A Conference To Check Out & A Principle To Remember

I’ve been spending time this week getting ready for EQUIP—a conference for ministers and volunteer leaders interested in improving outreach and involvement in their church. (Hopefully, that’s most of us, right?)

If you’re within driving distance of Nashville, you should check it out. It’s the 26th & 27th, and the session topics look great. I’m presenting on “4 Things Every Outreach Initiative Needs (Hint: You May Not Be Doing Any of Them).”

I probably won’t address this explicitly, but at the heart of my presentation is the truth that what’s important gets so easily crowded out by what’s urgent. 8 times out of 10, the important stuff isn’t loud. 10 times out of 10, the urgent stuff is. Ministry is ruled by this truth.

So is most of life.

I suppose part of the solution is to make the important stuff loud—to convince yourself it’s essential and to build it into your life in a way that ensures it won’t get ignored.

Easier said than done, but worth shooting for.

Involvement Minister or Outreach Minister?

Some churches have “involvement ministers.” Others have “outreach ministers.” Either’s great, but here’s my opinion:

Nothing brings people together and gets them involved better than a shared mission that’s bigger than any one of them. And you can’t do outreach without getting people involved.

If the core of your involvement isn’t outreach, something’s wrong. And if you expect outreach to happen without everybody being on board and engaged, you’ll be disappointed.

So…

The best involvement minsters prioritize outreach. And the best outreach ministers prioritize involvement.

Right?

The Coolest Thing Our Church Does

What’s the coolest thing your church does?

Here’s my vote for ours: a couple of weekends ago we completed our second annual Home for the Holidays project at Henderson. Every year, we connect with a local family in need and renovate their home in time for Christmas. It’s a ton of work. And it’s a blast.

The family we helped this year was due for something good to happen to them. Gwen and her husband, Darin, are raising their 18-year-old son and their three grandchildren (8, 5, and 18 months). The kids’ mother is in rehab, and Gwen and Darin haven’t been able to get much help from the extended family (all of whom are white) because the kids are biracial.

Gwen has been doing all of this on her own lately, because Darin’s National Guard unit was deployed to Iraq.

About a month ago, they got behind on the payments on their rental house, were evicted, and came home to find their all their things thrown out in the front lawn.

In the rain.

They found a smaller house with a lower payment, but it was in rough shape. It needed paint, the floors were damaged, the gutters were falling down, and they couldn’t afford to cover the windows with anything other than old sheets.

So we helped out. We painted the entire inside of the house, replaced the floors in the living room, bedrooms, and kitchen, fixed the gutters, redid the cabinets, put blinds on all the windows, landscaped the yard, gave them a Christmas tree, and took care of a few other odds and ends.

And we did it in a weekend.

It’s not Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, but it’s a big transformation. Less “Move that bus!” and more “Move that small pickup!”

Anyway, I’m proud to be connected to the people that made this possible, and we’re all more than happy to share Christ’s love by helping people in need.

Here are some highlights and the reveal for your viewing pleasure:

5 Reasons Churches Don’t Grow (part 2)

*If you missed the first 2 reasons, you can find them here.

Here are 3 more growth inhibitors for your consideration:

1. Placing outreach at the periphery, not the center
   There’s a huge difference between cobbling together a few programs and making outreach the center of everything. If leadership communicates (whether actively or passively) that a church exists for something other than saving lost people, saving lost people becomes extra credit. And nobody puts the same effort into extra credit that they put into the exam.
   
   
2. Lack of Prayer
   In the end, it’s God who gives growth, right? …So why aren’t we praying for conviction and transformation more fervently? (And quick mentions in opening prayers don’t count.) Could it be God’s just waiting for a sincere invitation?
   
   
3. No Vision
   In the words of the Apostle Paul, “if the trumpet does not sound a clear call, who will get ready for battle?” Without a clear, compelling, shared picture of what could and should be, people won’t mobilize in a common direction.
   
   Sure, vision can be tough to craft and tough to cast. It requires time away from what’s urgent. It sometimes takes tough conversations among leaders. But Paul was right—no vision means no victory.

So what would happen if we eliminated these 5 things from our churches? What would happen if we embraced helpful change, pursued radical Christlikeness, anchored our identity in outreach, relied on God through prayer, and set before our congregations an irresistible vision of lives changed for the glory of God?

I bet a church or two would grow.

Let’s do it.