By Any Means Neccesary...

I do not believe the above statement. I think too often the church has let the ends justify the means. The means must be ethical, Godly, good and loving or the ends seems irrelevant to me.
Here are ways we grew the church this week. I feel comfortable with all of them.

We passed out thousands of flier invitations and placed them on doors. There is a fine line here for me. I am against putting things on people windshields. Yet somehow I think leaving a note, even a Xeroxed one, on someones door is moving towards a personal invitation, even when it's done anonymously.

We tried to treat service employees with dignity and respect. We tipped them well. And invited them to check out our community.

We gave away 750 bottles of water to movie goers, the swat team, to shoppers, and airport employees. Just a Random Act of Kindness... the bottles do have our church info but the gift comes with no strings attached.

We ministered to fifty kids in our community this week by means of gospel illusions, ice cream, games, cool crafts, prizes, songs, movement, stories, and fun.

A couple in our church gave birth to a beautiful baby this morning. This is our second newborn in three weeks. There is more than one way to grow a church.

I am so thankful for God sending a team from another church to help us with these, (accept for the last one). I am reminded once again the importance of living in and valuing relationship with others. Ministry flows out of relationship and we need each other.