Your congregation is perfectly calibrated for the mission-fruit you are currently producing.
Are you seeing lots of people in your congregation investing in friendships with people in their neighborhoods who are living without the grace and truth of Jesus?
Are you seeing lots of people from those neighborhoods coming to faith and wanting to be baptized because of the love and conversations they are having with the people of your congregation?
Are you seeing so many people from the community now becoming a part of your congregation that your congregation is increasing weekly?
No?
There’s a reason why.
Your congregation is probably mistaking church-activity for mission-accomplishment.
It’s easy to do if you don’t know where you’re going or how to get there.
There are two simple but profoundly important questions the leaders of every congregation need to answer if they want to end up with abundant mission-fruit:
Where do we want to end up? (We want to see abundant mission-fruit being produced frequently, consistently, over and over again!)
How will we get there? (Here’s a simple, biblical, proven plan…)
However, if you don’t have a clear understanding of where you want to end up or how to get there, it is likely that you will fall back into a hodge-podge of church activities: programs, services, groups, and meetings galore.
Your congregation will be busy, busy, busy. But will all that busyness produce mission-fruit? Well… what have you been seeing so far?
Wandering in circles and getting nowhere is easy to do if you don’t know where you’re going or how to get there. And continuing to do what you’re already doing – only faster and with more enthusiasm – will simply get you nowhere faster.
For instance, this weekend, I am supposed to be at a congregation in Kansas City running a leadership retreat. If I want to end up at the correct place, I need to answer two questions correctly:
Where do I want to end up?
How will I get there?
Once I settle down and focus on answering those two questions, everything else is pretty simple.
Where do I want to end up? At the congregation in Kansas City. How will I get there? I will take an Uber to the airport, get on the flight to Kansas City, rent a car, and follow the map to my destination.
Simple.
You know what would turn something simple like this into something not so simple? If I knew I was supposed to be at the congregation, but I didn’t know where the congregation was or how to get there. (I actually have nightmares about that. I dream that I have to be some place, but I don’t know where it is or how to get there. Awful.)
You know what might be even more awful? Knowing where you WANT to go, but not knowing how to get there. As a leader, maybe you have a fruitful destination in mind. You've been dreaming of it, praying for it, preaching on it, having meetings about it. So, why aren’t you seeing the fruit?
It’s not what you’re doing, it’s what you’re missing.
Let me help.
Together, we can craft a simple, biblical, doable plan for how you will see your congregation producing abundant mission-fruit frequently, consistently, over and over again.
It’s time to settle down and focus on answering those two questions. I look forward to our conversation.