Church progams.
So how do you determine what church programs you should have and what church programs you should not have? This blog is not meant to be deep or profound, but rather to just address a portion of an issue that is continually on my mind.
I find that many churches grab onto the latest and greatest programs, turning them into somewhat of a "fad." And the fault here is not directly in the "fadness" of the program, but in the choosing of the program. I think many churches add programs to their churches merely because it's a program, and more programs mean more opportunity for ministry. I find this to be completely backwards.
Take 1 Timothy 5:3-16 for example. The church had a "widow-care program." Did they have this program because they wanted to attract widows to their church?
Consider the culture of their time. Commonly older men would marry younger women. This, combined with the trend for women to live longer than men, would result in a massive amount of widows in society, not just in the church. Often these widows would still be somewhat young.
I use this example to make the point that our church programs need to fulfill a need that already exists, not to attract people to need the program. If there is an abundance of programs within a church body, there ought to have first been an abundance of needs for which the programs were created to fulfill. In the case of the Ephesian widow-care program, their program satisfied the needs of the widows in the church. We cannot tell from Scripture whether or not there was an outreach to those outside of the church. However, I think it is fair to say that the priority was the care of those within the church. I would take "for when their passions draw them away from Christ" to imply that they are already in Christ.
This is not to say we should not have outreach to our unsaved communities. I AM saying that the first priority of the Elder needs to be the health of his church. A healthy church is an evangelistic church. If a pastor is truly evangelistic, he will see the many potential evangelists within his own church, rather than just himself, and work to see that they spread the grace of Christ.
When I was a freshman in college, we had a "church fair" where the new freshmen can go around and talk to a number of pastors to help figure out where they want to go to church while in school. I remember one pastor being asked "what kind of evangelistic outreach does your church have?" The pastor's response was "I will build my own church. Just leave the evangelism to me." This is a sign of a church from which you should run because the pastor is not truly and deeply concerned about the health of his church OR evangelism.
But in short, church programs should come from a passion to meet a need that already exists. Church programs are not needs in and of themselves. They represent and meet the fundamental needs of people. Especially those within the church. And you determine what programs you should have by assessing the needs first within the church, and second outside of the church. You do not determine your program line up just because the program sounds like a good ministry opportunity to get involved in.