Launching Missions

When is the last mission launch the church has done in your area? Has it been awhile? Over a decade? A couple of decades? Maybe the only mission launches you have seen or heard about are from mega-churches. Somehow they start off with lots of money and staff and resources. And they set up a mission launch. And bam, it takes off. And all the other churches get scared because they fear that the new launch will attract their people.

Here’s a few things to consider: 1. If your folks will be pulled away by a new shiny thing, then they weren’t committed to your church/mission to begin with. 2. It takes people and resources to launch a mission. 3. What if we aren’t approaching mission launches in the best way?

So in light of that, I’d like to offer a “proposal” of sorts.

Why do we assume that we can’t do mission launches any more? Often we get stuck on the idea that we need to buy land and build a building. I think we assume that a mission launch has to look like existing congregations. That those congregations are the model that we need follow.

Why? Because that’s how we’ve done it in the past?

What if things have changed? This is what I do know — things have changed. COVID caused a societal change. We have serious political challenges. We have economic challenges. We have a society that has serious trust issues among its people and with long standing institutions. We have serious poverty and homelessness issues. We have climate issues. We have violence issues. We have mental…