IN THIS ISSUE:
1. REASON FOR THIS NEWSLETTER
2. CHURCH GROWTH
3. LEADERSHIP
4. CHURCH INTERNET WEB SITE
5. BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS
6. SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE

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1. REASON FOR THIS NEWSLETTER
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A businessman advertises a sale, then holds the sale, and spends the next few years collecting payments, while buying more inventory to advertise and hold another sale. In this cycle, he made money for himself and the stockholders. He held so many sales that the employees knew what they had to do in planning the advertising, getting ready for a sale, and collecting the payments. The businessman knew his work so well, he could predict the dollar amount of the sale and the profits. As a church leader, the businessman used the same know how in growing a church. As a result, every three months an effort was made to advertise the church through its members and then invite more people to church and its functions. The members knew what they had to do to convert guests into members. They had a thirteen week cycle that was well planned and implemented. The spiral continued and the church grew. This newsletter will present the second item of Arthur Flake's fivefold formula for church growth. Andy Anderson used these principles. The five items are 1) Find the People, 2) Equip Leadership and Teachers, 3) Provide the Space, 4) Enlarge the Organization – Number of Classes or Units, and 5) A Program of Visitation. In equipping leadership and teachers, Dr. "Bill" Patterson, "now semi-retired, was editor of "Christian Bible Teacher" for its first 25 years," has held many seminars in leadership and teacher training sessions with outstanding results. This newsletter will cover many of his lifetime of ideas and experiences later this year. In cooperation with the webminister, his new web site (under development) is located at http://webminister.com/acce/home.htm.

In recent years, he has published two articles with the same title "Adult Christian Continuing Education" (ACCE) covering both his philosophy and history of his mission -- http://webminister.com/acce/acce0010.htm and http://webminister.com/acce/cbt2401s.htm . For more information, e-mail him at accebill@aol.com .

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2. CHURCH GROWTH
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According to Arthur Flake in "Building a Standard Sunday School" (1922), the organization needs to be enlarged to take care of additional people brought into the Sunday school OR "practically all of the work done in inviting people will come to naught." (p 41) The church needs "an organization strong enough to reach, hold, and teach the people who should be in the Sunday school." Additional workers must be brought in and trained. (Read this section of Flake at http://webminister.com/growth01/plan0136.htm .

Flake sets forth three steps to produce the required number of teachers and support personnel. First, the church should pray publicly and privately for workers. Second, leadership for the Sunday school and the minister(s) should make a list of prospective workers and teachers, as well as asking for volunteers. Third, personally ask those who have been selected to serve and with their agreement to work. This may require a visit to their homes and telephone calls.

Flake states: "Lay upon their hearts their obligation to serve Christ. Win them away from the things they are doing by giving them a place where they may serve Christ. Do not give up. Get the teachers "

Flake concludes this section: "When they answer that they do not know how to teach, promise them the necessary help. A training class should be formed, teaching aids furnished, and they should be led through the materials in the training course. This should take about 13 weeks to complete.

Dr. "Bill" Patterson has specialized in training teachers and leadership in education, like his book, "The Growting Christian Teacher."

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3. LEADERSHIP
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Andy Anderson in "The Growth Spiral" (1993) covers "Equip Leadership and Teachers" in three chapters: five (The Value of Workers), six (The Value of the Workers' Planning Meeting), and seven (The Value of Training). Anderson states: "There should be at least one worker for every five people enrolled in Sunday School in order to adequately minister to their needs."(p 63) Remember enrolled equals twice Sunday School attendance. The webminister's initial response was that this was way to many. However, Anderson's results of a survey of 250 churches show that if the ratio of workers is 1 to 5 - 7 enrolled, then 58% of the enrolled will be attending. On the other hand, if 1 worker for 8, 9 enrolled, then 43% of the enrolled will be attending, and if 1 worker for every 10 and up are enrolled, then 36% of the enrolled will be attending. Thus, for strong church growth a high percentage of trained workers and teachers are required.

The count of the teachers and workers will include teachers, class outreach leaders, department directors, outreach leaders, minister(s), staff members, the minister of education, the Sunday school director, adult group (care) leaders, librarian, and bus ministry workers.

Anderson states that 80% to 90% who start a quarterly (13 weeks) training program (24 hours and a Leadership Diploma) will go to work in the Sunday school.

Anderson starts chapter seven: "We ought to emblazon on the walls of our churches and our desks this motto: WE CANNOT GROW CHURCHES WITH UNTRAINED LEADERSHIP. We have never done it. We will never do it." (emphasis his)(p 79).

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4. CHURCH INTERNET WEB SITE
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In the ever changing Internet world and web page design, standards have constantly changed under the leadership of W3C World Wide Web Consortium at http://www.w3.org . Many of the HTML tags have been marked for "deprecated" status with eventual elimination in new browsers (unless backward compatibly is maintained). Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are replacing many tags. A word of warning: At present only a small part of CSS1 Standards are compatible with both Netscape and Microsoft browsers and neither support CSS2 Standards at present.

Some of the HTML tags marked for "depreciation" are: "applet", "basefont", "center", "dir", "font", "isindex", "menu", "s", "strike", and "u". Some are marked "Obsolete", i.e., "listing", "plaintext", and "xmp".

The "span" tag has become the in-line container for holding font size and color within a paragraph, while each paragraph is now considered as a container requiring the closing "p". The closing "p" was optional until HTML 4.0 Standards which recommended it for blocking purposes.

Not all "Cascading Style Sheets" work on all browsers, but some work on all browsers. For example, font-weight (plain or bold), font-size, font-style (plain or italic), text-align (centering text), text-decoration (for underscoring), text-indent (paragraph indenting), and color (both background and contents). These can replace all center, underline, and font tags. Almost all positioning (box) cascading styles do not work or work only on a few browsers

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5. BOOK RECOMMENDATION
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Chuck Musciano & Bill Kennedy have written many books on HTML. Their "HTML: The Definitive Guide" (3rd edition -- August 1998) includes HTML 4.0 Standards. They present all tags with their attributes and when adopted by the various browsers. They present the standards for scriptable entities (Javascript) and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS).

"HTML: The Definitive Guide" (paperback) can be bought for $39.95 with discounts plus shipping and handling.

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6. SUBSCRIBE/UNSUBSCRIBE
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Visit http://webminister.com and its links.

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Let me know if you want to "unsubscribe."

In His Service,