Our church has been featured this month as “Church in the Spotlight” by the Inland Empire Southern Baptist Association. Pictures and a brief church history have been published in their Clarion newsletter and are available on their website.
We praise God for the prayers and support of our local association, and how the Lord is using them to strengthen local churches like ours.
After my April 1 post about ministering to the homebound and elderly, I did some more thought and research and concluded that CD and DVD technology is just too much of a barrier to help reach our homebound.
So, I’m deferring to the good ol’ printing press. Starting this month, I plan to write a monthly newsletter called “Family News” for all our homebound and hospitalized church members (about 20 of them). This may take a little of my time away from blogging, but it will be well worth it, because it will reach a totally different demographic in our church.
I may still invest someday in a simple MP3 player for hospitalized folks. But I think a simple, two-page newsletter will be the most effective way for our homebound seniors to receive updates, hear praises, learn how to pray, and get a regular dose of Scripture. I have tried to make the layout sharp and professional, so it will be an encouragement to our members and also a good witness to others in the community who may see it lying around in a hospital room or nursing facility.
You can view the entire first edition here.
I just made a short promo video for our church using a service called Animoto. You just upload the photos and select the audio track, and it does the rest. They have longer videos available for a cost, but the 30-second short videos are free. This should be a nice addition to our church website homepage…
Last Sunday, our church hosted Dr. Tony Chute, a history professor from Cal Baptist University, to celebrate 400 years of Baptist faith. Did you know the Baptist church turned 400 this year? It was started in 1609 by John Smyth in Holland. Three years later, the first Baptist church in England was planted by Thomas Helwys in 1612. The Southern Baptist Convention, however, did not arrive until two centuries later, in 1845.
David Dockery, in his book Southern Baptist Consensus and Renewal
[W]e as Southern Baptists in the early years of the twenty-first century are infected with historical amnesia – we do not know our history, we do not know our theological identity, we basically only understand the programmatic expression of what it means to be a Baptist as we related from local church to local church…Today Southern Baptists need to begin to build a new theologically and historically informed consensus that will help us understand our past, our identity, and our beliefs – so that we can move forward to carry the Gospel around the world and “disciplize” the nations in the twenty-first century.
On Sunday, our church took a tiny step to shake off the historical amnesia and improve our knowledge of church history. Through Tony’s message, we learned that Baptists have accomplished four main things in the last 400 years. Basically, each century brought one major contribution:
I wonder, what will be our greatest contribution in the 21st century? May this be the century we grow in our unity, mature in our doctrine, and increase in our efforts to evangelize every nation, tribe, tongue, and people.
Every community has its own personality. Ours is a unique blend of retired seniors, military families, independent artists, low-income families, and rural desert-lovers.
One of the joys and challenges we face in ministering to this area is a lot of senior citizens who are beginning to slow down and become increasingly “homebound.” As I scan through our church directory, I see at least twenty-one members who are currently hospitalized, ill, or significantly disabled, and who rarely, if ever, make it to church.
It can be an overwhelming task to minister to all these people. Especially since they are a group that loves time and attention, but will rarely be able to “give back” to others in the future. I have also noticed that many of them struggle with reading their Bibles or listening to sermons, sometimes because of physical handicaps, and sometimes because they are tired, unmotivated, and untrained in these disciplines.
How then do we care for the homebound and elderly? Well, nothing replaces the value of a face-to-face encounter. These people need to see their pastor, their deacons, and their church family with an occasional home or hospital visit. They need to feel our touch, hear our laugh, and see our smile. They need to hear us read the precious truths of Scripture to them, and to help fix their eyes on Christ and deal biblically with home and health problems. They need to know they are still loved and not forgotten, neither by God nor by their church. When a personal visit is not possible, a phone call or hand-written card may be an acceptable substitute, but they need as much human contact as possible.
I’m also exploring how new technologies can be used to more effectively minister to our elderly. I realize that most seniors are not tech savvy, nor do they have any desire to be. They have seen many things change during their lifetimes and have learned to adapt remarkably, but they simply do not have the interest in the latest gadgets and gizmos like young people do. Many of them will never read this blog post, nor will they ever check out our church website, my twitter feed or facebook account. Most seniors do not have iPods. Many find it unneccesary, too complicated, or too expensive to have internet or an email address. Some don’t even own a DVD player or CD player. If any of these comments shock you, then you are probably too out of touch with the seniors of your church.
How, then, can new technology possibly be used to minister to the elderly? The key word is simplicity. Whatever is done, it must be simple. Incredibly simple. Simple enough for today’s 2- or 3-year old to operate. Because that’s the technological literacy level of most senior adults.
I don’t know for sure how this will work, but I’ve been talking with someone at church about the idea of recording a monthly audio or video address to send to all our homebound. It would include a short greeting from myself, a few updates of recent highlights and happenings around the church, and then I would read through several chapters of the Bible and make a few comments. For some, this may be the only Bible intake they get. I would close with a few prayer requests for current church needs. The whole thing would last maybe 20-25 minutes. We could burn it to a CD and even buy a cheap CD player for them if they don’t have one. Any thoughts??
(Update: my April 21 post shares the final result of this discussion)
Pinch Of Clay 