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Ministry Encouragement Podcast – Episode #070 – 10-30-13
Sponsored by: Proactive Ministries (proactive-ministries.org)
Your Host: Rev. Jim W. Hollis
Hello today! I want to welcome you to our Ministry Encouragement Podcast Episode number seventy. I deeply appreciate your taking time from your busy schedule to share in the community God is building around this Podcast. It’s my prayer that you will be spiritually enriched and encouraged by participating with me today. If this is your first time, welcome to you.
For this Episode, I’ll be addressing one of the most major gaps in every local church across North America today:
How Can We Reach Our Inactive Members and Families?
Some of the “experts” say this is impossible and a lost cause. They instruct us to basically forget our Inactives and just continue to pursue reaching new members who are visiting our church or will show up as visitors in the future.
Here are some additional thoughts about Inactives that represent a huge part of nearly all our churches in North America today:
- We have so many of them who live in our community that if 50% of them returned on any one Sunday, we may have to bring in extra chairs to seat them!
- We literally ignore this reality and if confronted with the truth about Inactives, we often say, “That’s normal today. Every church faces this unavoidable reality.”
- The actual truth is that we can reach our Inactive Members and Families. It’s a proven reality!
In this Episode I will share some key realities concerning our Inactives:
- Defining an Inactive Member or Family
- Understanding Inactive members
- Our often inaccurate perceptions of Inactives compared to their own perception of themselves
- Best reasons from Christ to reach our Inactive members
- Our resident Inactives represent one of the greatest, potential “relationally reachable” groups today!
This is an area of ministry that most Pastors and Church Leaders find very interesting to learn about and discuss. Yet, unless our new understanding of Inactives goes beyond learning and discussing, our ministry to them will remain anemic and ineffective.
Let me personally encourage you to move into action with what you have heard today. If you are the Pastor, then gather your key leaders and share with them this teaching, while praying that God may give you and them together a wake up call resulting in a decision to pursue developing an effective ministry with your Inactives.
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And feel free to contact me personally regarding this possibility. We have helped churches develop effective and ongoing ministry with their Inactive Members and Families for the past 20 years across North America. We have seen this work in small, rural churches who started with an average worship of 20 or so, up to congregations that have had 9,000+ members and an average worship of more than 1,500 on Sundays during worship. The point is this: it CAN happen in your church. Lives and relationships hang in the balance. It’s my prayer I will hear from you. Let’s talk about your church and exactly how to get from where you are to where you would like to go in this area.
My contact information is:
Proactive Ministries Offices, Smyrna, GA (USA): (770) 803-9988
Jim’s Email: jim@ministryencouragementpodcast.com
Facebook: Jim W. Hollis OR like our Proactive Ministries Page on FB.
LinkedIn: Jim Hollis
It’s my prayer that I will hear from you soon.
Blessings in Christ,
Jim
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