Start with a Crowd
Start with a Crowd, not a Core Group.
The foremost reason for launching a new church as large as possible is simply good stewardship of the gospel. All evangelism is based on extracting from the community at large those people who are seeking God. The term “seeker” is becoming outdated in our church culture; however God is very interested in “seekers,” since God is the one who creates a “seeker,” as defined in scripture: “No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him…” (John 6:44).
By gathering as many seekers as possible in one place, we maximize the impact of the living Word of God. The Word of God is the Sword of the Spirit that God uses to piece men’s souls (Hebrews 4:12). Therefore, every time the Word is shared, all seekers within earshot are potential converts. The larger the seeker crowd, the more potential impact of the Word of God.
Here’s the bottom line: We’re practitioners, not theorists. We’re not big into huddling around a small group of people to discussing theories of how to engage culture – we experiment. We fail. We try again. And we’re simply not going to blog each other on the finer points of obscure theology. Since we assume the power of the Gospel to transform lives, we just do it! To paraphrase D.L. Moody, when his evangelism ‘style’ was criticized: “I like my way of doing it better than your way of not doing it.”