Principle to Keep in Mind While Making Changes

Taken from "Healing for the Church". Harold Ewing Burchett, 1989.

1. Very real, steady growth will follow the real, steady investment of proper effort.
2. Right attitudes and wrong methods are generally to be preferred above right methods and wrong attitudes.
3. Never back into a position. (Your posture or stand on important matters must be positively motivated, or you might be repulsed into extremes.)
4. Knock against nothing legitimate until you have something better already going - then still do not knock.
5. Similarly, never discard something good for something better until that better thing is functioning.
6. It is generally not good to change labels (of various programs or structures) until that better thing is functioning.
7. Some friction is inevitable, but expressing appreciation for people of former days and older methods will ease much of the tension. Do not consider things of the past as necessarily evil.
8. Avoid frightening, agitating, driving, or forcing. Lead with life.
9. Let the dead bury the dead. Involve the more vital ones in spiritual functions.
10. New growth in love will make it easier to implement organizational changes, but mere program and organizational changes will not in themselves bring new life.
11. Watch carefully so that you do not trip over your new insights.
    

Harvest Book Club

In the interest of growing in our faith, several folks at Harvest have suggested we start a book club.

Despite my unswerving devotion to the works of C.S. Lewis (and my nagging habit of continually quoting him) there is a bit of a buzz about a new book by Jerry Bridges called "Respectable Sins." Look for the link to amazon.com at the bottom of this post.

Here are the "rules" for the book club:
1) We'll try to make this kid-friendly. The Wii is a great kid-distraction.
2) We'll focus on getting together early in the evening, and eating together.
3) We'll do dinner "finger-food" or "covered dish" style, to keep the burden off of any one person (suggestions here?)
4) We'll pick our next book at our first meeting (suggestions?)
5) If we get 20 people into this... we'll find a better location.
6) You'll have a month to read the book.
7) We'll discuss the book after dinner.
8) There will be lots of good coffee.

More details as they occur to me.

Progress of Redemption - Week 2

As we continue our study of the whole Bible,week 2, we'll be looking at the Prologue to the Bible, found in Genesis 1:1-11:32. (Click on the previous link to read it.)

Study begins at 7:00. We may be moving to the classroom outside of the nursery. See you tonight.

LEAD 02-19-08 God's Part in Ministry

Audio from the Teaching portion of Lead last night.

LEAD_021908.mp3

Link to the original.

Well... I'm Not in Favor of Boring...

I don't know that I'm willing to concede that preaching should be boring... but I'm okay (as some of you have noted...) with long.

See what Michael McKinley has to say on the subject.

Looking for A Few Good Members

"Discovering Church Membership" is coming.

We'll be beginning March 2, 2008 at 9:30 AM sharp.

If you're not a member of Harvest, or a member from "before the transition", or you know someone in the church who isn't a member and isn't on this list... Let them know.

All are welcome, no requirement to join upon completion of the Class.

Update: I'll be posting audio, documents, etc... on the blog. So sign up for the email update, or put this in your "feed reader" so you'll be updated when things are posted.