Scott Leary has uncovered a helpful worksheet that takes various measures of a person's Christian maturity as held up against his or her "gospel fluency" and "missional orientation."
Check out this handout from the Edge Network here; it is a PDF under the title, "empirical indicators." Use it as a self-assessment or as an assessment tool for someone you're considering to be ready for leadership.
Updated on by
Phil Henry
We have completed our preview stage as a church. This means we've met four times as a gathered community and enjoyed the public worship of God.
We think it went pretty well!
We averaged sixty people per service; had a variety of musical expressions, all along the lines of ancient and Christ-centered hymns set to modern music; heard God's Word preached from the Gospels, the Psalms, the Pentateuch, and the Epistles; and saw a few dozen people visit a "church" who don't typically do so, or haven't done so before.
But there's a lot of work still ahead. In that light, we're excited as we move into this summer and see what God is doing in our growing community.
We're calling this summer's stage our "incubation" stage.
Our goals in this stage include meeting for worship in homes, launching several small groups (called crowded houses) and showing mercy to our community through various ministry and outreach efforts.
Some of these may be as simple as showing up and "being there" for a community event.
Mercy Hill's "launch team" is a group of people who are committed to helping us launch weekly worship services in the fall.
We have also called this gathering a beta version of our small group ministry, our first "Crowded House," because we have some elements of sharing life together (we eat together every week, for example) and living out the Gospel with one another.
As of a few weeks ago, the Launch Team has sharpened it's focus in response to requests from some members of our team who had been asking for some specific guidance on just how--specifically, how?--to live out a missional Christian life.
We were asked, "Can you give us some practical steps?" Below, we'll describe what kinds of changes we've been making over the past several weeks.