Building a bold missional strategy begins by seeing your associational context as an unentered missions field with unreached people groups.
To see your context anew. To see your Jerusalem from the viewpoint of a missiologist rather than a church growth expert.
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Thus far in our quest to reveal 2025 as a year of “discerning next” for your association, we have talked about preparing spiritually and through meaningful fellowship. Now we need to talk about your local missions field.
To prepare spiritually, focus on convening pastors in small groups for dialogue and prayer.
Not pastors and closest colleagues, but pastors from a diversity of congregations in terms of size, location, membership characteristics, worship and ministry style, and even doctrinal diversity.
Pastors who are already best friends function as mini ecosystems. This stifles new learning.
For meaningful fellowship to exist in your association, it must happen primarily through lay leaders.
Let lay leaders lead
A reasonable goal would be for at least seven lay leaders from the average size congregation to engage in fellowship activities with the family of congregations — not just their own congregation.
Start at the beginning.
Imagine there are no Great Commission, evangelistic, Great Commandment, Good News — choose your term — congregations in existence in your associational context, but there are people of varying demographic characteristics.
People who are young, old, long-term residents, new arrivals and various races, ethnicities and socioeconomic statuses may characterize your context.
Businesses of various types. Employers seeking people with specific job skills. Schools both public and private. Colleges and universities.
Houses of worship of diverse persuasions.
Plus, other characteristics you observe.
Your first task is to develop a full understanding of what is present in your associational context. Often you think you know, but a deep dive might surprise even long-term residents.
Engage in research.
Demographic reports with past, present and future projections from the denomination, government, demographic organizations, public school systems, businesses and higher educational institutions seeking to project their futures.
In using these, know at any given time their current understandings and future projections miss things that basic research might not uncover. Their research sources are not always current.
Therefore, conversations with knowledgeable experts are needed. The type of people in the area who understand trends not yet documented.
Pastors, staff members and lay leaders in congregations should be included in conversations. Often, they know things which add value to the research.
Look for the unusual
Look for the unusual that is not typically part of surface observations. Small communities off the main roads where niche people groups live. Immigrant groups moving into your context.
With these niche people groups, consider bringing in specialists about these groups. These persons may be able to connect with leaders within these niche people groups to discover their life, ministry and spiritual needs.
It is also important to discover the spiritual practices and religious habits of people. Other than Baptists, what denominational and nondenominational congregations are present? Other than Christian, what houses of worship or other spiritual gatherings are present in your area?
Next insert into your research template your existing congregations.
Who are they? Where are they? Who are they reaching? Who are they not reaching? Which congregations are open to new missional opportunities?
To what extent are they only skimming the surface of the people groups around them? Or are they significantly engaged with diverse people groups?
What’s missing in the ministry patterns of your family of congregations? Where are the places of unreached people groups? Who are these people and who is ministering among them? If anyone.
Where are new ministries and congregations needed?
For 80% of Baptist congregations in the average association who are not growing, what opportunities and challenges are right at their doorstep?
How can they engage in new ministries, or give permission and support for new ministries to take place?
Next seven years
Over the next seven years, where are the places and people groups with the most receptivity for your family of congregations, and what are the places and people for whom ministry is a challenge that must be addressed?
What unrealized or underutilized capacities does your family of congregations have for bold missional engagement during the seasons of the next seven years?
EDITOR’S NOTE — George Bullard spent 45 years in denominational ministry. He served on the staff of three associations, was a key staff person working with associations in two state conventions and served on the association missions division staff of the former Home Mission Board of the SBC. He retired in June 2022 as director of Columbia Metro Baptist Association in South Carolina. He has led strategic planning processes in more than 100 associations and has written extensively in this area. Bullard now serves as a strategic thinking mentor for Christian leaders through his ForthTelling Innovation ministry and a correspondent for The Baptist Paper.
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