pat loughery

This is Part 4 in the Strategic Planning for Missional Churches series. You can find the whole series by viewing this tag.

Sifting through my notes from last week, I can’t find where this simple item came from. Perhaps it was a Rockefeller idea, perhaps it’s from Gazelles, but it is striking in its simplicity.

3 Questions You Should Ask Your Employees and your Customers
1. What should we KEEP doing?
2. What should we START doing?
3. What should we STOP doing?

The first two are easiest for us to follow through on. The third one is most difficult, and may be the most important. It implies and imparts a sense of focus.

Whenever we create a to-do list (task list, action item list, whatever you call it), you should also have a section on that list of the “To Stop Doing” items.

Applying the Three Questions in Missional Churches

One of the haze-clearing truths about the missional church is that it doesn’t create programs for the sake of having programs; it doesn’t hire staff for the sake of hiring staff; it doesn’t create a mass of busywork in the hope that something “sticks”.

But I also think there is great wisdom in asking both your church community, and your neighboring community, to give feedback about the activity of the church.

John Wimber used to tell this story:

Folks, the world knows what this is supposed to look like. Years ago in New York City, I got into a taxi cab with an Iranian taxi driver, who could hardly speak English. I tried to explain to him where I wanted to go, and as he was pulling his car out of the parking place, he almost got hit by a van that on its side had a sign reading The Pentecostal Church. He got real upset and said, “That guy’s drunk.” I said, “No, he’s a Pentecostal. Drunk in the spirit, maybe, but not with wine.” He asked, “Do you know about church?” I said, “Well, I know a little bit about it; what do you know?” It was a long trip from one end of Manhattan to the other, and all the way down he told me one horror story after another that he’d heard about the church. He knew about the pastor that ran off with the choir master’s wife, the couple that had burned the church down and collected the insurance—every horrible thing you could imagine. We finally get to where we were going, I paid him, and as we’re standing there on the landing I gave him an extra-large tip. He got a suspicious look in his eyes—he’d been around, you know. I said, “Answer me this one question.” Now keep in mind, I’m planning on witnessing to him. “If there was a God and he had a church, what would it be like?” He sat there for awhile making up his mind to play or not. Finally he sighed and said, “Well, if there was a God and he had a church—they would care for the poor, heal the sick, and they wouldn’t charge you money to teach you the Book.” I turned around and it was like an explosion in my chest. “Oh, God.” I just cried, I couldn’t help it. I thought, “Oh Lord, they know. The world knows what it’s supposed to be like. The only ones that don’t know are the Church.”

When you joined the kingdom, you expected to be used of God. I’ve talked to thousands of people, and almost everybody has said, “When I signed up, I knew that caring for the poor was part of it—I just kind of got weaned off of it, because no one else was doing it.” Folks, I’m not saying, “Do some-thing heroic.” I’m not saying, “Take on some high standard, sell everything you have and go.” Now, if Jesus tells you that, that’s different. But I’m not saying that. I’m just saying, participate. Give some portion of what you have—time, energy, money, on a regular basis—to this purpose, to redeeming people, to caring for people. Share your heart and life with somebody that’s not easy to sit in the same car with. Are you hearing me? That’s where you’ll really see the kingdom of God.

From Cutting Edge magazine

The taxi driver’s answer is priceless – and John heard it because he listened to the story of somebody outside his church.