Churches need to be mission oriented but often fall into maintenance behavior and many times they don't know they've slipped from mission into maintenance. Let's look at the following to gauge how much mission vs. maintenance exist in our congregation:

1. In measuring the effectiveness, the maintenance congregation asks, "How many pastoral visits are being made? The mission congregation asks, "How many disciples are being made?"

2. When contemplating some form of change, the maintenance congregation says, "If this proves upsetting to any of our members, we won't do it." The mission congregation says, "If this will help us reach someone on the outside, we will take the risk and do it."

3. When thinking about change, the majority of members in a maintenance congregation ask, "How will thi…