What is your source of frusttration? What causes u to lash out?

In the church, there is lots of offense. Pastors that preach the gospel offend people who don’t want to hear what the pastor believes is true. Leaders that reach out offend people who feel that they have put in their time and their money into the church and don’t really want anyone new who isn’t going to be just like them. Musicians become territorial and take umbrage at the new musician who is trying to be creative and encroaching upon their space.

It is very easy to be offended. How would it be different if we allowed ourselves to feel the sting but didn’t lash out, and instead turned to God to see what God is actually up to? How might we grow, and thus lead others to grow?

Top Ten Mistakes — Jim Griffith and Bill Easum; about starting churches … but useful info even for revitalization.

Love Wins — Rob Bell. I”m in the midst of it right now.

The Search to Belong — still on my top ten list. Joseph Myers

Unbinding Your Soul — Martha Grace Reese. Profiles the main themes of Christianity, and includes a prayer journal and group exercises, and a plan for inviting friends into the group. My fav of the Unbinding books … can be used in a variety of ways in your church.

Worship Evangelism — Sally Morgenthaler. That was a “best seller,” and put Sally on the map. And with all the people that have read it, I’m still surprised by how many haven’t.

Missional Worship — I’ve read it, and I also wrote it. Applies to worship, the worship service, and to church growth.

Starting a church, starting a worship service, and growing a worship service over the long term requires that pastors get out into the mission field and get to know the mission field, taking the time to actually care about people and meet them and find out what is on their hearts, why they don’t like church, why they’re afraid of the church or see it as irrlevant, what they’re searching for, why they don’t like Christianity, and showing them a different picture of all of the above. THROUGH relationship. OVER time. Not a one shot deal.

In sales, you have cold calls, then you have long term nurturing of relationships. Growing a worship service is the same. When we develop relationships with our mission field, WE grow, and so do our worship services, because now we are thinking in terms of RELATIONSHIP IN the actual service.

I have a section on this in my new book. And honestly, the amount of time that I take to see in worship services how much relationship there ISN’T is driving me crazy.

Relationship is contemporary.

There are many layers of truth in what I’ve just written. The bottom line: is the ministry that you’re developing of essence in your mind and heart? Do you want to give something of value to your mission field? Then don’t do what you’re doing just to garner $$$. It’s irrelevant, and you won’t bear fruit. Funding is important, but it isn’t going to help you change a thing. Only the drive of love and hope and the willingness to do what it takes to communicate those things to a hurting world is going to matter in the end.

And then, as your worship service and ministry becomes relevant, and minds are starting to change, and friends start inviting friends, you gain momentum. Pretty soon peers of peers are helping you change minds. Then it’s not quite as hard as it was.

Of course, now we have to keep growing. that’s the next hard part.

So, what are you reading?

On the other hand, it’s not just about the reading. It’s about the doing. Many of us read lots of books and then we never do anything.

So, what are you doing?

But at the heart of good marketing is belief. In the midst of being in relationship with our mission field we must have some sense that what we have to “sell” to them is going to make their lives so much better. We have to have the passion and the drive of Christ’s great commission in our hearts, or there is absolutely no point in doing this work.

What is your faith level? Where is your passion? How much time are you willing to spend getting to know the people around your church building so that God can touch their lives through you?

In church work, strategic partnerships are brilliant: finding persons and / or organizations who can help you broaden your ministry base and “extend your church’s shadow.” Churches need the community — the neighborhood in that surrounds the church — and the community needs the church. Why not form such partnerships?

But the partnership must be right. There must be affinity, common interest, or some kind of relationship. And it’s not about us, the church, trying to take something or someone over. Too often, that’s what the church does with existing organizations in a neighborhood that are not religious but that are serving the community well. We must be humble, and ask how we can serve that organization and “partner” with them to accomplish their goals, and in so doing, we accomplish ours.

I heard once that Bono and Bill Hybel’s wife were friends because they had partnered on a common interest: Aids.

Don’t be afraid to reach your hand across the aisle.

I have been good at making them in my life. I grew up when I stopped, and took responsibility for myself and my behavior.

Worship attendance numbers are an excuse petrie dish. Our space is too small; the weather is too bad; the big church down the road is stealing our people; I’m too tired to care; our neighborhood has changed; people don’t go to church any more; they don’t like the way we do things and they’re wrong…

If you want to increase attendance in your church and expand your church’s boundaries, then there is no excuse that can cover you if you don’t succeed in reaching your goals. Only when we stop making excuses will we grow.