It always unsettles me when there are changes in the church schedule. Many people do not choose to participate in church conference where things can be changed significantly at any time. This is certainly not the case with our most recent conference. Let's examine the lead up to conference.
In our October conference there was a discussion of potential schedule changes that would provide more options for adults on Wednesday nights. A change in the schedule effects all of the other activities throughout the week. We agreed in conferenence (which was running long) that we would pray for two weeks and come back to discuss a way forward on the issue. At this point I personally distributed a multiple page evaluation on the issue from three years before. That is right, we were examining this issue three years ago, even before Dan Calkins was on staff. The issues discussed in that piece were related to the priorities given the various activities of the church.
That document reminded everyone that we "protect" the priority of worship by allowing no other activities during worship and by discouraging people even cooking and setting up during worship for a lunch that is to follow. We "protect" the Bible study of Sunday School from other activities. We "protect" discipleship time from the over reach of committee meetings which begin an hour earlier than discipleship. We "protect" outreach on Monday nights by prohibiting the calendaring of church events in conflict with visitation from 6 to 7 p.m. This makes perfect sense because these are biblical priorities. It makes as much sense to "protect" the biblical priority of corporate prayer. We have accomplished this for many years by setting aside the time from 6 to 7 p.m. on Wednesday nights. So why was there a motion to change the schedule as we have it?
Wednesday night is a time that the church family thought we could help each other make it to the evening events by having a dinner. Pastor Woody Jackson started the dinner and even cooked it for some time. Eventually others took a shift to relieve him of this work. For the last several years there have been adults who said they would like to invite others to the Wednesday night dinner and activities but did not think that unbelievers would appreciate the prayer meeting. Since we were "protecting" the time slot, they did not see an alternative. Some took it upon themselves to create alternate activities and even prayer times without the approval of the church. Ultimately, this needed to be a matter of prayer so that we could discover the mind of Christ on this scheduling issue.
After encouraging the church to pray through this period of time, and discussing it on Sundays including the multipage document that was distributed, I hoped that serious prayer was going up to God on this issue. As your pastor, I know some of you prayed carefully about this matter. We did not need the best of our opinions, but the very best direction we could receive from God to maximize our schedule and protect biblical priorities. But the last church conference had displayed a weakness in our ability to communicate clearly.
Because there were several people who did not understand the parlimentary process of creating a motion to accomplish business in conference, I offer a special training this past Sunday at 3 p.m. before the called conference to make certain that anyone with questions could learn the process. We displayed the time on the media slides before the service and published the time in the Cypress Heart. We wanted to make certain that no one was intimidated by the parlimentary process. This must not have been an issue because only six people attended and two of them already had a pretty good idea of the simple process. So, when the called conference began the first person to address the chair presented a motion that was corrected and was finalized to say, "I move that we move church-wide prayer meeting to the Sunday evening worship time beginning January 1, 2014, allowing the children and youth to participate, for a period of six months when it will be evaluated by church council." One question for clarification resulted in a description of the change being like the special prayer events we had on Sunday nights previous to the last election. After the amendments were final, there was the call to vote first by voice and then by a show of hands for greater accuracy. The motion passed. But, what does it mean? What will now change? Have we discovered a way forward that protects the biblical priorities and reflects the mind of Christ. That is what will unfold in the days to come. I will outline some possiblities in my next blog.
Your Pastor,
David Turner
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