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Ten Things All United Methodists Should Know In 2011
God gave 10 commandments – Those 10 everyone should remember!
David Letterman gives top 10’s, go ahead and forget those!
These are 10 things every United Methodist should know:
1. At the core, United Methodist faith is grace-filled, passionate-and-disciplined life in Christ. Our distinguishing characteristics are our emphases on personal experience with Christ, continual, ongoing growth in Christ and the importance of sharing the love of Christ with others.
2. A connectional church is different from a congregational church. United Methodists are distinctively connectional. Teaching the difference between a connectional church (with representative decision-making) and a congregational church (where congregations make all the decisions) is important.
3. Being a spiritually alive church is not a special program for a handful of churches in decline. Spiritual vitality and fruitfulness is the goal for every United Methodist Church.
4. There is nothing more crucial to the vitality of a church than healthy, spiritually mature leaders. If the leaders of the congregation are not mature models of Christian life, servanthood and selflessness, the congregation is greatly handicapped in taking important next steps of growth.
5. United Methodists test, train and keep ministers accountable on an ongoing basis. With the safeguard of ongoing accountability in United Methodist ministry, United Methodist pastors are sent to LEAD their congregations AND communities. Pastors are sent to LEAD.
6. No church has to be a large membership church to be vital. Churches of all sizes are important and churches of all sizes can be fruitful and spiritually alive.
7. The culture we live in has changed. Decline in attendance cuts across denominations. Blaming the preacher, other church members, the economy or shifts in the culture will not help us move forward. It is not 1957. Let’s adjust.
8. Where there are money problems, there are spiritual problems.
9. Moving the preacher is not the way to resolve conflict in the church.
10. When people come to church, they are DISCIPLES, not consumers.
If you want to have things your way, go to Burger King. But when you come to church, take OFF your consumer hat and put ON your DISCIPLE hat!
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