Sunday, September 30, 2007
Small Church Within a Large Church...
Our church has approximately 4000 members from various areas surrounding it. (We live in Mesa, but our church is in Gilbert.) So our Elder board developed a way for us to have "small churches" within our large church. We meet together for corporate worship and Sunday school. We have women's activities, men's activities and children's activities as a body, as well as quarterly gatherings for our entire church body. (We have 4 services, so we don't always see the people from the 4:00 service, but we unite with them at other events.) On top of that our church is organized into 5 different "area groups". Each area has its own pastor and its own small groups, bible studies, playgroups, etc. So, if I was hospitalized and we needed help with childcare or meals we would contact our area pastor who has his own team of people who are not only available to meet our needs, but already in our area. Chris's weekly bible study is with men in our area and we have playgroups with the same families. We can make a greater impact on our neighbors by forming fellowships within our area. It would be harder for me to invite a non-christian friend to drive 20 minutes for a play date than it is to meet at the park up by our house with other Christians who live in this area. It makes a lot of sense to us, but the thing that makes me happiest about it is that our head pastor is still available to us. He has his own email that only he reads and he responds to each one. But on the other hand, our area pastor knows us and our needs and is paid simply to minister to them. I really feel like it is a win-win situation for everyone. I hope this makes sense. I really love our church and the way it is run, so I really want to do it justice:)
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7 comments:
does your church have a website? (if you don't want to post it here, you can tell hobbitsister, who'll tell melilot, who'll tell me;)
www.evbc.org :D Lots of archived podcasts (w/ video!) of sermons too!
i like the sound of that :)
Thanks! So where do your small groups meet? At the big church or do you also have small meeting areas? I'm also a little confused- you meet in your area groups each Sunday and then you all meet together quarterly? Or everyone goes to the big church every week and you have a giant bbq or something quarterly?
We attend "big church" on Sundays and then also have quarterly gatherings. We meet for small groups at homes, restaurants, parks. It just depends on what we are doing. Chris's small group meets at a cafe, the playgroups meet at the park and when we all get together (All the Mesa area) we meet at a great big outdoor meeting place.
oh yeah! I keep forgetting that you live where it's warm and you can plan on meeting outside! I need to move there! Thanks for all this info. I really like how your church is set up- people really thought about the needs of a church and set up ways to meet those needs in practical ways. That's awesome!
hey, busy - i know this is off topic, but how did chris's tests go?
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