Today, along with some other things, I had a meeting with the Choco's about our annual Pastors Conference. I enjoy working with these guys.
This year, at our conference just gone, we had as our speaker Terry Walling. He was fantastic. His style of teaching involved a lot of group work, sharing with others. Very EC of him, and I really enjoyed it. There was a general consensus that for such an occaision, being the first time Bapos and Chocos met together or the annual Pastors conference, he really helped us network and grow together.
Another interesting point he made was the priority of his cafe outreach over day to day church activities. His church runs a cafe. Actually he would say the cafe owned by the church, happens to have a church attached. A seemingly subtle change, but it confronts who is served first. As Borden and Walling would say, the non churched gets served first. Or as I would say, "the church is not for you, you are the church. The Church is for the unchurched".
It made me wonder about NCD and their emphasis on the 8 signs of a healthy church. While I like these, it seems to me the problem is that evangelism, mission, reaching out, call it whatever you like, is far too important to just include with seven other attributes. Even Warrens 5 purposes suffer a little from this. If seeing people come to Christ is not THE Key Performance Indicator in our church, then I think we have a problem. Now some will come back and say, if your church is healthy it will be seeing people come to Christ. True, but if your church does not have mission as its first priority, I dont think its healthy.