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…

We know that your mission is your purpose, and the method is how you're accomplishing it. But something you need to identify in every meeting is how each one manifests itself during a conversation. 

When I meet with churches to discuss mission and method, I'll start by listing a series of ministries or traditions that happen in that church, and I'll ask the group if they think that thing is a mission or a method of the church. 

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?'“

A question I get a lot is “how do we get more young people into our church?”. This question inevitably leads to a brief conversation about advertising through social media, emails, or even the newspaper.

I’m a fan of media, but I still believe that a personal invite is always the best way to go.

Interestingly, only 2% of people in their church say that they’ve invited someone in the last year.

Where I live (in the Kitchener Waterloo area), Nones made-up 24% of the region in 2011 (and I would expect that number to be much higher today). Nationally the number of Nones has grown exponentially over the past 40 years from 4% of our population to about 24% as of 2011. As church leaders we can't ignore this - so the topic of Nones has quickly risen among church leaders in all denominations. Questions like ‘What do we need to know’ and ‘what do we do next’ are being asked.