Externally Focused Church

A couple of years ago I met Rick Rusaw from Lifebridge Christian Church in Longmont, CO. Rick radically altered my definition of the word “outreach.”

For years I have done outreaches. I’ve done Sidewalk Sunday School in low income apartment complexes all around the U.S. I’ve done large scale outreaches drawing as many as 5,000 people. Easter Egg Hunts, Halloween events (or fall festivals for those of you that are easily offended), I even did a pro-wrestling event and had the late Eddie Guerrero wrestle at an outreach wrestling match. I think I’ve been around the block, at least a little.

Then I meet Rick.

At Rick’s last large scale Christmas event drew some outrageous number like 30,000 people. His city’s population is about 75,000.

This kids, is some crazy outreaching.

But Rick looked past big crowds and asked himself some hard questions. These kind of questions always plagued me: Did our big event REALLY change any lives? Is this the most effective way to share Jesus with my city? Is there a better way for us to do this?

Today several people from the church I pastor went to a low income senior citizens home and made lunch for the residents. Rather than preach at them or tell them ‘TURN OR BURN!” We chose to serve them. We made them lunch and then sat and ate with them. It was great. This was refreshing and a lot of fun.

We have done other externally focused outreach events and I’ll share more of those later.

I’d like to hear from other Externally Focused church planters with your ideas on how to do this.

Thanks for reading, talk to you soon.