The Future of Church Strategy

I am meeting with a pilot group of 12 churches and 12 consultant-practitioners known as Future Travelers. The group is led by Alan Hirsch.  The 12 churches are large growing mega-churches that represent 90,000 in weekend attendance. Some of the churches involved include: 

• Austin Stone
  
• Christian Community Church
  
• Rock Harbor
  
• Granger Community Church
  
• Seacoast Church
  
• Kennsington Community Church
  
• Mountain Lake Church
  
• West Ridge Church 
  

What's exciting about this group, is that these churches, most considered to be thought-leaders, are not satisfied with their current strategy. They are pushing the envelope of strategy in the name of things like "missional community" and "apostolic movement."

KEY QUESTIONS WE'RE ASKING

• How does our declining church influence in our leading cultural cities, help us wake-up to the enormous need for completely new strategies? Right now we are in San Francisco which has a 4-6% churched from an evangelical perspective. 
  

• As we develop new strategies, how do we keep mission as the organizing principle of all we do? (That is, how are we thinking missional not just talking missional.)
  

• If our best church models will not even come close to touching 40% of our culture, how do we reach the other 60%? Here is a post from Tim Stevens on "The Shrinking 40."
  

• How do we get our best churches to a place of re-imagining the future and not just improving existing methods?
  

• How do we leverage the platform of the "attractional," mega-church to integrate and launch initiatives that multiply the mission with new "incarnational" strategies. 
  

• Is the multi-site "strategy of the day" just a stepping stone to a more viral and exponential strategy to expansion that could be captured by the progression: MEGA  > MULTI > MICRO. Read Todd Wilson's Micro Manifesto. 
  

I will continue to post learning from this group.

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