Church Strategies to Enhance Spiritual Growth

[MadHermit]

Almost all churches need to find new ways to upgrade congregational spirituality.  But what concrete steps can and should they take to achieve this goal?  As a retired pastor, I have come to certain conclusions about how we do church and I  want to share some simple and practical ideas that might best promote spiritual growth in a congregation.  I have left out doctrinally divisive themes because I want to focus on strategies whose appeal crosses denominational lines.  Please don't comment on B or C below until A has been thoroughly explored.  Examine A-C and feel free to suggest other practical and realistic strategies that I have omitted.  

A. Corporate Spirituality Apart from the Sunday Service:                                                                                                                                                                      

1. Make regular attendance of a small prayer group a membership requirement.                                                                                                                               

2. Better still, restore 19th century-style Methodist class meetings as requirements for church membership.                                                                                 

3. Sponsor these forms of community outreach: a weekly soup kitchen for the poor, a monthly service at a local assisted living facility or nursing home, an advertised monthly potluck dinner and movie night featuring Christian movies or Hollywood movies on spiritual themes with a brief discussion period afterwards.

B. The Structure of Sunday Worship Services:                                                                                                                                                                                         

1. Serve Holy Communion twice a month and make an extended period of holy silence for confession and listening for divine guidance a regular part of the Communion service.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                 

2. Require at least some of church music to express the sermon's theme.                                                                                                                                            

3. Regularly observe the Lent and Advent seasons by creating worship services with appropriate themes, music, and rituals appropriate to both seasons.  

C. The Enrichment and Expansion of the Preaching Ministry:                                                                                                                                                               

1. Require pastors to accept preaching mentors or mentoring groups.                                                                                                                                                  

2. Actively train lay preachers and create opportnnties for them to preach on Sunday morning or at other services.

Edited July 4, 2018 by MadHermit

[Willie T]

I think the specific wording of #-1 in "A" has just earned you a top spot of adoration on this forum.  You are right in line with the consensus here, I think.

Edited July 4, 2018 by Willie T

[MadHermit]

1. Make regular attendance of a small prayer group a requirement for church  membership.                                                                                          

I have learned over many years that regular small prayer groups are far more powerful and effective than either prayer during the Sunday service or telephone prayer chains.  Though retired, I continue to attend a small interdenominational prayer group that I started prior to retirement.  We have seen the blind receive a healing touch, huge blood clots vanish, needy souls given up for dead by doctors healed, and broken families receive a measure of reconciliation or at least unexpected help to minimize the tensions.   These results are far more impressive than what I have observed from Sunday service prayers and telephone prayer chains.  I'm not sure I fully understand why.  Perhaps the very act of inconveniencing oneself on a snowy week night to participate in group prayer is already an act of faith that helps make a decisive difference.  Also, prior to our oral petitions, we take time to strengthen each other by sharing testimonies and we enter a holy silence to still our minds, to place the needy under God's loving and protective care, and to receive all the grace, power, and guidance we need to pray more effectively and, where necessary, to be part of the answer to our petitions which are the subjects of our oral prayers later.  

Believers attend Sunday services for reasons other than prayer and pastors find it very hard to induce members to join a regular prayer group.  Sermons can fire people up to pray for revival, but prayer meetings for this purpose usually quickly peter out.  As for telephone prayer chains, it is too easy to lay the phoned in request aside and give I only perfunctory prayer attention.  It is for this reason that membership in a regular weekly small prayer group might be needed as a requirement for church membership.  I say this with trepidation, fully aware that any church that tries to implement this policy will lose many members who are unwilling to pay this price.  For this reason, I never tried to enforce this membership criterion in any church that I've pastored.  But the subject of this thread is how church's can promote spiritual growth in their members and I think we need some sadly and inevitably smaller churches with this level of commitment.  

 

[frienduff thaylorde]

27 minutes ago, Willie T said:

I think the specific wording of #-1 in "A" has just earned you a top spot of adoration on this forum.  You are right in line with the consensus here, I think.

NOT FROM I , it don't .    We need to cease of the ways of man wisdom on how to GROW any thing spiritually.

AND RELY ON THE HOLY SPIRIT WHICH WOULD DO JUST THAT .     I am not against some organization .  But goodness.  IF Folks just followed the SPIRIT

THEIR WOULD BE SPIRITIUAL GROWTH   AND THE HOLY SPIRIT ,  YEAH,   IT PUTS US IN THAT BIBLE .   IN THE BIBLE .   

[frienduff thaylorde]

11 minutes ago, MadHermit said:

1. Make regular attendance of a small prayer group a requirement for church  membership.                                                                                          

I have learned over many years that regular small prayer groups are far more powerful and effective than either prayer during the Sunday service or telephone prayer chains.  Though retired, I continue to attend a small interdenominational prayer group that I started prior to retirement.  We have seen the blind receive a healing touch, huge blood clots vanish, needy souls given up for dead by doctors healed, and broken families receive a measure of reconciliation or at least unexpected help to minimize the tensions.   These results are far more impressive than what I have observed from Sunday service prayers and telephone prayer chains.  I'm not sure I fully understand why.  Perhaps the very act of inconveniencing oneself on a snowy week night to participate in group prayer is already an act of faith that helps make a decisive difference.  Also, prior to our oral petitions, we take time to strengthen each other by sharing testimonies and we enter a holy silence to still our minds, to place the needy under God's loving and protective care, and to receive all the grace, power, and guidance we need to pray more effectively and, where necessary, to be part of the answer to our petitions which are the subjects of our oral prayers later.  

Believers attend Sunday services for reasons other than prayer and pastors find it very hard to induce members to join a regular prayer group.  Sermons can fire people up to pray for revival, but prayer meetings for this purpose usually quickly peter out.  As for telephone prayer chains, it is too easy to lay the phoned in request aside and give I only perfunctory prayer attention.  It is for this reason that membership in a regular weekly small prayer group might be needed as a requirement for church membership.  I say this with trepidation, fully aware that any church that tries to implement this policy will lose many members who are unwilling to pay this price.  For this reason, I never tried to enforce this membership criterion in any church that I've pastored.  But the subject of this thread is how church's can promote spiritual growth in their members and I think we need some sadly and inevitably smaller churches with this level of commitment.  

 

THIS WE OUGHT TO DO .   And give reading assignments OF THE BIBLE to each one as well.    Cause folks is DRYNG AND DYING cause they aint READING THAT BIBLE .

Every so called FEEL GOOOD SPIRIT ,   often aint the HOLY GHOST ,   AND its easy to discern the spirits .   IF they contradict a THING JESUS TUAGHT

ITS NOT the     H    O     L       Y        SPIRIT ,   just another wicked spirit alluring right through the flesh the lusts and desires of the carnal .

[MadHermit]

5 minutes ago, frienduff thaylorde said:

NOT FROM I , it don't .    We need to cease of the ways of man wisdom on how to GROW any thing spiritually.

AND RELY ON THE HOLY SPIRIT WHICH WOULD DO JUST THAT .     I am not against some organization .  But goodness.  IF Folks just followed the SPIRIT

THEIR WOULD BE SPIRITIUAL GROWTH   AND THE HOLY SPIRIT ,  YEAH,   IT PUTS US IN THAT BIBLE .   IN THE BIBLE .   

But as a whole churches don't rely on the Holy Spirit in practice.  So we need practical strategies that help make such reliance a reality and A(1) is an important step in that direction. 

 

[Alex2165]

Hi Madhermit.

You wrote:

“Almost all churches need to find new ways to upgrade congregational spirituality.”

Long overdue!

 “But what concrete steps can and should they take to achieve this goal?”

I heard it so many times almost in all churches I ever visited. Very conventional approach. Pastors always ask this question occasionally and usually received many answers and advises which some of them can be very useful, but they never implemented or even given any reasonable consideration. The issue always remains in form of a question and answers, but never implemented as action. Churches are not interested in spirituality; they are more interested in attendance, numbers, and of course collection of money; this goal they achieve very successfully.

“As a retired pastor, I have come to certain conclusions about how we do church and I want to share some simple and practical ideas that might best promote spiritual growth in a congregation. “

Believe me, you are not the first!

“I have left out doctrinally divisive themes congregation. I have left out doctrinally divisive themes because I want to focus on strategies whose appeal crosses denominational lines. Please don't comment on B or C below until A has been thoroughly explored. Examine A-C and feel free to suggest other practical and realistic strategies that I have omitted. “

“A. Corporate Spirituality Apart from the Sunday Service: “

A Corporate Spirituality? A Corporate pyramid structure of today’s church actually has spirituality?! I know for a fact that they have plenty of material greed, but spirituality, never heard of it and never seen it sir. Is it possible for corporation to have a soul?

“1. Make regular attendance of a small prayer group a membership requirement.”

Almost all, small and big churches have prayer groups, and people also pray whatever it necessary or not. And of course we pray and pray whatever comes to our mind but themselves we do nothing, because we think that the Lord will do everything for us, and on our part need no effort.

Very good advice how to pray is given in Matthew 6.5-13.

Above all, many Christians do not follow their own GOD and by the tradition, dogma, and the doctrine of the church perverted and nullified the statutes of the Lord.

Matthew 7.21

21."Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the Kingdom of Heaven, but only the one who does the will of My Father in Heaven."

 

Proverbs 28.9

9.When one will not listen to the Law, even one's prayers are an abomination.

“2. Better still, restore 19th century-style Methodist class meetings as requirements for church membership. “

Oh those good old days! And of course if you do not receive a good juicy slap on your behind by the thick wooden ruler as initiation, how then possibly you can be a member of the church? Does membership is really necessary? Of course necessary, because how then the church will collect its bloody “tithes”?!

“3. Sponsor these forms of community outreach: a weekly soup kitchen for the poor, a monthly service at a local assisted living facility or nursing home, an advertised monthly potluck dinner and movie night featuring Christian movies or Hollywood movies on spiritual themes with a brief discussion period afterwards.”

Yes! Finally we are getting somewhere! We can also add to that wonderful list of recreational activities: a trip to casino, a trip to aquarium or to a theme park, ride on horses, golf, fishing, and country dancing, all of which of course shall be done with a long and deep prayer.

“B. The Structure of Sunday Worship Services:

1. Serve Holy Communion twice a month and make an extended period of holy silence for confession and listening for divine guidance a regular part of the Communion service. “

I do not know any church that does not do that, and in majority of the churches people do that every Sunday. Concerning Holy Communion you mentioned, according to the Bible, it can be done only on the Sabbath Day. Such rule of GOD particularly specified in Leviticus and in Numbers, in which every Sabbath Day had its holy communion, and no any other day of the week. So, if you propose to do holy communion of the Sabbath Day twice a month, I am with you.

“2. Require at least some of church music to express the sermon's theme. “

As far as I know, even in the smallest church I ever been, there is no shortage on entertainment. Many churches start their music even before the service. I remember one church I visited for the first time about 9.30 AM and the music was already so loud and a girl was singing so loud that I feel the vibration of all my internal organs. No wonder that parishioners learn so little in the church about Gospels, they are all deaf  from this insane loudness!

But to be reasonable and fair, some churches do perform quite nicely from Rap style to Rock and it consume about half of the service, then goes announcements, prayers, jokes and finally about 20 minutes  or less the theological rephrasing the Bible.

I remember one church in which I patiently spend 3 long hours and did not heard anything from the Bible or even a single passage from the Holy Scripture, but only songs, music, and dancing!  I also remember advice of one pastor to another who said, “If you want to attract more people to your church, hire more professional musicians.”

And I also remember another “good” advice written on the piece of paper and attached to the door of the office when I was working for Tandem Computers in the mid 80’s when my company was downsizing: “Lay off all workers and hire more accountants.”

“3. Regularly observe the Lent and Advent seasons by creating worship services with appropriate themes, music, and rituals appropriate to both seasons. “

How many more rituals we need? We are already up to our eyeballs in all sorts of meaningless rituals. How about more real and not “corporate” SPIRITUALITY!

C. The Enrichment and Expansion of the Preaching Ministry:

1. Require pastors to accept preaching mentors or mentoring groups.

2. Actively train lay preachers and create opportunities for them to preach on Sunday morning or at other services.

I thing that the preachers themselves shall obtain enough knowledge and understanding of the Bible, and only then preach and teach others. Many pastors competing one against another in pretty words and in convoluted theology, jumping from one subject to another, and at the end make no point. Just like a bad joke that is long and has no punch line.

 

 

2Timothy 4.3-4

3.The prime time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but wanting to have their ears tickled, they will accumulate for themselves teachers in accordance to their own desires,

4.and will turn away their ears from the truth, and will turn aside to myths.

 

Titus 1.10-16

10.There are many rebellious men, empty-talkers and deceivers, especially those of the circumcision,

11.who must be silenced, because they are upsetting whole families, teaching things they should not teach *for the sake of sordid gain.

*(Verse 11. Teaching for monetary gain: (Micah 3.11) (Acts 20.33-35) (John 10.1-12-13-16) (2Corinthians 2.17) (1Timothy 6.3-5) (Titus 1.10-11-16) (1Peter 5.2-4)

 

1Peter 5.2-4

2.shepherd the flock of GOD among you, exercising oversight not under compulsion but voluntarily, according to the will of GOD, and not for sordid gain, but with eagerness,

 

Hebrews 13.9

9.Do not be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings, it is well for the heart to be strengthened by grace, not by regulations about food which have not benefited those who observe them.

James 3.1-2

1.Not many of you should become teachers my brothers and sisters, you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.

 

 

[MadHermit]

4 hours ago, Yowm said:

Because Churches don't rely on the Holy Spirit (which very thing they are commanded to do) so they need practical strategies to make that reliance a reality??? 

Sir, faith comes by hearing and hearing comes by God's Word. We are Christians here not corporate strategists.

Your glib cliched response illustrates why churches can't upgrade their promotion of spirituality!  Yes, faith comes by hearing, but today's Christians don't spend enough time meditating in holy silence to hear anything directly from God.  That's the reason for Jesus' frequent admonition, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."  Most Christians today are not attuned to spiritual hearing.  Yes, hearing comes by God's word, but by "God's Word" Paul does not have our Scriptures in mind.   His reference is the divinely imparted Word that is mediated through anointed preaching to those who are sufficiently prayed up to hear it.  In other words, there is no substitute for the right spiritual disciplines.  That is why every believer should read Richard Foster's top selling masterpiece, "The Celebration of Discipline."  

Edited July 5, 2018 by MadHermit

[Willie T]

One translation helps us avoid Bibliolatry: 

¹⁷ Faith, then, is birthed in a heart that responds to God’s anointed utterance of the Anointed One.

[Willie T]

37 minutes ago, Yowm said:

Which translation is that?

'Bibliolatry' is a liberal term used by the Emergent Church crowd to pooh pooh those who take serious the study of God's Word. Satan has attacked God's Word since the Garden. This is a term designed to cause Christians to back away from God's Word so the Emergents can slip in their false teaching and methods into the Church.

No one I know actually worships the leather bound pages with writing on them.

I'm glad to see that you agree with me that Bibliolatry should be avoided.  It seems far too many people get hooked-up on a particular translation as if those were actually the exact words that came out of Jesus' mouth, and that it is blasphemy to say it in anything but the precise words of the translation they use.

Edited July 5, 2018 by Willie T