 Sunday, February 18, 2007 |
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At the January 10, 2007
meeting we voted to adopt the new Village Planning
structure. Those who were elected as leaders have
been meeting on the second and fourth Saturday of each
month and have been entitled the Village Council.
Each of these persons is a dynamic leader in his or
her own right. As Jim Collins asserts in his book, Good
to Great, the first objective of a quest for the growth
and development of an organization is getting the right
people on the bus and into the right seats.
In the book of Exodus Jethro, the father-in-law of Moses,
encourages him to appoint gifted leaders to assist in the
leadership of Israel. What Collins references as
"getting the right people on the bus" is what
Moses discovered as the Jethro Principle, finding and
discovering key leadership for the work of the Lord.
In the last several weeks, the Village Council has looked
at what Collins calls the brutal facts, the difficult
issues any organization faces in its attempt to grow.
The brutal facts have been ineffective
follow-through, insufficient communication, and lack of
unity and solidarity within the congregation.
Collins encourages organizations (congregations) to find
the one thing they can do better than any other
congregation in the world and to hold to that principle
against the myriad of lures that come upon them,
regardless of how attractive these distractions may be.
He calls this the Hedgehog Principle. The
author states that the hedgehog has a unique system of
defense. He simply rolls into a ball and maintains
that posture and frustrates the predators that would try
to kill him. Foxes and other animals may attempt to
destroy the hedgehog in various and sundry ways but the
defense is always the same. In most instances the
hedgehog survives. The Hedgehog Principle the
Village Council has adopted is that Shiloh Baptist Church
is God's Village, specializing in teaching and learning.
In the month of March, the village planners, in
conjunction with the Christian Education Ministry, will
sponsor a workshop on the need for us to become a
teaching and learning community. The work of the
Council has been exciting. When a date is
established, we encourage the entire congregation to join
the Village Council in learning how Shiloh can become the
best teaching and learning congregation it can possibly
be. Please keep the work of the Council and the
overall life of our church constantly before the Lord in
prayer.
Readings for February
25, 2007: Genesis
15:1-18; Psalm 27; Philippians 3:17-4:1 Luke 13:31-35;
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OUR PURPOSE
Building the Village by Caring
Concept: Our pastor, the Reverend Wallace Charles Smith, envisions a holistic Ministry of Building by Caring, which includes a 3-tier approach - Care for Ourselves (spiritually), Care for Our Relations (family, friends and members), and Care for Our Community (outreach). In building our capacity to care we will also create an atmosphere that will increase our church's membership, winning more souls to Christ; they will know we are Christians by our love;.
