Pastor Jim at Pathway

The Importance Of The Seven Acts chapter six points out the vital need for qualified congregational leadership.  This is needed so the ministry of prayer and the word can remain the priority of the church apostolic leaders. This priority doesn't seek to minimize the congregational needs of the church that arise or to diminish the roles of those who serve in those areas.  On the contrary, the story in Acts 6 points to how important it is that those needs are met by the church.  Indeed if those needs aren't handled appropriately then the church runs the risk of veering off it's God intended course.  Also, meeting the contextual needs of the church has a role in confirming the message that is being shared to the world. The apostles didn't ignore the need, nor did they simply say, "find someone els to get it done and don't bother us".  Rather, they thoughtfully addressed the problem and confirmed it's importance by establishing qualifications and by ma...

Leadership is our first point of discussion for the passionate core-transformation team.  For a church to be healthy, it must have a healthy, vital, effective core of leaders.  Without effective leaders the vital functions of the church will never be accomplished. Let's point out a few general truths about leadership and the church before we get into what Acts teaches us specifically.  So here are a few things to note about leadership: 1. Everyone desires to lead in some form or another.  This is shown by how irritated or even angry we get when things don't go our way or someone doesn't behave in a way that suits us at church.  We reveal that impulse to lead when we tell ourselves (or whisper to our best bud), "They should do things this way", or "I wouldn't do it that way, this is how it should be done".   This behavior reveals that somewhere inside of us is the desire to influence something or someone in a way that we believe is right or be...

In my last post we discussed the need and the basic  job of a passionate core/transformation team.  Basically, it's job is to regularly evaluate the effectiveness of vital church activities and then to make the needed changes, based on their evaluation, so that those activities continue to be effective in the life of the church as it moves forward in an ever changing culture.  Churches have life-spans like any other organization, for continued life it must strategically and regularly evaluate the effectiveness of its methods and ministries if it's going to continue forward with purpose, passion, and power. For Pathway we need to focus on six areas of our church life.  These areas are essential to the continued life and growth of our church, must be seriously evaluated, and must the roles and tasks within these areas must be fulfilled to the best of our knowledge and ability. Before I list these areas. it's important to understand that to evaluate our church is to...