Ever since last Thursday, when our host Erion told my team and I that we are going to plant a church, we’ve been trying to think of ideas to get people to come to our service. Maybe we should have a movie night with popcorn, everybody loves movies. We should definitely have coffee and snacks at every service. Bump some upbeat Christian songs on the speakers as people come in. Oh, Easter is coming up so we can throw a big party to invite people to, parties are good.
Honestly, we will probably do most, if not all of these things. They’re all great ways to draw people in that otherwise may not come to church. But as I’ve been thinking and studying more about church planting and growth, I looked back at my notes from training camp.
“If you plant the church, you will sometimes get disciples. If you make disciples, you will always get the church.” -Somebody on staff at Adventures in Missions, 7/13/17.
Wow. What a perfect quote to find for this season of the Race. Bringing people to a physical church building is great, but that shouldn’t be our main focus. Jesus doesn’t tell us to bring people to our church, He tells us to make disciples. Our goal should be to build relationships and to make disciples. And that doesn’t have a formula. It comes from organic everyday life. It comes from intentionally choosing to spend time people over and over again, pouring into them and showing them the love of the Father. Maybe it means meeting up for coffee, or maybe it means hiking up a mountain. Regardless of the how, we are called to make disciples. If we do that, the church will grow.
