truncate_post January 2025 - Pathways 4 Mission

Before you launch new stuff…

Just the same as individuals make new year’s resolutions, churches will sometimes use the dawning of a new year as an opportunity to kick off some new initiatives.  It’s usual that new initiatives are designed to bring some kind of growth – either in the form of new people coming to church or deeper discipleship among those who already do.  Later in the year we’ll take a look at discipleship, so for now let’s have a think about new year’s initiatives to produce numerical growth. It’s very, very common for a church leadership team to ask, “What can we do to grow?” and the most common type of answer is to do something additional to what the church is already doing, which usually means spreading the church’s human and financial resources just a little thinner.  It’s an uncommon church that has ‘spare’ capacity just waiting to be put to use. New initiatives usually involve the committed people committing a bit more.  A common effort at growth involves a focus around a single event, often with a very broad focus in the hope that lots of new people will attend.  Church fetes and festivals, concerts and community carols are common in this category. Less common is consideration around ‘What’s next?’  I asked this question of a church that planned to revitalise their fete targeting its appeal to families with primary school aged kids. Their ‘next’ was a school holiday program.. The whole design of the fete was to engage families (not raise money) and to promote the school holiday program. The fete was ‘successful’ because the school holiday program (same mission focus, one step forward in the pathway) was filled to capacity.  If you’re contemplating a new one-off event, consider how people will be invited to a ‘next step’....