Thoughts On the Outward-Focused Life

Rabbits go fast, turtles move slowly. They’re both good. I’m convinced we are naturally inclined toward one direction or the other. All of us need to find our soul speed then walk with ease there. The Bible positively presents both rabbit and turtle characters in its pages. Martha scurried about serving and was an obvious rabbit. Her sister Mary was a turtle – all she wanted to do was sit at Jesus’ feet. I believe a lot of fast paced, driven Believers will give Martha a hug in heaven for providing them with a biblical model.

I was a natural born rabbit but through life circumstances have been converted to a turtle. I now move slower and more pronounced than earlier in life.

Walk at your own pace no matter how you are wired – at your unique speed of soul. You can walk there for the long haul through life.

As a leader in any venture it is necessary to bring change to your organization. There is predictable, constant push back from most of your relationships as you encourage the “C” word. If you are called to be an actual change agent you have a tough way to go in life. Your life is exciting in one sense – you are destined to usher great things into existence but sometimes at great cost. No matter what people say up front, they absolutely hate change. It disrupts predictability – what we all gravitate to. If your role in life is to birth things you are going to be a controversial character come what may. Smile. Do your best imitation of Forrest Gump. Muscle through it. Heaven is coming, but in this life you will have resistance.

What can you bring change to a church that didn’t begin in an outward direction? Here are a couple of practical first steps to take.

…senior leadership (esp the senior leader) can begin to regularly participate in outreach – IE once a week. This one step will transform a congregation more powerfully than any other. As this person (people) go, so goes the church. Sure they are busy, but who isn’t! Pastor Timothy was plenty busy when Paul exhorted him to “do the work of an evangelist.” Most pastors are naturally inclined to do the work of a teacher rather than outreach. That’s okay. You can determine to do outreach and God will grant you favor and fruit. I am a living testimony of that. Of course these leaders need to be persuaded to do this. For most pastors it takes no significant empowering to stand up and teach each week – that comes naturally to them. Outreach is another story. Lean into the empowering of the Holy Spirit and stand back to see what God does as he shows up in surprising ways. He will change your life and change your church.

…begin to reach out regularly – on a weekly basis. Begin to show others that this is fun and doable. Bring back encouraging stories. Take pictures and videos with your phone to show others the power of simple but profound acts of God’s generosity. It will take about six months of weekly outreach to properly launch a momentous outward ministry at your church. Don’t give up before you are off the ground!

…set aside a percentage of the local church’s budget to local ministry to the Poor that will be distributed by local church people. There is nothing more transformational to a church than engaging in care for the needy.

…practice one-on-one prayers with outsiders. Begin with ten second prayers for those you reach out to. As you pray you will find open doors to bring the Gospel to hearts that are wide open and hungry for God.

Someone sent me a tweet recently I’ve been thinking about. He asked about mega-churches and if many of the people they attract simply come from other churches. I had to agree. Having been a part of a couple of them and observed many more up close, I believe the following to be generally true:

A. Mega-churches are cooler, hipper than other area churches, therefore are natural gathering points for already-converted people who are looking for “something more” – namely cooler program options, better worship, more services with fewer demands. In a way, they are to local churches what Wal-Mart is to mom and pop stores. Difficult to compete. I’m not convinced they do a better job all around at bringing the Kingdom of God to a community.

B. Mega-churches nearly always think they are doing a significant work of evangelism but typically they are weak in outreach or are simply approaching outreach as one of many programs versus making it a primary focus of the church. Look at the per capita baptism rates to get the real story. Statistics show that the ideal sized congregation for maximum evangelism to take place is a medium-sized congregation – between 250 and about 500. There is great motivation among members of that sized congregation to include newcomers than at an exceedingly large church. To boot, a church tends to be as evangelistic as her senior pastor. You can apply that truth to any sized congregation. Great up front teachers aren’t necessarily passionate about bringing people into relationship with Jesus.

C. My bottom line after leading at a couple of mega-churches is this: I’d rather have 15 churches of 500 that are maximizing their potential for outreach than to have one church of 7,500 that is fun to lead, fun to be a part of, that strokes my ego, but that in the quiet moments scares me that one day God is going to ask me how I stewarded all of that potential. God give us wisdom to walk rightly with you.

Sorry to come across heavy with this, but every once in a while it needs to be preached.

Seth Godin is a thinker I look up to. He says, “Plans are good but missions are better.”

Plans will let you down but missions endure for the long haul.

Plans have a limited shelf life. They come and go. They are packaged and eventually they wear out. Missions cause us to move forward for the rest of our lives.

A mission is something God himself touches the deepest part of our lives with – and in turn changes the world through us.