Would Your Church Be Missed?

If your church closed its doors today, would anyone but its own members notice? Would it be missed? Would the city or community be saddened because such a great community transformation partner was gone? Or would it even miss a beat?

These are questions that, if genuinely considered, will take a great commission church to a whole new level of discussion. It would probably be more a question of deeds than of words.

I'm not sure but that many churches would not be missed too much except by the members of these churches.

What is a community transformation partner? It is a church that not only knows what is going on in the community but is part of the transformation of that community.

Think about it. Would your church be missed?

David P Smith

Isn't There Another Way?

The workshop that was conducted by Tommy Estes, Bill Kuykendal and Robert Wallace was excellent. I'm not sure if this was the first ever workshop at an MBA meeting. To my knowledge it was the only one. Maybe someone will straighten me out on this.

The Eastern Baptist Association in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, etc., have been conducting workshops for their pastors and messengers for years. They have streamlined their meetings and made sure that the people go home with something they can use.

The Texas meeting could be much more enjoyable by having several workshops on several subjects every year which would help equip and inform the pastors and messengers of how to do more effective ministry. There would be less boredom and fewer sleepy messengers.

It was really hilarious that someone on the platform humorously noted that there were several sleeping (me too) during the afternoon session (that's when all of the reports are given). Personally, I believe it was a shame that we should be subjected to the reading of reports for an hour and a half when the same reports could have been printed and made available for our personal reading for a later time. With the reports in hand we could take them and read them to our churches. We wouldn't be sleeping during a workshop and we would have something of value to take home with us.

Traditionally we have always read these reports at our meetings, but do we have to keep on doing this? Isn't there another way?

Door-to-Door Outreach

Recently the North American Mission Board released some interesting statistics. It indicated that people that 40% of the most unchurched are favorable to someone knocking on their door and inviting them to church.

"--many people are open to an invitation to your church and some are open to hearing about heaven. Even 40 percent of the most unchurched are open to an invitation to your church, which is something that the whole church can do-- something that's much less scary for the typical believer and takes less training. It is helpful to know that many people are open to a church event invitation where, perhaps, they can hear the gospel in an understandable way. Imagine how many more houses your church group could visit if every person could be convinced to make one visit and one simple invitation." Ed Stetzer blog.

Going door-to-door is a very effective outreach. It still works in most places. We have used it for six months here at Greater Heights and we have seen 17 souls saved and increased church attendance. Some are awaiting baptism right now.

I pray constantly that our ABA churches would awaken to this marvelous opportunity to reach their neighborhoods for Christ.

David

Healthy Balanced Churches

A healthy church is a balanced church.

For a church to be healthy it needs more than doctrinal purity. It needs a balance of evangelism, worship, discipleship, fellowship and ministry.

Is your church a healthy balanced church?

If your church is focused mainly on teaching you are probably unbalanced. No matter how good your teaching ministry is you will end up with empty pews because there will be no reproduction without evangelism.

If your church is focused on evangelism alone you will have a revolving door to your church that will be next to impossible to close.

If your church is focused on ministry alone you will have people serving and meeting the needs of one another and the community and be in danger of having a social gospel that wins no one, and disciples no one.

If your church is focused on worship alone you will have a church that feels good but has little foundation.

If your church is focused on fellowship alone you will have a church that has cliques and more cliques, which will in turn become exclusive instead of inclusive.

To be a healthy balanced church follow the example of the Jerusalem church in Acts 2:41-47, purposefully.
David