"The Rhythm of Prayer", by Mark Moore

Mark Moore and WPH are getting ready to launch a brand new "40 Day Experience" titled, "The Rhythm of Prayer"

I have seen some of the advance material and it is looking like an excellent/useful resource for discipleship, small groups, Sunday School, personal study, etc.

Mark moved to Indiana from San Diego (who does that???) where he was on staff in the youth ministry at Skyline Wesleyan Church. He's now an editor with WPH.

He's a coffee drinker, which instantly makes him a friend, and his office is where I usually drift to when I need a 3 p.m. sanity break.

www.wesleyan.org/wph Watch for the release and give this one a try. I think you'll like it.

The Movement Continues

I know that Keith Drury, David Keith and others have shared their stories on creating a youth ministry movement in the Wesleyan Church, but it still fascinates me. I was reminded again last week of just how strong our denomination is in youth ministry. Scott Simmons, the Dir of Youth, had 200 youth pastors from across the Wesleyan Church in for FUEL - the annual train/network/chill/ event for people who love throwing themselves into the lives of anyone 12-18.

Back in September I had the opportunity to just sit with David Keith and listen to some of the ways God used him and others to create a movement. Powerful stuff. I could listen to people like that all day.

What do you think about 'creating a movement in the Wesleyan Church'? Can it be done in something like Discipleship? Senior Adults? Is it merely a God-thing or are there things that we can do to construct a movement?

Another Church Launches Small Groups

There are many in the post-modern-mega-Willow-Saddle-church world (just coined a new phrase) who would find it hard to believe that we still have churches who are just starting to try small group ministry. Yes, Chicago, its true ;-> To those of you in the trenches helping your churches explore new ways of reaching deeper levels of community (authentic relationships & discipleship) here is another example of a successful small group ministry launch.

Pastor: Rick Haworth
Church: Mentone Community, Mentone Alabama

Rick shared this in our Master's course and gave me permission to post it:


The message ? MCC took a evaluation from NCS and found our minimum factor was Building loving relationships and Empowering leadership. After meeting with a consultant and speaking with our leadership we believed that we could work on these two things through small groups. So this is the message, empowering leaders and building loving relationships. The main focus would be the relationship building.
I selected 8 key couples in the church and spent time sharing with them the core competences of MCC small group ministry.

The Launch: We used the worship folder to announce that Small Groups were coming in the fall. We used the announcement segment of our worship hour on Sunday AM, (We also used skits and sermons). Finally we used our annual Ministry Fair as a time of sign-up. We had the leaders there and advertising their group.

Post Launch: So far the only thing we are doing here is assigning each of the four new groups a time to serve as Sunday AM greeters. They are also responsible to get visitor info and send a note to new visitors. This still needs some work.

Sustaining the change: There are scheduled meetings with the leaders to debrief about their small group meetings. This is a time for questions, ideas and insights gained on how we can improve or so better with some things. Do we need to add more groups etc.

Disciple Groups

Here is the new logo for "Disciple Groups" - a huge component of the Adult Ministry division of the Wesleyan Church. Disciple Groups is an umbrella for Sunday School ministries and Small Groups. The line that we use to describe Disciple Groups is: "Making Disciples of Jesus through Sunday School and Small Groups".

We're not hung up on when your groups meet or what title you use to describe the ministry. the question is, "What are you doing/offering to help people become more like Jesus Christ?"

So, what ARE you doing?