Pathways. There’s a lot of them. On the side of the road. Through the native bush reserve by St Paul’s in Brightwater. In life. I even got made redundant because of an organization called Pathways when they won most of the contracts that my previous employer had at the time! As I said, there’s a lot of pathways – and not all of them are good! But the pathways I want to draw attention to, the pathways I want you to distinguish from others, is the Pathways mission schematic created by Australian missiologist Ken Morgan.
But first I want to tell a story about a cul-de-sac.
There was once a church, inspired by its call to be on mission, decided to try hosting a toddler’s music and movement programme called M&Ms. It was an encouraging endeavour – over a period of twenty years numerous families from the community came to this programme. There was a great vibe at the programme. It was a welcoming and fun group to be part of.
Yet, in those twenty years not one non-Christian from the community got embedded into the Sunday service – not a single unchurched person who attended M&Ms became part of a discipleship group. Despite the good energy, despite the competent administration, despite the hours of hard work of its volunteers, despite the good intentions, ultimately M&Ms was a missional dead-end. A cul-de-sac.
Why?
Ken Morgan would say M&Ms was a missional cul-de-sac because it is not on a disciple-making Pathway. There was no clear plan regarding how M&Ms attenders moved towards becoming followers of Jesus. The strategy employed by the leaders was “If we get them into the church building and meet a need, they might start coming to church.” To put it bluntly, it was a strategy of well-intentioned but mostly misplaced hope.
So what is Ken Morgan’s Pathways about? And how might it be applied to the M&Ms missional cul-de-sac?
Ken Morgan’s Pathway provides a road map of how people go from not knowing Jesus to becoming a mature Jesus-follower. This is particularly helpful for existing community-facing ministries like M&Ms.
There are seven stages in Morgan’s Pathway, and I will describe each stage as it relates to the M&Ms programme:
So, up until this point, the M&Ms leaders feel like their programme is a rip-roaring success. Lots of families come and they love being part of it.
The steps that take M&Ms out of the cul-de-sac and onto a disciple-making Pathway are:
At its simplest, here are the missing Pathways ingredients at M&Ms:
· Have more Christians at M&Ms whose primary purpose in attending is to make connections and build relationships. This specifically means freeing your relationally-inclined Christians from programme admin and kitchen duties.
· Create an Embrace the Gospel opportunity, like Alpha, ensuring it’s at a time that suits young families. Advertise it at M&Ms. Encourage the Christians at M&Ms to invite their non-Christian M&Ms friends to come to Alpha with them.
In churches across the region, I see lots of good-intentioned and well-received community ministries that appear to be successful. But I would argue that whilst they feel like good kingdom work, they are limited in their missional impact simply because there is no clear plan on how to do what Jesus commanded us to do, which is to make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20). Essentially these ministries are great at the Great Commandment, but not so great at the Great Commission!
When I first understood the Pathways schematic there were pennies dropping left, right and centre. It wasn’t hard to understand. It made sense. Ken Morgan has plenty of encouraging stories about people who came to faith and got discipled after Christian leaders applied Pathways strategies. I also felt a little stupid: This is so simple! It’s not rocket science. How did I miss this? I’ve been pondering missional effectiveness for twenty years and have never clearly understood the simplicity and the effectiveness of a disciple-making pathway that gets you to think about – and then provide – a next step.
In our context, we have a wonderful community-facing ministry called Exercise and Games (E&G) led by our Senior Care Coordinator Nicola Berthelsen. This is a Thursday morning programme that provides appropriate exercise for seniors, morning tea, and board games. It’s a fun social event for elderly folk from the community. For a number of years this programme has been enthusiastically attended by people from the community, but when Nicola started to apply Pathways thinking, we started to see fruit almost immediately. E&G has always been a very effective Belonging space. Over the last few years, we’ve applied Pathways thinking to E&G as follows:
Two years ago, people from E&G were invited to attend an Alpha course (an Embracing the Gospel space). Three people from E&G came to Alpha for ten weeks, and then continued to attend the Sunday evening gathering that hosted Alpha. This is called Sunday Live, which is primarily a Following Jesus space that feels comfortable for those checking out Christianity. Two of those three people have subsequently become Christians.
We are currently trying to do some work at the front end of the Pathways schematic, attempting to move people from Potential Contacts to In Touch – that is, we are wanting to get more new people along. We recently asked a photographer and designer to come and take photos at E&G, and to create a great looking graphic. This graphic will be used for advertising on the local community Facebook page, as well as the church website.
Sunday Live will be hosting an Embracing the Gospel series (Alpha again) this year. In preparation for this, we have shoulder tapped a handful of Christians who attend E&G and asked them to be intentional about connecting with one or two people each. Two of these “connectors” are the two that became Christians recently through Alpha and Sunday Live – thus moving them into the Serving in Ministry step in the Pathway! These folks are clear that their job is not to busy themselves with kitchen work or the sign-in table, but simply to hang out. We’ll start to advertise Alpha at E&G later this term. Then, with the right mix of discernment and courage, some of these Christians will invite their E&G friends to come with them to Alpha at Sunday Live next term. We are excited about engaging our elderly church members in mission in this way, and praying that God will stir spiritual curiosity in our E&G attenders. We’re also applying Pathways thinking to our community-facing family-age ministry that the parish offers.
In reality, things are much messier than the seven Pathways step would suggest. No one is surprised by that.
If you’re involved with a good community ministry that’s in a missional cul-de-sac, maybe it’s worth finding out more about Pathways.
For more information:
• Visit the Pathways website.
• Read the book Pathways: Local Mission for All Kinds of Churches by Ken Morgan.
• Watch Ken Morgan explain Pathways in more detail in his presentation to Australian Salvation Army leaders.
• Consider coaching. Nathan Hughes is my Pathways coach – we meet every six weeks or so. It’s great having a coach, as he helps me formulate achievable plans and keeps me accountable about follow-through, all for the sake of the gospel and making disciples. Nathan would love to chat to you about Pathways. Email or call him.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
We have invited these writers to share their experiences, ideas and opinions in the hope that these will provoke thought, challenge you to go deeper and inspire you to put your faith into action. These articles should not be taken as the official view of the Nelson Diocese on any particular matter.
Pathways. There’s a lot of them. On the side of the road. Through the native bush reserve by St Paul’s in Brightwater. In life. I even got made redundant because of an organization called Pathways when they won most of the contracts that my previous employer had at the time! As I said, there’s a lot of pathways – and not all of them are good! But the pathways I want to draw attention to, the pathways I want you to distinguish from others, is the Pathways mission schematic created by Australian missiologist Ken Morgan.
But first I want to tell a story about a cul-de-sac.
There was once a church, inspired by its call to be on mission, decided to try hosting a toddler’s music and movement programme called M&Ms. It was an encouraging endeavour – over a period of twenty years numerous families from the community came to this programme. There was a great vibe at the programme. It was a welcoming and fun group to be part of.
Yet, in those twenty years not one non-Christian from the community got embedded into the Sunday service – not a single unchurched person who attended M&Ms became part of a discipleship group. Despite the good energy, despite the competent administration, despite the hours of hard work of its volunteers, despite the good intentions, ultimately M&Ms was a missional dead-end. A cul-de-sac.
Why?
Ken Morgan would say M&Ms was a missional cul-de-sac because it is not on a disciple-making Pathway. There was no clear plan regarding how M&Ms attenders moved towards becoming followers of Jesus. The strategy employed by the leaders was “If we get them into the church building and meet a need, they might start coming to church.” To put it bluntly, it was a strategy of well-intentioned but mostly misplaced hope.
So what is Ken Morgan’s Pathways about? And how might it be applied to the M&Ms missional cul-de-sac?
Ken Morgan’s Pathway provides a road map of how people go from not knowing Jesus to becoming a mature Jesus-follower. This is particularly helpful for existing community-facing ministries like M&Ms.
There are seven stages in Morgan’s Pathway, and I will describe each stage as it relates to the M&Ms programme:
So, up until this point, the M&Ms leaders feel like their programme is a rip-roaring success. Lots of families come and they love being part of it.
The steps that take M&Ms out of the cul-de-sac and onto a disciple-making Pathway are:
At its simplest, here are the missing Pathways ingredients at M&Ms:
· Have more Christians at M&Ms whose primary purpose in attending is to make connections and build relationships. This specifically means freeing your relationally-inclined Christians from programme admin and kitchen duties.
· Create an Embrace the Gospel opportunity, like Alpha, ensuring it’s at a time that suits young families. Advertise it at M&Ms. Encourage the Christians at M&Ms to invite their non-Christian M&Ms friends to come to Alpha with them.
In churches across the region, I see lots of good-intentioned and well-received community ministries that appear to be successful. But I would argue that whilst they feel like good kingdom work, they are limited in their missional impact simply because there is no clear plan on how to do what Jesus commanded us to do, which is to make disciples (Matthew 28:18-20). Essentially these ministries are great at the Great Commandment, but not so great at the Great Commission!
When I first understood the Pathways schematic there were pennies dropping left, right and centre. It wasn’t hard to understand. It made sense. Ken Morgan has plenty of encouraging stories about people who came to faith and got discipled after Christian leaders applied Pathways strategies. I also felt a little stupid: This is so simple! It’s not rocket science. How did I miss this? I’ve been pondering missional effectiveness for twenty years and have never clearly understood the simplicity and the effectiveness of a disciple-making pathway that gets you to think about – and then provide – a next step.
In our context, we have a wonderful community-facing ministry called Exercise and Games (E&G) led by our Senior Care Coordinator Nicola Berthelsen. This is a Thursday morning programme that provides appropriate exercise for seniors, morning tea, and board games. It’s a fun social event for elderly folk from the community. For a number of years this programme has been enthusiastically attended by people from the community, but when Nicola started to apply Pathways thinking, we started to see fruit almost immediately. E&G has always been a very effective Belonging space. Over the last few years, we’ve applied Pathways thinking to E&G as follows:
Two years ago, people from E&G were invited to attend an Alpha course (an Embracing the Gospel space). Three people from E&G came to Alpha for ten weeks, and then continued to attend the Sunday evening gathering that hosted Alpha. This is called Sunday Live, which is primarily a Following Jesus space that feels comfortable for those checking out Christianity. Two of those three people have subsequently become Christians.
We are currently trying to do some work at the front end of the Pathways schematic, attempting to move people from Potential Contacts to In Touch – that is, we are wanting to get more new people along. We recently asked a photographer and designer to come and take photos at E&G, and to create a great looking graphic. This graphic will be used for advertising on the local community Facebook page, as well as the church website.
Sunday Live will be hosting an Embracing the Gospel series (Alpha again) this year. In preparation for this, we have shoulder tapped a handful of Christians who attend E&G and asked them to be intentional about connecting with one or two people each. Two of these “connectors” are the two that became Christians recently through Alpha and Sunday Live – thus moving them into the Serving in Ministry step in the Pathway! These folks are clear that their job is not to busy themselves with kitchen work or the sign-in table, but simply to hang out. We’ll start to advertise Alpha at E&G later this term. Then, with the right mix of discernment and courage, some of these Christians will invite their E&G friends to come with them to Alpha at Sunday Live next term. We are excited about engaging our elderly church members in mission in this way, and praying that God will stir spiritual curiosity in our E&G attenders. We’re also applying Pathways thinking to our community-facing family-age ministry that the parish offers.
In reality, things are much messier than the seven Pathways step would suggest. No one is surprised by that.
If you’re involved with a good community ministry that’s in a missional cul-de-sac, maybe it’s worth finding out more about Pathways.
For more information:
• Visit the Pathways website.
• Read the book Pathways: Local Mission for All Kinds of Churches by Ken Morgan.
• Watch Ken Morgan explain Pathways in more detail in his presentation to Australian Salvation Army leaders.
• Consider coaching. Nathan Hughes is my Pathways coach – we meet every six weeks or so. It’s great having a coach, as he helps me formulate achievable plans and keeps me accountable about follow-through, all for the sake of the gospel and making disciples. Nathan would love to chat to you about Pathways. Email or call him.
Check out other articles in the
series below.
More articles in the
series are to come.
