Our Mission to Pastors, Churches, and Church Leadership: Be the ‘Guide by Their Side’ in Growing their Church by Growing their Community
The Problem
As you are aware, citizens, communities, cites and countries are underachieving. Societal problems are trending upward because of a meltdown in the values and institutions that make a community or city great.
The church is not even in the top seven influencers in United States culture.
The public relations image of the church is the second lowest of all entities in the United States. While some churches are growing on the inside of the walls, the church is losing the culture outside of the walls.
Jesus is interested in changing culture, not just getting bodies in chairs.
Abandoning the culture allows the world to determine the culture. Too many have become keepers of the aquarium rather than fishers of men. Truth: There will be no transformation without incarnation.
Things change from the inside out, not the outside in.
The Solution
Notice God’s solution in times like these. Earth wasn’t going to heaven, so heaven came to earth. The Word became flesh. The spiritual became natural. Why? To show the way and to redefine God to the community.
Jesus’ strategy was contact and communication without contamination.
Jesus gave God a face in the community. In the same way Jesus redefined God then, we, the church, redefine God to the community now.
If the community is not going to the church, then the church has to go to the community.
Our destiny is to go to heaven, our responsibility is to bring heaven. If they can’t see us, they won’t be us.
Two Questions Every Church Must Ask
How is our community better because of this church?
If our church was gone, who would miss us?
The church is complex in that fact that it must be upward, inward, and outward at the same time. Most churches are good at being upward and inward, but struggle with the outward.
For the most part the church is not strategic and therefore not effective in engaging faith in culture.
Seminary and bible schools don’t teach pastors and leaders for ministry outside of the church. If there is no deposit into the community, there will be little return from the community. Jesus entered humanity to save us, not from a distance, but from the position of a participant, a fellow human being.
God wants more than belief and worship, God wants faith and love!
Be fruitful and multiply, don’t just bask in paradise! Hence, the church needs to release social entrepreneurs. Social opportunity is spiritual opportunity. Social entrepreneurs join cultural relevance and eternal significance. They are touched by needs in their community. They are “soul oxygen” for the community.
Salt can’t flavor what it doesn’t touch.
We Want Sustainable Impact.
We are not primarily concerned about church forms such as seeker, charismatic, traditional, fundamental or social. We are concerned about uplifting and empowering people, churches and communities to be all they were designed by God to be.
After our engagement with a church and the church leadership, they will never, ever see their community, city, or nation the same way again.
The result is that most will embrace the possibility of an undeniable change in their community.