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.

I’ve almost finished reading The Ragamuffin Gospel, but I think it’s one of those book you have to turn around and read again to begin to fully get it. To me it is a truely amazing book one that everybody should read. The major point of the book is that no matter how beat up, down and out, bottom of the barrel you feel God loves you. This is the central message of the Good News, yet we never hear it. Being good so God can bless you, evangelize so there are more people filling this church building, you need to declutter you schedule so you can do more at church are some of the predominant messages we hear but so far from what God really wants from us.

This book has really laid heavy on my heart as what people are really longing to hear when they come and worship Him in community with others. When we have them as a captive audience we should spend more time connecting people with God and let Him change them from the inside out in stead of us writing messages that we think will change them and make them “better” Christians. We don’t need “better” Christians we need CONNECTED Christians. Christians connected to their creator and it’s our duty as leaders in the church to speak the Gospel and pray God works with in those that hear.