"Walking isn't a lost art. One must, by some means, get to the garage." - Evan Esar

FAIL!
(click to enlarge)

Just go read the headline. (You can read the rest if you want.) Did you think you'd ever see this?
USAToday article
Amazing!

Shhhhh!
I stopped tracking attendance at Pathway last fall because I found myself feeling good or bad about the ministry based on the trend line. Attendance records are one of the tools a church should use to analyze health and plan for the future. But at our age and size we don't need a spreadsheet full of hard data as much as I need to trust God to do his work in his time without the distraction of numbers that will inevitably rise and fall.

The elders can see in the not-too-distant future the need to make some wise and careful decisions. So in preparation for our meeting tonight and in order to assemble as much relevant information as possible I counted noses. Counting only those people who have asked to be included on our directory page (and thus seem to indicate they consider Pathway their church home) we have 48 noses. Seventeen of those noses are children, the oldest of whom is six years old.

A friend asked me Monday how big our church is and I guessed that if everyone was there we'd have 35-40. So I was surprised with the results of my counting. And greatly encouraged!

God has blessed Pathway Bible Church. We have a LONG way to go as we develop ministries and mature as a community of believers. A long way! But at this point I pause to say, "T'ank you, Fadder" for his blessings on our efforts.

**************

I'm just back from that elder meeting. Good discussion of some key issues. One of the pitfalls of elder meetings is the tendency to spend too much time on details that can better be taken care of by individuals outside of meetings. The focus on particular trees prevents them from looking at the forest. As overseers and shepherds elders should spend perhaps a majority of their time looking at the big picture. "Where are we now? Where do we want to go? Are we on course to get there? Are we doing what we want to be doing?"

So tonight, after working through some necessary details we got up and moved into a different room to do some of this "big picture" analysis. Tonight the focus was on our worship service. The pastor appreciated the discussion because of the feedback it provides him. See, the pastor is especially inclined to this micro-thinking, this focus on trees, because he works on those trees all week. It's so easy to see everything only as individual parts, instead of a whole made up of parts.

Years ago I read an article in which the author encouraged pastors to spend significant time each week staring out the window. That was his metaphor for stepping away from the details and taking time to look at the big picture, thinking freely about the whole and thinking about what could be.

What's of value for pastors and for elders is also true for anyone in any station in life. When was the last time you took an hour sans radio or TV or [____] to look at the big picture of your life?

In the absence of the perspective that can only come as a result of staring out the window it's way too easy to wander off course one small degree at a time until we wake up one morning and wonder what in the world happened.

FWIW