Belonging (eBook)

Helping people feel like family instead of an outsider

Bill Calvin (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2025 | 1. Auflage
136 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
9798317813000 (ISBN)

Infos

Written with a clean and actionable methodology, this book includes a distillation of proven strategies for cultivating the crucial 'belonging factor' to building healthy, growing faith communities. Chapters include introductory infographics and diagnostic questions to help readers with outreach and assimilation, while appendices serve as a helpful handbook for busy pastors looking to conduct training sessions. A must-read for churches looking for a tangible way to enfold newcomers, enhance community, close the back door of attrition and foster a stronger sense of belonging!

Driven by a curiosity as to what it takes for a church to grow via evangelism, Bill Calvin has devoted his 46-year pastoral ministry to finding ways to cooperate with God in reaching people for salvation through Jesus Christ. Not only a practitioner but also a student, Bill has earned a doctorate in church growth from Fuller Theological Seminary studying under Dr. Peter Wagner, Carl George, and Dr. Peter Lattore. Over the years, Bill has planted two churches from scratch and served as the pastor of outreach and assimilation in two other plateaued churches. In both cases, these plateaued churches kept their lead pastor and doubled in size, while growing stronger and healthier. Bill has recently retired to Gallatin, TN with his wife Nancy where he spends his time teaching a Connect Class at First Baptist Church of Hendersonville, running marathons, and spending time with his two adult children, Joel and Nicole.

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Discover a vital perspective on building healthy, growing faith communities, cultivated from decades of practical experience by a veteran church planter and pastor of outreach!The guidebook is not a theoretical treatise, but a distillation of proven strategies for cultivating the crucial "e;belonging factor"e; within a church to help guests discover a true sense of the fundamental human need for connection and belonging a need divinely woven into our design as beings created to love God and love others. Written with a clean and actionable methodology, chapters start with an introductory infographic that crystallizes the contents of the chapter and prepares readers for the steps ahead. Chapters also end with diagnostic questions that help the reader discern how their church is doing in specific areas of outreach and assimilation. The numerous appendices also serve as a helpful handbook for busy pastors looking to conduct successful training sessions for their church leaders. A must-read for churches looking for a tangible way to integrate newcomers, enhance community, close the back door of attrition and foster a stronger sense of belonging!

Textauszug

Introduction

Matt put the gun in his mouth and chipped his tooth. He remembered his kids and put the gun down to write them a note. But he was too tired and too drunk to write and instead fell asleep. Matt was in his mid-forties, divorced, and a functional alcoholic. He was self-medicating the PTSD that he acquired by doing multiple tours of duty with the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan. One day his boss asked him what was going on and said, “You need to go to church.” He had promised his dad he would give Christianity a try, so he went to Northwoods Church the following Sunday. He saw a table promoting Alpha and was told it was about Christianity. He tried it for a couple of weeks and then disappeared.

After a while, Matt showed up at Northwoods Church again. He did not want to have anyone near, so he sat next to a pole. After the service he heard a voice call out to him. It was Keith Haun. “Hey Matt, where have you been? We’ve missed you at Alpha. Why don’t you come back?” He did, but nothing changed.

Matt was drinking vodka and decided to call Scott, one of the Alpha leaders. They had a simple conversation; not the Bible says this, or God says that. It was a conversation that impressed Matt that Scott cared. He went to the Alpha weekend-away but brought his own food and drink because he did not trust their food and drink.

At the retreat Matt prayed, “God if you say who you are is true, then I am a mess.” Just then he felt a hand on his back. It was John Chaney and he wanted to pray for Matt. They went into the back room and John prayed. Matt felt a new sensation. It was peace.

When Matt went home, he flushed his Vicodin and other pills down the toilet. He also poured three bottles of Vodka down the drain. He went to sleep, and for the first time in many years, he slept without night sweats and bad dreams. He woke up at 5:00 a.m. and could not wait to tell John Chaney. When John heard the news, he was beaming. When he went to Alpha on Tuesday night, he told Scott and some others. Everyone was thrilled.

Matt said, “I went outside and just had to tell people about Jesus. I did not know much but I could not contain myself.”

Matt’s story took place ten years ago. He joined John Chaney’s discipleship group for people who had finished Alpha. He has a good job. He has married Stacey, a woman he met at Alpha. Together, they teach children at the South Side Mission in Peoria and have gone as short-term missionaries to the Dominican Republic for nine straight years. He has been a table leader at the Northwoods Church Alpha many years.

I love Matt’s story, but I cannot help but wonder—what if on the day he isolated himself by sitting next to the pole in Northwoods sanctuary, he had been left alone? What if Keith Haun had not called out, “Hey Matt, where have you been? We’ve missed you at Alpha. Why don’t you come back?”

This book is dedicated to all the pastors who are doing everything from preparing sermons to taking out the garbage. It was written for the hard-working pastor who is knocking himself out, who is taking his church one step forward, yet seeing it slip two steps back. It is for that man who can envision a better future for his church but cannot seem to get his church over the hump. It is for the man who is making calls, visiting the sick, leading endless committee meetings, while not being paid on time or in full because there is not enough money. It is for the pastor who has gone to countless evangelism, church growth, and leadership conferences, who would like to be a speaker at those conferences but would feel like a hypocrite because he is ashamed of his results. It is for the pastor who thinks about getting out of the ministry at least once a week. It is especially for the pastor who is working at evangelism, seeing people saved, but still not seeing the church grow. It is for the pastor who is discouraged. It is also for the church member who wants to see his pastor’s vision for the church come to pass but does not know where to start.

It is written for pastors of churches with less than 500 in attendance. For pastors who desire tracks to take their greeters, ushers, deacons, elders, and governing boards to a desired destination: an evangelistically growing church that is not simply bigger but stronger, too.

Most every book or teaching done in the field of growing a church comes from pastors who are involved in mega-churches. I have read seemingly everything written on this subject and cannot help but notice there is a big disconnect with the small church situation. I think of the ministry/company that will help you send mass formulaic texts to guests that supposedly fool the guests by including their first name. I can show you how to be a lot more effective without incurring an ongoing cost.

Have you ever considered that the small church is far more effective than most large churches at reaching people for Christ, baptizing them, enfolding them into the church, and seeing them serve the Lord and even go into the pastorate or mission field? Early in my ministry I read Carl S. Dudley’s Making the Small Church Effective and the statistics he had compiled based upon his work with the Southern Baptist Convention. I started seeing that a small church of fifty members that is baptizing five people a year is far more cost-effective than a church of a thousand members baptizing fifty people per year. The small church has one baptism per ten members, whereas the large church needs twenty people to baptize one person.

I have also noticed after ten years of serving on the Midwest District of the Christian and Missionary Alliance’s Licensing Ordination Consecration Committee (LOCC) that very few people are coming from our larger churches to be approved for the ministry. If it were not for the smaller churches (500 and less in attendance) we would hardly see anyone go into full-time ministry.

I believe in the ministry of the small to mid-sized church. A Spirit energized small church is large enough to make an eternal impact and yet small enough for lots of people to know your name. I have been involved in church plants and churches of less than 500 hundred in attendance my entire life. I have served in one church, that doubled from 150 to 300 in two years and another church from 250 to 500 in five years’ time. I learned most of these principles from growing a church from scratch to one hundred in a neighborhood that was ninety percent Jewish. My heart goes out to the pastor who is knocking himself out to grow his church but like me, always wondering: What am I doing wrong? What am I missing? Is there a better way?

I have also written this book with dedicated lay people in mind. People like my mom and dad. People who love their church, who would do anything to help it grow to become a strong church. Over the years I have noticed that most of the big Christians come from small churches. Most of the ideas and practices in this book are within the reach of active lay people. However, you will not be able to succeed in helping people belong in your church unless you team up with your pastor and plenty of others. I encourage you to read and practice this book as a team if you expect to get any kind of meaningful, long-term, even eternal results.

Over the past forty-five years I have planted two churches and been the associate pastor of outreach and assimilation for two other churches. I have loved every church I have ever served. The first church I planted was in Long Grove, Illinois—a suburb of Chicago. We started with no people and had an Anglo as well as a Hispanic congregation owning a beautiful new building five years into our existence. I stayed in this church for sixteen years and left to start another church from very small beginnings. The second church, in Omaha, Nebraska, was wonderful to serve but in six years we could never find a decent place to hold services.

The building we were meeting in was sold and our church had one month to find a new place. All of us were getting weary but I was especially frustrated that we could not get over the hump to either buy or build a building. I decided I would pray and fast until I received God’s direction as to what to do. I was figuring on this being a long fast but within an hour God spoke to my mind by saying, “Why don’t you ask Pastor Mike Goeringer at Victory Christian if he would consider merging churches with you?”

I called Pastor Goeringer and asked if I could see him right away. He left home, came to his office and sat down to meet with me while announcing he was experiencing the worst year of his life. His church had only been in their new building for a year and now many of their core members were moving out of town for new jobs. Worse still, his sixteen-year-old daughter was pregnant. I felt terrible for him but pressed on to tell him what had happened that morning while I was praying about what my church should do.

He shook his head wearily and said, “Today as I was praying, God spoke to me with the idea of calling you and asking if you wanted to merge, but I thought ‘He won’t want to do that’ so I didn’t make the call.”

I asked Mike to be the senior pastor, and he consented. Mike asked me to be the associate pastor with the primary responsibility of assimilating people into the church. This newly merged church doubled in two years.

I really liked the church, but moved to Bloomingdale, Illinois to become the associate pastor of outreach and assimilation and...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 10.11.2025
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Christentum
• ISBN-13: 9798317813000 / 9798317813000