THE USHERS MINISTRY

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• THE USHERS MINISTRY

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MINISTRY VISION

• Ensuring that we have organized church services
  through committed, well trained and spiritually
  guided and motivated ushers.

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MINISTRY OBJECTIVES

• Glorifying God -Col 317, 23
• Enhancing the Worship and Praise of the Lord
• Lighten the burdens of others Gal 62, 10
• Bringing the helpless to Christ Mark 23

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MINISTRY GOALS
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MINISTRY ACHIEVEMENTS

• Ushers were trained by Elder Jack Masiko. The
  training inspired and energized the ushers with
  vigor and guidelines.
• The development and use of an Ushers Rota has
  helped bring in some order and direction among
  the ushers.

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• The indiscrete movement of children during the
  service has been checked to some extent
• Visitors have been signing the visitors book to a
  big extent
• Serving as an usher has been fulfilling to the
  members in the Ministry

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MINISTRY CHALLENGES

• Some children are still not disciplined in the
  service they make unnecessary movements that
  disrupt the service
• Some of the ushers are Sunday school teachers
  this makes it difficult for them to pray with
  their friends before the service doing the work.

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• The church members are not good stewards of
  church property i.e hymn books, and other worship
  equipment.
• The Luganda service ushers were not trained and
  have never attended ushers meetings so far held
  in the year 2007.

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• Failure to take and keep statistics for each
  Sundays attendance.
• Sometimes elders do not come to talk to the
  visitors

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• Some ushers do not delegate when they are unable
  to serve
• There is irregularity in the production of
  visitors follow up slips- they have not been
  produced in the last five months.

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• There is a limited number of ushers serving in
  both the Luganda and English services. The
  Luganda service has three ushers while the
  English service has ten ushers. Three of the
  ushers in the English service are not going to be
  serving with effect from October for various
  reasons and another one is very irregular and
  unreliable and in November one of the

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• ushers (Freda) will also not be serving for
  maternity reasons. So this leaves the English
  service with only five actively serving ushers.
  This inevitably calls for the ushers to be on
  duty every Sunday which is not possible due to
  other commitments that sometimes necessitates one
  or two ushers to be away on some Sundays and this
  also leaves them with no time to rest.

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MINISTRY INPUTS

• On the indiscipline of children
• The CDC director and teachers should encourage
  and counsel the CDC children against unnecessary
  movements in church during the Saturday meetings
  with them.
• The Pastor to call upon parents with children in
  the congregation to over see the movement of the
  children by sitting with them

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• Sunday school teachers should continuously
  counsel and urge children against making
  unnecessary movements in the church
• Parents should be the ones to escort their
  children out to the place of convenience rather
  than leaving their young siblings do so

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• To ensure effective service
• Ushers should be willing to sacrifice personal
  rights and privileges 1 Cor 919-20 by
• (i)                Reporting to church at 8.00 am
  an hour early to pray and to organize
  themselves for the work before the Sunday school
  begins for those on duty.
• Foregoing the casual interaction with friends
  after service so as to effectively do the tasks
  required of them after the service e.g. counting
  the offertory money, looking up visitors and
  taking them

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• (i)                to the visitors room, keeping
  away the kneelers and hymn books, recording the
  contact addresses of the visitors for follow-up.
• (c) The ushers in the Luganda service need to be
  trained and encouraged to come for all the
  general ushers meetings by the church
  administrator and the pastor

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• (d) The hymnals will not be used by the
  congregation because most of them are torn. The
  worship service team should always use the hymnal
  transparencies instead.
• (e) Ushers to begin wearing name tags for easy
  identification
• - Phone Number
• - E-mail address
• - Box number
• - Were you invited? Yes No
• - If yes by who?.................................
  ............

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• (g) The ushers need to be trained by the Pastor
  and Church Administrator on how to take
  attendance of Sunday services. There is need for
  a standardized procedure of collecting, keeping
  and using this information.
• (h) Holding general ushers meetings on a
  quarterly basis so for 2007 it was proposed that
  these will be held on the 7th April, 2007, 11th
  August, 2007 and 1st December 2007.

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• The ushering ministry is a capacity building
  opportunity that the individual ushers should
  participate in with the aim of growing in all the
  aspects of their Christian life as individuals
  and as a team. For purposes of ensuring effective
  growth and ministry by the ushers, supportive
  mentoring and supervision of each other and from
  the pastor, church administrator, the elders and
  all concerned church members is highly called
  for.

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• l) The ushers have proposed their serving theme
  as verse 1 Cor 1558b
• Always give yourselves fully to the work of the
  Lord, because you know that your labor in the
  Lord is not in vain.

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• The chief usher wrote to the board of elders
  through their chairman to 
•    
• arrange for the purchase of offertory bags with
  wooden shutters in order to minimize the
  possibility of somebody scooping/steeling money
  from the bag

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• Ø      arrange to have the respective categories
  of money offered by the congregation printed on
  to the envelopes because some people do not move
  with pens for writing while others just forget to
  do it. Some of the categories include tithe,
  offertory, building fund/church property fund,
  etc
• Ø      advise on how the data on visitors
  attendance is used by the church
• Ø      plan to recruit and train more ushers for
  both the Luganda and English service

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MINISTRY INDICATORS
The package of the ushering Ministry as adopted
from the ushers training package involves ushers
starting to exhibit qualities of a good usher
which include-performing their work in humility
Mtt 1042 Acts 20 18-19
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• -doing their work in love John
  2116-sacrificing personal rights and
  privileges in an effort to do their work
  effectively I cor 919-20 -willingness as an
  essential not being forced or completed to their
  work (Judges 52, Neh112,Psalms1103)

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MINISTRY TARGETS

• By June 2008 the ushers hope to see the following
  things happening in the ushering ministry
•       Ushers reporting to church at 8.00 am
  an hour early to pray and to organize
  themselves for the work before the Sunday school
  begins for those on duty.
•      

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• Ushers foregoing the casual interaction with
  friends after service so as to effectively do the
  tasks required of them after the service e.g.
  counting the offertory money, looking up visitors
  and taking them to the visitors room, keeping
  away the kneelers and hymn books, recording the
  contact addresses of the visitors for
  follow-up.     
• The ushers in the Luganda service having
  been trained by Elder Masiko and participating in
  all the ushers general quarterly meetings.

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•       Using name tags for easy identification
•       For purposes of follow-up of the visitors
  the Church Administrator would have design a
  visitors card which taps information in relation
  to the
• - Phone Number
• - E-mail address
• - Box number
• - Were you invited? Yes No
• - If yes by who?.................................
  ............

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•    Ushers and elders who are unable to serve
  during their time of office being able to
  delegate and inform the Pastor and Chief Usher to
  whom they have delegated using the telephone
  numbers included in the Rota.
•      The church having purchased chain links
  for blocking off the front doors of the church in
  order to bar people from using these doors during
  the service because they disrupt the service

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•      The church having purchased offertory bags
  with wooden shutters in order to minimize the
  possibility of somebody scooping/steeling money
  from the bag
•     The church having advised itself on how the
  data on visitors attendance is used
•      Enough ushers for both the Luganda and the
  English service would have been recruited and
  trained more ushers for both the Luganda and
  English service

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MINISTRY BUDGET

• The serving ushers need at least 2,000 Ug Shs
  per Sunday, that is 8,000 Ug Shs per month and
  48,000 Ug Shs per year for sending thank you
  follow up messages to the visitors.