Recently my home church, in Quakertown PA, expressed a desire change as it seems the church is having trouble brining in younger families and is having difficulty with close proximity and “backyard” type ministries. When my parents informed me about this it got me excited because of what I am learning right here in this class about entrepreneurship and how that relates to the mission of the Church.
After putting in a lot of thought, consulting with my parents, and putting in plenty of prayer time I went to my assistant pastor from our church, whom I am very close to. We discussed where our Church is at currently and how he would like to see things change as far as “backyard” ministries and especially shepherding of the young by the elderly. Our church has many elderly whom my pastor said he really wants to push to connect with the youth to share there wisdom and help others grow in their Christian walk. He also talked about pushing the church out of staying in the mindset that things have to stay the same as they have always been. In addition, one of the most important things that my assistant pastor said, that really struck me, was that before any of these changes can take place the church must first work on changing their attitudes. People must gain more servant type attitudes where they are looking to help more with ministries and shepherding of others.
Following this conversation, I was able to share with my assistant pastor some of the specific ideas I had come up with that might help our church connect better with outside younger people. I also was able to share some ministry ideas that would help our church to connect better with our area. One of my ideas was to have a sports camp for kids as our Church has many coaches that would be willing to help with this and our Church has all the needed facilities to allow this to happen. It was really fun to be able to apply what I am learning in this class to the real world and it got me fired up to help serve Christ better!