What is the place for long-time elders and other church leaders within the new focus on the Love, Hope, and Faith Avenues of a healthy church?
By Glen A Weber, Central Region Support Team, Coach
Leadership in our denomination has been on a constant trajectory of growth over the past few decades. I began serving in ministry in late 1972 (fifty years ago next fall). Church leadership involved having a pastor and occasionally an associate pastor if the church was large enough. Pastors would often ordain elders. Typically, the standard for ordination of an elder was based on the qualifications given in 1 Timothy 3/Titus 1, but rarely with any job description. Elders served “at-large” simply being “pillars” in the church and... Read the article
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Prepare now for the guests and visitors the Spirit will lead to your church.
By Daphne Sidney, Superintendent Australasia
Have you considered how it might feel to be a first-time visitor to your local worship service? While long-time members may be very comfortable surrounded by familiar faces and friends, it is easy to forget how that first encounter with church might feel.
In the positive, I have heard stories of members who recount their early days as newcomers to the church – and how much they appreciated the brethren who befriended and included them. They appreciated the hospitality of being invited to a member’s home for a meal and the intergenerational friendships which were formed. In the negative, there are too many... Read the article
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Jesus’ heartache for humanity informed his mission. Does it inform ours?
By Heber Ticas, Superintendent, Latin America
We often express a feeling of deep sorrow and anguish for others as a “heartache.” We use phrases like, “my heart aches for you,” “my heart is torn,” or “my heart is broken.” We are moved as we observe the pain, anguish, and misery that our fellow neighbor may be experiencing. In our shared humanity, it is impossible not to be moved. Although these experiences usually tend to occur around those who we are already in relationship with, there are times when the strings of our hearts are tugged by a story or event that it’s not as close. Events in our community, our state, our country can pull at our... Read the article
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The GCI Microsite is a resource we provide to help you have a professional and easy to customize a website. This month, we added support for events to our GCI easy website template (aka “Microsites”). You could use this, for example, to promote your Easter service, or other special services during Holy Week on your website.
To see this in action, check out this demo website: https://micro.gci.church/garwood/
You’ll see the Good Friday service featured both in the 4th banner and the left feature block farther down the page. There is also a new “Events” page in the menu. These items only appear when you have added at least one event in the site editor. By default, we select the earliest occurring event to feature,... Read the article
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The journey through Holy Week and beyond helps us with our unbelief.
The disciples had been through a lot with Jesus; they’d seen multitudes fed, demons rebuked, people healed, and the dead brought back to life. There was still confusion in their minds about who Jesus really was, but some were starting to believe he just might be the Messiah. His teachings were profound at times, confusing at other times as he loved to speak in parables – requiring them to think deeply about what meaning was behind his words and stories. They knew they were headed toward Jerusalem, but they seemed to believe it was for a different purpose than Jesus told them. Three times, he told them what he was going to face. Here is the third passage:
While Jesus... Read the article
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