The UmBlog

Ben Dubow is a local pastor who also cooks. He sees all the kitchen lessons he brings to pastoring . It is great stuff. Great ingredients matter. No one is above any task--great chefs jump in the pot sink when needed. Preparation is critical. You have to call the best out of people. Conflict is inevitable and must be dealt with. Understanding your customer is critical. Excellence is in the details--at every stage! You can't micro-manage a line chef. Trust them or fire them. Ultimately, though, the executive chef is accountable for everything! You earn credibility over the long haul and you can lose it with one bad meal or experience. see other thoughts on ecclesiology and church

at the Glocal Trekker blog Another thing to think about. So, so much emphasis on starting a church, but the reality is that’s only a 2 to 3-year process. How does what we teach enable someone, not just to start a church, but to "complete" it? Maybe we should change the term to "church finisher" rather than "church starter!" The goal cannot be to inspire lots of people to start churches. The measure cannot be the hype, the conference, the launch, but the measure is the church ten years after it is planted. If that were the case, I promise you, it would change how most people teach and how we plant churches.

Guy works in Bolivia, i mean Ecuador. He describes their work and process and concludes "So therefore, a church is a group of baptized believers who meet regularly together where God has planted them and function as a NT ekklesia ." but you would be well served to read his entire post

There have been swipes at Haggard and the US evangelical leadership model in general, the charismatic leader/founding pastor, on the blogs. However, in 3 days, his board has held him accountable and told him to step down and he did. That is an excellent response time to a moral issue in the leader. So like many other things, when it works well, it works really well. I'm glad his church implemented this accountability structure that Haggard himself set up. Hopefully, that accountability board will walk with him and his family for the long haul. No board can prevent someone from sinning. No denomination can. No accountability partner can. Each sinner is responsible for his own sin. The board did well, so far. I commend them.

Thabiti Anyabwile writes, The writer, picking up on the typical multi-site church slogan, "One church, multiple locations," asks a critical question: "But what does it mean to be "one church," spread across hundreds or thousands of miles?" Good question. This model of doing church calls into question all of our assumptions about pastoral ministry. It calls into question whether the relationship between pastor and congregation is at all essential. It begs the question of whether preaching really is central to our gatherings (at least live preaching from a flesh-and-blood preacher). And I'm curious about the approach to governance or polity used by such churches. How is a group in Bangkod involved in the decisions of groups in Southern California? Rev. Geoff Surratt, co-author of The Multi-Site Church Revolution and a pastor at Seacoast Church, a church with six sites in Georgia and one in South Carolina, makes this case for multi-sites over and against...

Daneil Wallace from bible.org argues, A Case for the Plurality of Elders... his introductory points follow, you'll have to click the link to read the developed argument... (1) Presbyters (also translated "elders") and bishops (also translated "overseers") were apparently the same individuals. That is to say, the two terms were synonymous. (2) The leadership of the church from the earliest period always had elders, even if it did not have deacons. Young churches only had elders; more mature churches had both elders and deacons. (3) Elder and pastor are not the same thing in the NT. (4) For elders, the one qualification that is other than moral is the ability to teach. (5) The consistent pattern in the NT is that every church had several elders.

My post on duties of a pastor generates many, many hits. I thought this by Maxwell is very helpful also. jpu hat tip: Blanchard Family Leadership is influence—nothing more, nothing less. When you become a student of leaders, as I am, you recognize people's level of influence in everyday situations all around you. FIVE MYTHS ABOUT LEADERSHIP There are plenty of misconceptions and myths that people embrace about leaders and leadership. Here are five common ones: 1. THE MANAGEMENT MYTH A widespread misunderstanding is that leading and managing are one and the same. Up until a few years ago, books that claimed to be on leadership were often really about management. The main difference between the two is that leadership is about influencing people to follow, while management focuses on maintaining systems and processes. As former Chrysler chairman and CEO Lee Iacocca wryly commented, "Sometimes even the best manager is like the little boy with the big dog, waiting to see where the...

another perspective by David Alan Black posted at a commenter's blog, This is a long article but here is the teaser. Black writes, "...The array of ecclesiastical titles accompanying the names of Christian leaders today is completely missing from the New Testament, and would have appalled the apostles and early believers. In light of what we have said above, there is a great need for reformation within local churches in the way we view leadership. Traditional pastoral ministry promotes an unbiblical one-man model of leadership under the self-styled “pastor.” In contrast, the New Testament teaches oversight by a plurality of men called elders. Some elders might be gifted differently and may even excel in specific pastoral tasks, but there is no biblical warrant for dividing church leaders into separate “offices” with honorific titles. Traditional concepts of “pastor” are clearly unscriptural. The New Testament does not speak of two classes of Christians, as we do today. Accord...

Start with this article. Dallas Morning News | News for Dallas, Texas | Religion : Few things create more anxiety for a church than having to find a new pastor. Most congregations don't like to think about it, much less plan for it. It's inevitable, of course, that pastors eventually will leave – whether they move, retire or die. Being unprepared for that day can cause chaos for those charged with finding a new leader. It can create rough sledding for whoever gets the job. It can even endanger the stability of a successful church. In particular, megachurches built on the personality of a dynamic preacher are at risk when that pastor departs, say church consultants. Imagine Saddleback Church without Rick Warren, or the Potter's House without T.D. Jakes. Many churches don't realize they're 'a heartbeat away from coming undone,' said J. Russell Crabtree, a church consultant in Ohio and co-author of The Elephant in the Boardroom, a book that encourages churches ...

This is a long post, but its shorter than the 5 articles i'm condensing. He loves the form of the church though admits its lack of description in the Bible. "Some people refuse to be a vital part of a congregation of Christians. They feel they are 'giving up their liberty' when they officially join a group of Christians and submit to their love and discipline. What liberty do they give up? Do they have the liberty to divorce themselves from 'the people of Christ' in their locality and not meet and worship with them? I don't think so. I am spiritually joined to all those who are also joined to Christ our common Lord. Every member of His body is my brother or sister. Do the NTS tell me to do certain things that can only be done by my being a member of a gathered group of His sheep? Yes. Do I have the liberty to be a spiritual lone wolf responsible to no other human beings? Where do the NTS give me the liberty to think and act as if I owe nothing to the ekkles...