Good News: Encouraged By Church

September is the beginning of the new ministry year at church. This is also my first September at Queen Street Baptist Church. I always hope for good things but at the same time I never know what to expect.

I want to see new things happening but not change for the sake of change. One of my passions is discipleship, especially with a teaching element. The challenge is not to come up with an idea that I think is great but that the congregation is not interested in.

I did some research last year about when people were most likely to come out to a small group or class. By far, the majority indicated that they would prefer to stay after church for a study. Our worship service starts at 10 am, and so it is very possible for us to grab a coffee and a cookie and have a class and still be out by around noon.

But what to study?

I have all sorts of interests that I could teach on. But listening to the congregation, the desire was to have a sermon feedback time where we could discuss the message and reflect on ways to apply it to life. Not only was the congregation interested, but I had read a number of articles by the “experts” recommending the same thing.

And so today we had our first sermon feedback class.

We had close to twenty people show up, which is very good for the size of our congregation. The reflection was deep and the discussion was good. It was neat to see how different people picked up on different parts of the message. I was very encouraged by it.

This is my good news for the week: I’m very encouraged by the good things happening at Queen Street Baptist Church.

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