Evolving Church Ministries: New Opportunities For Their Communities

I've had the pleasure of recently visiting with friends and relatives from my hometown and surrounding communities, and during our visits one of the subjects was the lack of ministers. One minister is dividing her or his time among three or more communities. I have a neighbor and a niece who are ministers, and through them, I've gained an appreciation of the sacrifices such people make in order to serve their communities. Their job is being on-call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for not only the weekly sermon, but they provide other community services during the week, and they are there for times of celebration and times of sorrow. Unless they have another minister to help shoulder the duties, it can get really stressful. These are truly giving people, and they are being expected to "do more with less and less and less."

Do more with less is exactly what I experienced in the business world--the corporate world of manufacturing and packaging. It's not a new idea--the Jewish slaves in Egypt in the time of Moses were expected to produce more bricks for building, and in a shorter time with less raw materials. Their expected quota for the day was raised.

I look at the OLD business bottom-line profit approaches and they don't even make COMMON SENSE! Some employees around here in Minot, an area that enjoyed a financial abundance during a short-lived oil boom, are chastised for not bringing in the money now that they did when the community was feeling flush. When oil prices were at their height, the costs of rent and food were astronomical--a ridiculous gouging of the people who made up our community. I was personally frustrated at the lack of COMMUNITY consciousness in these practises--and it wasn't everyone that was doing it. It was mainly being done by unawakened individuals and companies who thought it was about competition and survival of the fittest. They weren't aware of even looking for another way that might benefit everyone involved.

But that's what we have now--a segment of our world population is either awake or in the process of their awakening, and these individuals are starting to incorporate new, more community-service-based (heart-based) practises in their daily lives and businesses. Others are deep asleep in the old hypnosis of the old ways, and they really aren't open to anything new. There is no judgment here--there is a time and a season...and a profound reason...for everything and everyone, just as they are, under the sun.

While listening to my friends tell about church members filling in to do Sunday services on days that their traveling minister was engaged at another church, it suddenly struck me that the dying church of the old ways was creating a new window of opportunity for its parishioners. People who were passionate about learning more about God and Jesus, and understanding and improving their own lives, were actually reading their Bibles and other books surrounding the stories related there-in, and were stepping up to share their own inner aha moments with other people gathered to hear such profundities!

Now this, my beloved human friends, is the type of interaction with other people that gets me excited! I LOVE being with others who are so willing to share their deepest and highest experiences, and the wisdom and compassion they gain from them--and then are so willing to listen as I share my own with them. These are the most rewarding interactions I have ever taken part in. Conversations surrounding sports and reality TV and gossip or political rants do not interest me in the least. But when someone shares with me something from deep within their heart--realizations that set them free and add sparkle to their eyes--I exult and dance it in for hours and days later.

I can see a new type of ministry emerging from the ashes of the old: I see the rows of pews facing a lectern or an alter turning into a circle of chairs where each person in the circle has something to share that everyone benefits from personally if they are willing to listen. Heck, my dad and my brother, Steve, did ministry work having coffee in a booth at the local restaurant. We can create safe and sacred spaces for ourselves and each other no matter where we are.

With much love and celebration and anticipation,
The Benevolent Rebel