I have been thinking about uniqueness lately. There are so many youth ministries and churches that look a like, sound a like and act a like. They sound like the latest church with a book deal. Now i”m not knocking Rick Warren, Andy Stanley, Ed Young Jr. and others who are successfully reaching the community they are in. But so many times we buy into their models and game plans without figuring out why it worked for them and might not work for us.
I don’t want to focus on the negative because we can learn principles from them but I really want to encourage churches and ministers that each community is different. There are different things that make a community tick from the make up of the community’s ethnic groups, history (especially who churches have acted or been received in the past), demographic information and I’m sure more factors I’m not thinking of. But all of these factors contribute to the how you might reach your community. I know its easier to copy what some other successful church is doing but in my own experience only led to more time trying to figure out how to make it work which takes time away from other areas you cannot copy.
We have it in us to study our community and learn new ways that will reach people. That’s what these other guys have done, figured out what works for them in their community and we can do the same thing and instead of lots of churches that look a like, sound a like and act a like we’ll have unique community focused churches. Just like the 7 churches in the beginning of Revelation faced different problems so do our different churches and only time spent learning our church and community will help us figure out ways to better reach our community for Christ.
