What happens to old Churches when the members die off or move away? More and more, this seems to be happening in small towns and villages. It is hard to realize, but Churches have a life cycle of their own. They are started by a few people with a desire to see a Church in that location. They grow up and mature as a congregation that serves their community and nation. And they decline and sometimes die off when the community changes. If your Church is in the late stage of this process, then several possibilities come to mind:

• The Church can be donated to a non-profit organization.
• A Mission organization can take over the building and use it.
• A new Church plant can occupy the building and reach the community.

If your Church is in a decline, you can just let it happen. Or you can be intentional about transitioning the building and grounds to another use. May God grant you the wisdom to celebrate the life and ministry of your Church, and then move on to better things.

Disasters happen. They make the news. And they impact Churches in the Disaster Community. If the Church building is spared, then it often becomes part of the recovery effort. Your Church building can provide shelter to those who are homeless. It can provide logistical support for organizations – e.g. UMCOR – that are bringing in relief. It can provide support groups and comfort to those who are traumatized by the event.

When the Church building is damaged, as in a storm or fire, then it too has to be rebuilt. Generally, there will be property insurance to help pay the bills. There may need to be an alternative worship plan for a time while reconstruction happens. Sometimes a neighboring Church will share facilities. Or a school auditorium may be used. Churches and communities need to pull together to rebound from the disaster. That’s what the Christian Community does.

When a disaster strikes a community, the Church is often there immediately to help. Whether it is a hurricane, tornado, flood, fire or earthquake, the Church is part of the community response. Usually, this happens after the first responders have completed their mission. Churches will reach out with people, resources and service to help in the recovery. This is part of the Church’s caring for others ministry.

How does your Church respond when a disaster strikes? Some Churches will take up a collection and send money. Others will gather supplies and get them delivered. Still others will organize a team to go and help. It might be covering damaged roofs with tarps to keep out more rain. It might be repairing damaged homes for those without insurance. It might be sending cleaning supplies and home goods to help those who have suffered. Whatever the method, the Church is called to reach out and help. And I have been amazed at the generosity and helpfulness of those in the Church.

Church buildings need security systems. In the past, there have been incidents at Churches. These make the news. But do they mean that the Church building needs for security are being ignored?

In the past, the Church – especially the sanctuary – was considered a place of safety. It was a refuge to those in trouble. People respected this, so the Church building was secure and safe. This is no longer the case. So staff need to take steps to make the Church building secure.

Property alarm systems can be installed, but who monitors the alarm in the middle of the night. One Church I was involved with had the alarm system connected to the police station, which was 2 blocks away. This meant that if there was a break in, the police arrived in 2 minutes. However, what happens if the youth are having an overnight event and accidentally trip the alarm. Better to have someone in the Church also get the alarm, and be able to override it before it goes to the police station. And that person should be up to date with the scheduled events of the calendar. That way, you don’t have an issue on the 4th of July.

Church buildings have various systems and security needs. Some are open only on the weekends. Others are almost open 24×7. They need utility services. They need security services. Your Church probably has a programmable thermostat. This saves energy and lowers electricity bills by running the HVAC system only when the sanctuary is in use. It might start cooling down the sanctuary early on Sunday morning and shut it off again after worship services are concluded.

Church staff need to know how to control these systems. There might be an morning children’s worship service during VBS week. Someone needs to reprogram the thermostat so everyone stays cool. Or there might be special evening event open to the community. Someone needs to unlock the doors and ensure that the heat is on in the winter. Whatever the reason, make sure that staff know how to control these systems and understand their responsibility to ensure that the building is used responsibly and used well.

Eastertide is the period of time between Easter and Pentecost. On Easter, we all think about the empty tomb. It is the defining characteristic of Christianity. Other religions have great leaders, but only Christianity has a leader who rose from the dead. And for good measure, he did it after 3 days!

Many Churches have special celebrations during Eastertide. Some Churches have a sunrise service, to celebrate the empty tomb. Some Churches have special events for children, like Easter Festivals. I even heard of a Church that clipped the Church. Clipping the Church is an English custom where you form a human chain around the Church building, facing outward. You then sing hymns to celebrate the fact that the Church is reaching out to the community.

However you celebrate Eastertide, always remember that it is because of the Risen Lord that we have Easter!

There is so much that goes into the Easter season. It can get a little hectic. And you may be asking yourself, is serving on the Church Staff bad for my Spiritual Life? Let’s reflect on this a bit.

In one sense, yes. You are involved in almost everything the Church does, and it can become spiritually draining. But in another sense, you are continually inspired by worship – even when you lead it!

Traditionally, the Ash Wednesday service comes with an emphasis on repentance and silence. Why be silent? Why not have someone reading scriptures during the imposition of the ashes? That way, those still in their pews will have something to focus on as they pray.

Many Churches hold an Ash Wednesday service. It marks the beginning of Lent, which is traditionally symbolized by the color purple. During this service, people are reminded of their need for repentance. The ashes are traditionally taken from burning the Christmas Tree. The imposition of the ashes is a reminder that we are all mortal and in need of Christ’s forgiveness and grace.

As Christians, we find hope in Christ. There is no time like Christmas when we need to realize that hope came into this world with Him. Before He came, there was only a distant hope – a glimmer like a star. Now, we experience the presence of hope every day. The world may remind us of hopelessness; it is certainly all around us. Yet, the baby in the manger a long time ago in a far away place is something that resonates within us. It bursts forth within our hearts – the hope of a new child. So we have reason to be hope-filled, even in the cold month of December. Advent brings with it a renewal of all our hopes.

May this Advent season bring you a new sense of hope for the coming year!

Stewardship involves more than just giving money. It really involes the whole person. But sometimes this is hard to see. The following link is for a spreadsheet that I came up with that looks at three aspects of stewardship – Time, Talent and Treasure. Take a look and see how you balance these three in your life.

Excel Format:
Time Talent Treasure Worksheet

PDF Format:
Time Talent Treasure Worksheet

Last Sunday, there was a medical emergency in the balcony. It happened right during the praise time, interrupting the service. Fortunately, the man turned out to be alright. And it was amazing that there were doctors and nurses in the congregation at the time, who promptly rendered assistance. I rejoice that after the paramedics arrived, the man was able to walk to the ambulance – a good sign that he was going to be alright.

On reflection, I wonder what the best way to handle a medical emergency is. Certainly, you want to ask for medical professionals to render first aid. CPR might well save a life. Or if you have an Automatic Emergency Defibrillator (AED) handy, then get it promptly. But what should you do then? Ask everyone to be in prayer? Lead a prayer for the sick person? Play quiet music while the EMTs stabilize the patient for transport to the ER? Or just go on with the service? Seems like Churches need a response to these types of situations. What does your Church do?

Where do you go to find training materials for ministry? There are lots of great resources available online. This site will soon be setting up a training area dedicated to ministry technology:

Training Page

Check back for new training materials in the future.

You want to be a Church that welcomes newcomers. They are your life blood as a Church. (There is always attrition, as people retire or die. So if you’re aren’t growing, then you’re dying.) However, you don’t see any newcomers coming.

Here are some ideas of things you can do to Welcome the Stranger:

• Take time to welcome any visitors during the worship service.
• Reserve parking spots for Visitors
• Make the nursery clean, safe, sanitary and well-equipped
• Limit announcements to just the highlights

What do people see during the week when the come to the Church? Do you have an information kiosks that they can inspect to see what’s going on? One approach that I’ve seen uses a closed loop TV cable system to display information. The sequence is an endless loop, showing the same series of images. Or perhaps you have a slideshow that appears.

Why not integrate the announcements from Sunday with the information kiosk? That way, people would find the same information when they came to a Church meeting that they saw on Sunday. You could dedicate a page on your web site to providing a slideshow with this information. The slideshow would automatically repeat. You would update it on the database from time to time, and it would publish new announcements automatically. Here is an example that I have programmed:

Announcement Loop

What does a great Church look like? You often think of the great cathedrals. Or perhaps the little brown Church in the woods. Either way, the variety of Church Designs is amazing. However, the Church exists to serve the people, so the design should have some utilitarian aspects. It may be impressive, and that will draw people to it, with a lofty spire and elegant stone cuttings, but it also has to serve the purpose of ministry.

Generally, the bulletin is printed during the week and distributed on Sunday. But why couldn’t we prepublish the bulletin to the web site? It would give the members a heads up on the plans for worship this weekend. For some, this would help them prepare by prereading the scriptures for the sermon. For others, this would be an opportunity to see what is going on so they can plan accordingly, rather than be surprised on Sunday morning.

Given the fact that most Churches today use computers to publish the bulletin, it wouldn’t be hard to include a step that published it to the web site of the Church. It would go up when the bulletin was finalized – i.e. printing on paper. At that point, there are no more changes to be made. (However, the web site copy can always be updated.) Many Churches no doubt already send parts of the bulletin out already – e.g. announcements of various events coming up via email. This would just expand upon that process.

Some people think of mobile devices (i.e. cell phones) as an annoyance in Church. I prefer to think of them as an opportunity to extend the Word! Yes, they do tend to go off during the sermon. (Have you posted any signs or notices in the bulletin like Please mute your cell phone during worship?) But many people have the Bible on their smart phones. Why not ask them to follow along in their Bible on their smartphone or on paper? You might be surprised by how many people are already doing that!

Rather than seeing all of the technology as a hindrance to worship, look for ways to leverage it into worship. That way, people will download apps that are Biblically oriented. And that means they will be more likely to include Bible Study in their typical day. After all, who goes anywhere these days without their smart phone? One Church even makes the sermon notes available during worship for people to download, read, and take notes on their mobile device. Actually, that would mean that the preacher doesn’t have to publish their notes a week in advance; they could do it that morning, 15 minutes before the service!

As you plan for the future you need a strategic planning mindset. Don’t get bogged down in today’s issues. Look at the future needs of the Church. What will it look like in 10 years, 20 years? Then begin the process of visioning for that future. How do we meet the the needs of our community in 10 years? If you start now with good planning, you will accomplish it!

Virtual Local Area Networks (VLAN) allow you to partition a physical network so that you have multiple networks defined. This might be useful in creating a Church network on multiple campuses. The VLAN would span multiple physical networks, but act like one big network with large capacity.

A VLAN has to be set up by a network engineer using software for definition and management. The software can automatically assign nodes to the VLAN as needed to support attaching and detaching computer systems.

Most users presume that they can send an attachment to an email of any size. Storage is cheap these days, so it makes sense. However, the technology has limits. Specifically, there is a limit to the amount of space the individual servers will allows. Email messages travel in a chain from one email transport to another – ultimately arriving at their destination. If the size of the message exceeds the size allowed by one of those machines, then it probably won’t make it to its destination. This is a technical limitation that prevents overloading that server with too much email.

If your Church has it’s own eMail server, then you’ll want to set clear policies on the size of an attachment. You want to be reasonable with your staff’s needs. If they really want to send video clips around, then you should probably up the limit to match what YouTube allows – i.e. 15 minutes. But if they just want to exchange MS Office documents, the limit could be around 16 MB. Check to see how people want to use eMail.

If you use an outside service for eMail messaging, then you have to follow their policies. This can vary all over the map, but you want to educate your staff and members about this limitation. Otherwise, you’ll get a lot of support calls about eMail messages that for some reason didn’t go through. And we’re not just talking about SPAM filters here.

Having files attached to eMail messages is a useful service. It can make communication more effective by keeping a working set of files together. However, if you’re going to edit the files heavily, then you may want to consider setting up a virtual space for collaboration. For example, you can make a drop box for sharing and editing photos.

Any computer system these days is vulnerable to online hacking. The only way to keep that from happening is to never connect to the Internet. But the Internet is such a wonderful source of information, it just can’t be done. However, there are some things that you can do to keep the Church computers secure:

o Use Antivirus software (and keep it up to date)
o Turn off systems when they are not in use
o Avoid downloading anything you have suspicions about

Physical security is probably the best. If the computer is off, then no one can hack into it. However, there is also room for shrewdness (Matthew 10:16). So be on your guard at all times.

Sometimes we want to rush out of the sanctuary right after the service. We are busy people, and the Church has a special place in our lives; but we also need to spend time with family on Sundays. Yet sometimes there is a special occasion for those we serve. What if a family has a baptism? Or better yet, someone experiences salvation. They may want to mark the occasion by taking pictures and/or video. Perhaps we should check to see if people are still in the sanctuary after we’ve completed our post production activity. If they are, then perhaps we should keep the lights on so they can get great shots.

How can a Church make use of a Content Management System? The Church has the best content in the universe – i.e. the Bible. But how can the Church manage this? Open source Content Management Systems are readily available. They are designed to enable authors to write in an easy and naturally flowing manner. The Content Management System software allows you to organize the content in an orderly fashion.

All Churches add and/or replace staff members. Would it not make sense to have a standard staff workstation configuration? You could simply make this a disk image, and install it on new or resurrected hardware. It would then boot up and run a standard set of applications, such as:

Office Productivity
Various Browsers
Church Accounting (if appropriate)
Membership Records
Worship Planning
Spiritual Music

The technology exists to make this an easy and straightforward process. And it makes providing IT Support much easier, since everyone has a known starting configuration. The only drawback is the matter of licensing. Most Churches don’t have volume licensing agreements, so they have to add and track individual licenses to software applications. Is there a way to do this effectively in a small Church office environment? And of course, staff tend to have varied interest and favorite applications they want to install and run. How do you get everyone on the same page? Or maybe a better question is, should you? What do you think?

Streaming the video of a worship service has always fascinated me. My background in TV Ministry combined with Web Technology makes me aware that the technology is there. The trouble is in the end points. How can we ensure that people have the bandwidth to receive a streaming video webcast of the service? Do you set minimum standards for their hardware? Or do you come up with complicated methods for downgrading the video quality until something works? What has been your experience in this area?