By the kindness of the presence of God and his teaching from the story of Elijah I’ve had to ‘get out of my cave’ of disappointment these past weeks. I pray that if you find yourself in that place…

Five questions and three purposes for meetings

What does the Bible have to say about management?

You may have noticed that the nights are drawing in, the temperatures have dropped and it’s beginning to look a lot like……. NO, please don’t mention it! Well, you’re right, it’s not Christmas yet and you don’t want to make the mistake to talk about it too early as I’m already boycotting the supermarkets where Christmas cards and mince pies have appeared. However, when you work on a church staff team it is important to think ahead and Christmas is looming at the end of this term.

We hate to remind you of the annual event that is coming, but now really is a good time to talk about our approach. Not the approach of the number of services, or how many visitors we will be looking after, but how our personal approach says a lot about our trust in God and what “efficiency” looks like.

Christ’s final command to us was to go into all the world. These notes assume your church believes it is right to support worldwide Christian work and lists what and who to support and how you might organise this.

These notes are designed to start you off on a building project by asking the right questions before you appoint an architect.

We have a new interactive forum for posting questions and receiving responses, courtesy of a strategic shift across to a facebook group

At home, we’ve just secured planning for a small garden room extension on the back of the house. My husband is an architect and I’ve had the luxury of not having to get involved in the design work or the planning process, for which I’m VERY grateful. But now the preparation for foundation laying is underway I have no choice but to get involved! Suffice to say the house is a little fuller and messier downstairs and the garden looks like the beginnings of a building site (sigh)…

There are 115 sets of Training Notes on John’s website

Churches include all kinds of so-called teams, such as a Finance Team, a Newcomers Team, a Ministry Team.  But should a Music Group not be a team, and can even something like a Church Council seek to work as though a team?