How can you tell if your church doesn’t understand it’s mission? Over at GraceGround.com, I posted ten possible statements that will clue you in. Here are three:

8. During the opening welcome, you are told that “This is a safe place for you and your family.

9. During the opening welcome, you are invited to “Relax and enjoy your time. Get your batteries recharged.”

10. In the announcements, you learn that there is a budget windfall, and to make the church more attractive to the community the board is trying to decide between repaving the parking lot or repainting the building.

Head on over there to read the rest of the list.

My wife recently bought a Shark. No, not one of the pointy-toothed predators of the sea, but the effective steam cleaner for all the hard surface floors in your home. One day as I was using it, I looked outside and noticed a road repair crew using a steamroller to repave a section of the street. Seeing how steam could be used in two different ways for two different purposes got me thinking about two different forms of leadership, the Streamroller, and the Steamcleaner. Both have benefits and dangers, but if used properly, can help leaders provide direction to those who follow. [Read more…]

I found the following post over at Backyard Missionary, and thought it was so good, I needed to repost part of it here. The incarnational approach to ministry is one of the best ways to connect with others today.

If Jesus were alive today and his mission was still to ’seek out and save the lost’ what might he do?…

Would he hire a building, set up a sound system, develop a music team, drama team, and then do local letterbox drops advising people that they could come and be part of his church on Sunday? Frankly I don’t believe this approach to mission would rate a blip on his strategic radar. The so called ‘attractional’ mode of mission centres its focus on the church service and is dedicated to producing an event that pagans will want to come to. The theory goes that the more professional the service is, the funkier the music, the better the coffee, and so on” the more likely the punters will come, hence the term ‘attractional’. As such the success of mission in this mode is almost always measured by the number who attend on Sunday. While a small minority of larger churches do experience some success with this approach, the overwhelming majority of smaller churches attempting to be Hillsong clones continue to haemorrhage members every week because they cannot offer the same quality of music, preaching or other services that their mega-mall comrades down the road are able to provide. [Read more…]