Will Mancini

In yesterday’s post I talked about the 6 signs of being stuck in the “more is more” program mindset called “Walmart thinking.” The solution to this common ministry problem is to develop a simple strategy for your church designed to connect people to Jesus and to others. Having a simple strategy promotes and protects the big picture of disciple-making. It also enables the church to live in a “less is more” reality. Think Starbucks not Walmart. 

If you are reading my blog, you have probably figured out that it is one thing to talk “simple church” and quite another thing to execute it.  Long before Thom Rainer decided to publish his student’s research project (His student was Eric Geiger and the book was Simple Church) the Auxano team had been working with a wide variety of churches to develop and maintain a simple disciple-making strategy.

What have we learned? Simplifying around discipleship requires ruthlessly consistent communication. 

The single greatest tool for ruthless consistency is what we call the Missional Map (mMap). The mMap is picture that shows how the church will accomplish its mission at the broadest level.  Just imagine if every regular attender’s experience at your church was saturated with a picture that points to discipleship. What if this picture trumped everything else in church communication? The benefits would be huge.

THE MISSIONAL MAP WOULD:

1. Connect the mission with a  few “best” ministries
   
2. Present Jesus and guide people toward life change in Him
3. Remove complexity and clarify a pathway of involvement
4. Limit time “at church” to release people to “be the church”
5. Filter which ministry ideas fit best and which ones don’t fit 
6. Build a climate of invitation that encourages new commitment
   
7. Shape a culture of Christ-following over program-consuming 

The daily work of discipleship is hard and messy work. So why not limit all the random, attention-draining and resourcing-depleting moving parts of your church that keep you from getting the basics done. Why not highlight the best ministries you can offer and show how they relate to each other for the purpose growing people in Jesus and for His mission in the world. This post is adapted from page 150 of Church Unique. To learn more about developing a Missional Map for your church, contact me through Auxano.
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There is a great line up of places to meet and get down and dirty with clarity. Here is where I will be hanging out and speaking in the next several weeks:

Verge in Austin is Happening NOW. This is the first conference to focus on Missional Communities. It sold out around 2000 folks. The good news is that you can attend the conference via live feed. Sign-up here. Why Verge?

• #1 Missional Communities are the next thing. We’ve gone from “mega” to “multi” to “micro”
• #2 Austin is a great town. (Especially for those who are truly free in Christ.)
• #3 This huge meet-up will be an inspirational high

If you want to meet there I will be coming late and staying over Sunday and Monday to spend time with Alan Hirsch with some other thought leaders. 

The following week you might want to check out the Churchplanters.com Conference in Atlanta. Why do I look forward to this conference each year?

• #1 Sean Lovejoy, David Putnam and company host a great event with focused content.
• #2 The vibe is real and raw- You’ve  gotta love the guts it took to plant a church in Andy Stanely’s backyard. You’ve gotta respect their results.
• #3 Mt. Lake Church and Auxano are partnering to launch an Atlanta based co:Lab 

I look forward to seeing your there. I will be speaking twice on Tuesday and hosting a lunch if you’re interested in the Vision co::Lab

One March 3rd, Leadership Network is bringing their next online conference experience to the masses. This time its called “Aha!”  Why attend Aha!

• #1 It’s totally free and you get to learn from comfort of home!
• #2 40 Aha moments all delivered under six minutes
• #3 Fresh voices will be highlighted, so get off the rock-star train. 

For Aha! I submitted one of my own stories entitled, “How a Funnel Changed My Life.”

While these are the next three, there are many others coming in the next few months where I would love to connect! More on these to come. 

• Cornerstone Alignment Conferences  This fantastic event happens in four big cities- the first one is March 16th in Indianpolis. 
• Large Church Initiative for Methodists in San Antonio on April 12-15th
• Exponential – My favorite of them all! April 19-22 in Orlando
• Q Gathering in Chicago, April 28-30 
• NACBA Conference in Orlando 

Whatever your opinion of the iPad roll-out today, Apple’s ability to capture the consumer imagination and bring innovative products to life is unparalleled.  Today’s 8 minute overview of the revolutionary iPad contains these phrases. What if people talked about church saying things like…

• When something exceeds our ability to understand how it works, it sort of becomes magical
  
• It’s hard to see how something so simple can be so capable
  
• It’s going to change the way we do the things we do, every day
  
• I don’t have to change myself to fit it; it fits me
  
• We decided, “Let’s redesign it all…let’s redesign and reimagine and rebuild from the ground up…”
  
• You get an order of magnitude more powerful
  
• There’s automatic orientation 
  
• Everything gets out of the way so that you can focus on the content you care about
  
• We want to put it in the hands as many people as possible right from the start 
  
• This is a new category, but millions and millions of people are going to be instantly familiar with it

A I work daily to help the local church reflect amazing claims like this,  I believe we have a massive opportunity to be schooled by Apple’s achievement. How? Listen to the linchpin strategy of Apple’s success:

“It’s built by our hardware team in concert with our software team and what that gives you is a level of performance that you can’t get any other way. Apple is the one place that you can really do this. We build battery technology, we build chip technology and we build software and we bring all those things together in way that no one else can do it.”

The singular application is that design from the ground up is so fully integrated, that quality and innovation are unsurpassed. In church speak, we would dream that ministry content, ministry environments, ministry people and processes are so integrated that life change and accessibility to the gospel are unsurpassed.

But we prefer not to do the work of designing, thinking and building this way. We like the message of Simple Church, or Church Unique, but get stuck talking with lay leadership about original and simple design. In the end we punt essential principles in favor of ministry environments running with imported programs. We let every staff person makes decisions based on their own “operating system.” 

Today I am hanging out with Mel McGowan, a thought  leader in the area of designing sacred space. We are collaborating at a blue sky session with one of his new church clients in Houston. Mel’s passion is to “tear down the metaphorical walls that separate a church from its local culture and create places that help re-connect the community to the message of Christ.” His background in film and a decade-long stint with the Walt Disney Company influenced the designs he has created for more than 60 faith-based clients including Saddleback, Mariners in Irvine and Southeast Christian in Louisville.

Why do I love Mel? While most church architects have led us to “do church” in the United States of Generica, Mel is showing a better way- the way of Church Unique.  I have worked up close with two churches that have used the services of Visionering Studios, and the product is impressive. 

The church pictured here is Northside Christian Church, in Spring, Texas. Northside is an Auxano client that went through Vision co::Lab, and brought us in to do a Guest Perspective Evaluation. Post grand opening, Northside doubled their attendance from  600 to 1200 in the first six months. This true “third space” comes with stocked pond for fishing and disc golf course among other features.  Imagine having to solve the problem of people smoking weed on your church property. Or wait, is that what architectural evangelism is all about. The first step in their stated strategy is “hang out!”  

What guiding principle drives the redemptive heartbeat and unorthodox creativity behind their design process?  They follow the tenet “form follows fiction,” rather than the traditional “form follows function.” All faith communities have a story to tell, and church buildings provide the perfect medium for this narrative. 

The bottom line: Don’t wrap your unique vision with generic brick and mortar. Find someone like Mel when its time to integrate your DNA and story into a one-of-a-kind building solution that serves as a tool for mission. Read more on “form follows fiction.”

Find out about our co::Labs starting soon both virtually and in Atlanta, Orlando, Houston and Dallas.

#1 Programs don’t attract people; people attract people (Aubrey Malphurs)

#2 Think steps not programs; strategy makes the next step simple, easy and obvious. (Andy Stanley)

#3 Strategy is a missional map, therefore communicate it visually (Church Unique)

#4 As a whole, cluttered and complex churches are not alive. (Thom Ranier) 

#5 Growing people grow people; consuming people consume programs. (Church Unique)

#6 Strategy as assimilation should not be confused with spiritual formation; one is about getting individuals into the body of Christ, the other is about getting the life of Christ into the individual.

#7 Strategy connects programs and events vertically with the mission and horizontally with one another. (adapted from Bill Donahue)

#8 The fewer specials you have the more you sell. (An executive chef  said this in an Auxano Vision Pathway, talking about church strategy.) 

#9 Churches need strategy because mission and values alone are not enough to remove competing pictures of the church’s future. (Church Unique)

#10 The two biggest reasons people don’t get more involved are 1) they don’t know how and 2) nobody invited them. (Auxano survey work)