BEST PRACTICES PT II

Profiles and conversations with ministry leaders.

A few years ago, Dr. Tom Nees interviewed some "K-church" pastors, (Nazarene pastors who pastor churches of 1000 or more), in an attempt to understand the effective practices we've adapted that may have contributed to our church's growth. Today I will continue to share excerpts from his conversation with me.

Dr. Tom Nees - "What percentage of your people are in small groups?"

Bud Reedy - "I've not done a survey recently, but probably 30% to 50%. I wish that were a better number. We do everything possible to make small group participation accessible. We have a great variety of these small groups. We have some traditional Christian education classes, we have a marriage and family track, a recovery track and a ministry oriented track. Our choir now is a small group because they have an approved teacher and curriculum, with 30 minutes of Bible conversation. That's the only criteria for a small group. We try to make our small groups, our worship services, and our ministry opportunities more accessible to people. We made the transition. We no longer say, here's the church, here are the programs we offer at the specific times, and families, you need to adjust your life to fit into the church's schedule. What we now say is, "here are all the ministry options, small groups, youth and children's programs, and worship services we provide. You know your own family schedule, so you custom fit whatever works best on your schedule and your needs. We take a menu approach, you can join this small group, attend this worship service, get involved in this ministry. We try to do this in such a way that it only requires people to give one or two times slot commitments a week to the church."

"All this was a huge change for our people. I remember a board retreat in 1995 when I presented this concept. It was very, very difficult especially for those long term long time Nazarenes who had been so thoroughly indoctrinated into the old traditional Wesleyan Holiness congregational spiritual formation model. Those were some tough meetings. But I just kept returning to the notion that if we are really going to reach families, if we are really going to pull them into the center of our church's life, then these kinds of adjustments will be needed."

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The next excerpt will include my response to Tom's question, "With all that variety, what holds the church together with a common identity?"

To view the previous post in this series, please click HERE.