The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
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The Healthy Church Staff Podcast
Teaching Your Congregation to Practice Gratitude
What if your church could become a beacon of gratitude in a world often focused on scarcity and negativity? Join me, Todd Rhoades, on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast as we explore how to transform your congregation into a community where thankfulness is second nature. Inspired by Psalm 100:4, we'll discuss practical strategies for embedding gratitude into the fabric of church life, extending its reach beyond Sunday services. I share insights from a remarkable church that has mastered the art of cultivating an atmosphere of hope and positivity through simple yet powerful practices. Get ready to discover how these small acts of gratitude can have a profound impact on your church environment.
As Thanksgiving approaches, I challenge you to implement at least one gratitude practice in your church this week. From creating a gratitude wall to sharing testimonies of thankfulness during services, the possibilities are limitless. We’ll discuss how these practices can help make gratitude a habit that changes attitudes and fosters a sense of community. I’m eager to hear your ideas and experiences, so drop me an email at podcast@chemistrystaffing.com. Let’s work together to create a ripple effect of gratitude throughout our church communities and beyond.
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Hi there, welcome to the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. I'm Todd Roach, your host, also one of the co-founders over at chemistrystaffingcom. I'm glad that you joined us today. Join me. Today we're continuing our series of gratitude. We started last week. We're continuing through the end of this week.
Speaker 1:Today's focus, though, is on teaching your congregation to practice gratitude. As church leaders, we're not just responsible for our own attitudes although we've talked last week particularly about how to make our own attitude better through generosity and gratitude and thanksgiving but as church leaders, we also have the chance to influence our entire church, our entire congregation. So how do we encourage our church members to develop habits of thankfulness that go beyond the hour that we get with them on Sunday mornings? All right, so let's dig right in. Okay, first of all, I think we just need to start by acknowledging one simple thing we live in a culture Can I say this? I think this is true. We live in a culture that isn't always great at gratitude. It's easy to get caught up in what we don't have or what's not going right. Caught up in what we don't have or what's not going right, and that mindset can sneak into our churches too. Matter of fact, a lot of times it does. If it sneaks into our lives, it's going to sneak into the life of our church. That much is true. But what if we could help our congregations become places where gratitude is the norm, not the exception? And for this I want to guide you to a verse in Psalms. It's Psalm 100, verse 4. It says Enter gates with thanksgiving, enter his courts with praise and give thanks to him and praise his name. That's an invitation to bring gratitude into every part of our worship, into every part of our services. But it's more than a Sunday thing. It's really a way of life and as church leaders we have the privilege of helping people see that Now.
Speaker 1:I remember visiting a church that made a practice of asking members to share something they were thankful for at the start of every small group or Bible study. And it wasn't complicated but it was powerful. And people would share things like I'm grateful for a good report from my doctor or I'm thankful for my family's support during a tough time. But here's what it did. It created this atmosphere of hope and positivity even when people were challenging, were facing really challenging situations, and it reminded everyone that, no matter what was happening, there were still reasons to be thankful. So I was thinking how do we take this idea and make it work in our own churches?
Speaker 1:I think it starts with creating that space for gratitude both during our services and throughout the week, whether it's a testimony time or a gratitude wall, or even a simple social media challenge absolutely could be a way to encourage people to share what they're thankful for. The goal is to make thankfulness a habit. So here's your bottom line today I want you to think of at least one practice. You know. If you can think of more, that's great, but at least one practical way that you can encourage your church to practice gratitude this week. And this is a great time to do it, headed up to Thanksgiving, right? Maybe you set aside a few minutes during the service this next week to share some brief stories of thankfulness, or you can create a gratitude jar in your church lobby where people can drop in notes of saying what they're thankful for.
Speaker 1:But I think these prompts are important. How do we prompt our people to think about what they're grateful for? I think that an important thing is just to kind of keep it simple and keep it consistent. When people get used to looking for things to be thankful for it changes something even in their brain, in their attitude. It becomes a part of who they are and that can have a ripple effect in your entire church.
Speaker 1:I'd love to hear what you come up with, if you've already got a practice in place for encouraging gratitude, or if you're trying something new after today's episode, drop me an email. I'd love to hear from you. I read every email that comes in to podcastchemistrystaffingcom. Let me know your creativity and ideas might just be something that can inspire others who are listening. And if you haven't subscribed yet, go ahead and do that now. We're rolling through this gratitude series. I don't want you to miss a thing, so hit subscribe if you haven't done that, and we will send you reminders so that you don't miss an episode of the Healthy Church Staff Podcast. All right, very much, I appreciate you and I will see you right back here tomorrow on the Healthy Church Staff Podcast.
