Our need for a more effective way to function became clear after our all-church study of Rick Warren’s “The Purpose Driven Church” and his more recent book “The Purpose Driven Life.” Our leaders were further inspired by several churches (Carson City UMC) and their vitality as they embraced a new way of approaching church work.

We realized that as new people connect with our church it is difficult to understand how to get involved. Questions were regularly being presented like: “What can I do to help?”, “Who is in charge?”, and “What are the ministries of this church?” When confronted with the board and committee structure of our church, new members were overwhelmed by its complexity and the large commitment which monthly meetings required. We kept hearing, “Isn’t there a smaller way for me to get involved?”

It was decided that we needed an clearer and easier way to keep everyone informed and involved with our church. It was also decided that we didn’t need to completely re-invent the wheel. So we looked again at Rick Warren’s work and to area churches which were having success with this very issue.

What came out of this time of reflection is a structure which organizes our church around ministry activities, not committees. In this way, if a person is wanting to help with an individual activity (like the CROP Walk) they no longer need to serve on a committee which oversees all missions. They simply connect with the individual activity, thus bypassing the need to attend monthly meetings throughout the year. In this model, meetings are short-term and relate directly to the specific ministry. This makes ministries more directly connected to the people of our church.

To help communicate what is going on, who is doing it, and how to get involved, we are working to create visual displays in the Parlor. The parlor displays will be shaped like houses because we are calling ministry work areas “Houses.” As we get them completed it will be easy to see all the exciting things going on in each House and who to connect with to get involved. Each House has a “Head of House” who works to support and encourage all of the individual ministries that fall within his or her house. The Heads of the Houses are working together which we are calling the Vision Team.

The leaders of our church are excited about the potential that this new ministry approach has to offer. As we live into this together please feel free to share your ideas with those involved. The enclosed graphic will help you to see who the heads of each house are.