Hello Friends,
Today I share a bonus Milk Can. These are some ideas that have been rumbling around in my head. I have shared them on many occasions, but this is my first time to bring them into this arena.
In short, my challenge today to churches and pastors is to consider riding the circuits once again, but instead of dusty trails on the back of a horse, let’s ride the electronic circuits of our computers.
What do I mean? In my denomination, and others like it all across our country, we have many small churches in small towns. These churches are struggling under the economic realities of our time. Many are unable to pay the salary for a part-time pastor, not to even consider a full-time pastor. Additionally, in many of our larger cities we are seeing a growing phenomenon of the multi-campus churches. Let’s put the two together and reach our smaller towns!
How do we do this? It is really quite simple. If you are in a city and there is a church or two in neighboring towns that are unable to find or support a pastor, offer to be there pastor. Provide pastoral care and cast a vision for what could be. When it comes to the sermon on Sunday morning there are several options available including:
- Live simulcast your church’s sermon into the other church.
- Video record your church’s sermon and upload it to a server. The other church could then download/stream the sermon into the service on the same day.
- Burn a DVD of the sermon and have a runner take it to the other church.
- Video record your sermon on a Saturday night. Play this sermon at the sites while the sermon is preached live at one of the churches on Sunday.
I hope you noticed something. Many of these options would allow us to be circuit riders once again. Each Sunday we could deliver our “live in the flesh” sermon to a different one of our churches. The other churches would receive the same sermon but in an electronic format.
What about leadership? Designate a lay pastor at each site who is responsible for the worship service details each week. One of the great things about small churches is they usually already have a person who is the de facto lay pastor. If they didn’t, the church would have closed years ago. On a very regular basis meet together with each of the lay pastors as a group. Use this time for unified prayer, vision casting, dreaming, planning, and leadership development.
What if we were to ride the circuits again?
Pastor Stephen