I read the book Simple Church this past week. It’s one of the best ‘practical church’ books that I have read in a ling time. The whole premise of the book is that lass is actually more. We live in a culture… and in a church culture where more is more, so this goes against everything that seems natural. The authors Rainer and Geiger did a ton of research and found that the churches that are the most ‘vibrant’ (people are meeting Christ and getting connected with other people and are excited about the church they are a part of) are the churches who know who they are, know what they have been called to do, and ruthlessly say no to the things that don’t fit into that niche. They are the churches who say no to A LOT!
At its heart, the book is centered around the idea that we do a few things really well instead of a ton of things average (or below average). For me, the read was a very refreshing look at the calling of the church. I started to think about what I would have to say no to if theWELL were to start to operate like a ‘simple church.’ In the book they also talked a lot about having a functional mission statement as a church. They said that your mission statement should not only paint a picture for people, but it should also reflect the process that you hope they go through in becoming a devoted disciple.
Almost a year ago we came up with our mission statement as theWELL staff. We never released it on a large scale because at the same time the church was coming up with their 2020 vision statement. The goal was to be able to use that one… but it’s too verbose to be functional for our context. So here is theWELL’s statement. “Gospel Centered, Relationally Connected, Missionally Charged.”
Over the next few days I’m going to write about how these reflect both our mission and our process at theWELL. I’m excited for the way that this will help us streamline ministry at theWELL and be even more effective.
