Five Step Process To Initiating God’s Purpose For Your Church, New Or Old

Words are cheap, or so the saying goes. A friend of mine called me to debrief a meeting he was in with people who were touted as the “cream of the crop,” of this particular denomination. They were all about “movement,” the new buzzword. He did find some keen people. But, they were not many, and they were relegated to the back of the room, listening to the super stars, waxing eloquent on how to build your church bigger, better and wealthier. He was dismayed to the say the least.

Churches in America just can’t get beyond themselves as a place to collect people to listen to their superstar, and be led in “worship” by their five star musical entertainers. Or, smaller churches that are mega “”wanabees.”

But, in fact, I have discovered that being the church that God has designed us to be is really not as complex as all of this. And, probably, not as entertaining!

Here is the start of the path that I have tried to influence over the years.

1. Cooperate with the power of the church      

The Spirit living through Christ’s people the five values (see these values in the book Renovation at https://www.dwightpaulsmith.com/books) are the center of God’s genius for: His glory to be seen, His righteousness to be touched, and those whom He is drawing to Himself to be won. When His children are practicing their priesthood as a normal part of their life; when they have centered their lives around their coming and living their particular grace testimony; when they are maturing in the fruit that comes from the life of the Spirit in them; when they are releasing the abilities that the Spirit is living through them for service; and, when they are stewarding all of their assets in obedience to their God given representation design, the Church is effective in filling darkness with the knowledge and actions of the Gospel.

2. Cooperate with the economic reality

In the structure of your leadership and places you gather, cooperate with both the economic reality in which you live and the need to be responsible and reasonable with the monetary assets that God provides. Remember point one above, and design the structure and life of the church around homes and marketplaces, with a majority of the leadership necessary to drive this coming from non-paid people. Keep the paid leadership gathered in the primary responsibilities to train others, and the preservation of Biblical truth in the life of the community.

3. Cooperate with the convincing ministry of the Holy Spirit

In the process of evangelization in your nearest circle, look for people in whom God is already working. Our strategies ought to simply bring us into close physical access to enough people to allow for the Spirit of God to show us who He is convicting, convincing and calling. Our challenge is not relevancy, nor even public exposure, but physical proximity to people in the normal living spaces and experiences of life.

4. Train leaders

To carry the decentralization effectively we have to train enough leadership to faithfully and biblically carry the empowering responsibility to everyone who is in our fellowship, or who will come into it. The primary task of the core leadership of any church is not the management of a program, nor the sole proclamation of Scripture. But, it is the preservation of truth in the midst of the faith community and the training and release of leadership, at every level, into the life of the community who carry out empowerment of every member of the body towards the fulfillment of the purpose of the church in the world.

5. Find one other interested church that you can help through the same process.

So that the vision extends into other neighborhoods, spend enough time in the larger faith community to identify companion churches that you can envision and assist to carry out your church’s responsibility in the whole of the city, county or state. Upon a unity of confession about the purpose of God in the Divine identity and work of Jesus Christ, effective and operational cooperation can be built. Other kinds of unity will not produce this same God on mission through His people affect.

For the next two years you only need three training materials. In them you can find all of the resources necessary to build the vision, commit to measure the vision, fully mobilize the people, and harvest whatever God the Spirit has prepared in that place. The result will be that you will organize around what God has ordained to be done, provides for you to harvest, and results in enough structure to allow for the lateral expansion of the church to outweigh the vertical building of a program. This will put as much divine incarnation as possible into direct contact with the people of the place as God has designed in order to draw them to Himself.

Those assets and help are available at: scpglobal.org. Click on the national page and it will connect you to churches that are living this way, and are available to help others.

1. The SCP journey, as your guide in the process

2. The book, “Renovation” to train the leaders. The book referenced above and on the scpglobal website.

3.What we call “BSG.” Bible study material written for individuals and groups, excellent for the decentralized groups, helping people to begin to learn to tether their lives to God and His word. See me about that,