Missional Living | Coaching Churches

Category Archive: Missional Living

Cursing The Darkness

Posted by on March 24, 2019

As we enter this post-Christian period in America, I am deeply concerned that we still do not understand why we are increasingly ineffective in making disciples. I hear everything blamed from emerging churches, seeker services, contemporary worship, reformed theology, postmodernism and watered down preaching just to name a few.

We certainly will never be able to solve the problem if we can not accurately diagnose the cause. We must stop cursing the darkness and talking about everything that is wrong and start shinning the light about what is right.

We must start with the simple truth that the people who are not attending church are significantly culturally different from the people who are. This means that all pastors in America must become missional in their methodology in order to reach new people or our churches will die.

The days of build it and they will come through transfer growth are over forever and in the end that is a very good thing.

We must stop preaching that the culture is our enemy. It is simply the context in which we have been called to do ministry. As a necessary reminder the modern culture with all its logic and reason was no friend to the gospel because it produced humanism and evolution.

I am extremely excited about the next generation and their passion for community, integrity, spirituality and service. We need compassion for their lostness but respect for their uniqueness.

It is our responsibility to understand them if we want to reach them and not require them to become like us if they want to come to Christ.

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How To Discern God’s Will In Your Workplace

Posted by on January 16, 2019

The front lines of the gospel ministry have moved from the churches we attend to the places where we work and the neighborhoods where we live. Our work is an incredibly important platform for God, as we daily combine the secular and the sacred to show people the reality of Christ in our lives. This post by Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra is a great reminder:

In 2004, businessman Terry Looper—founder and CEO of the $6 billion Texon energy company—was partway through negotiating a sale when he realized he’d forgotten to pray about it.

“I hadn’t even tried to get neutral,” he said. “Getting neutral” is his term for pushing down any greed or selfish ambition, quieting his heart, and listening for the Holy Spirit’s leading. Looper makes decisions by spending time in prayer and Bible reading, consulting with colleagues and family, watching for circumstances, and asking God for “peace in my gut.”

Beyond The Walls

Posted by on March 21, 2017

The days of build it and they will come are over for churches. We may not want to admit it but for most Christians when they talk about church in their minds it’s about what happens at the buildings and not out in the community.

I recently met with a very successful committed Christian who is a pediatrician who wanted to grow more spiritually and get more involved in ministry. It was obvious to me from the very start of the conversation this meant to him taking on more responsibility at the church.

I began to share with him the vision that he could do more through his practice to reach young couples for Christ than we could ever do at the building. They would not even come to the building to hear Billy Graham but they were several new couples sitting in his waiting room every week expecting their first child.

In this postmodern age, we must never minimize the importance of the church gathered for worship and ministry but we must prioritize the church scattered for evangelism and missions. We must find new ways to take the gospel to where people live, work and play.

By the end of the conversation the light had come on for my friend because he no longer had a career but he now had a calling. That’s what happens when you change the definition of success from increasing profits to impacting people.

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Are You Personally Called Or Professionally Driven?

Posted by on December 7, 2016

It is very important that we all know the difference between these two power words. If you are not careful and buy into the culture’s definition of success you will be driven to get all the perks of this lifestyle.

Driven people see their career as the primary provider of their physical and emotional needs. It gives them power, possessions, position, pleasure and all the emotional significance they want from all the outward success they achieve.

Called people on the other hand see their career as a means to a much more important end and that is impacting other people. They get up every day on a mission to make a difference and the bottom line for them is not profits but people.

I am convinced that called people in the marketplace can be more successful in every way than their driven counterparts. They have a passion that goes way beyond just showing up for work and hitting the numbers.

All of us have a strong desire to look back at the end of our lives and know that we have made a real difference. That difference will not be who has the most toys but who has helped the most people.

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Developing Intentional Relationships With Non-Christians

Posted by on October 22, 2016

For years we have all been told that we are to be witnesses for Christ so that people can come to know Him. The major problem is that the prevailing strategy that has been used for years has never worked for the overwhelming majority of Christians.

The problem is not that this command is somehow out of date to the point that it should no longer be taken seriously. The critical failure is how we as leaders have modeled this ministry and trained our people to carry out this most important assignment for the church.

In the worst of situations we have trained our people to memorize a lot of facts and then after meeting a total stranger try to share all of the facts with them so they can make the most important decision of their lives all in thirty minutes.

I will acknowledge that in some cases there are divine appointments that God has prepared someone’s heart for just such a meeting. However, that does not mean that we should take this aggressive an approach with everyone we meet.

In the normal course of everyday we all tell stories about things that have happened in our lives. The subject matter can be anything from our last vacation, great new restaurants, job stress and personal family problems.

The reason why all of this works so easily is that it is in the normal course of our everyday lives within relationships that already exist to some degree. This is the biblical model of as you are going about your life share with other people the incredible and wonderful things that He has done in your life.

When evangelism moves from direct confrontation to casual conversations more people are going to respond to the good news of the gospel.

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Glocal Missions Strategy

Posted by on October 21, 2016

During the last century there were very clear distinctions between the concept of evangelism and missions. In the simplest of terms evangelism was reaching people for the local church and missions was reaching people for the kingdom.

Within the context of missions there was a local, national and an international segmentation. This implied the potential for several different strategies to be effective in all of these areas. It was understood that to reach people in an international context that significant cultural barriers had to be addressed for the gospel to be effective.

Today the cultural distance between the people who are in the church in America and the people who are not is significant enough to require a cross cultural missiological approach to reach them. They hold an entirely different world view and they are simply not going to come to our buildings regardless of how cutting edge our marketing may be.

For churches to be effective today in reaching the unchurched in America we are going to have to become missionaries in our own local context. We will have to find ways to take the gospel to where the people live, work and play and do it in a culturally relevant way.

That is why we need to stop thinking in terms of the old models of segmentation. The world has literally moved to America and through the use of technology and the new global economy everything has changed.

The church must become glocal in its thinking, which means one missiological mindset that produces multiple strategies depending upon who we are trying to reach in our area.

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Moving Beyond Paycheck

Posted by on August 12, 2016

As Christians we are to do everything as unto the Lord and not unto men. That means we have far more than a job we have a calling.

We tend to live segmented lives with separate time and devotion given to work, family, faith, friends and entertainment. What comes with this mentality is the faith part of our lives tends to be limited to what we do on Sunday and it has very little practical impact on how we live the other six days of the week.

For some of us it goes way beyond that. Our careers become the major source of emotional fulfillment in our lives and we become seduced by all the power, position and possessions that come with worldly success.

In my opinion every Christian should see themselves living in full time ministry on mission for God. Their career then becomes their platform for impacting other people and not merely project deadlines and performance reviews.

When your whole life is integrated around your faith everything you do and every relationship you have takes on eternal significance. The person you are now working for is not your boss but the One who died for you so that you might live for Him.

Changing the world one person at a time is a career worthy of God’s grace in our lives and it is way beyond any paycheck that any company can give.

How do you keep your work from just being a job?

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Changing Missions Paradigm

Posted by on June 17, 2016

The one thing that has never changed about missions is that God has always been seeking people to know Him and then to make Him known. The unchanging message of the gospel started in a garden and will end in a city full of people from every tribe and nation on the earth.

The great commission was given to the early church and they immediately began to carry the message to every part of their known world. This message was primarily being shared not by a professional ministerial class but by average believers who had a personal story to tell about what Christ had done in their lives.

During the middle ages the formal church was the focal point of representing God to the world. The emphasis had shifted from individuals to organizations and the world suffered greatly in this period of isolation from the truth.

The reformation gave the scriptures back to the people and set the stage for all that followed in the modern mission’s movement where individual believers once again committed their lives to go into whole world with their message of hope. However these individuals became part of much larger organizations that took the lead in spreading the good news.

Today the major emphasis is still upon organizations, denominations, mission agencies and other groups that represent primarily the trained professionals who maintain the old paradigms that have existed for hundreds of years. These groups do a great work and will always play an important role in touching the world.

An exciting new movement is developing where committed Christians are once again being used by God in incredible ways and places where the professional worker model cannot work. They are using their career calling as a platform not only to make a profit but also to make an eternal difference.

If you want to learn more Great Commission Companies is a great book that points the way to how God is using globalization to break down barriers and effectively create genuine communities of new believers.

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The Target Has Changed For Churches

Posted by on March 17, 2016

Any time you talk about some group of people being your primary target most people in the church get offended. It is if they are concerned that because they are not in the target group their needs are not going to be met. This of course should not have to be the case at all.

For over fifty years at least the same target group has existed from a demographic and psychographic standpoint. They were the adults that made up the World War II and the Baby Boomer generations. We developed programs and services to meet their needs and they would bring their children to church with them.

A typical adult conversation on the way home would be how did you like the message, music and the lesson? If both adults had a good experience, then they would deal with whatever issues the children had and bring them back the next Sunday.

Today the overwhelming majority of adults under the age of forty are not coming to church any more. They have a different world view about God and the need for role of the church in their lives.

When they do come because someone has relationally connected with them at work or in the neighborhood the conversation on the way home has completely changed. Now the major thing that matters is what type of experience did their children have and do they want to come back again?

If the answer is yes, the adults are now willing to make the adjustments and they will be back. If the answer is no, then regardless of what happened to mom and dad they are not going to give you a second look.

If your preschool, children and student ministries are not world-class in your church then you cannot expect to reach families in today’s culture. The conversations on the way home have changed and your target group must change with it as well.

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Building The Business Case For Doing Good

Posted by on February 21, 2016

The whole idea of making a profit so that you can make a difference is hot right now. More and more organizations are getting a corporate conscience and that is really helping a lot of people who desperately need it. However, there is incredible internal benefit and Gwen Moran tells us why:

“Creating workplace philanthropy programs is a good way to bolster a company’s reputation while making employees feel good about the place where they work, says management consultant Michael Montgomery, founder of Montgomery Consulting, which helps companies implement such programs. However, starting a philanthropy isn’t just a matter of picking a charity to support.”