The Future Church Company was a highly collaborative, two-year project that created a consultative toolbox to help churches gain disciple-making clarity like never before
Named for the book, Future Church: Seven Laws of Real Church Growth, the Future Church Co. started with a group of friends who led with a mission to "forge together the next chapter of church." We aspired to "reframe possibility" about what the organized expression of church could look like between 2020 and 2040.
The Future Church Company produced a 12-month, culture-changing journey designed to rebuild the church's "discipleship engine" from the ground up. The first step involves owning the common reduction of the Great Commission to: "Go into all the world and make more church attenders, baptizing them in the name of small groups and teaching them to volunteer a few times a month."
The first step involves owning the common reduction of the Great Commission to: "Go into all the world and make more church attenders, baptizing them in the name of small groups and teaching them to volunteer a few times a month."
The journey takes about twelve months and ten full day sessions with an empowered leadership team. Each session is guided by biblical insight, evaluation work, imagination training, and collaborative dialogue that leads to new a ministry design and a new visionary plan. The process utilizes the master tools of the Vision Frame and Horizon Storyline, but does so by going further up and in to the unique call of each church in order to live out the true call of relational disciple-making.
Jesus didn't give his life for a version of ministry that is exclusively "program church." Yet even some of my own success stories in prior years of Vision Framing, pastors were still being sabotaged by the weight church involvement that stopped short of training everyday disciples to make disciples where they live, work and play. We simply must move the church's identity from teaching center to training center.
We simply must move the church's identity from teaching center to training center.
It's hard to capture the enthusiasm and fruitfulness that "Future Church Vision Framing" created with the first 75 churches that walked the journey. Last week a team of four pastors recounted, "If it hadn't been for the Future Church toolbox, all four of us would not be in ministry today. We now have more confidence and energy as pastors than ever before."
The good news is that you can too. Although the band of friends who contributed the toolbox have decided to go in different directions, my burden continues to be helping leaders fall in love with ministry again as they navigate the most important church reset of a lifetime. I've committed to working with a handful of teams personally and have a group of certified consultants I can introduce as needed. Let me know if you might be interested in the toolbox for your church or in learning how to use it church consultant. Just shoot me an email.
