Eric Geiger is the Executive Pastor of Christ Fellowship in Miami, and the co-author of Simple Church. His latest book, Identity, is a challenge to believers to live out the reality of their God-given identity. You really should pick up both books. (Eric will also be part of a forthcoming interiew in my leadership book interviews.)
Eric and I wrote an article for Neue Quarterly. You can find our article on page 84, but there are lots of other articles you will want to read and all are available on-line here. You can read "Simply Missional" in its entirety below and feel free to comment.
Simply Missional
Ed Stetzer and Eric Geiger
Dell Computers has shattered the warehouse myth. Most companies love big warehouses. They feel safe with lots of inventory on large shelves in massive warehouses, always ready for that next order. In their minds, the well-stocked warehouse confirms the belief they will always be able to meet customer demands and customer expectations.
Dell disagrees with the warehouse approach. In the technology business, the product literally rots in value on the shelves. Because Dell does not want their best resources on the shelves, they only keep two hours of inventory. Which means that if you order a PC on dell.com, the parts will not arrive to Dell until two hours before your PC is shipped to you.
Dell wants their resources out there, on the street. Not in the warehouse, where the resources merely gather dust and produce no impact. So Dell has designed a very strategic process to move their resources to the street.
Sadly many churches are betting their futures on the warehouse myth.
Most churches build big warehouses and shelve a bunch of Christians (those rows look suspiciously like shelves). They design attractive programs to "retain" people in the sacred warehouse, keep precise records of how much inventory (people) is on the shelves, and brag about their warehouses being constantly open. And warehouse managers love to show other warehouse managers their newest warehouses while dreaming together of bigger and better warehouses.
God is calling churches to shatter the warehouse myth, to change their warehouses into strategic distribution centers, where people are distributed as salt and light to the world--sending them out on mission. Some churches are strategically challenging their people to be out there, and these churches have a strategic and simple process that moves people from the warehouse to the street. These churches are simple and missional.
They are simply missional.
We are often asked if there is a relationship between our two books Breaking the Missional Code and Simple Church, co-authored with David Putman and Thom S. Rainer respectively. Is there a relationship between a church being missional and a church being simple?
If you have not read our two books, here is the elevator conversation: Breaking the Missional Code helps leaders effectively exegete their culture so they can live on mission as a Biblically faithful and strategically contextualized congregation, focused on living for God's kingdom. Simple Church challenges church leaders to design a simple discipleship process that places people in the best environments for spiritual transformation, and to remove the clutter and the busyness that competes with the essential.
So is there a relationship between a church being missional and a church being simple? We believe so. Churches that are living as missional communities in their culture are often quite simple. These churches do not rejoice in their complex systems or impressive buildings, but in the micro stories of their members' transformed lives. In the same way, churches that are designed around a simple process are embracing the call to be missionaries in their culture.
As best we see it, the relationship between being missional and being simple is apparent for at least six reasons...
Posted on October 23, 2008 at 7:23 PM ~ 13 Comments
