What if…
What if…
Instead of organizing large-scale, expensive mission trips, every small group prayed, planned and went on their own mission trip together?
our next campus was in the heart of Atlanta? Or even another city?
leaders in our church viewed themselves as “little pastors,” spiritually shepherding the people under their care?
we had a chilled-out, more acoustic, more hymn-driven worship service?
we took Nuts and Bolts on the road and took ten people to help out a group of churches in another city?
Christians actually read the Bible and did what it said?
we all sacrificially gave to support the ministry of the church and starting new churches?
we had fifty campuses or churches in the fifty largest cities in the United States?
every year, three or four families from Oak Leaf Church, moved to a major city to start a new church?
three or four people from our church showed up at every community event to serve and invite?
I like the questions. What if…
Ive thought through this concept of limited mission trips to only 4-5 people each trip, keep the logistics simple and one main objective to accomplish.
Keeps from the headache of dealing with keeping up with 10+ people.
another quick thought…we should start using the phrase ‘we are going to…’ instead of ‘what if…’
All great What If questions. I would love to see them all happen, especially reading Bible more and doing what it says, and taking Nuts and Bolts on the road- that’s a great idea! On the acoustic hymn service…. maybe mix it up with what we do now, not all the time.
sometimes I get the feeling you are an old-time fundamentalist in contemporary clothing.
Great questions Michael.Really interested in the small group mission trips.
Thanks!
Thanks
been thinking about these ideas this morning…
what if we…instead of having ‘missions’ and ‘outreach’ departments, we led our community groups to be something like mission groups and we intentionally focused our missions and outreach via groups.
purpose of community group is to be a community on mission. So, we lead our groups to do the following:
- develop relationships
- target neighborhoods to reach
- do community outreach projects together
- take mission trips together
picture this…instead of trying to do one big church wide event, you had 30 groups doing 30 different mission projects and trips as you reach your city and world!
there are some logistics involved in this…but you took the discipleship focus in groups off the common idea that discipleship = bible study. yes, there is bible study involved, but your groups are out doing stuff together.
there is a lot good ideas we can do here, I believe…kind of has me reshaping some concepts for our community groups.
here you go…what if:
what if you had 50 churches + 10 international churches; with various numbers of groups in each church; partnering with each other sending mission teams to these cities to help out…
what if one church had 30 groups that did 30 outreach projects in their city, committed to 30 different churches worldwide by praying for them and taking a trip each year! imagine if each of those groups had an average of 10 people in them. that’s 300 people who did an outreach project, took a mission trip together, and prayed + supported 30 churches world wide.
I think you start doing these things via group…would create more involvement and have a bigger impact…
that gets me fired up right there…sorry about posting 80 times on this.