Preaching time reduced to fit in more church notices

Church Life

If a church meets but doesn’t have church notices can it be called a church meeting?

Cross Point church in Sacramento has taken this truism to heart.  As second pastor, Sam Harris, says, “As pastors, Jesus told us to take care of his sheep.  But as we know you can lead a horse or indeed a sheep to water but you can’t make it drink.”

Cross Point’s history in trying to communicate information to their flock started with church notice boards but quickly they realised that no-one actually looked at them.  As one committee member said, “We found that there will still notices that were asking for help with the children’s work that had been there for more than 10 years!”

Then they moved to having the church notices on a printed sheet that was handed out by the welcome team. However, as Sam commented, “We found that many Christians seem to avoid being welcomed or even making eye contact with the welcome team let alone taking anything thrust at them.  And those who did take the sheets left them on their chairs or gave them to their children to make paper aeroplanes out of them.”

Then they tried getting the house group leaders to share the notices but then people came late or left early just to avoid the “unimportant” notices part of the meeting.

With the advent of the internet, Cross Point made full use of emails.  However, despite sending 4 a week, they couldn’t be sure that their congregation were opening emails, let alone reading them.  Hence, it seems that notices have to be given in the meeting.

Sam continues, “For years people have memorised bible verses, well we’re just doing the same thing with the notices.  I can’t be sure that they’ve really heard ’em until they can repeat them back to me word for word.”

Responding to concerns about preaching time being reduced due to the church notices, Sam said, “You can’t put the cart before the horse!  If we don’t prioritise reminding people of important information, like the fact that church is on next week, then no-one would come and listen to the sermon anyway.”

You can’t argue with that kind of logic.

Reporter: John Spencer aka Not the Bible

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