Organizing Your Church into Leadership Ministry Groups
and Developing an Excellent and Biblical Constitution & By-Laws

If you're like me, organizing your people doesn't come naturally. I think they ought to naturally function as an effective expression of the local Body of Christ. I shouldn't have to organize them. But guess what? it doesn't work that way.

We know that the Holy Spirit gives people differing gifts and abilities. He moves them to have a heart for different parts of God's work, and for differing ways of ministering to people. As a young Pastor, I had no idea how to take the non functioning people who were in our congregation and get them functioning and fruitful. I was completely discouraged with working seven days a week, and having only the same two or three people working along with me and my  wife.

About that time, I was asked to join a local Kiwanis chapter. It was a group of local business people who wanted to make a difference in peoples' lives and in the community. Hey! That's what our church was trying to do! They were working with volunteers, just like WE were! But there was a difference: They actually got the job done! I knew that God had placed me there to get some answers that had been avoiding me!

For several years, I was an active member of Kiwanis and later Rotary International. Both of these service organizations are lead and run locally by volunteers, and they accomplish an amazing amount of good in their communities. What amazed me most was how they can take a group of dissimilar people and organize them to function together for the good of others.

As a church, we're working with volunteers pretty much exclusively. We can't make people do anything! At the same time, we have to have high expectations, and need our work to be done right and efficiently.

Using principles and materials that I got while in Rotary International and Kiwanis, we ended up adapting them for ministry groups within the church. The various functions that need to happen for a group to operate don't vary a whole lot. And, they don't cost a lot of money or take a lot of brains or theology.  Following are links to all the information you need so you can develop small ministry groups to use these principles of:

1. Attracting and Recruiting New Members. Membership is crucial to the Great Commission. Church members MUST ask people to become a part of your church.

2. Membership Caring and Retention.

3. Developing Your Members through a New Members Orientation Program. Orientation is critical to ensuring that members stay in the church. If orientation is done poorly, new members may feel isolated and leave the church.

4. Effective Public Relations - creating awareness of church activities, getting and keeping the interest of local media and enhancing current projects to make them more appealing to the media.

5. Fundraising without being obnoxious. Understand the importance of successful fundraising activities, and the importance of ongoing fundraising activities. Plus you'll learn how to select team members who will enable the church to pursue fundraising goals effectively.

6. Community Service Projects - Your church's basis in service is not only part of obeying Jesus in being salt and light in the world, but also helps to attract qualified members to your church.

7. Church Administration: Roles and Responsibilities. Church administration provides the framework that enables the church to function effectively. Here, you'll learn some of the ways to select team members who will enable the church to pursue church administration goals effectively.

8. Committees! How, why, types, selection, operating with them, using them to pacify your more quarrelsome members, etc etc. A "must read" for those in ministry who, like myself, have no natural inclination or affinity for committees.

9: Sample Church Constitution and By-Laws that balances power and helps head off problems before they start. There seem varying extremes in the balance of power in local churches. One is that the Pastor is the puppet of the people, with no real say so in the business and decision-making in the church he is expected to lead. How about quorums? Can 15 or 20 people decide to skip business meetings and keep your church from conducting business? Not anymore!

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