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I think Jesus was more interested in making cookies than creating cookie jars.
It seems like many churches in America today, and in other parts of the world, seem to be obsessed with cookie jars. Even though Jesus didn’t have much to say about cookie jars, most pastors want one that’s full of cookies. They don’t even care where the cookies come from as long as they show up every week.
My friend Louis DeLuca has learned a lot of important lessons from planting Sojourn Church in Oxnard, California. I think this video tells their story in a very creative way. Please watch it!
This video is about Sojourn Church. Louis tells their story…
In a world where cookies are followers of Jesus we share our story…
When we first started church planting, we parachuted into a city and began leading people to know and follow Jesus.
Our church doubled in size every year until we decided to move our church out of the house and into a school. Our focus unintentionally shifted from being the church to doing church. Music, hip coffee, ambience and lighting were the things that we were focusing on.
And when people moved away, our numbers diminished because we stopped making new followers of Jesus.
Last year we took a bold step and left the traditional church model. We renewed our commitment to making followers of Jesus. More importantly, we realized we needed to make followers who could make followers themselves.
That meant developing a recipe or process that could be easily learned and repeated by anyone regardless of their background.
When enough followers are made, a new micro-church is birthed. This gathering can meet anywhere: a home, a business, a coffee shop, or a park. All of our micro-churches are interdependent, regularly coming together for fun, for service in the community, and for large scale worship events and for baptisms.
Sojourn… churches without walls.
There’s so much I love about this creative video – particularly the radical commitment to abandon the traditional church planting model in order to make disciples who make disciples who make disciples.
What would it take for this concept [every believer engaged in disciplemaking relationships rather than just being good church attenders] to not be radical but rather normal in America?
How does this video impact you?
What steps are you willing to take to get serious about obeying what Jesus said: “Go therefore and make disciples.” I’m pretty sure He expects all His disciples to be making disciples.
Today’s Missional Challenge
Focus on making cookies, not just gathering in a really cool cookie jar.
