We’ve entitled this series, Blueprints. This is a play on our church’s name, Bethel. Bethel is a Hebrew word meaning, “House of God.” Beth, house. El, God. House of God. It was a location named by Jacob where he had his dream of the ladder to heaven. Jacob names that spot, Bethel, house of God. House. To build a quality house, you need high quality blueprints – designs which the actual construction and home can be built upon. That is what this series is for, to lay out biblical blueprints – God’s plan for a vibrant church. For a church to be blessed by God it must be built by God. Built the way He intended. God’s Word lays out the essentials of the kind of church God blesses. Join us as we look at the rooms of the house that God desires to build.
Blueprints: God's Design for a Vibrant Church
God’s Blueprint for a Vibrant Church
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The Journey operates by the generous support of Bethel Church located in Northwest Indiana where Steve DeWitt is the senior pastor, and listeners like you.
Take Your Church's Pulse presents ten vital signs of a healthy church--five key commitments and five key functions. It then introduce you to a church-health diagnostic tool you can apply to your setting. Thousands of pastors and leaders around the world have found this paradigm helpful in organizing the ministry and mission of the local church. This book and the free diagnostic tool it presents are most useful if accompanied by a healthy process of conversations. With such a process, led by the Spirit, this book can help you discern a preferred future for your community of faith.
Koster and Wagenveld write: "A healthy community of faith is rooted first of all in the character and nature of God. It understands its mission and purpose in the world and organizes its life and work to be faithful and effective in its context. None of these vital signs stands alone. It is a combination of factors that together make up a faithful and fruitful organism, the living Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. There is no magic in the number ten, but for the teaching purposes it has worked quite well in different cultural contexts in providing ideas and a language for discussing important issues in congregational life and mission."
The intended audience for this book is any pastor, leader, or church member who is interest in having healthy conversations with others to strengthen the local church.
Looking for additional resources to help you dig into the call to build the church?
Is there anything sacred about the place we worship? Is the church really God's House? What is my part in the church? These and many more questions are answered in this study of God's House from the pages of Scripture. Not only are we called to gather in God's House, but we are also called to help build it.