Blooming Congregational Seeds!

One of my deepest passions is seeing congregations thrive in serving God and God’s people.  For the last six years, I’ve studied congregational development and church planting, having read some of the leading thinkers and attending workshops and institutes on church planting and renewal.  I love the analogy of blooming congregations from gardens that contain both flowers and vegetables.   For a garden to grow it must first have seeds planted, the same for congregations new or existing.  I believe that our congregations are gardens from which the seeds of worship, formation and service allow people to bloom in their spiritual walk with Christ!

 Congregations are the mission centers or garden from which all other ministries bloom. Over the last six years I’ve pastored an existing congregation and planted 2 congregations, one that did not bloom and the current one that is blooming.

I’ve spent my time thinking about how these principles would apply in the context of an independent sacramental and liturgical community.

Here’s what I know Sunday worship alone will not sustain a community, we need to grow our communities from three seeds regardless of the size of our congregations. Those seeds are Worship, Formation, and Service centered in Christ and lived out in community as a called out missionary people.

 

One of the impacts of being a missionary people for those who are in the Independent Sacramental Movement is that we cannot plant a congregation on what we are against or what we have left behind. There must be a connection to the greater (Missio Dei) Mission of God that we are seeking to plant in our communities.  Because we are radically inclusive communities we are not debating inclusion, we are living, praying, serving and witnessing to the kin-dom of God.

 The independent sacramental movement(ISM), needs to explore, vision, mission, demographics, ministry strategies, social media.  We need to bring the church outside the building and make our presence known in the community in person and through social media.  Even though we are not part of the  mainline denominations, a lot of our communities suffering from the same issues that they are facing in evangelism and thriving beyond the current generation.

One other unique thing about the ISM movement, we have to be church planters and missionaries, if we expect to thrive.  You cannot plant a congregation from your living room and hanging up a sign that you are open. You will need the skills of being an entrepreneur, creative, and visionary person that can build relationships with people and connect your congregation to your community (local context).   Missionaries go where the people they are trying to reach, not waiting for them to show up. Missionaries study the context that they see, instead of imposing a foreign structure on a local community.  It requires us doing things that do not fit in the box that we have grown up in our respective traditions.

Our mission field is great if we learned or exegete our local community for the unchurched and dechurched regardless of where they came from faith or no faith. Our garden should be a mix of flowers and gardens. We need to find more ways to help people belong, before they come to belie

Unchurched and dechurched folks are seeking to belong to a community, make friends and connect to spiritual practices. Belonging is the front porch for many of our ministries to begin and thrive.

 I’m willing to share what I’ve learn through workshops and retreats on building seeds of ministry in new and existing congregations in our ISM movement and independent congregations. Please follow my page  for to learn more about strategies and connect with others who are seeking to grow congregations.

 Fr David Strong