As iServe pastor, Mari Beth Poor oversees the “on the mountain” ministries that enhance the overall experience of people attending Sunday worship services at Mountaintop Community Church. These include guest services, student ministries, children’s ministry, and worship and media. She also leads the church’s “off the mountain” community efforts and global outreach.
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The aisles that guide your congregation to a higher power could lead to slips, trips and falls if you’re not careful. Falls are one of the leading causes of unintentional injuries in the U.S., according to the National Safety Council. Those injuries accounted for about 8.8 million visits to the emergency room in 2013 — a nearly 500,000 drop from about 9.3 million visits to the emergency room in 2011.
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While churches might have to be run like businesses, there are specific needs and flexibility which non-CMS financial management applications just cannot provide. For some, the leading secular accounting software might be the answer — but we suggest otherwise. Here’s why.
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In this series installment, Paul Gage — who has consulted more than 500 church capital campaigns, with results exceeding $1 billion — focuses on the second phase of a campaign: Organization. According to Gage, the three most critical components of this phase are Prayer, Presentation and Preaching.
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Church members not only look for spiritual leadership from their pastoral staff, but they also have expectations that donations made will be widely used. Often, they expect leadership to provide financial reports produced from a reliable accounting package, verifying their trust.
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Anyone with resources — whether believers or not — will only give generously to what they understand and value. If your givers can’t articulate the result, or if they don’t fully support the outcome that their gift is meant to achieve, they won’t give much. Typically, they won’t give consistently, and they certainly won’t give lavishly or at great sacrifice.
Clearly communicating vision provides both the roadmap and the destination for the generous heart.
I recently conducted a small Facebook test. Survey participants were asked to answer three questions about giving. Here’s what I found:
• 96% of people consider themselves to be generous
• 80% of those same people want to be more generous than they currently are
• 92% feel held back by a lack of money
These findings represent a strange tension between who we are, who we want to be, and our perceived lack that stands in the way.
What defines good sound? While some might argue that the concept is subjective, there are certain aspects of a good sound system that we can all agree on. Spoken word should be intelligible. Musical performance should be clear and full-range. And sound should be consistent, everywhere in the house.
Of course, addressing these goals will vary widely from one church to another. Are you welcoming your flock in a 1,000-seat sanctuary? Clearly, your needs will differ from a congregation meeting in a 300-seat chapel, an auditorium, or a converted warehouse space.
A Master of Divinity or Master of Arts in Christian Studies degree from Grand Canyon University prepares students to lead in local churches and Christian organizations.
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Seminary is not about answering every question a church leader might encounter; it is about developing a holistic biblical worldview and obtaining the right tools to understand those questions and discern the answers. It is about being prepared to apply biblical truth in a variety of social and cultural contexts. It is about speaking the truth of the gospel with humility and grace.
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