At Activate-Your-Life we were challenged to rethink our terminology and our strategy by the ‘Withreach’ organisation. Have a look at their website or read the contrasting lists below. It certainly prompted some deep thinking amongst us. We’d love to hear what you think of it all, maybe you could use this to prompt discussion or a training session amongst your other Activate friends.
Outreach
Confrontational
Unchurched are nameless faces and numbers
We do good things for people
Transformation imposed from the outside
Monologue
Superiority
Church speak
Religious jargon
Paternalistic overtones
Impatiently look for quick results
Seek conversion within narrow set of goals
Love shown with an agenda behind it
Great Commission priority
We have what you need / you have nothing to give
You cannot contribute until post-conversion
Fearful of differences
Clergy – laity split
Sunday AM priority
Church is domain of the sacred
Target segmented group
Image of community
What would Jesus do?
Withreach
Incarnational
People are unique and vital treasures
We do good things for people by doing things with them
Transformation created from within
Conversation
Humility
Human voice
Language of dreams (aspiration / spiritual purpose)
Honor and respect
Patiently take the long view
Seek relationship for multifaceted vision
Love without strings attached
Great Commandment is the engine of Mission
We both have much to give / we both have much to learn
You can experience God in giving and serving
Honoring of and dependent on diversity
Priesthood of every believer
24 / 7 community and holistic life
Church is catalyst for God’s rule in every sphere of life
Create holistic community
Authentic community
What is Jesus doing?
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Connecting Far Beyond
The Limitations of Outreach
Withreach is an incarnational paradigm of mission that begins with honor of all people made in the image of God, and humbly seeks a place of commonality to reach together for the purposes of God, and is willing to nurture faith in contextual community, wherever faith is found. These comparisons are meant to communicate the contrast between traditional outreach and withreach.
www.withreach.com
Withreach is a protected service mark of Breakthrough Media. This chart Copyright © 2004 by Breakthrough Media Group. Permission is freely granted to local churches and all church ministries to copy the chart and/or to use the term “withreach.” Use for commercial purpose, or any use in any context by a for-profit company, is prohibited without express written permission.