this site you can find links to resources of many kinds - text, audio and video - with top rate theology and biblical studies.
Dave Herman: We’re in the midst of a transformation process aimed at helping us become more focused on becoming a disciple-making church. Dave Herman is the consultant working with us. At this link you will find the audio of the two presentations from February’s training event. You can either download the audio file or listen online.
Though his setting (New York City) and his denomination (Presbyterian) are different from ours, I find Tim Keller quite helpful as we think about how to reach our community for Christ. You can find some short videos at YouTube: Characteristics of a Missional Church, the difference between being Missional and Evangelistic, and Missional vs. Seeker Churches. If you’d like to see a brief summary in print, you can find his outline (as a pdf) here.
Called to Ordained Ministry?
Has the idea crossed your mind that God might be calling you to ordained ministry in the United Methodist Church? If so, here’s a document that will tell you about the process involved (in pdf format).
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April 23 2008 01:34 pm