6 Strategies to Succeed in Portable Church (Discovering Permanent Success in a Portable Church, Part 3)
AT A GLANCE…
Read this if…
You are a church leader or church attender in a portable church environment looking for ways to help ensure success.
This post in one sentence…
Six specific ways we have learned to succeed in a portable church environment.
HERE WE GO…
As a church leader, I’ve spent the better part of my professional Christian life in portable church. I’ve learned a lot, made some mistakes, found some advantages, and experience success without a building. In the previous two posts, we discussed portable church challenges and opportunities. Let’s close this conversation by looking at the best ways to succeed in a portable context.
BRING ON THE PIPE AND DRAPE!
Any opportunity, regardless of size or potential, is worthless when not leveraged. In the world of portable church, this is certainly true. So many church leaders (and attendees) allow the challenges of portable church to overwhelm the possibilities. In some cases, I’ve even seen pastors lose their passion for the church in the face of portable challenges.
But being a portable church does not have to be a necessary evil while waiting for your own building. There are ways to make the portable church succeed, and in doing so, possibly influence more people toward Jesus than you could if you owned a building.
6 Opportunities a Portable Church Provides (Discovering Permanent Success in a Portable Church, Part 2)
AT A GLANCE…
Read this if…
You are a church leader or church attender in a portable church environment.
This post in one sentence…
If we can see through the challenges of portable church, we can discover the many opportunities portable provides.
As a church leader, I’ve spent the better part of my professional Christian life in portable church. I’ve learned a lot, made some mistakes, found some advantages, and experience success without a building. In the previous post, we talked about portable church challenges. But there are also opportunities, and ways to succeed.
Let’s look at some portable church opportunities now, and then we can evaluate how to succeed as a portable church in the next post.
LOVING YOUR PORTABLE CHURCH
When you are in the midst of set up and tear down every week, it’s easy to forget there are advantages and opportunities that come with the territory. They are not readily evident at 5:30 a.m. when trailers are being delivered or at 3:00 p.m. Sunday afternoon as the tear down process concludes, but they are there. And when we look close enough, they become evident.
Like most difficulties in life, though, the frustrations and challenges of portable church can mentally and physically outweigh the opportunities portable provides. So before you get too frustrated with your portable challenges, consider these opportunities:
How to Reach the Unchurched Right Now.
How can your church reach unchurched people right now? That question is mission-critical as a church. It stands to reason investigating churches already finding success with unchurched people would be a great start. After all, if they have cracked the code, we can just borrow the combination. So most church leaders set off to investigate […]
Could Your Success Today Kill Your Innovation Tomorrow?
Do you have the resources necessary for your job?
What about your department or organization? At our church, we challenge the leadership to ask that question frequently. The thought is simple and logical – if you don’t have the resources you need to succeed, we want to help fill in the gaps – within reason, of course.
When I first arrived at Watermarke Church, we were FAR from resourced. We existed as a hand-to-mouth organization. Every dollar we received left as it arrived. Every offering was critical. Every check was necessary. For two years, we scratched and clawed our way. It was a difficult season, but it was also a season full of fun and challenge … and innovation.
Then, after two years, we converted our church partnership into a campus location of North Point Ministries. Many things changed. And by many, I mean nearly everything. But our resources changed the most. Overnight, we went from being under-resourced to winning the church resource lottery (not really, but it felt that way). There were no blank checks, but we immediately improved financially. Within weeks our church began to take on new staff and new equipment. Our services improved. Our technology improved. Our leadership bench improved.
But… our innovative spirit began to wane.
