Every church deals with four kinds of people: Faithful, Snackers, Near, and Far. To be successful, you need to tailor your evangelism and mission to meet the needs of each group. You also need to be brutally honest about your programing and budget. It’s very easy for the Faithful to consume all of the resources to the exclusion of the other three people groups.

The four groups are:

Jesus tells a powerful parable in Luke 10:30-36. It seems that the more we preach it, the less we hear it. We certainly don’t want to apply it to ourselves, even though clergy and church leaders are its target.

1) The theme of the parable is missional relationships. Jesus is asked, “Who is my neighbor?” It can be reframed, “How should church leaders relate to the world?” If we narrowly interpret the missional neighborhood to be the members of our congregation, everybody but God will be happy. We will inherit honor and position, but not eternal life.

Recently, I went to a burger joint that used the new Coke Freestyle vending machine to dispense my beverage. Instead of giving my drink order to the guys behind the counter or filling it up my cup at the fountain nozzles, the Freestyle vending machine presented me with a touch screen. After stabbing away few menus, and I had a drink made exactly to my individual tastes. It hit me that Freestyle had a few things to teach the church about our new postmodern world:

Reality Check 101 talks about how important it is that each congregation discovers its vocation or calling from God. Discerning congregational vocation is a lot like figuring out how to play a hand of cards.  Some congregations will discern that they are called to play the hand that God has dealt them in Hearts, that is by focusing on their heart for mission.