Church to the People (part 1)

A church’s goal to get groups into the world

by Dan Lentz

My local community of Christ-followers, since starting over 8 years ago, has always had the decentralization of discipleship and evangelism through home groups at the center of our strategy. However, we are taking that to a new level this summer.

We have a weekend worship gathering as most churches do, but we have decided to make that gathering a training ground for reaching the world. Here's a quote from one of our recent weekend teachings: "There are a lot of churches out there that are really good at attracting people to Sunday morning service or to some program. Thank God for those churches, but we have to be honest and admit even those churches fall way short. There are still way more people who will never come close to a church building on Sunday morning. So our goal is not to attract people to our Sunday morning service. It's to attract people to Christ, by going to the people, going 'out there' and loving people."

The week after this talk, we took our entire Sunday morning crowd (kids and adults alike) and organized them into a "grocery sack" assembly line. We acquired a large quantity of fresh produce and filled grocery bags with the produce and a simple message of Christ's love. Once the sacks were filled, we sent our people out in groups to deliver these grocery bags to specific neighborhoods in our community. It was a great morning and there was some great chatter on the local news online discussion groups from our town.

We are going to continue doing these types of activities over the course of the summer, and we imagine these type of activities changing the culture of both our Sunday gatherings and our home group gatherings for the longer term as well.

If you are interested in trying one of these "church to the people" or "missional" activities, there are several books with great ideas. Here's a few to check out:

Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church

Organic Leadership: Leading Naturally Right Where You Are

Hell's Best Kept Secret

ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church

Next time I'll tell you about some other resources we have used for getting the church out of the church!

posted by Dan Lentz on June 29, 2009 3:18 PM

Comments

I also recommend "Conspiracy of Kindness," which combines the ideas of missional service and evangelism.
http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/product?item_no=745722&p=1018451

This is such a good lesson,thanks for sharing. It is hard sometimes to think of our self as a tool the the lord can use just like the one's we have learned from.