Weekender Plus - Part 2

Continuation -

Random Thoughts

• Church planters are wimps (per Mark Dever bc we should be going to revitalize existing churches; they love wimps though as stated when a brother in Katy introduced himself as a wimp church planter).
• About 70% of the church is in small groups, BUT Dever said that he prefers one one one discipleship because it is more flexible and I believe he said fruitful. I may try to ask him about this. Their church does small groups for: men, women, young married couples (or recent), evangelism groups, and by location (mixed groups).
• They have 13 elders currently for over 600 real-members, more non-staff than staff because of salary setting. I asked what they think is optimal number of elders. Differing views. Two people, including Dever, said have as many as we can. Matt Schmucker said he thinks that there can be too many as it makes it more cumbersome to get things done in meetings. Every elder has to agree to bring on new elder. That is a high standard and eventually would probably start limiting the number of elders that were added, unless specific leadership was done to prevent this. They did say that it was very important when having a larger group of elders to have someone who can run the meetings well (a "chairman", I guess). A good chairman is one who allows discussion, but doesn't let it go too long. They have a very good chairman now, whereas others who have tried have been too rules oriented (not enough discussion) and others not enough order.
• They try to pray through their membership list at elder meetings every year.
• Mark Dever says the next most important book after his bible is his membership directory. Be praying for members every week.
• I like the way that they taught the Members classes (parts 1-3). Mark covered the statement of faith in order of what Christian churches agree on, then what Evangelical churches agree on, and then added the congregational and baptist distinctives. Matt started his section on church covenant with his testimony. Very different style from Mark, but worked well for that section. Mark did various things to get to know who the people were that he was talking to. I remember know that Billy and Travis, you all did this at the beginning class, but might be useful for each class, i.e. use time at the beginning to get to know people a little bit better through some question(s).
• They prefer to baptize people after they have left home. Mark's youngest baptism was a 16 year old, he thinks. Children are to desire the approval of their parents and that is a godly thing. Don't confuse it by trying to get them to stand on their own before it is time. I agree in principle, but don't know about the leaving home part. When biblically do children need to leave home? When they marry. Should they be mostly independent of parents before then. I think so. 20 is when you can serve in the army biblically, so you should be ready to leave home by then. Thoughts? However, I would be hard pressed to keep someone younger from being baptized if they were the ones that were pressing me about it, i.e., if a 12 year old was on his own initiative, as far as I could discern, pressing to be baptized and doing so in a Godly way that showed his or her maturity, then I wouldn't deny it to them. Look, here is water; what is to prevent me from being baptized.
• When communicating, make sure you are educating your audience about any terms or concepts that they do not know or just use a different term when you can. Important biblical terms require education; can't leave out atonement, justification, etc.
• An elder is standing by each exit at the end of the service to greet people as they leave. CHBC does not have a meal afterwards and has multiple exits. As we discussed at our introductory meeting, it is good to make an effort to talk to people who are visiting and our members in general. Be looking for opportunities to care for people.