RAMblings…

June 2009

Change!  Aubrey Malphurs in his book Advanced Strategic Planning makes this comment about what he calls megachange.  He states…

“We are living at one of those rare points in time when an old worldview (modernism) and many of its trappings are dying and another (postmodern) has been born.  The consequence is a massive shift in our culture, science, society and institutions.  This change is enormously greater than the world has ever experienced, and we (the Church) are caught in the middle of it. We are living in a frightening point of absolute chaotic discontinuity, watching the old die off and the new rush in to fill in the vacuum.”

He then asks, “Where is the church in all this?  How is it doing?”  His response, “The answer is, not well.”  He goes on to state what all of us know from our casual observation, “between 80 and 85 percent of all churches in North America are either plateaued or are in decline (dying).”  In spite of the boom in the last quarter of the 20th century of the Mega-Church, and the Satellite Church in the 21st, the church is in serious trouble overall.

What does he suggest as the answer?  He says that Church Starting and Church Revitalization with Strategic Leaders and Strategic Planning is the key.  Churches must rekindle their initial missionary vision and implement missionary strategies if they are to have a significant voice in the future.  Malphurs defines strategic planning as, “the envisioning process that a point leader uses with a team of leaders on a regular basis to think and act so as to design a specific ministry model that accomplishes the Great Commission in their unique ministry context.”

As your missionary, I am preparing myself to assist our existing churches by expanding personal leadership skills in Strategic Planning and Church Consulting.  I have been invited by the Healthy Church Group of the California Southern Baptist Convention to receive their Consultant Training to assist the churches of our region.  I will be in California for that training on June 8-11.  I am also beginning to develop some partnerships that I hope will plant new churches or new Bible study groups in the unreached neighborhoods of our region as well as the unreached people groups. 

Someone has said, and I agree, the 21st century may be the most opportune time in church history to return to our 1st century missionary roots.  The first century church had to break free from the traditions of the past and translate the gospel to the pagan culture of its time.  Hear what the Message Bible says…

Proverbs 29:18 If people can't see what God is doing, they stumble all over themselves; But when they attend to what he reveals, they are most blessed.

Thank you for this privilege to serve you!

Keith Williams
Regional Associational Missionary
E-Mail: ram4ns@q.com
Cell: (505) 603-1051
P.O. Box 4535  Santa Fe, NM 87502