I recently saw a sister church's motto - Making Room for You. Well,
my little motto of late is "We have Room for You!" We have not only the
physical room, but the mental, social and spiritual room. We need You! We
need you to come worship with us. To pray for us. To socialize with us
...and most importantly Serve with us. The Student Ministries here at
Liberty wants to give young people a chance to come, connect, committ and
be commissioned. We have Room for You to Serve. We need godly parents;
godly youth sponsors; godly grandparents. Basically we need people to be
the people God wants them to be.

A part of that is encouraging your church leadership.

Here are 10 Ways to Encourage People in the Serving Business of our
Church.

1. Have the church leaders and Ministry Leaders visit another church that
is active and growing and maybe apply some of the principles to the
situation here at Liberty.

2. Bring some of the leadership and that of a growing church to your
congregation.

3. Have a brainstorming session with a guest speaker or even the people
here at Liberty for new ideas.

4. Ask the leadership to take part reading and discussing a helpful book.

5. Listen to helpful Tapes. (I personally find James Dobson's resources
good for families).

6. Use articles from magazines and websites to help you in your journey.
I like the Lookout for devotional, Group Magazine, and also the
Stone-Campbell Journal.

7. Invite a consultant to present a seminar. A lot of our Bible College
professors have thorough knowledge to help our church leaders and workers
out.

8. Secure manuscripts or resources such as from the NACC or even from the
different camp meetings that happen.

9. Visit your local Christian bookstore and browse for a while to look
for helpful resouces including videotapes and that. I had found the
Wineskins magazine by accicent while at Logos Bookstore. People at Heaven
& Earth, Lifeway can be very helpful.

10. Start with yourself. In order for there to be encouragement, and that
we have room for you is to start with yourself. Evaluate yourself. Am I
serving where God would have me? Can I encourage others? I tend to be
more critical of myself than anyone else. I also tell people "That you
may have a log in your own eye, but I got a whole forest in mine that I'm
working on!"

Some people want to just give up and maybe even go to another church.
Instead wouldn't it be great if people instead of saying well this church
doesn't offer this or that ....that they would honestly look at
themselves and say I'm going to give this church a different ministry. A
different approach. We have room for you. But are you willing to fill the
room?