Early Thoughts on a Plan of Action

Evergreen Presbyterian Church (the church I serve) has already put in place some of the ground work for this new paradigm for ministry. We have adopted the Purpose Driven model for ministry and focus our efforts on those five purposes. We have a systematic process for the spiritual development of those in our church family. Our process has a lot of bugs that need to be worked on, but at least we have a good place from which to start. The biggest struggle is that Evergreen still has “walls.”

The First Step – Prayer

The Session of our church is going to be asked to spend time praying about Evergreen becoming a church “without walls.” This prayer would be a part of our Elder’s regular prayer time. If this effort isn’t led and empowered by God then it will be of human hands, and will fail.

The Second Step – Pray as You Drive

We are a part of the car culture. We drive. We drive. We drive. (note: our church is 1.5 miles from the nearest public transportation line) I am going to suggest to our Elders that as they drive to-and-fro they pray that God will reveal what new ministries he envisions in our area and where those ministries should take place. We don’t ask, so we don’t receive. We don’t look, so we don’t see. We don’t listen, so we don’t hear.

My guess is that new paradigm ministries could be started in all of our communities if we did these two things. It is too easy to keep being the church we have always been. We need to find ways to take Jesus to the masses rather than waiting for the masses to walk through our church doors.