Five Ways to Get Out of the (church) Box

1. Be the church where you are. The picture in this article is from a recent small group ministry effort of my friends in Africa. All they did was to find a shade tree and dig into the Word and prayer. Where can you bring Christ’s Church through serving, fellowship, prayer, and study?

2. Love on people in a local nursing home. Hundreds of elderly and disabled folks in our communities are lonely and forgotten. What if a handful of people from church invited non-churched friends from the community to gather with people there for conversation, songs, a brief devotion, and some games every week? The result would be a satellite congregation and many lives reached with the love of Jesus!

3. Deploy. What if you started a “preaching station” or a missional community in another part of town or in a town nearby? Why not stretch your boundaries by sending people to extend the reach of the Gospel?

4. Plant a church. What if you worked with your local Mission and Ministry Facilitator to seriously consider what it would take to get the right church planter on board to start a new ministry?

5. Serve. What if you blessed the community by finding a way to help make the community better? Talk with community leaders to see what needs exist. Then invite non-members to get involved with you. People will say yes to community service more often than to attending a church service. Let them see Jesus in action first!