Inconvenienced for the sake of the Gospel
Julie and I are members at Hope Covenant Church in Crystal Lake, Illinois. We started attending when we moved here three years ago. Within weeks of our arrival, the senior pastor resigned for another call, then an interim served for a year and now we have a new senior pastor. I am learning first hand what it feels like to be a parishioner in the midst of transition.
Hope Covenant is a classic stable church. But what really excites me is that this stable church is intentionally moving forward to become a healthy missional church. The church leadership is guiding the congregation in making bold missional decisions.
For example, the church recently reconfigured the Sunday morning worship schedule. The letter that I received brought joy to my soul!
Listen…
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Dear Hope Friends and Family,
Your Church Council is excited to announce our new worship schedule beginning the first Sunday after Easter. We have been praying through the vision statement brought to us by the Vision Task Force and voted into place by our congregation this fall – asking God for what steps he would like us to take to put action to our words.
We consulted with the Covenant Church’s Veritas development resources and our Ministry Advantage coaching team and the advice was clear – the best time to welcome people new to our fellowship was right in the middle of our education hour. So with some trepidation, but mostly excitement, we have stepped out in faith.
There are lots of things we are working on – parking, ushering, action zone, and nursery – there will be lots of opportunities for service. We invite your participation on this journey with God as he uses us to help the community during these very turbulent times. Please pray for your Church, its leaders and volunteer teams in this transition, but also please pray for a bountiful harvest of new believers and friends.
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I am so proud of Hope Covenant Church! They gave their very best hour to the harvest and I am confident in the Lord that he will bless our church as a result. We are growing in our commitment to be inconvenienced for the sake of the gospel. I have never been more excited about our church than I am right now!
To be honest, there are some things I do not like about our church. But what else is new? Yet I keep coming back because people are meeting Christ. And I believe that the leaders are seeking to bring missional alignment to all we say and do.
The church brought thirty people to Veritas, the pastor is being coached by Ministry Advantage, there is a prayer meeting every week and the church is working on a behavioral covenant. That’s momentum and ministry muscle!
Success is not defined in terms of congregational size or how large the building is. Success is defined in terms of healthy and missional. By “healthy” we mean pursuing Christ. By “missional” we mean pursuing Christ’s priorities in the world.
To be sure, there are some challenging days ahead for Hope Covenant. But now it feels like I’m on an adventure and I can hardly wait to see what God does next! That sense of anticipation is a dynamic that you will find in a healthy missional church…and that is what Hope Covenant is becoming.
Reflection Questions:
- How committed is your church to being inconvenienced for the sake of the gospel? What evidence can you point to?
- When is the last time someone came to know Christ in or through the ministry of your church?
- Is your congregation making bold missional decisions and following through? Or are bold missional decisions being blunted in the name of niceness and underlying selfishness? When is the last time your congregation made a bold missional decision?
- What is the level of intentionality in your church to move forward and reach your full kingdom potential in Christ? What is holding you back? Fear, dissension, comfort zones…?
- It is estimated that 33% of established ECC churches are in the stable category. What would happen if these stable churches were convicted by the Holy Spirit and began to move forward to become healthy missional churches? How would that change the contour of the Covenant? What would that mean for the harvest? How many lives would be redeemed?
- What role does prayer play in all of this?
- How do pastors and lay leaders guide healthy missional change in a way that is civil, compassionate and Christ honoring? For more information, click on EPIC.
