I met with a church a few years back, and I asked them many of the same questions I presented in my previous post. I was sitting a team of leaders putting different church areas into a “Mission” or “Method” category. When I came to Sunday School, their answer was clear. They believed their Sunday School was a Mission in their church, not a method. 

As I often do in these moments, I asked them to explain…

In every church, and in every ministry, there are two things that are in constant competition with each other. 

Your Mission, and Your Methods.

And if you don’t know how to tell the difference between the two, then you’re in for some frustrating days, and your church will be less effective in sharing the message of Jesus and loving your neighbours than it should be.  So today we’re going to start a conversation about the difference between Mission and Method and going to help you, big time.

In almost every church I visit, people ask me this question:

“Mike, why aren’t young people committed to the church anymore? They seem to have forgotten about loyalty!”

Why don’t Millennials stick around at the churches they grew up in? Why aren’t they coming back to their ‘home church?'“

I explained, as concisely as I could, that I'm a youth pastor, and that I work with a group of churches trying to help reach people in his generation. His follow up question caught me a little off guard - “I think there is a special school somewhere that you can learn how to be a youth pastor. Did you go there?" As a Christian you might laugh at this question thinking “Really? Who doesn’t know what a Bible College or Seminary is?”

The topic of church hospitality is coming up more often as I speak with church leaders, sessions, and elder boards. As congregations continue to shrink, and more churches close each year, leaders are looking for ways to combat this trend. How can we bring new people in? How can we ensure they want to come back? How do we make sure our back door isn’t as wide open as our front door?