Mission HQ or Mission Field

Generally speaking the most dominate movement within the modern day American church is to be MISSIONAL. This movement, when done with compassion, consistency, and tenacity will reshape the structure of the church.

Sinner has to assimilate to the Church
before they actually have an encounter
with God.

The predominant "missional" practice is to compel people to come to a church function (youth group, men's/women's ministries, outreach located at or near the church, etc) A great deal of time, energy, and money is spent on outreaches that draw people to the Church. This is not bad but it makes the "Sinner" take the first step...and that not toward God but toward the Church. We can believe that what we are doing is missional but it is far from it.

Church goes to where the Sinner is at
and opens the door for the Sinner to have
an encounter with God in their context.

I love the practice of those that attend Mars Hill in Seattle, WA. Their pastor, Mark Driscoll, says that you can look at his church's budget and you won't see a lot of money being spent on outreaches. And the reason that is because within his church the people know that outreach is a thing that they are supposed to do every day. So instead of 1 outreach committee and 1 outreach event a month or whatever; you have 100's of "outreaches" going every single day. That is the reality of Christians actually being missional.

Just think of the tremendous impact a truly missional church would make for Christ. Picture your church. How many people attend? How many of the people either do nothing or do everything? How often do you have a strategic evangelistic emphasis? Who gets involved? Is it the same people? Just imagine the impact your church could have if the DNA of the church was that each person intentionally reached out to someone everyday.

Let's say your church has 50 people and everyone of them reaches out everyday to one person. Now lets say that only 10% of those that they reached out to everyday accepted Christ and started attending your church with that type of DNA:  Sunday 50, Monday 55, Tuesday 61, Wednesday 67, Thursday 74, Friday 81, Saturday 89, Sunday 98 so in a sense by the time the next week rolls around you would have nearly doubled the attendance of your church.

In order for that to take place we need to infuse a new DNA within the church. It can be catastrophic or revolutionary. But it takes visionaries to start making those steps to create the change in their context to reach their communities for Jesus.