Thank You LCOP!!!

Thank You! Thank You! Thank You!

Change is never easy. Even if it's necessary and the right thing, changing is hard to do.

Thank you all for your willingness to put up with and adjust to the changes happening. 

One of the realities of the church in America is that we have somehow failed to communicate the incredible news of Jesus Christ to two generations of people. Most of our congregations are aging, and some have children and youth, but there is an absence of folks in their 20's, 30's, 40's, and 50's.

If there was an easy way, a sure fire way, of ministering to those who are not a part of God's church family then everyone would be doing it. 

The reality is that no one knows the "secret." 

The only thing we know for sure is that unless we discover and discern some new ways of connecting the good news of Jesus Christ with people who don't know Jesus, we will continue to fail the people of this generation.

The Prairie Hall Project and the Contemporary service changes are an experiment. The pastoral staff and the session are endeavoring on prayerful, strategic, and God-centered changes. Not all of our experiments will work. But we are praying that God will lead us together to make some Godly smart changes that will reach more people with the message of Jesus Christ. 

It is because of your willingness to do whatever it takes to be about the ministry of Jesus Christ that we are able to do what we do.

The simple reality is that there is no LCOP without you who are currently members of LCOP. You make LCOP happen. Thank you!

John Maxwell writes in his book Failing Forward:

Working artists David Bayles and Ted Orland, in their book, Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking, tell a story about an art teacher who did an experiment with his grading system for two groups of students. It is a parable on the benefits of failure. Here is what happened:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its quality. His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pounds of pots rated an “A,” forty pounds a “B,” and so on. Those being graded on “quality,” hoever, needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A.” Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of the highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

It doesn’t matter whether your objectives are in the area of art, business, ministry, sports, or relationships. The only way you can get ahead is to fail early, fail often, and fail forward.

Little Church on the Prairie, thank you for your willingness to be bold with doing everything we can to reach people with the greatest news on earth: God loves you!