3 Movements Toward a More Outward Focus

I’m so excited to have Omar Garcia with us today. Omar is the missions pastor at Kingsland Baptist Church in Katy, Texas.

Omar arrived at Kingsland 12 years ago as the first missions pastor. The church had a great reputation in the community, with a great prayer ministry and great family ministry. However, everything at Kingsland was very inwardly focused. The church needed help in reaching beyond the church and into the community.

  • Take ownership of ministry initiatives. // Omar wanted to help the Kingsland membership to stretch themselves and step into situations they never had before, locally and internationally, while demonstrating God’s love in practical ways. One of the first steps in reaching beyond the church’s doors was to challenge the community groups to take ownership of a local initiative. The church stepped outside of Katy’s upper middle class neighborhoods and into the inner city of Houston, forming an urban alliance with a church there. Omar took 45 moms and kids to deliver fans during the summer to elderly within these neighborhoods in Houston.
  • Care for your community in various ways. // Once the local initiatives took off, Kingsland faced the issue of remodeling their worship center and having to be out of the church for a Sunday. The staff discussed the plan of finding another place to worship that day and what building they could rent. But instead the initiative of Caring for Katy was born, which filled the problem of needing a place to come together to worship. On that Sunday, everyone stepped outside of the church, found needs within the community and determined how they would address them. Caring for Katy is now in its tenth year and reaches out to people throughout the Houston area to bring the love of God to them in practical ways.
  • Find passion among the staff. // An important part of finding success in initiatives like the ones Kingsland has done is to be passionate about seeing people grow in their relationship with Christ. Kingsland’s senior pastor is a passionate supporter of everything the community missions has done in reaching beyond the church. He recognizes that as his congregation grows in sharing their faith, they are investing in and contributing to the Kingdom of God. Often these kinds of outreach initiatives don’t work because there is no passion or full support from the senior leaders in the church. A senior pastor who is just as passionate about these projects as the groups doing them will encourage success and help provide resources needed for local missions.

You can learn more about Kingsland at www.kingsland.org and reach Omar at omar@kingsland.org.


 

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rich Birch

Rich Birch

Thanks so much for dropping by unseminary … I hope that your able to find some resources that help you lead your church better in the coming days! I’ve been involved in church leadership for over 15 years. Early on I had the privilege of leading in one of the very first multisite churches in North Amerca. I led the charge in helping The Meeting House in Toronto to become the leading multi-site church in Canada with over 4,000 people in 6 locations. (Today they are 13 locations with somewhere over 5,000 people attending.) In addition, I served on the leadership team of Connexus Community Church in Ontario, a North Point Community Church Strategic Partner. I currently serves as Operations Pastor at Liquid Church in the Manhattan facing suburbs of New Jersey. I have a dual vocational background that uniquely positions me for serving churches to multiply impact. While in the marketplace, I founded a dot-com with two partners in the late 90’s that worked to increase value for media firms and internet service providers. I’m married to Christine and we live in Scotch Plains, NJ with their two children and one dog.

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comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
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