outreach impact sunday service

I hear Jeff saying a lot about growth, and some people challenging the definition, need and goals of said growth.

I feel that spending ANY time worrying about growth of a church and specifically expanding it’s sunday morning ‘event(s)’ , especially one that’s “radically committed to making a difference in our local community” is a serious misstep. Growth, especially when centered around a specific need or desire (in this case, affecting the community, ie: evangelism and outreach) must be organic. The Journey can spend the majority of it’s time and effort on a sunday service that is almost exclusively for Christians (although people will say this isn’t the case - time and time again has proven otherwise), or it can spend the majority of it’s time, effort and money on having an effect on the community.

I have a strong belief that some times (and, in this particular case) - the journey would become stronger in it’s primary mission by having a smaller body of people more committed to direct goals, as opposed to a larger body of people consuming a (well put, btw) LCD on sundays.

Also, the presentation doesn’t change the message. ‘Changing’ and ‘Trying new things’ during a sunday morning service doesn’t mean that you’re reaching out to more people, it means that you’re appealing to a different subset of the larger. Anyone who tries to debate this clearly hasn’t attended one of the ‘Town Hall’ type EPIC meetings (IE: Bitchfests) that have been occurring since the transition to Pioneer. Every new thing appeals to some, and some (often larger) group is in opposition.

Here is a specific example: The first week after the Unconference, we tried a fairly radical paradigm shift with worship - the band and seats arranged in a circle, different worship sets, different approaches.

I didn’t like most of the music.

I was skeptical of the circle, because it meant that others were watching me, especially during worship.