Maybe Your Church Needs a New Water Fountain

What if your church is missing a crucial element that leaves your congregation spiritually parched? Join host Todd Rhoades on the Healthy Church Podcast as we explore this intriguing analogy between water fountains and churches, delving into the significance of spiritual nourishment. Discover how we can transform our churches into wells of living water, offering genuine refreshment that goes beyond mere doctrine and old programs. Todd shares insights on crafting environments that fuel the soul, emphasizing the need for sermons, programs, and interactions that truly nourish and sustain believers throughout the week.

In this episode, Todd encourages us to prioritize authentic connections within our church communities, turning them into spaces where relationships flourish and the love of Christ is experienced deeply. We discuss practical ways to encourage spiritual practices like prayer, Bible study, and service, ensuring members aren't just spiritually fed on Sundays but can continue to nourish themselves throughout the week. Todd also highlights the importance of leaders' spiritual well-being, reminding us that effective ministry begins with us. Don't let your church become a spiritual desert; learn how to provide the life-giving refreshment that your congregation craves.

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Maybe your church needs a new water fountain. Welcome back to the Healthy Church Podcast. My name is Todd Rhodes. Today we're taking a little bit of a detour from some of the usual topics to explore a seemingly very mundane object that holds a surprising little spiritual metaphor today At least I hope it does for you and we're talking about your church's water fountain. I know what you're thinking a water fountain Like? Seriously, todd? But hear me out here.

Speaker 1: 0:35

Imagine a packed stadium on just a scorching summer day. The crowd is cheering, the energy's high, but there's something that's missing. There's no water fountains and people start to faint. The energy's high, but there's something that's missing there's no water fountains and people start to faint. The excitement turns to frustration and the event becomes a disaster. You know what this actually happened about 10 years ago. I forget where it was, but it was a brand new stadium that was built and they forgot. I don't know how do you do this. They forgot to put enough water fountains in and it was just a scorcher of a day. It was like a hundred degrees and people were starting to drop like flies from heat exhaustion because they were not staying hydrated, and it created quite a stir and a lot of busyness for the EMS people that day.

Speaker 1: 1:20

But in many churches a church without spiritual refreshment is exactly like that stadium. There's the analogy for today. Okay, people come in seeking something to quench their thirst if I stick with this analogy to fill them up, to give them energy to keep going throughout the week, but if all they find is just dry, stale doctrine or old programs, they'll eventually leave feeling unfulfilled and parched. They'll eventually leave feeling unfulfilled and parched. How can you make your churches more like well-placed water fountains, offering those refreshing streams of living water? I'm really taking the analogy to a new level now. But how can we make our churches places that nourish people?

Speaker 1: 2:02

And the first is just prioritize that spiritual nourishment and make sure that everything that goes on in each of our environments and from the stage in our Sunday school classrooms, in your small group places, in your children's ministry, in your youth department, make sure all the sermons and the worship and the programs are really designed to feed people and to feed their souls, not just their minds. Give them something that they can take away and that they can actually put into place and into practice that week. Prioritize spiritual nourishment. The second thing is just create spaces for authentic connection. We really need to think about this. I think we're on autopilot so much. Sundays come every week, it seems. But we need to foster an environment where people can build those genuine relationships and experience the love of Christ in communities. It's a lot of it is what we say, but it's a lot of it is how we connect people as well. We need to create those spaces where people can do that and then, thirdly, encourage these spiritual practices. Does what we do on the weekends, does what we do in our small groups, really help disciple people, help people develop the spiritual practices of prayer and Bible study and service that will help them sustain them in their daily lives, so that it's not just when they come on the weekend that they feel like they're being nourished or feeding themselves.

Speaker 1: 3:22

Can they self-feed and are you being a source of refreshment yourself as leaders? Make sure you're taking care of your own spiritual well-being. I mentioned this yesterday. Leaders, it begins with us. In order for us to be able to effectively minister to others, we need to be in really really good shape.

Speaker 1: 3:45

I once visited a church that had a beautiful. It was a beautiful water fountain out in the lobby. But when I went to try and get a drink. It was out of order. It was the perfect illustration of how even the best intentions that we have in our churches sometimes fall short if we're just not paying attention to the details. Okay, so here's your bottom line for today Don't let your church become a spiritual desert.

Speaker 1: 4:08

Make sure that you're offering refreshing, life-giving water that people are craving, and make sure you take a look at your ministries and programs. Are they really truly quenching people's thirst? And if they're not, yeah, it might be time to install a new water fountain, metaphorically speaking, of course, it might be time to reorganize and make sure that what you're doing is really nourishing people. If you're looking for ideas, just somebody you can talk to about how to revitalize your church, particularly more your staff and your team there. Maybe you've got a slightly dysfunctional team or some problems on your staff and need a little bit of outside coaching and help. Email me. I'd love to be able to talk with you and maybe work with you. Through that, I can tell you how we can work together. You can email me anytime. Podcastchemistrystaffingcom.

Speaker 1: 5:00

Okay, thanks for joining us and tuning in, for do you still tune in to podcasts? How many of you tune in on the radio. Thanks for clicking on this podcast. If you've not subscribed to the podcast where you get notifications daily when we have a new episode I think they drop about every morning about 5 o'clock Eastern in the morning you can subscribe and that would help us out as much as well. Maybe forward the link on to somebody else on your staff that you think might benefit from this. I'd love to be able to get this in the hands of as many church staff people as we can. All right, thanks so much. Hope you have a great day and come back and join me again tomorrow.