Ministry Leadership

Looking for some practical ministry advice here. A church has extended a call to my husband come on as their pastor and we are in the middle of discerning the Lord's will. There is nothing apparently difficult about the situation but haven't yet felt a "spark" or anything to propel us forward other than he is currently underemployed working a secular job and is not currently using his gifting in the church. We've been praying that God would direct him to a pastorate in a certain geographic area and this opportunity has opened up. Still we're uncertain.

So my question is this (benefiting from your combined years of experience): when, how, why, what should be the compelling reasons to accept a call to a church? what would keep you from accepting?

In light of the Penn State scandal, how can we as churches ensure that this will not happen in our own congregations? I know that a very similar situation occurred in the church I grew up in. ... From my travels, I've seen numerous similar situations. This is not meant to be a blame game and pointing fingers. I would like to see this topic discuss constructive ways to prevent these scandals from occurring.

Jim Elliff has some good thoughts for frequent bloggers and commenters:

Christian Communications: Check Your Guns At the Door,

I have been to 6 SBC churches in my area (within 20 minutes) and 5/6 of them were depleted of many or any young people in their 20's - 30's. Many of them had large buildings but a small flock. The more contemporary rock based churches have flocks of young people, and the Fundamentalist churches also have many young people. It seems that people either want a contemporary seeker based church or they want a separatist based church. Whats your theory as t the decline of youth in the Southern Baptist Churches?

John