Help me think through my ideas.

For this post I would like to submit my own model for church and ministry and maybe a few folks wouldn't mind helping me see its strengths and weaknesses. I have been inspired greatly by the book Simple Church and one of the churches profiled in the book, Northpoint Community Church. If you are familiar with their stuff or the book some of what I am saying will sound very familiar. I doubt I will cover all my bases in one blog post, but this will be a good overview. Also, before I get started, let me say that no model is perfect and we need to be careful allowing our vision of a model cloud our vision for people. All models are only servants to the gospel and the cultures we seek to reach. With that being said, let me begin.

The mission of this church in my mind would be "to help each person in our community discover God, discover purpose, and discover impact." If you are familiar with the Simple Church concepts and Northpoint's "steps" idea then you will see them pretty quickly in that statement. If not, let me clarify. The church is really about helping people do three things: discover God, discover purpose, and discover impact. I think any mission statement or strategy should really be a re-wording and fleshing out of the simple command from Jesus, "Make Disciples." I think that these three elements describe the process by which a person becomes a disciple. I think it will be obvious how i think this all works out as I explain more details below.

Each of those statements not only describes one of three major steps in the process of discipleship, but they also describe the tree different kinds of events (or environments for you Northpoint disciples). The Discover God Event is what most people would call the Sunday morning worship environment. It's goal is to help the people who attend discover and develop a friendship with God or "discover God" for short. This gathering is focused on new or weak believers with the idea that if when you are teaching to this demographic you will also find it easy to connect the dots for unbelievers. (So, while the focus is on new believers, great effort will be made to make sure everything is explained in the language of a radically unsaved person). The idea really is to meet the spiritual needs of a person who had never sat foot in a church but had recently be led to Christ by a friend. That friend can bring this new convert into this gathering for those first few steps of growth. It also provides a a great environment for a person to bring a friend to when they are in the process of leading that person to Christ since we will make sure that the environment is relevant and interesting and understandable (in every way) to a radically lost person.

Step two is "discover purpose." This event is a home based/ cell group/small group environment. (We will call them impact groups. The goal of this event is to discover and develop God's unique purpose for your life. One or more of these groups will be for people who want to join the church. This special group will include the usual basic church overview so that new members know what they are committing too and understand the vision and strategy of the church. In addition the real focus of this church membership orientation is to help each person discover their purpose or sweet-spot. Really, the entire process is based around the idea that each believer has a unique purpose and the church process should facilitate them fulfilling that purpose through training, accountability, inspiration, and structure. (By the way, I know i am using a bunch of stupid technical sounding words... It is 4am. I can't do any better!) We simply want to help people find God's mission for their life and then do everything we can to help them fulfill it.

Other than the membership group, other groups will be meeting together on a weekly basis to discuss a bible study (prepared for them by a church leader), pray with each other, and generally share life with each other. Of course the curriculum they use needs to be as cool and media supported as possible. It also needs to follow an intelligent plan.

The final step is the "discover impact" event. This event actually comes out of the impact group as well. Each impact group is built around a common interest (such as football, fishing, crafts, feeding the poor, etc.). The interest may be intensely spiritual in nature or not. The interest may be community service oriented or not. It may just be something all the people like to do. The idea is that people form their group around a common interest. Then, once the group is formed around this common interests they plan regular events where they participate in this common interest such as playing golf together, or watching the game, etc. They should have at least one of these a month and can have as many as they deem feasible above that. (a group may want to talk together every day for instance.) The goal of this even is "to discover and develop impacting friendships through common interests with people outside the church." Maybe it needs to be re-worded a little. It use to simply be "to discover and develop impacting friendships through common interests." I didn't think that was evangelistic enough. Obviously from this goal, the point is that these groups that are based on some interest will meet together to do whatever it is they are interested in and invite unchurched people to come along. (This is an attempt to capture the power of friendships. As you may know 90% of the people who come to church and stay do so because a friend invited them. Nothing is more powerful than our peers.)


Here is what I like about this plan.

First, it is simple. Easy movement through the system.

Second, there are three clear steps.

Third, It allows people to use their gifts and creativity to do ministry in radical ways.

Fourth, it is built on the people doing the ministry. The platform ministry is just a support to them.

Fifth, Simplicity also allows focus which means bette ministry. Less is more. You can do one thing better than five.

Sixth, It allows for a neat staff structure.

Seventh, it allows for most of the teaching to be done by the Christians in a share format.

Eight, The small group format allows for better prayer and intimacy (which allows for better "body care" and accountability.)

Ninth, It is easy to measure your efficiency. You want people to be involved in all three steps. You can easily see who and how many are where in the process so you can test your system. Even better than that, you can see how "reproductive" the system is. How many people are connecting through an interest event of an impact group and then moving through the cycle themselves.

Tenth, There is no compromise on teaching theology. Your impact leaders can be lead to teach anything you want.

Eleventh, funding and building needs are minimized allowing better focus. You need an event center for only one of your events.


There are a few negatives:

1) Childcare can always cause a problem for small group ministries. I wonder what is the best solution? I always kind of just think that each group should take care of it themselves by hiring a babysitter or letting the kids sit in (though I am not a big believer that this is somehow mandated by Scripture nor is it better for the child or the adult).

2) There is also he danger of controlling what people teach. (Of course that is a danger no matte what).

3) How do you integrate teens into this model? Do you just let them work in like the other adults? Do you allow them to have adult sponsored groups where the teens actually lead the groups and it is built around there interests?

4) Basing groups on interest could pull families a part some though not necessarily. It would in my family if it were a group based on watching football, but my wife and I could be a part of "board game" group together. i don't like pulling families apart at all.



Oh yeah, (through with negatives) I would also have a monthly or quarterly meeting with the Impact Group leaders. Also, all ministries of the church would happen through these impact groups. The children's ministry leadership would be an impact group. The worship band would be an impact group. A group going on a mission trip would be a group. The groups would work on a four month schedule (Jan-April; May-Aug; Sept-Dec.). There will be no automatic group divisions (like the traditional cell model). Groups may be on-going or seasonal. Each group would be required to have three people from three different families for church approval; no other size limit.