Day 13, The 5 Practices of a Fruitful Congregation

There is a book that has been written that is making the rounds in the Methodist church here in Missouri and beyond.  Bishop Schnase is in charge of all the churches in the state of Missouri.  The 5 Practices of a Fruitful Congregation is a book that talking about the 5 areas that a church needs to be excellent at if they are wanting to reach unchurched or underchurched people.  Like all books of this type, I think this is a good start and our church has really taken this book to heart and has worked in each of the 5 areas.  I don't believe this is the end all but I know that you can change your church for the better by putting these practices into place.


Since our church has started working on the 5 Practices, we as a youth group has also been making adjustments to put these 5 Practices into place.   Over the next 5 days I will be blogging about each specific practice and how we have adjusted our youth ministry to become better at each practice.  Let me talk a little about each practice.

1. Radical Hospitality - How people feel when they walk into your building
   
2. Passionate Worship - Creating an environment that allows people to worship God in the best way possible without distraction or pressure
3. Intentional Faith Development - Creating a path for church members to become deeper in their faith with God
4. Risk-taking Missions and Service - Doing everything possible to reach the poor and needy locally, country-wide and worldwide
5. Extravagant Generosity - Giving as much as you can, not because of a request from the church or pastor but because God is asking you to.

Each of these practices can help a church become a place where visitors want to come and members want to come back.  The Bishop has some great ideas and for our ministry is was almost a no-brainer to adopt these practices and do everything we can to put them into place.  I have taught these practices and they work for a youth group of 2 students to over 2000 students.  You might read these and think they are common sense, but once you start looking around your church, you will be surprised at how bad some churches do at each of these practices.