Sentences with phrase «mature as a congregation»

Not exact matches

Failure to act as direct teacher and dean or principal of a school of discipleship by its pastoral leader probably accounts more than any other single factor for a congregation's inability to mature in its ministry.

For example, once a congregation has learned to raise its budget by having dinners, bazaars, and raffles, buttressed perhaps by the windfall of an endowment fund for operating expenses, it loses the capacity to understand stewardship as an expression of maturing in Spirit and in mission.

Beside preaching, explicit instruction in prayer by the pastoral leader best acquaints parishioners with the master vision of the life of the congregation as a corporate journey toward maturing in the Christian life.

I am convinced that the first major step to expertise as a guide to maturing in the Christian life is to listen to as many stories of faith journeys among members of one's congregation as pastoral access provides.

A better measure of the strength of a congregation as a vehicle for maturing would be the number and proportion of the adult membership that meet in groups — disciple schooling, soma, and mission - support — outside the sanctuary at other times of the week.

Just as the reports of ongoing mission keep the full range of the mission before the whole congregation, so a liturgy with theological and experiential integrity keeps the full range of maturing in God constantly before the whole congregation.

The guide as educator must monitor the enterprise to ensure that subject matter and method in each area are appropriate to the goal of a congregation maturing in the Christian life.

A maturing congregation will be one that relocates the center of gravity of its life from Sunday morning worship to the groups that express life in the Spirit and the church as the body of Christ in nurture and in mission.

The pastor's need for a metaphor for ministry which provides a sense of meaning through all the personal crises of passing decades as well as the continual need to balance the demands of the congregation with maintaining the integrity of the «call» can be met by the New Testament based metaphor for ministry as being a «prophetic guide to maturing in the Christian life.