In my role with Organic Outreach International, I have the privilege of working with leaders who are committed to changing the DNA of their congregations. The desired outcome is a culture where every Christian wakes up every morning praying that God will fill them with an awareness of those He has lined up to cross their path that day with a divine appointment. They would recognize opportunities and invest the time in these encounters to move relationships along a trajectory that begins with sharing how God has worked (and continues to work) in their life, in good times and bad, and eventually leads to a full sharing of the Gospel and invitation to enter a living relationship with Jesus. The vision of Organic Outreach is that ordinary Christians would lift prayers to encounter people they have never met as well as specific people or family members who have been in their lives for years or even their entire life.

One challenge of affecting this kind of culture shift in many churches today is that the starting point is so far in the opposite direction. Many church members look at their church like a country club—its purpose for existence is to serve the members, “They call it a sanctuary for a reason, right?”

As daunting as it may seem to even consider overcoming this mindset, with prayer, faith, and perseverance it can be done. In a recent cohort session of pastors working toward this kind of culture change, a pastor I had been working with shared the following story.

When this pastor first arrived at the church, he had a member say to him “Pastor, your predecessor was so involved in wanting to outreach to others that he really didn’t take care of us. This church would be so much bigger if the pastor had just taken care of us more.” His response to this gentleman was that the problem was exactly the opposite. The problem was that the outreach of the church had been left up to one person – the pastor! The pastor felt that he had to do outreach because no one else was doing it. He then proposed a deal to this member—if he would help convince everyone in the church that they should be responsible for, and participate in, reaching out and sharing the Gospel with others, he would promise to take care of everyone doing outreach. An agreement was struck and the process began. What this pastor discovered in the following months was that the more people engaged in outreach, the less demanding they were that the pastor care for them. He began to see a shift—instead of people coming running to him with all of their own needs, they were coming to him with the needs of the people they were reaching out to. They began sharing the needs of their neighbors and co-workers. The people of his church were becoming less needy because they were focusing on the needs of others.