I created this to diagram four postures a church can have toward a community, which can become four components of their strategic mix. Obviously, I strongly advocate incarnational withreach strategies. But, there is a place for the other three. Community service is a must, and even some attractional strategies need to be part of the whole. However if not done very carefully and thoughtfully, church-centric branding and event or program-focused media will not only be ineffective, it can even undermine the other, more effective components of strategy. ...feel free to use this.
I totally agree with this withreach strategy, especially I see it as the core of the whole diagram as the picture shows.
ReplyDeleteI´m a Spanish teacher of English and I also serve God in worship. Right now, I´m having the chance to experience that incarnational withreach with one of my pupils, as she is thirsty to meet up with me and listen to me about Jesus,
She is sick and very needy and God is showing me how to imitate him just responding to her emotional and spiritual needs. People´s hunger for God will direct us to experience that incarnational withreach, because I think the time is coming now when people, as the Scripture says, will be hungry for God´s Word.
We must be there to respond to that hunger with a direct, intimate and very personal contact with them, as Jesus did, He was the master of incarnational withreach, don´t you think?
In fact, this vision had been always in my heart, but I´d never been able to put it into words, I just didn´t know what was wrong with the way we approached people in my country.We´ve been negligent about direct contact with people and we expect massive campaigns to transform people´s hearts without being involved ourselves in just spending quality time with them. It´s simpler than what we think
I´m also working in a Christian Youth Association called EGEIRO, we are working in ASTURIAS, the north of Spain, with youngsters from different denominations. Our vision is to disciple them so that they can discover their gifts and callings and put everything into practice to go forth and conquer their families, neighbourhoods and towns for God.
We are working in worship, dancing and study of the word with them, but it´s still a pioneer work. As churches, we lack vision and maturity to dare to change church structure and tradition into merciful and passionate one- to- one contact with people
We´ve started one year ago, but we´re still babies in the vision.
I pray God will make us more aware of this withreach strategy.
Thanks to your page and all the materials offered, they are a powerful tool for me in both areas: school teacher and working for Christian youth.
Thanks very much. May God bless this ministry .
ROSI SÁNCHEZ
I just discovered your website. Great stuff!
ReplyDeleteThanks so much, Rosi. I want to connect you to a friend of mine who has an incarnational work going on in Spain. I'll ask him to email you.
ReplyDeleteMichael