WHAT DO YOU NEED TO DROP?

BY STEVE DUNN 

I teach a seminar called Bridgebuilders-Helping Traditional Churches Reach Their Unchurched Neighbors. A key to achieving this goal is to see themselves as sent.  The church needs to learn to go rather than to always expect people to come.  Another key is to build redemptive relationships with unchurched people. This means the church needs to take the time to go and build those relationships.

Part of the problem with this is that we still think of going to church instead of being the church.  And what keeps us from going as the church is that we have too many programs or we spend too much time taking care of the church's needs (and each other) that we have little time or energy left to go and make disciples of the nations that have not yet (and may not) come through our front door.

I love this quote on the MAKING DISCIPLES Facebook page. "With a view to making disciples, Jesus dropped his hammer and the disciples dropped their nets. What do you need to drop?"

So here is the challenge.  We need to make a relentless missional inventory and decide what we need to drop.  If the disciples had not dropped their nets, they never would have become fishers of men.  If they had not dropped their nets, the people might have continued to be well fed; but the citizens of Jerusalem, Samaria, and the ends of the earth might have continued dead in their sin--lost people.