Please read the previous posts HERE and HERE! These are just scribbles in my journal at this point and thought that blogging it would help me process it more. The first two stages are Establish and Enhance. The established church basically “made it” to the point that they could continue doing the exact same thing and ALWAYS exist just as they are. The enhancing church is taking what is established and making ALL of it better. Becoming more efficient and excellent in how they are doing ministry. It leads to stage #3.
Stage #3 is Expand: When a church begins to expand, they are going beyond making it better. The expanding church wants to make sure they are reaching FULL impact in ALL areas of ministry for their community.
The biggest statement is “Whatever makes it bigger”: Now that things are better, how do we make them bigger? How do we reach MORE people? How do we serve in MORE places? How can we give MORE to missions? How can we do MORE in our city? Impact, influence, the SCOPE of the ministry is ready to go BIG but how do we do it? The enhancing church, if they aren’t careful, can keep making things better without ever using better to be bigger. I’m not JUST talking about “How many come to church”. I’m talking about “How big of a stinkin’ dent can we put in hell?” “How can we help meet REAL needs of REAL people in our community?” How can our church of 200 make the BIGGEST impact? What about 500? 1000? 2000? I DO think that if a church makes it to the third stage, the results WILL be more people “coming” to church but that isn’t necessarily the goal.
The biggest question is “What more can we do?”: Where else can we serve? Can we take our existing serving opportunities and make them bigger? What else does the city need? What can we add to our experience to make it bigger? Expansion mode, keeps the church in establish and enhance mentality ALL the time. When you’re expanding, you’re constantly trying to establish new things, enhance them then expand again. Establish, enhance and expand again. You’re ALWAYS willing to “do whatever it takes” and “make it better”. Your consistently wondering “will we make it?” because expansion STRETCHES the church like nothing else. It keeps the church ADVANCING! It is risky and scary. But there is no better place to be. If expansion doesn’t happen, a church will enhance itself to death and eventually just establish.
The biggest danger is “Let’s stay here!”: “We’ve always done this so why would we change it, add to it, or take it away?” Most churches are GREAT at getting here, and then they stay. Keep everything running smoothly and efficiently, WHY ROCK THE BOAT? “We don’t mind enhancing what we already have, but lets not go beyond that.” It’s at this point where churches are in danger if being “ABOUT” the building and not use the building to be “ABOUT” the city, people or Kingdom. There is NOTHING wrong with having a building, as long as you’re not ABOUT the building. It’s at this stage that we are VERY comfortable. We like where we are at. We like who we are with. And we like what we already do. It’s just easier to stay here! What we end up with is we keep enhancing OUR STUFF but our impact on the city stays the same.
I’ll tell you, THIS is where I am challenged the most as Lead Pastor of Element Church right now. HOW do we expand our impact. It’s our vision! That GOD would so impact the Cheyenne area through Element Church that if it were gone the community would miss it.
Processing,
Jeff
[...] the church…Part 4 of 4 27 02 2009 You can read the first three posts HERE, HERE and HERE. If a church can reach and commit to the third stage of church planting, then I think the [...]