This question has been an important starting place for our church in our new disciple-making reorientation. The idea that discipleship can be defined locally was a revelation to me. Obviously, there are core universal roles and expectations of disciples of Jesus that cannot be changed or tweaked. However, the way we frame the roles of discipleship should reflect the local community we’re trying to reach. The guys at Clarity House helped our team by walking us through a process to name our “local predicament,” what are the unique problems present in our surrounding community. The next logical question becomes, what kind of disciples of Jesus do we need to produce in order to reach our region?
So we looked generally at some of the issues that our Erie region is facing right now from a spiritual standpoint. And after a lot of conversation and investigation we summarized that Erie is plagued by some broken narratives. This brokenness expresses itself in three main predicaments.
- Ironic Insecurity.
There’s an insecurity that people from Erie have about themselves that just isn’t warranted. When you see some of our slogans or nicknames for our town, “It’s OK to love Erie,” and “The mistake on the lake,” and “Dreary Erie.” And the kids who grow up here think they need to get away from Erie to make something of themselves. This is a broken narrative. - Change Resistant.
Any new initiative that tries to get established in our community faces an uphill fight the whole way. People from around here are generally stuck in their ways and dig their heels in against new things. Erie is famously a test-market for new products by a number of different companies, because if that new product can work in Erie, it can work anywhere! - Fractured.
There’s a disunity and territorialism that defines the Erie area – from churches, to businesses, to social agencies. There is siloing and competition where there could be cooperation. There is racial fracturing, ethnic fracturing, socio-economic fracturing. There are invisible lines drawn all over our region that people are not inclined to cross over.
These are broken narratives. Our team went on to define four key discipleship roles that address our local predicament. In fact, our new mission statement, “Following Jesus as we live out God’s story every day, everywhere,” expresses confidence in the fact that the people of God can help Jesus to redeem narratives, and our lives can tell a better story.
I think it would benefit any church leader to spend some time reflecting on the unique problems in your town that your church could address. I once heard someone say that the local McDonald’s manager has a better handle on the trends and demographics of a town than the average pastor. That’s just not acceptable. I’ve created a tool to help church leaders improve their community observation skills. You can check it out here…
CLICK TO DOWNLOAD – 3 TOOLS FOR COMMUNITY OBSERVATION
