the year of discipleship

Matt Adair's church is determined to make missional discipleship part of the fabric of their community. Here are some of the key points.

• Tweaking our definition of church. In the American Southern Suburbs, 'church' usually is only thought of in terms of our large group, Sunday morning worship gathering. ... never toss aside Sunday mornings (and it's unfortunate that some missional churches are doing so) but church is bigger than Sundays.
• Suburban compassion, mercy and justice ... address issues like marriage and parenting, addictions, and functional poverty.
• Leadership development ... come alongside leaders in the church and the community and equip them to be who God has called them to be.
• Decentralize leadership/ownership. While we wholeheartedly and passionately affirm the biblical and ecclesiastical imperative to have elders oversee the church, we've started a conversation about how we reshape what our elders do and how we function in order to get all of the giftedness in the church engaged in where God is sending us ...
• Learn how to take care of our business. We want to minimize the amount of time spent maintaining the 'machine' of church in order to free everyone up to be on mission. ... it is very easy for leaders and entire churches to exhaust all their energies on tidying up the house without ever thinking and praying and acting in conjunction with Jesus' mission.
• Value-driven leadership. ... elders must spend their time guarding the values-practices of our church, embedding those values in new areas for gospel and community to happen, and creating environments that equip people to be on mission in ways the church cannot and should not.
• Less time trying to please Christians. At the heart of mission is incarnating Jesus in the lives of hurting people. What I mean is that we simply cannot spend inordinate amounts of time trying to explain ourselves to those who don't share our core values and work off of other agendas.
• Continue to talk about who we are, not who we are not. Work hard to help people see the big picture of what we're about rather than getting bogged down in secondary issues and bizarre theological questions.
• Quit worrying about numbers. Notice that I didn't say quit paying attention to numbers - healthy things grow so you'd expect more people to be connected to the church. But to worry about that - particularly if it drives us away from a regular life of repentance and faith - does no one any good.
• Get better at breathing. It's very easy for Christians to hold their breath - we spend little time taking in good deep breaths of grace and even less time breathing out in lives that love people in our neighborhoods, schools, workplaces and communities. ... We take in love and grace from God and give it away to others.

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