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Becoming a Blessed Church: Forming a Church of Spiritual Purpose, Presence, and Power
Contents
Foreword, by E. Stanley Ott
Acknowledgments
Part I: Becoming a Blessed Church
- What Is a Blessed Church?
- Setting a Spiritual Foundation
Part II: Forming a Church of Purpose, Presence, and Power
- Grounded in God’s Purpose
- Alive to God’s Presence
- Open to God as Power
Part III: Leading a Church to Blessedness
- Becoming a Blessed Leader
- Leading the Blessed Church
- Leading the Church to Blessedness
Appendices
- Assessing the Church’s Spiritual Openness
- Session Agenda
- Discerning God’s Purpose for the Church
- Discerning Direction for a Particular Issue
- A Prayerful Process for Discerning Committee Budgets
- All-Committee Budgeting Process
- Guiding Members to Give
- Sample Stewardship Materials
- A Guide to Healing Prayer
- Nominating Committee Members
- Becoming an Elder at Calvin Presbyterian Church
- A Guide to Holding-Spiritually Grounded Meetings
- Four Principles of Discernment
- A Guide to Creating a Prayer Group
Notes
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FOREWORD
I sat in the hospital waiting room with just one other person, a fellow waiting for a doctor to return with a prescription. Someone walking by said hello to the man, and he replied, “Have a blessed day.” A short time later, I said to him, “Now that’s a great phrase, ‘Have a blessed day,’ because it says you are trusting God to do the blessing.” The man turned to me and beamed. “That’s right!” he said and went on to describe the power of his experience of Christ, explaining, “Blessed means ‘He will make you rise!’” After the doctor brought his prescription, this gracious man stepped into a nearby elevator, turned around, and said to me, “Have a blessed day.” I waved and said, “He will make you rise!” and the man was gone. I thought, “Wow! What a marvelous way to think about being blessed. If God is going to make you rise, then God is going to bring life and love and power and presence into your life and into your church. That’s blessedness!”
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Part I: Becoming a Blessed Church
For as long as I can remember, I have struggled with church. I think it has been one of God’s holy jokes to call me to be the pastor of a church, to spend my life in the very place that I had struggled with for so long. Most of my earliest memories of church are not particularly wonderful. I remember sitting in church and being told constantly to “Quit fidgeting,” “Don’t sniffle,” and “Be quiet.” I remember being given a weekly assignment, as part of my confirmation class, to listen to the sermon and outline what it said, and then trying to cheat from my cousin’s notes because I had no idea what the preacher was saying. I knew that the church was supposed to be a place of God, but I had a hard time sensing God there. Instead of being confirmed in the church, I walked away from the church after confirmation class because I had become disillusioned with the church. Looking back 25 years later, and especially on my 17-year career as a pastor, there have been times when I jokingly concluded that my being called into ministry was simply God’s holy joke on me. You see, I am now the one who invokes fidgeting in young children and bewilderment in teens. Why would God call that fidgety, discontent child to become a pastor?
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Chapter 1: What Is a Blessed Church?
What exactly is a blessed church? It is a glimpse of what a church can be. It is a vision, a glimpse of a healthy church uniquely grounded in a relationship with God that allows blessings to flow through it. Unfortunately, it is a vision too few churches have today, although many are glimpsing it. There are so many factors that keep churches from becoming blessed communities that it’s hard to grasp the full ramification of this vision. To understand what becoming a blessed church means, it might be helpful first to look at the factors that need to be overcome to allow a blessed church to take root and grow.
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