Fruitful Churches: Focus on Their Mission

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. . ."  That's how Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities begins.  For most churches in today's America, it's just the worst of times!  There's no "best" to it!  That's because they're stable to declining.

These churches cast about for methods and programs that will renew them, only to come up empty.  They're like patients in cardiac arrest in emergency rooms.  They're trying everything they can, including drugs, electric shock, oxygen, CPR, and more to revive the patient.  But nothing is working!  

A book I discovered recently offers a good approach. It suggests that churches focus on fruitfulness.  Robert Schnase, a United Methodist pastor and bishop has written the book Five Practices of Fruitful Churches.  Schnase suggests churches focus on the concept of fruitfulness.  

Fruitfulness is a great biblical image.  Numerous passage speak of the importance of bearing good fruit.  They include John 15:1ff, Galatians 5:22ff, and more.  Jesus even condemned a tree because it didn't bear fruit!

Fruitfulness implies the fulfillment of mission and purpose.  

Schnase identifies five practices of fruitful congregations: radical hospitality, passionate worship, intentional discipleship, risk-taking mission, and extravagant generosity.

These are all important.  But the thing that stands above them and holds them together is a focus on the church's mission: making disciples.  Fruitful congregations focus like a laser beam on their mission.  

A critical choice faces churches today.  They can try to grow by drawing from the declining population of people who are involved in church culture.  That's a shrinking group!  Or, they can try to grow by reaching those who don't go to church.  

The easy, quick-fix approach is to appeal to people already in churched culture.  Churches can say, "Your church is okay, but our church has the best choir, most beautiful building, best preaching, etc."  But that's a path to certain death, because it's based on appealing to a declining population.

The riskier, more difficult approach is to seek to reach people who don't go to church.  We can't reach them by hoping they'll come find us.  We must go out to them. love them in Christ's name, and introduce them to the God we love.

The key to being a fruitful church is to focus like a laser beam on our disciple-making mission.  Individual members become missionaries, who go into the community and lovingly engage those who don't go to church.  This is a challenging approach, but it's the only one that will bear good fruit in "the worst of times!"