Please remember to suggest good news stories to stafford.north@oc.edu.  Share your good news with thousands through Good News. 

Stafford North will be conducting an evangelism seminar on Saturday, June 2, at the Alvin Drive Church of Christ in Salinas, California.  Call 831.449.7211 for more information.

Also be making plans to attend the OC Lectureship on Sunday, October 7 through Tuesday, October 9.

Over the Easter Weekend, I attended the Lad to Leaders/Leaderettes event in Dallas, Texas.  There were a thousand there and, including similar events in Atlanta, Nashville, Indianapolis, Memphis, and Orlando, a total of some 20,000 youth, parents and sponsors attended the Lads/Leaderette programs.

On the same weekend, Leadership Training for Christ was conducting similar events with three in Dallas, and others in Kansas City; Phoenix;  Indianapolis; Houston ; Mobile;  San Francisco, Rogers, Arkansas; Hickory, North Carolina; and Spearfish,  South Dakota.  They had an estimated total of almost another 20,000.

It is very good news that almost 40,000 of our young people and their parents/sponsors are engaged in programs to foster Bible knowledge and church leadership skills.  Some congregation not involved in these events have their own plans for developing their young people.  We need these youth to stay strong in the faith and be prepared to take on important roles in the church.  Both the preparation and the presentation part of LTC and Lads provides great preparation for these young people.

At these events, students compete in events such as speaking, Bible reading, puppets, Bible bowl, song leading, posters, art work, signing, bulletin boards, and choral singing.  In some cases, they get awards for memorizing a large number of Bible verses and doing service projects.

I was particularly interested in one group at the Lads/Leaderettes in Dallas.  They were all wearing tee-shirts with their church name on them—Lewis Street Church of Christ in Little Rock, Arkansas.  Andrick Todd, one of the sponsors, told me about their program.  This church of about 200 in attendance brought 31 students from 3rd to 12th grade.  Last year they came as observers and this year they began participating.  Some were in art, song leading, and Bible bowl.  Others were receiving awards for service projects and year-long Bible reading.  The group travelled in two vans from Little Rock to Dallas.  They hope to expand their participation next year.  This congregation, primarily African-American, planed to recognize those who participated when they return home.

If your congregation is not using one of these programs to assist in the development of your young people, you should check it out.  In addition to the two obvious benefits of learning more about the Bible and improving important skills, there are two other important ones.  First, as students work on their events, their parents often become involved and many parents accompany their children to the events observe their performance.  We are hearing more and more today about connecting parents and children in spiritual development activities, and these programs are a good way to do that.  A second benefit that might go overlooked is that in these programs students receive rewards for spiritual activities.  Our children are drawn to those things that give them a sense of approval.  Often, they get their “reward” through good grades in school or excelling in sports.  We need to find ways to help them receive a sense of approval and satisfaction from spiritual activities as well—and these programs do that.

So, we appreciate the work that all those involved in Lads/Leaderettes and LTC are doing and believe that having 30,000 young people and sponsors participating in church leadership training by preparation and participation is very good news for the church.

To contact either of these groups, Google their name on the internet.  The Lads to Leaders group has a central contact point at www.lads-to-leaders.org.  The various Leadership Training for Christ locations each has its own contact person.  For further information, contact stafford.north@oc.edu.

The great majority of congregations within churches of Christ, as with many religious groups, are small.  And many of these smaller churches are struggling to survive.  Such was the case with the church of Christ in Hampton, Arkansas, a congregation which had declined to about twenty.  Although it once was larger, the usual factors have taken their toll—youth not returning, older members passing away, families with children leaving for a larger congregation with a more robust youth program, and the lack of something to get members excited.  Such circumstances can easily put a church in decline.

One Wednesday evening in January of 2012, Mike Parker, a member of the 1400-member Pleasant Valley Church of Christ in Little Rock, was hosting a Bible study in his home.  During the evening, one of those present received a phone call from his brother in Hampton saying that they had no one to preach the following Sunday and did he know of anyone who would be willing to make the two hour trip from Little Rock to fill the pulpit for them.

Parker, a Bible teacher at Pleasant Valley, said he would be willing to go.  And so began a process that is starting to revive the church in Hampton.  Now, a group of men from Pleasant Valley rotate by the month in going to Hampton to preach, and their local minister, Chuck Monan, is assisting them with their sermons.  The church in Hampton pays them for coming, some accepting it and others re-investing it in the work there.  But the connection has growing much beyond just Sunday preaching.

The Pleasant Valley congregation has committed $5,000 to helping the work in Hampton with the funds used primarily for regular ads in the local, weekly newspaper.  These ads seek to build interest in the church among those in the 1700-member community.  The church in Little Rock also provides well qualified teachers to conduct seminars in the Hampton church on one Sunday afternoon each month.  These seminars deal with such topics as parenting, financial management, women’s health, and other topics to interest the local citizens.  The members at Hampton help with the advertising by handing out brochures throughout the local community—at businesses, community meetings, with friends, and especially at the local county fair.

Through these seminars, the Hampton congregation is sending the message to the community that they are alive and well, that they are serving the community, and that they seek others to join them.  Guests who attend are identified and members do follow-up.  Sessions are scheduled soon to bring the Hampton members and those coming from Little Rock together in planning sessions to find additional ways to build up this small but now growing church.

Families and friends of those coming to preach often accompany them and this gives young men an opportunity to help lead in worship.  The young people at Pleasant Valley, who are planning to conduct vacation Bible schools this summer, will also be going to Hampton to do one there.

As this process moves along, the church in Hampton hopes to regain some of those who moved to other congregations to seek a more extensive program for their young people.  And there are other smaller congregations nearby who may decide to join forces to provide a more vital work.

In addition to serving the church in Hampton, those who are going from Little Rock are also receiving a blessing.  They are developing their talents, their families are being strengthened, and they are having the joy of serving which the Lord always provides.

What is happening between these two congregations that arose seemingly by chance, serves as a model of what could happen between many larger congregations and those who are finding it difficult continue.  Who should take the initiative?  It could work either way as members stay alert to the needs and capabilities of congregations around them.  The smaller church could ask for help, or the larger church could establish a group to search for congregations needing help.  Obviously care must be taken for the larger church not to overpower the smaller one and to move only as the smaller church participates. 

According to the 2012 Directory of Churches of Christ, 35 percent of the congregations among churches of Christ number fifty or less.  Many of these are strong churches but others are in decline.  The combination of larger congregations and smaller ones working together can be a great help to strengthen this strategic part of the brotherhood.

Oklahoma Christian University conducts a seminar two or three times a year on how smaller churches can grow stronger and, for these seminars, has developed a 41-page booklet filled with useful ideas.  This material is available to download free from www.oc.edu/churchrelations.  The next such session will be part of the OC Lectureship on Monday, October 8.

Ty Hale, who works with evangelism at North MacArthur, reports that their plan for getting members to invite guests is to provide a slip of paper on which a member writes the name of someone they are going to invite.  The church then prepares a personalized invitation with the person’s name on it.  With this being done several weeks before the event, the member then gets the invitation with plenty of time to present the invitation and to have the opportunity to encourage the person to attend.  The church has found that when the member has something with the person’s name on it, it is easier for them to follow through with the invitation.

On Easter Sunday the North MacArthur congregation had 762 people in attendance with more than a hundred of these being guests.  Their previous high for a friend’s day had been 695, so they felt that their plan for the Easter event worked very well.

For follow-up with the guests, North MacArthur has an evangelism team of seven persons who actively pursue further contacts with the guests through various means.  Their first goal is to get them to come back to a church service one more time.  The team members watch for them and when they spot one of them, they make additional contact and seek to start an individual study with them.  In addition to this team, members working in the monthly Monday Night Outreach program, make calls on the visitors to thank them for coming, to gather more information about them, and to encourage them to return for another visit.

There are several effective elements in the North MacArthur plan.  First, it takes advantage of a time of the year when people who do not usually go to church are thinking that they want to.  With the people in that frame of mind, an invitation is more likely to be productive.  Second, it invites all members of the congregation to be involved in the process of evangelism.  All are asked to turn in names for personal invitations.  Members are also involved the members in handing out the invitations and through other ways in trying to get a person to come.  Successful outreach programs need to get a lot of members involved.  Eventually they can be inviting people on their own. 
Third, the church has developed a complete follow-up plan through a team of members who are specializing in that work.  Most congregations do not continue contact with guests who come because they do not have a carefully designed strategy for doing do.  Without this follow-up, all the other pieces of this plan will not yield good results.

For more information on the North MacArthur plan, contact tyehale@gmail.com.

The article mentioned a number of places using these devices such as schools, corporate meetings, cruise ships, fire departments, AND churches.  The front page picture accompanying the article was of children at the Southgate Church of Christ in San Angelo, Texas.

The article said, “Southgate Church of Christ in San Angelo, Tex., has 150 clickers for its annual Bible Bowl on Saturday.  This year, elementary and high school teams from six churches studied 1,322 questions about Genesis.  At the contest, they will use clickers to answer 18- multiple-choice questions.

“The hardest ones,” the article continues, “are the ‘begets’ said Dawn Stanley, the Bible Bowl coordinator.  For example, “Which of the following was son of Raamah?’  Click: a Dedan, b. Elishah,, c. Madai, d. Havilah, e. Meshek.  (The answer is a.)”

The “good news” is two fold.  One of our congregations has a front page picture in the New York Times and churches are using innovative ways to teach students the Bible.

Here are two good things you can do.  Send ideas for Good News stories to stafford.north@oc.edu. Send to kaye.wilkerson@oc.edu the email address of someone in your congregation who can forward Good News to the list of emails you have.  Each month, then, we can send that person a link to the new Good News, and that person can just forward it to your members who will be informed and encouraged by good news from Good News.

All of us need to recognize the power that lies in an invitation to church.  In March, I was preaching a meeting at College Station, Texas, and stayed in the home of Lemuel and Oleta Phillips.  At breakfast one morning, as we were swapping stories, they told me their story.

Lemuel’s parents worked in the oil field near Holliday, Texas, in the 1940’s, and neither they nor their children attended church.  When the church in Holliday conducted a gospel meeting, a neighbor invited the Phillips family to attend.  The mother was interested in going and discussed it with the family.  The father did not want to go, but insisted that all the children go with their mother.  He said that if they did not want to go back, it was up to them, but they had to go with her the first time.

So Lemuel and the other four children went.  At the meeting, Lemuel saw some of his school friends, but, in particular, met a young woman who interested him—Oleta Robertson.  So he kept attending some church services, and getting better acquainted with Oleta and learning from the Bible.  About a year later he was baptized.  The local preacher, C. R. Mansfield, took an interest in the young men of his congregation and asked Lemuel, now fifteen years old, to make a devotional talk.  He spoke on David and Goliath.

Four years after they met, Lemuel and Oleta, both still quite young, were married.  Raymond McCaghren was now their local preacher, and he mentored Lemuel.  Soon he was teaching a young adult Bible class.

Lemuel was a full-time oil field worker and, when the company for whom he worked was sold, he lost his job.  He moved to Kamay, Texas, to work for another company.  Within a few months, the preacher there moved and the brethren asked Lemuel to preach on Sundays while they looked for someone.  He continued to preach for them for three and a half years and, during this time, to improve his Bible knowledge, he drove ninety-nine miles each way to take Bible classes at Abilene Christian University.

In 1963, the church at Temple, Oklahoma, asked Lemuel to come to be their full-time minister and he accepted their offer.  From then until 1996, he served as the pulpit minister for different congregations in Kansas, Oklahoma, and Texas until he retired.  Even now, at age eighty, he still is one of the men who serves in a rotation to preach for the Brazos Valley Church of Christ in College Station, Texas.

From an invitation to a neighbor to attend a gospel meeting came a preacher who has influenced thousands for good over his lifetime.  This story should encourage all of us to be more active in inviting others to services and activities at our congregation.  And my thanks to the Phillips for sharing their home and their story with me.

Recently I was visiting the Pleasant Valley Church of Christ in Little Rock, Arkansas, and noticed a flier they were making available to advertise “work opportunities” within their congregation.  The one-page sheet let members know about ways they could become involved.  Certainly one of the most important things any congregation can do is to get the members to work. 

The message at the top of the flier read “Below is a list of service opportunities and areas of involvement that run year round.  On January 22nd, we will be having a Ministry Fair to help our members get more plugged in.  May we serve those in need around us, but more importantly, through our service to them teach them about Jesus.”

Eighteen different ministries were listed with the contact person or persons with each.  The list did not include many of the standard opportunities such as working with Bible classes and missions, but it did include some that people might not have thought about.  Those listed were:  Sleep Mat Project, Hawkins Prison Ministry, Silver Servants, A/V Ministry, Disaster Relief Team, Family Care, Boone Park, Downtown Devo, The Grill Team, Baking Through Blessing Group,  Golden Years, Parking Lot Team, Men’s Ministry, Women’s Ministry, PV Thanksgiving Food Drive, PV Family Needs, River City Christmas Toy Drive, and the C.A.L.L. Closet. 

At the bottom of the sheet an email address was given through which a person could ask questions.

Getting members involved is one of the key ingredients for both congregational growth and individual spiritual development.  A church, therefore, needs to use many methods at the same time to get the most possible members involved.  So, put out the call for workers through a booth in the foyer, through bulletin boards, through a ministry fair, through surveys, through bulletin items, through PowerPoint slides before services begin, through phone calls, through Bible classes, and, in addition, put the information on fliers that are easily available for people to pick up.

One church asked a special committee to do a study of what would provide the greatest opportunity for the spiritual development of their members.  Many things, of course, can contribute to spiritual growth, but the study report said that those in the church who develop the best are those who get involved in the work of the church. 

So, use every means you can to connect members with good things they can be doing.

“In mid-February, the youth participated in a week of service projects that left lasting impressions all over the city, as well as on the kids themselves.  From cleaning up houses and playing with children to baking cinnamon rolls and stuffing bags at the food bank, our youth group made a positive impact on hundreds of people!

“Physical service led right into spiritual service as many of our teens invited their classmates to church last month for our annual Bring-a-Friend Night.  With festivities running from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m., the event was filled with fun, friends, and fellowship.  Despite the 300 chairs that had been prepared, more had to be set up as the service began because our teens brought so many of their friends—94 in all!

“The most recent venture has been ‘Family Month’—a class during the month of March where all of the students and their parents attend Sunday morning Bible class together. . . .  It was great seeing so many teens interact with their families.”

The article also mentioned a coming spring break ski-trip and a lock-in.

The teens in your congregation can be one of the most active groups and can often do the best job of any in the congregation at bringing friends to church events.  By planning lots of occasions to which they can bring others with them, a congregation can develop many good prospects to bring people to Christ.

With much being written and discussed these days about churches losing their youth after high school, it is vital that we connect high school youth with the center of the church.  Use them to help conduct the services and in work projects.  Create occasions when they can bring their friends so that their friend develop a connection with the church and become prospects for Bible study.  Do things that will develop strong spiritual ties between parents and children as well as ties with the church. 

In short, make a plan for the spiritual development of the young people in your congregation.

Over Spring Break at Oklahoma Christian University, and at our other Christian universities as well, a large number of students took their break to travel to other places to serve in vital roles.  A total of 165 OC students were involved in these campaigns, some with groups composed entirely of OC students and some with a mix of OC students with adults.

About twenty OC students with forty adults from the Memorial Road and Del City churches went to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where they worked out of the Baxter Institute.  They did some improvements on the campus and worked in the Baxter medical clinic.  Others provided a medical clinic elsewhere while some began to build a church building in a mountain area where forty members of the church are meeting in a house that is much too small for them.  The group also handed out fifty food baskets to poor families.  Those going had provide $1,200 either themselves or through funds they raised from churches and individuals.  So, a trip like this takes preparation, dedication, and sacrifice.  Dr. Dudley Chancey of the OC Bible faculty leads the group.

Those going to Honduras were able to work with Bart and Melissa Dodson and Michael Lemmons, who are two-year missionaries on the Oklahoma Christian HIM program, and with OC alum Amber Foster who works there permanently.

About fifty from OC and the Memorial Road Church of Christ went to San Antonio to work on a project for Habitat for Humanity.  The Edmond Church of Christ took about ninety, including abut forty students, to Mexico.  The OC missions group named Outreach had four other groups.  One went to San Antonio to work with a church on an evangelistic campaign.  The three other groups went to Memphis, Little Rock, and Oklahoma City to help with inner-city works.

Our young people encourage us with their serving spirit and we need to encourage them as they serve in such good ways.  Our special thanks to those individuals and churches that help these works both through their financial support and their leadership.