Outreach - period ended 8.15.2006

Outreach/Youth/Music/Damron, Gary/Southwest Daily Times/Liberal Southwest Daily Times/Liberal/KS/USA/14-Aug-06/... Across town, at Friends Church, pastor Gary Damron said the members of his church have also discussed the need to reach the younger generation.

"It's really a problem of balancing the needs of those that are out there, and ministering to what we might call your base," he said. "We've had some discussions, but as in most churches, movement [toward change] is slow."

Damron's observation is that for most congregations, "it usually comes to a crisis," where membership has declined dramatically, before people are ready to consider big change. Sometimes, he noted, "you can wait too long, and then there aren't enough people attending to go to a two-service format." . ...