Try talking

Two years ago I was leading a workshop for a group of pastors and was discussing the need for churches to become more missional in their ministry.  I explained that we needed to do a better job of identifying existing needs in our communities and finding ways to respond to those needs.  When I mentioned that many churches really do not know what needs exist in the communities they serve one pastor raised his hand and asked, "Well, how can we find that out?"  I have to admit that I was stunned for a moment.  Knowing that I can be a little sarcastic when someone asks a really dumb question I tried to answer as calmly as possible, "Well, we can go out of our churches into the communities and ask people what they need.  We can talk to them about what is going on in their lives, and see if God gives us insight into how we might address that need.  But, it all depends on us engaging our communities and that demands that we enter into the lives of the people who live there."

I would like to take that thought one step further.  Not only do we need to go into the community to talk to people, we need to invite people into our churches to continue that conversation.  I begin one of my sermons by telling of the pastor who invited four people from the community to explain to the congregation why they didn't attend their church or any church.  Each Sunday for one month a different person came and spoke.  They ranged from the chief of police to an angry lesbian who had been raised in a pastor's home.  Some people didn't like what they heard and left that church.  Others realized they needed to make some changes if they wanted to be faithful to their call to impact their community for the Kingdom of God.

Another way to continue that conversation is to identify leaders within communities your church feels led to impact and invite them to meet with your church leaders.  A great example of this working well would be for the church that wants to develop stronger ties with the people of a different culture or race.  A church might realize that the community that surrounds it has changed its racial make-up over the years, and their church no longer reflects that community.  A good first step to change that might be to invite leaders from the new community to have regular meetings with the church leadership to discuss community needs and ways the church might address those.  A really courageous church might even consider inviting these leaders to have a seat on the church board to ensure these conversations are on-going.

These suggestions are risky, but if we want to see our churches move from a maintanance mindset to a missional one we are going to have to take risks.  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to recognize that our churches continue to grow smaller while people are moving further away from God.  If we want to change these two trends we must become willing to take risks in order to do ministry.  2011 might be a good time to start.