Confessions of a Reformission Rev.: Hard Lessons from an Emerging Missional Church (Leadership Network Innovation Series)

by Mark Driscoll

A third incarnation of the church is arising, the emerging and missional church,

four simple phases of organizational decline.

the goal of the management phase is not to get the church organized or under control. Rather, the management phase is needed to eliminate the inefficiencies and barriers that are keeping the church from refocusing back on the creative phase and creating a whole new set of problems to manage.

I feared that deconstructing and essentially restarting the church would kill us. I had found it a bit easier to take a risky gamble when we had nothing, but now we had something to lose. In the end, I realized that every person, every dollar, and every other resource belonged to Jesus and that he did not give us those treasures to bury them.

Three Types of Leaders:

I began writing out how I envisioned our church at 3,000-plus people.

if the church were to be able to continue to innovate and grow. Ten principles in particular stuck with me.

I also hired a male executive assistant, like Joseph, to work closely with me,

Larry proceeded to ignore all of my questions and instead started asking me questions seemingly unrelated to growing the church.

Not one of them had ever asked anything about my personal life and my family or even if I was morally fit to be a pastor.

I am a Christian first. Husband second. Daddy third. And pastor fourth.

permission to do what I knew in my gut was right but felt guilty for executing because it seemed selfish.

Larry warned me against creating a church that was essentially a giant monster that would devour my joy, my marriage, and my children.

I tried to begin with the end in mind. I sought to plan for our church for as far down the road as I could see. I could envision a church of more than ten thousand people and began working with Jamie to reverse-engineer a plan to become that church.

We drafted a strategic plan that was over a hundred pages long, between plans and supporting documents and articles.

Mature churches are known for such things as well-developed systems, policies, procedures, communication forms (internal and external), and leadership development tracts, which make it easy for ministry to be done well.

But I do not believe we are praying as strategically as we could or should be. So I am beginning an early morning prayer meeting for our men

the prayer meeting will allow men motivated to become leaders to prove their commitment by getting up early and marching forward on their knees.

both one large elder team that made churchwide decisions and various smaller elder teams making decisions for their ministry areas in the church.

We have never had adequate parking in the history of our church, and the future appears to be no different. Parking has become our biggest dilemma to tackle.

most churches called the trained, but their churches trained the called.

the general rule of thumb seems to be that a staff member should be added to the church every time the Sunday attendance grows by roughly 130 to 150 people. We have in no way kept up with this pace

We generally wait until a ministry had grown so large that a clear leader has emerged and then hire that person to expand the ministry.

One thing we still require of everyone we hire is a sense of awe and gratitude that they are privileged to work at Mars Hill and be a part of what God is doing by the power of his gospel. At this phase, we can’t tolerate employees who are simply working a job.

We keep everyone informed via weekly email of exactly where we are at financially and have taken the subject of money and simply made it part of our church family discussions. For our people to own our mission, they also must own our expenses.

As we get bigger, we must also get smaller with hundreds of small home community groups, in which people will be known, loved, and sharing the gospel with lost friends.

the key was to simply remember that you work for an audience of one and to love everyone and not get off your mission of serving Jesus alone.

But Jesus has called me to trust him by faith and to endure more pruning so that more fruit can be harvested for his kingdom. And for this reason, it is my deepest wish that Jesus keep pruning me, because I love him, want to be with him, want to be like him, and enjoy being on mission with him more than anything.