We have made it to the home stretch! You can do it! I hope at this point in the Bootcamp you can see not only progress, but strategies to continue practicing after the end of the Bootcamp. The best part of the Bootcamp for me has been to remember the struggle that I first felt when I set the pattern of making invitations to people every 5 days.
If I am being honest, I was resistant to regular social interactions when my pastor first challenged me to invite one person from our church to coffee or lunch per week. It wasn’t the social aspect of the assignment. I am a people person, so that was not the problem. The problem was letting go of my control over my time.
Tomorrow, I am giving you one last assignment, and then I am giving you back your time. It is up to you to decide to make the most of your time. I trust that you will no longer be able to look at your church community with dissatisfaction and not feel a personal responsibility for it as well.
One of the greatest obstacles to church community growth can be a pastor who excels at establishing and maintaining relationships.
A pastor who is good at relationships can do just enough relational maintenance to make the church look like it is full of good community. Unfortunately, looking like community and being a church that thrives through community are two very different things. The reason why a good relational pastor can be a bad thing is that the church can avoid their personal responsibility to invest in their community.
The worst thing about a relational pastor is that he is limited. Without a willing congregation to step up and share the relational burdens within the church, the pastor will burn out, and the church will never grow.
One of the best things that you can do for the health of your church is to be friends and build community with the people in your church who are not friends with the pastor. Everyone should feel loved and known by someone in their church, and as we discovered on day 4, your pastor has a limit to the number of people he can help.
So, if there is any part of this Bootcamp that I would encourage you to continue, it would be this practice of invitation. Invite someone or some family to something or to do something at least once a week.
What has changed your community the most over the past month? I want to know! Shoot me an email at jason@jasonhundley.com with your story.
Jason Hundley 