Congregational Identity Paper

Wilhoit, while teaching and having dialogue with his students pertaining to their spirituality formative influences which lead to conducting interviews with a number of church leaders, he realized, through these stories and interviews there has been a “sea of change in our formational structures and their effects will take a generation to fully manifest themselves.(13)” This establishes the basis for writing this book, to make a “call to intentionality about our formation and to repentance about how we have tried to engineer formation more than we have prayerfully opened our lives and our churches to God’s grace(14)”.

In the Introduction section of the book, The Hidden Lives of Congregations, Israel Galindo states that a congregation is a “corporate relationship organization” (3) and is not an organization. He points out that the hidden life of a congregation would depict the “nature” of a congregation. This further identifies the relationships and faith of the congregation. According to him, the universal principles are followed by the congregations so that “systemic relationships” can work. The leaders learn the roles that they have within the people who are the congregation. The journal will focus on Dr. Fowler’s question “what is the purpose of this gathering we call the church?”

1 – The Lordship of Jesus Christ – “Our identity as a movement, as well as

This is what happened today: A lot of familiars arrived to see Mia but Adam has still not arrived. Kim a friend of Mia arrive with his mother who never let her to drive long distances, Kim’s mother is very emotional, they are Jewish, at summers Kim goes to a summer camp this summer camp is very boring and she calls that camp as Torah Whore.

People used to think leadership and charisma in a pastoral setting as a senior pastor gets all light and attention and people totally depend on one senior pastor. There is no team ministry or team work with laities and other staff. There is no good discipleship to raise next leadership, which is like “one man show” on the stage. After 30 more years of pastoring one church from planting a new church, the church is collapsed when the senior pastor is retired. There is no next leadership, and people do not like another high-qualified leader ship because they have not been exposed to any other leadership. So our church does not keep mega church and one leadership. There are plenty of associate pastors who rotate their turns for leading worship and preaching on Sundays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and early Morning Prayer services. In the way, people do not look upon a senior pastor all the time. In anytime and any chance, a senior pastor steps out for the next leadership, and church still keeps going well as usual. It is kind of team work or team ministry without outstanding of one

The Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod is a mission-oriented, Bible-based, confessional Christian denomination headquartered in St. Louis, Mo., founded on the teachings of Martin Luther. Its beginnings can be traced to 750 Saxon immigrants who came to the State of Missouri in the United States of America in 1839. These German immigrants established a new church body in America, seeking the freedom to practice and follow confessional Lutheranism. Initial members, that included 12 pastors representing 14 congregations from Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Michigan, New York and Ohio, signed the church body’s constitution on April 26, 1847,

The Christian church has many different values, morals, and beliefs. Some examples are forgiveness, compassion, reconciliation, and unconditional love. Some of these values are very obvious when observing the discourse community, whereas some are more subtle and hard to catch. As I sat in the café of the church, I noticed a lot of communication going

Grace Chapel is a New Covenant Baptist church. Grace Chapel Baptist Church is located in Kingwood, West Virginia. The head pastor is Michael Argabrite, but the congregation calls him “Pastor Mike.” There are many whole church barbeques at the Pastors house that is just down the road. As all Baptists believe, they practice full emersion. They do not believe in infant baptism, only believers baptism. When the church was smaller, the Baptisms would take place at the Pastors house in the pool. Now they have a baptismal in the church. This individual church limits its song list to just hymnals. They also used to only have the piano playing. Now, the church allows a small drum box and they even have a choir now.

I desire to be part of a community that values creativity in how we partner with God in ministry, commitment to a particular people and place, and the necessary work to facilitate reconciliation between all people and God. Slow Church helped me to better articulate these ideas, but I am still learning how to lead others in living them out. As Smith and Pattison reminded me repeatedly through their book, these are all ordinary things, lived out in our day to day lives (Smith & Pattison, 2014, p. 223). It is my intention and my hope, by the grace of God, to keep practicing them for as long as I have

The First Foursquare Church of O has a more than 80-year history, though the element of change to be discussed in this paper came at the closure of a 20-year stint of a significant lead pastor. Set in a predominately white-collar Pacific Northwestern city, under the above mentioned pastor’s tenure, the church had more than tripled in size (to over 3,000 attendance), attempted an ambitious building project, transitioned to a multisite church, and survived the economic downturn of the 2000s.

Steinke addressed four core issues that leadership need to be addressed on a regular basis that includes: “1) Goals/missions; 2) Strength and Resources; 3) Anxiety and how to manage it's; and 4) Wholesomeness and to maintain it; and 5) Goals and applicable actions”. In this situation, the author feels that the church of attendance is at a stagnant state and that strongly relates to the core issues of anxiety and how to manage it along with wholeness and how to maintain it from dying. Here, the anxiety lies in watching the church membership rapidly decrease due to church leadership holding onto traditions and the refusal to make changes in the worship service and ministry leadership. In addition, wholesome and how to maintain its goal has deteriorated because the main system of leadership is unhealthy, in that, leadership is not open to understanding and with its form of spiritual dictatorship refuse to address concerns of its disease state of death. In addition, Peter L. Steinke stated that if congregation leader “struggle ineffective with one or more of the four core conditions, this can put the congregations in receipt of at-risk conditions for congregations”. Here, this author feels the main system should address its core issue by seeking god for wisdom and discernment to break this process of unhealthiness within that impacting its

They argue that God’s expectation for those leading the church is to seek to be faithful rather than successful. Again, key church planting advocates in North America and people who depend on church planting assessments would also argue for the importance of an awareness of weakness and dependence upon God. Jeff Christopherson, a key church planting leader in North America, writes about this necessary weakness for church planters in his book, Kingdom First: “You, by force of circumstances, find yourself in the most vulnerable intersection of weakness and lack. Perhaps for the first time in a long time, you are uniquely positioned and ready to experience the authority found in Kingdom first.” J.D. Greear urges believers to pursue ordinary, daily obedience to God, which accumulates to a lifetime of success rather than pursuing successful experiences. In Center Church, Tim Keller offers up “fruitfulness” as the response to the question of pursuing the standard of “faithfulness” or of “success.” Fruitfulness, Keller contends, is rooted in a pastor’s or church’s faithfulness to God and their faithfulness to doing the work God has laid out for them. Church planting experts would agree and advocate that a planter’s character and posture before God are far more important than any skills, gifts,

As shown in Appendixes 1 and 2, the individual identified as a white, heterosexual, bio man which was not something that I was surprised by. He also identified as gender conforming and able-bodied, as well as being a middle-class, young adult. These were all identities that I had previously assumed and was not surprised by any. There was some clarification going on at this time to ensure that the correct identity was being identified. He also declined to answer his identity on religion at this time. He stated that he perceived his gender, class, sexual orientation, and ability as all being purely agent status. Regarding his race, sex, and age, he felt that these identities were a mix of both target and agent statuses.

Wright does spend a lot more time on how communal activities and experiences are far more vital to the simply Christian life than is realized, and why vital relationships, as expressed in the church, seen as a real community, are the engine for linking understanding and experience. Wright's three common expressions of the Christian life: worship, prayer and Bible

I never thought to be a Christian leader. As a matter of fact, I am a person who did not know about God for 26 years. I was the center of my life, and there was no room for God to enter. Even when I was attending church service, I was trying not to be exposed to other church people. In other words, I was the kind of person who was afraid to walk into a life of faith. However, in the past three years, God has changed me in many ways, and showed me so many miraculous things. And, finally here I am. Being a Christian leader seems the most challenging job in the world. I am working as the chairman of a youth ministry, and walking on the path to be a church leader. When God called me to work for the