There are a lot of blogs, books, seminars, and conferences about planning successful church programs. I have read many of these books and posts, and have attended several of these seminars and conferences. Below are three things I have never heard anywhere, but which would significantly help church programs become more relational and missional.
If you are a house church, you may not think you have programs, and so this post doesn’t apply to you. But while you may not call it a “program” if there is any activity that your gathering does together for other people in the community–whether you call it community service, outreach, evangelism, mission, etc.,–this post might also help you be more focused an intentional in what you do and why.
First, all programs should include something beyond just training. I’ve written about this previously. It does not appear that Jesus or the early church ever did training just for training. Most of the training was while they were on the way to do something. It was on the job training. [Read more…]