Say Thanks. Two Suggestions.

I haven’t been able to post much anywhere. I explained on my personal blog.

However, I want to take a moment to remind the CBC crowd about our casual, family service on Thanksgiving Eve (November 26).  Like all our family services we keep the timing “kid friendly.” Starting at 7:00 we’ll be done no later than 8:00. Lots of pie will follow! And, my thanks to Pastor Tom Bell for stepping in.

I came across this practical suggestion for the holidays in Outreach Magazine: “Surprise a waiter or waitress by leaving a large tip during the holidays.“ And … don’t leave a tract. Let them ask … and as Peter reminds, keep your behavior excellent”  … I’ve been told that many waitstaff do not enjoy Sundays after church.

What Does an Executive Pastor Do?

The easy, flippant, answer is “no one really knows”. The role of the Senior Pastor is fairly obvious; as are the tasks of various associates like youth minister, adult minister, missions, etc. Executive Pastors are a bit harder to understand and classify. The position is very much defined by each church and by the ministry team and goals of each church.

Executive pastors are somewhat new in churches. At first they were limited to extremely large mega-churches. However, as “doing church” became more complicated – even in smaller churches of 500 – the position has become more and more common. Church leaders began to note that many Senior teaching pastors were being overwhelmed with the operations of a church to the degree that their shepherding and/or teaching suffered, or the pastor began to suffer symptoms of burnout.

The leadership of CBC determined to move to a leadership model that uses an Executive Pastor (that’s me), with responsibilty to serve the church, the Senior Pastor, and the staff by:

•  providing organizational direction and strategic administrative oversight; seeing that the needs of the congregation are met through the various ministries of the church. Assists the Senior Pastor in his areas of responsibility as designated in the constitution, primarily those of an administrative nature, so that the Senior Pastor can continue his main responsibility of preaching and teaching.
• facilitating the implementation of the mission, vision and strategy of the church; seeking to maximize the effectiveness of staff and ministry programs, and coaching them in the administrative oversight of their ministry responsibilities.
• providing daily leadership and supervision to the ministry staff team – working closely with the Senior Pastor.

The desired end is to increase the effectiveness of the Senior Pastor and ministry staff in implementing the mission and vision of the church. Maybe the simplest way to understand this role is that the XP (Executive Pastor) has the responsibilty and authority to keep the ministry mission, vision and values of the leadership – especially those articulated by the Senior Pastor – on track.

So … that’s the gist of it. If there is some interest I’ll create some more posts around this topic. Feel free to leave a comment.

Twitter Time @CrossroadsBible

I’m going to experiment with some different ways of communicating with the diverse crowd attending Crossroads. First up … Twitter. If you’ve never heard of Twitter then Wikipedia is your friend. Basically, Twitter is something of a “microblog” or maybe a mashup of blog and instant messaging.

How will we use it? That’s what the experiment is about, but we foresee “tweeting” up to three times a day with timely reminders, new information, general prayer requests, and maybe a “behind the scenes” insight or two. After you set up an account (very simple) you can check the updates on your Twitter page, choose to have them sent to your mobile phone or to an RSS feed reader just like blog posts.

If you have an account go to @CrossroadsBible  and click on the grey “follow” button to get our tweets.

We Have a Worship Leader

Jerry introduced our new permanent worship leader this morning … Timothy James Meaney. Tim has been serving CBC for the past months filling in the gap and serving as interim leader. I guess we grew on him and Jerry was pleased that after some serious discussion, reflection and prayer, Tim was quite open to following God’s direction to join our staff. From the applause this morning it sounds like the feeling is quite mutual!

We’ll update our web pages soon with more biography on Tim, but you might enjoy his professional website.

What Do Men Do at a Retreat

If they are at Crossroads Men’s retreat this weekend they are …

• singing like most women would not believe! There really is nothing like hearing 100 male voices worshiping their God. TJM is a great worship leader.
• listening to what God has to say…
  • Len Crowley has some excellent words about being men, authentic men, biblical men, in the church,
  • very practical words from fellow-travellers about building margin in our lives,
  • insightful stories from the lives of men who are serving God in their worlds … with Muslims, on motorcycles, in a new place.
• making new friends and connecting in new ways.
• adding a few new aches and pains … but that’s what guys do!