February 2008

01.28.2008

ne Parson’s Opinion


I have been your pastor for a little over four years, and I feel it is time to look at what ARBC is doing well and what we not doing so well. To do this, we need someone objective to look at ARBC and see how we can do a better job with reaching and discipling people. To that end, I began looking for a trained consultant who could be that objective person.

Our Director of Missions, Dr. Bob Ryan, is one person I mentioned this need to, among others. He was able to link ARBC up with Larry Richardson, who is a Director of Missions in Illinois.

Larry has been trained to do church evaluations by Lifeway. As an added bonus, Lifeway is going to help us with the cost of the consultant to the tune of $700. For you who may not know, Lifeway (which publishes most of the literature ARBC uses) is a not-for-profit organization. So, what would normally be profit in a business is used for ministry. They give money to the North American Mission Board, the International Mission Board, and to Pioneer State conventions like Colorado to provide salary for staff. For your information, most of Sam Cotter’s salary was paid by Lifeway. They also help local churches with projects like our church evaluation.

I will be asking several of you to meet in focus groups with our consultant on March 14 and 15, a Friday and Saturday. Larry will ask questions, listen to your answers and form a picture of ARBC. He will attend our morning worship service on March 16 and speak to us in that evening’s service. About a month later, Larry will return and talk to us about what we are doing well and areas we need work on to be able to move to the next level of usefulness to God.

See you on the Lord’s Day!
Jim

Posted by arbc at 09:19 PM