22: Will Mancini – Stop Faking Disciples & Real Church Growth

My Ministry Breakthrough

Breakthrough ideas with Will:

• Will Mancini thinks that the Program-Church Paradigm must soon come to an end.
• Will Mancini unpacks the “Functional Great Commission” and involvement in church stuff rather than disciple-making.
• Does your church activity lead people to life on life disciple-making?
• The local church is not only a community of belief; it must be a community of practice as well.
• Program Church was a viable model for a long time, creating an illusion of fluency around disciple-making through attendance in worship or groups. Probably not much longer.
• Every church is both making and faking disciples to some degree.
• Our best churches are beginning to experience a significant decline in attendance, even with what would have been considered relevant, engaging services ten years ago.
• Does counting engagement instead of attendance address the more significant problem of not making disciples at our church?
• What is real church growth? It is the idea that we can be vital and influential in our community through a commitment to both the organization and individual disciple-making.
• Does your programming exist to support and nurture disciple-making?
• What if the most important crowd in your church was the sphere of influence Monday-Saturday of those who show up on Sunday morning?
• The people connected to the people of your church could be your most important crowd. Your church has a more significant footprint of influence for the gospel than you know.
• What if you shifted your focus to impact the “cloud crowd” not the Sunday crowd?
• Real church growth starts first with a culture of mission, not with a culture of worship.
• Mission always precedes worship. Before we respond to the worship of God, we must respond to the mission of God.
• What connects your people emotionally to the church? Most churches would revolve around one of four, temporal connections. Will Mancini shares the four.
• You only have a church to the degree that there are people who are more connected to the mission of Jesus than they are to the building, to a class or group, to a particular program, or the personality of a leader.
• There is a difference in the size of your ministry and the size of your church. You don’t have a church if people are not connected first to the mission of Christ at your church.
• Content has now become a cultural commodity… there has to be more to your church than teaching because better teaching exists in abundance online.
• What if your church moved from a teaching center to a training center?
• Real church growth can happen, but it will not happen fast or without investment.
• The more willing you are to pause and reflect on life, the abler you are to experience progress.