It's Really All About People

I spent the last week in northern Illinois, helping the Illinois District of the Assemblies of God, install new software and train church users. While I have never served in an Illinois church, I have always admired this district, and the cutting edge ministry they bring to their churches and ministers. In this case, they are trying to give their district supervised churches better tools to do the best job possible in their communities.

Generally, a district supervised church is a smaller church that needs help in organization, funding, governing leadership and other elements. Once a church has become healthy in all the major areas, it transitions to being a self supporting autonomous church. The idea in Illinois is that if you give as much help as possible to the district supervised churches and pastors, you build strong churches in each of the communities that you are trying to reach.

Both communities I worked in last week were rural, and small. The first town was small enough that it did not have a single chain business of any kind. That included fast food restaurants, drug stores, grocery stores, etc. However, the church we were working in has more than 300 people worshiping there today, nearly 10% of the population of their town. The other small city we worked in was a little larger, with a smaller church. The pastor is bi-vocational and they do not have any paid staff. Everything is done by volunteers. The infectious enthusiasm I sensed there was refreshing. Each person that came for training was excited about the new tools. While our job was to install and train on a software system, I could see that each volunteer saw this as a better way to reach their own people and reach out to their community. When we talked about a "person record", the trainees saw that person as a "real person". It was fun to hear them talk about their various groups and ministries and how this new tool would help add people to them.

As a church administrator, sometimes the job can break down to software, numbers, buildings, supplies, and systems. I was reminded this week that it is all about people. Telling people that Jesus can change their life, and then demonstrating that by the way we live. I'll be doing some more of these installations. I can't wait to meet the people.