How does a large church care for its members? That question has captivated our pastors for years.<\/p>\n
At College Park Church, God has blessed us with a flock of 2700 members. Shepherding a large congregation is a challenge, but we don\u2019t believe God\u2019s expectation of shepherds diminishes because the church grows. So how do we ensure every member is cared for? How do leaders work together efficiently and effectively? For us, three keys are structure, servants, and strategy.<\/p>\n
Structure<\/strong><\/p>\n Eight years ago, our elders sensed the Lord calling us to a renewed commitment to pastoral care. From a \u201cnickels and noses\u201d perspective, things were going well. But too many sheep were slipping through the cracks. As a result, we deployed a \u201cparish model\u201d to care for our flock. This structure involves segmenting the church geographically and assigning households to elders based on where people live. College Park Church has eight geographic parishes.<\/p>\n The beauty of the parish model is the combination of two powerful forces which facilitate \u201cone another\u201d care: relationships and proximity. No matter how far away you live from your mom, you care for her when she is in need. That\u2019s the relationship factor. The other is proximity.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We don\u2019t believe God\u2019s expectation of shepherds diminishes because the church grows.
\nThe post How to Care for a Big Church appeared first on 9Marks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":972,"featured_media":79867,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[793],"tags":[369],"class_list":["post-79817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-9marks","tag-general","et-has-post-format-content","et_post_format-et-post-format-standard"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/biblicalcounselor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Dashboard-e1712193670322-177x300-2-1.jpg?fit=177%2C300&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/972"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=79817"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79868,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79817\/revisions\/79868"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/79867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=79817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=79817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblicalcounselor.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=79817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}