Other Ministry Related Articles • ChurchLetters.org

Drive-in Church Service is a Great Alternative during a Pandemic!

Words that none of us who are in ministry ever thought about when we started the year of 2020 with tremendous hope and optimism and, of course, vision!

After all, “vision” and “2020” go together almost like “peanut butter and jelly” or “ham and eggs”! (Sorry, but I'm stuck on food analogies). I even shared a 4-part message series on vision in January, yet if I knew then what I know now… Well, enough of that.

On March 15th, we had our final service in the Sanctuary, and even though we are not in a State which required churches to close, we decided to take the precautionary step and do so. We felt we wanted to have a community that we could minister to following the pandemic who didn't feel like we were “above the rules”.

I'm a reasonably technical person, and we had already been broadcasting online for a few years, so the transition to online-only would have worked out fairly well.

Stop Chirping and Fly toward Freedom in Christ!

John 8:36 So if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed. (We can have freedom in Christ!)

While pondering what to write about for today’s blog post, I couldn’t think too well because of what seemed to be a constant chirping from the garage.

Knowing that I had just mowed the lawn and had left the door open for a while, I had little doubt that a bird had flown into the garage and had now become an occupant of a place God never intended for little birdie to occupy.

Getting up quietly, I opened the door to go into the garage while the main door was still closed… quietness. No chirping was to be heard anywhere, so I came back to the desk and within a matter of minutes, you guessed it… chirp, chirp, CHIRP! CHIRP!

I opened the main garage door, and even though it sat there within a foot of freedom, all it could do was continue to chirp! I picked up a piece of cardboard to see if I could “shoosh” it out, but it just flew into the garage more.

Mother’s Day Welcome – Wide Spectrum of Motherhood

“The Wide Spectrum of Mothering” (Provided by Amy Young from www.Messymiddle.com)
(Great for sharing from pulpit each Mother's Day)

To those who gave birth this year to their first child—we celebrate with you

To those who lost a child this year – we mourn with you

To those who are in the trenches with little ones every day and wear the badge of food stains – we appreciate you

To those who experienced loss through miscarriage, failed adoptions, or running away—we mourn with you

To those who walk the hard path of infertility, fraught with pokes, prods, tears, and disappointment – we walk with you. Forgive us when we say foolish things. We don’t mean to make this harder than it is.

To those who are foster moms, mentor moms, and spiritual moms – we need you

To those who have warm and close relationships with your children – we celebrate with you

To those who have disappointment, heart ache, and distance with your children – we sit with you

To those who lost their mothers this year – we grieve with you

To those who experienced abuse at the hands of your own mother – we acknowledge your experience

To those who lived through driving tests, medical tests, and the overall testing of motherhood – we are better for having you in our midst

To those who have aborted children – we remember them and you on this day

To those who are single and long to be married and mothering your own children – we mourn that life has not turned out the way you longed for it to be

To those who step-parent – we walk with you on these complex paths

To those who envisioned lavishing love on grandchildren -yet that dream is not to be, we grieve with you

To those who will have emptier nests in the upcoming year – we grieve and rejoice with you

To those who placed children up for adoption — we commend you for your selflessness and remember how you hold that child in your heart

And to those who are pregnant with new life, both expected and surprising –we anticipate with you

This Mother’s Day, we walk with you. Mothering is not for the faint of heart and we have real warriors in our midst. We remember you.

Pastors Wife Appreciation Month is March… right?

It seems that there was an attempt to start such a month of appreciation back in 2015 and while it seems to have faded away a bit, I think it's still a great idea!

Perhaps I'm a bit biased because my wife is a Pastor's wife!
My mother was a Pastor's wife!

With the small slice of internet influence I have, I wanted to take a moment to write an article to encourage people in churches all across the world to celebrate and appreciate their Pastors Wife!

There are so many pressures in ministry life, and one might say that a Pastor's Wife has seen her fair share of them. While we could go on and on about some of those pressures she deals with (including encouraging the Pastor), I'd like to give 4 simple ideas of how to be a blessing to her.

Church Letter Writing Benefits

The art of communication has changed dramatically over the past few decades so this article with deal with church letter writing benefits. With the advent of email, we stopped writing letters. Then, with Facebook, blogs, and Instagram, we started posting information to all our friends and family at once, but stopped communicating with each friend or family on an individual, personal level. And Twitter shortened our communication with people to short messages, slogans, and hashtags. As the culture changed how it communicated, so have many churches. Churches used to write all kinds of church letters, be they church invitation letters, donation letters, or even Christmas cards, but fewer and fewer church letters are being sent each year and that’s unfortunate.

Please don’t misunderstand. The information revolution has done some amazing things for communication. Churches have never been able to communicate with as many people as efficiently as they can today, but in some ways we have also lost some aspects of communication. We live in an age of impersonal, non-tangible 1’s and 0’s, but the last thing the church should be is impersonal and non-tangible.