Thinking Like a Missionary (Mike Glenn)

By Mike Glenn

Most pastors, when they come into a new church, begin to try to understand the rhythm of the congregation. How does this church handle its budget? How do they make decisions and who are the gatekeepers of the congregation? How do they interact with their community? How do they plan worship services and do discipleship? What do they do at Christmas? At Easter? Figuring out how a church works usually takes about a year. The pastor has to go through everything once. Then, the pastor will work with the church’s leadership team to tweak the processes of their new church over the next year. For a lot of pastors, this will be considered a successful ministry. 

Photo by Nesh Lonzoy on Unsplash

Did you notice anything missing? The new pastor will never engage the local neighborhood. The pastor never walks around the streets in the community around the church to identify the people who actually live around the church. They never meet the business owners, the local political leaders, or visit local schools. They never identify “persons of peace” in their communities. For most pastors, their ministry is focused within the four walls of the church. Every pastor will talk about reaching  their community, but most of every pastor’s action betrays they’re focused on the members who already attend their church. 

Few pastors understand their calling to be to a community or neighborhood. Pastors always talk about being called to a church. Because of this, few pastors ever identify the “people group” their church is called to reach. Think about it. No missionary goes to reach an entire nation. They’re always assigned a people group within that nation. For some reason, most churches and pastors never identify their target group. If you ask them, they’ll say they want to “reach the city” or “reach the nation.” This, of course, never happens. In this overreach, the local church never reaches the family down the street. 

In post-Christian America, local churches and pastors are going to have to start thinking like missionaries. 

That means we’re going to have to understand the people groups our church can reach. We may not be sent to save the whole city, but the families who live between Main Street and the interstate. We may be called to serve those who are just starting their families or careers or those who have recently retired. These are two very different groups. Not every church is called to do everything. 

Yet, because most churches never identify their designated people group, they end up throwing ministry ideas up against the wall trying to find something that works. The pastor goes to conference after conference, bringing home new books and videos with ideas that have worked everywhere else. As a result of this scattergun approach, a lot of money is wasted and the church members are worn out. The church never understands their target and as a result, they never hit it. 

As a pastor, can you define your church’s mission field? No church can reach everyone in the city. So, who is your church focused on reaching? What “language” do they speak? Where do they work? Go to school? What are their issues? Where are the points of service in the community where the church could begin conversations with their neighbors? How is your church uniquely gifted to reach the community?

Local pastors are no longer chaplains of the Christian status quo. We are missionaries in our post Christian neighborhoods. That’s a different calling. That’s a different way of thinking. The church in America will continue to struggle as long as we consider ourselves chaplains of a Christian nation. We’re now missionaries to a post-Christian nation.  It’s time we started thinking that way.