Allen Kleine Deters

I believe we certainly develop as disciples as we live out the mission.  But we also see God's mission more clearly as we develop as disciples.  Often it is the mission of God is the innertia of discipleship, but once it's moving it creates its own momentum... if that makes sense.

Allen

Ruth, you have been an inspiration on this page.  I think I speak for many who have appreciated your openness to challenge us and encourage us to step out in faith being faithful in God's mission of reaching others and discipling others within the context of small groups.

May God richly continue to bless you in your roles in Small Group Ministry within the CRC.  I look forward to continuing the conversations through your comments and insights.

Blessings to you.

Allen

Neil, I appreciate what you are saying here in a big way. Healthy pastoral care takes on a variety of modes and avenues in the church. And it certainly effects the way we develop leadership.

I wonder how churches will look at the role of small groups as they tend more toward being one of the primary avenues of building disciples. The small group then takes on much more than a caring roll, but also a missional role where groups study, share, care, pray and take on more intentional mission together.

David,

This really rocks.  While we do have a very good website, we've created a FB presence and want to use it more.  This will really help.  I've seen some pages like World Vision on FB and it is an excellent example of how you can design a very attractive FB page.

Just a note, I decided to try short spurt advertising on FB.  I created two ads and ran them for only two days each.  One was for our theology pub meeting  and the other for Sunday morning worship, especially because I was starting a new sermon series.  I targeted specifically for our area and "voila" we attracted new people from both our ads.  And the cost was very minimal -- about $8 each for the two days.

Welcome Elizabeth. Glad to have you on board. I'm thankful for this new section.

You're right about the Classis check up. I was part of the original CRMT from our Classis here. It was good for us to ask the questions. But I think we're due for a review. Blessings to you here.

I can very much appreciate this video having been there and done that as worship pastor and musician.

I wonder still as the CRC ventures further into contemporary if we shouldn't offer a little more in the way of training to help with the transition. I've watched CRCs try to make this move and do it poorly trying to turn worship into something like the video portrays and no one trained well enough to even remotely pull it off. How do we make worship genuine and not manipulative so that the vertical and horizontal movement glorifies God and draws people into deeper relationship with him and each other?

I noticed that it seems in my area we are about 10 years behind in most things including clothing styles. There is the mentality especially among our youth to have the "hip" worship like the video as if that is the only option. And there are many here who believe if we change to more modern worship like that we will attract more people. And while I have worked hard with our church to develop a more "well done" blended, but slightly weighted toward modern, style of worship, I stress that God uses devoted followers of Christ to grow the church.

I'm not going to lie, I'd love to have David Crowder or Chris Tomlin or Blue Tree as my worship leaders.

Synergy is totally necessary. I'm with Mark and others in that getting people to think missional in their own backyards is invariably going to get more people thinking about and even participating in global mission. I remember being frustrated as a youth pastor when people supported youth who wanted to go on a YWAM DTS or a CRC short-term mission, but we could hardly get support to do ministry in the streets of our local communities. It made no sense to me at all, but certainly bore witness to the fact that people think about missions as about being, "over there" and not in my backyard.

I've witnessed first hand however in two churches, one I served and the current, where people who started serving local became more open to serving globally. We do a huge Serve project here and ongoing Communities in Service ministry. This past December three of our men went to Nicaragua with another group to drill a well. Now we're talking about going to Zambia in June 2011.

Missional starts at grass roots.

kvnsdsm,

I can appreciate that you feel that organ can work with contemporary, but I would say it is rare.
I'm not sure that it is fair to compare the pipe organ to a synthesizer. they are completely different instruments except for the keys. The sounds are significantly different. An electronic keyboard can host many different sounds such as strings, synth, varieties of organs including a Hammond B3 and other Jazz styles as well as choral voices and the like that sound no where close the pipe organ and which the pipe organ cannot emulate either.
I would agree that some of the modern hymns such as In Christ Alone or How Deep the Father's Love can sound okay with the organ, but are clearly not meant for organ.

If you listen to contemporary music by the artists you will notice an obvious absence of an organ except for perhaps a jazz, combo or B3 and for good reason. Those organ sounds work well, at times, with the style of music. When you listen to How Deep the Father's Love for instance, you can tell that it aches for a celtic feel with a penny whistle or Irish bag pipe type sound. I've heard it done with organ and it loses that celtic feel which I feel is a great disservice to the song. This of course is just an example.
While some songs do have a need for a long melodic line, it does not naturally mean an organ sound fits. This is something we bantered around in worship at Calvin Seminary too and came to understand that certain instruments are for certain styles of music. It is rare that any crossover works.

I remember my time in a local GR church where the organist tried playing contemporary music on organ. She was highly accomplished, but no matter what settings she used, she admitted as well, that the organ did no justice to the piece. I've experienced this same thing in other West MI churches as well.

Having said that, we still try from time to time to use the organ to fill the bottom. However, if the organist, no matter how lightly she plays, tries the melody line or to fill with chords the sound totally changes the feel of the song. 95% of the time, it just doesn't fit modern music.