Sometimes someone will win or pay extra for a backstage tour to see the artists up close and see how things work behind the scenes. There is so much that goes on at Pantano that the average person doesn’t see. Here are a few important things that happen out of sight.
Baptisms
As I write, we’ve have had a record 425 baptisms in the last eleven months. We want to make sure each person understands the commitment they are making. For many of the people, we’ve had in-depth conversations before the day they are baptized. For those moved by the Spirit on the day of the invitation, we have conversations backstage before a person makes their profession of faith and is baptized; that’s why we have changed our schedule to allow more time between the invitation and the actual baptisms at the end of the service. We follow up with each person baptized to encourage them to continue the discipleship process. Also, we offer a regular class for parents and their children to learn about baptism so the parents can determine when their child is ready to make that decision.
Teaching Team
We work hard to present a quality message each week. We want our messages to be relevant, engaging, biblical and applicable. The teacher has to do a lot of work to accomplish this, but none of our teachers do this alone. We use a teaching team to help in this process. The team reviews the message and gives feedback to the teacher three times in the two weeks before it is delivered, and one of those is after live teaching on Thursday. And the teacher also gets feedback from the team on the Tuesday after they deliver the message. That’s a lot of great feedback. We have populated the teaching team with a diverse group of folks who can give feedback from a number of perspectives. There are both staff and non-staff, male and female, younger and older, and feeling and thinking members on the teaching team. All of us on the teaching team feel like we are better teachers because of the great feedback and evaluation.
Curriculum for Children
Did you know our children’s ministry team has begun to write the curriculum we use on Sundays? By writing our own, we can personalize it to our unique community and the needs of the kids and our families.
A Warning
I hate to have to add this, but it seems a group of thieves are fraudulently sending out emails in my name with an email address that seems close to my real email but is not my actual email address. So far, they have been posing as me asking for gift cards for cancer patients. If you get an email asking for something like this, and you have any doubts, check with me directly or through the office. I’ll never ask you to provide help in this manner. I’ve just discovered that two more of my pastor friends have been used this way too. Our IT department is working on this, but please use caution and be careful!
I’m grateful for all the behind-the-scenes teamwork that makes ministry at Pantano happen!
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