I friend of mine, Damien Tougas, blogged a long quote about church planting and goals. You can read it here.
The quote that sticks out for me is:
Their goal is not to attract people to an event but rather to penetrate the community with the love of God and embody the gospel as well as communicate it.
Don’t get me wrong. With the Vineyard Church of Waterville, we’re certainly trying to attract people to our weekly “events”: Sunday worship and small groups.
But rather than experiencing incredible numeric growth over the last three years, we’ve experienced an amazing amount of “penetrating the community with the love of God and embodying the gospel as well as communicating it.”
We’re not compromising on our passion for Jesus. And, like Jesus, we’re being invited back! (I’m often amazed that the Holy one of God went to parties with people snubbed by the religious folks. And He was invited back to the next party.)
God has shown us favor far beyond our size or history.
Here’s a small sampling of blog posts from this year alone that illustrate how VCW is doing at penetrating the community.
I’m still working hard for numeric growth. But I’m really liking the ride Jesus has us on!
yeah, marc.. we can jive with holding the dichotomy of penetration vs growing in event size. p strout said to our pastor that we have to think of ourselves as a parish… that our impact will not be measured only in terms of how many buts fill the seats.
good work mate!
Thanks Kenny. Phil’s our sending pastor and the parish mentality has been HUGE for me!