An audacious plan - that worked.

Rick Warren's famous ditty “the main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing” is both strategic genius and strategic frustration.
It is genius in that leaders need to remember that followers are crying out for clarity. It is frustration as every leader knows too well there are multiple things pushing to be the main thing.

A few years back we faced this exact dilemma.
We had taken on a congregation that was well intended but classically inwardly focused.
Very quickly we brought an outward focus and a strong Kingdom of God teaching – we serve people who do not yet know Christ. Our constant language was of ‘belong believe become’; ‘a safe place to explore faith and Jesus Christ’.
We worked hard at bringing clarity of vision and purpose.
With focused teaching we emphasized that the main thing was to reach people who did not know Christ. The very essence of what it means to be the church is derived from the church’s origins in the Gospel. “No Gospel - No Church : No Church - No Gospel.”
Week after week we banged that drum – the church exists not for itself but for those outside of Christ.

But we knew we needed to put flesh to our language and theology.

So – we introduced our congregation to the Alpha Course (www.alphausa.org), a ten/twelve week exploration of faith. People were ready – they had the theology, they knew the reasons - but the critical strategic component was giving them something safe and quality they could invite people to. This is the Alpha Course. The sweetness of the Alpha Course is that people don’t invite neighbors and friends to a ten/twelve week course, all they invite them to is a single evening event – then the pastor invites them to go further.
As we urged people to invite their friends we equipped them on how to invite through using the “Becoming a Contagious Christian” course (www.willowcreek.com).
People began to invite. People began to come. People began to find new faith.

But as new people came and as the church got busier – the main thing was harder to hold on to. People needed discipled; ministries needed more volunteers; more staff needed to be hired; everything needed more planning – the church got more complex if not more complicated.

Within 18 months, we felt that the main thing was slipping, we were taking too many forced detours. It was time to do something bold, big and hairy!

We decided to ditch Sunday morning worship services for twelve weeks.
Rather, we’d run the Alpha Course on Sunday mornings in place of our two worship services. We’d take the main thing (reaching lost people) and take the main way we’d seen this happen (the Alpha Course normally taught on Wednesday evenings) and do it at the main time (Sunday morning worship hour when all the congregation attended).
Twelve weeks of no sermon, no worship singing, no ushers, but twelve weeks of the church fully participating in the main thing, at the main time - for everything else there’s normal Sundays!

Here’s how it went:

We took over our Family Life Center building, sat people around tables in groups with trained table leaders, served breakfast burritos at 9am, started teaching the course materials at 9.30am, moved to small group discussion at 10.25am, and ended the morning at 11.00am.

To see eighty-year old church members involved in the main thing – wonderful.
To see over ninety new guests exploring faith – amazing.
To have over forty people make a first time commitment to Christ – true worship.

The clarity of vision that these twelve weeks brought to our church cannot be underestimated. It put everyone on the same page. Everyone saw the new faces. Everyone witnessed the new names being pinned to the cross. Everyone got it.
The following five years have only built off of those crucial twelve weeks.