CONSIDER THE FUN OF HAVING THE WHOLE CHURCH INVOLVED
I’m going to offer you some sample sets of questions to spark your imagination. The questions are deliberately structured so that members can submit their answers quickly. My suggestion is that you make use of a program like Survey Monkey so that people can both participate quickly and in a short period of time they can also have visual graphs of the congregational response, (all without putting any individual on the defensive and quickly displaying the diversity that exists in the congregation.)
We will start with some easy questions that both describe the nature of the congregation and affirms its diversity even though they are one family. The idea is to avoid identifying right and wrong answers and encouraging the discovery of how diverse people can benefit from diversity.
So here are three question sets:
1. To nurture a warm, welcoming church, all member should commit to:
- Speaking to at least seven people before they leave the sanctuary.
- Take notice of and speak to people whose name they can’t recall.
- Always sit in the same place, so people around them are familiar.
- Pray by name for members who seem lonely.
2. To lessen conflict and create harmony, pastors should:
- Avoid preaching on Scriptures that might be controversial.
- Only preach on subjects about which everyone agrees.
- Acknowledge potential disagreements about points made and encourage further conversation.
- Allow people to vote on which parts of the Gospel they like and preach accordingly.
- The biggest contributor to distrust among church members is:
- Inadequate communication.
- Feeling that only a few people make all the decisions.
- Failure to understand how decisions are made in the church.
- Failure to hold a shared vision about the nature and mission of the church
