St. Maximillian Kolbe was right. It seems that the attitude of many today is indifference, apathy, and complacency. Our ministries and churches are unfortunately plagued by these attitudes as well.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Since the Church has no pride of place anymore and morals are a thing of the past, there are no real eternal consequences to our lives. Or so the world would like us to believe. The modern world, although it has brought many benefits and technological advancements that aid our lives in many ways, has usurped God with the promise “you can have anything and everything and be happy”.
We are apathetic, which is the greatest danger to Christianity.
The challenge becomes: How do I break through and communicate with someone who doesn’t care about anything? The Gospel and the faith are reduced to a set of rules and restrictions that most will gladly ignore. As Matthew Warner, CEO of Flocknote, states in his recent book “Why They Follow”,
Our team at Called 100% agrees with this. Although we believe emphasizing community and connection in our ministries and churches will do a great amount of good for the Church, we can’t build community for community’s sake. It must be for something bigger and that something is a life with Christ.
How can we do this? We must give our groups, ministries, communities, and churches a BIG why and communicate that constantly.
Strong communities have a clear and explicit sense of who they are, why they exist, and what they stand for.
One of the main reasons, I believe, 3 out of 10 people have no affiliation with organized religion is because we have in large part stopped communicating the BIG “why” or mission of the Church. And this is the thing that we all crave so deeply—to be a part of something BIG. People flock to others who are doing big things. And if they believe in the big thing themselves, they’ll do just about anything to see that it succeeds.
You can duplicate this in your group, ministry, community, or church as well.
As mentioned, one effective way to combat any indifference, apathy, and complacency that you run up against in your ministry is to communicate a BIG and attractive “why”. Let it speak for itself and force others to make a choice.
To do so, you need to take the time to write down what that “why” actually is. Here’s a simple framework you can use:
Step 1: Identify the Problem.
Step 2: Set a Goal.
Step 3: Communicate what is at stake if you don’t succeed.
Here’s what this framework looks like for us at Called.
I pray this helps bring clarity to your work and gives you the firepower needed to communicate a vision that compels even the most complacent among us.
We do so by empowering ministry leaders like you to build thriving groups and communities in 3 key ways:
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