No Master Plan

I was at a prayer event last night with a few folk from church and some friends from another local church. As we began I shared some thoughts which, in a nutshell, focused on the desire to see what God is doing in our communities and then seeking to connect with and become involved in that. Quite simply it's about asking the question: Lord, what are you doing and how can we help?

It can't be a coincidence then that this morning a post from the Doable Evangelism blog should pop into my feed reader. Here are a couple of quotes from the post.

Quite frequently, when doing a DE Seminar, I get asked how a church can become more “user friendly”. My initial response is that the church is people, not a building or program, and so the solution at the core is to get your people to become user friendly, which is what OA’s can help do. Once people start seeing evangelism as a spiritual practice (instead of a program) and actually celebrate ordinary attempts at it, the whole atmosphere in the “building” begins to change. Your people begin to see everything through the eyes of “outsiders” who now matter to them deeply. That will affect how you do business in the building eventually.

Whilst this does not connect directly with the question about what God is doing and how we can help, it does make the point that evangelism should be a  spiritual practice (instead of a programme). The thing I love about doable evangelism is that it is just that, doable. It's uncomplicated and therefore ordinary. When I ask, "Lord what are you doing, and how can I help?" I'm not looking for a programme, I'm looking for ordinary points of connection where the kingdom of God is breaking into the present reality of ordinary lives.

The second quote is a description of one church's attempt to build these values into their mission.

I and a hand full of mavericks here are in the process of spilling some ‘new Kingdom wine’ into a neighborhood where a lot of kids we are mentoring in a public elementary school live. Lots of needs. We are going organic, so there is no master plan.

This is exactly the kind of church of which I want to be a part.