Mark's Blog

We visited a long-established congregation in Europe a few years ago to talk about future LST projects there. It was a wonderful group of people—around 40—but they were located in an area of town that was widely known to be dangerous because of gang violence and drug trafficking.  These Christians were moderately affluent, drove to their building from other parts of the city, and were not prepared to reach out into their neighborhood. Their vision was for people like themselves and their strategies for the occasional public events were directed to people like themselves—who would likely never come to their part of town for any reason. For quite obvious reasons, this was not a growing church, but one that had settled into a comfortable size and a resignation with things as they were.

So why were they located there and why didn’t they move?  The answers were simple: they had been at the current location a long time and had invested heavily to make their facility very nice, and it would cost too much to move out of this district, so they accepted their circumstances as fait accompli.  

Another European church that LST has worked with over the years started from the desire of one national family to plant a church in their city. Before they even had a meeting place, they hosted an LST team with outreach to their entire city of several hundred thousand. Their first meeting place was quite adequate for perhaps fifty people, but after only a few years and long before they reached fifty, they moved to a larger more central facility, which itself was replaced a few years later by another larger, better situated facility. This group of Christians never outgrew their facility, but moved because they intended to outgrow their facility.

Great churches expect to grow, not just to assemble. They have a “be-fruitful-and-multiply” Vision and they make their decisions and plans (strategies) based on a trust in God’s promise that His Word will not return empty-handed. The fields they are given to work may be difficult—as is the case in Europe in general—but what God states in the familiar Isaiah 55 passage is, “my word…will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”  

Great churches seek the vision of God in prayer, then expect and plan accordingly, assuming that God is both truthful and faithful.  Great churches seek both their goals and strategy in what God can do, not what they themselves can accomplish.

Question: Not what are the wishes, rather what are the expectations of your congregaton?

Next: Observations on Great Churches #3: Process Precedes Growth