Invitation and Challenge Part 2

To begin this blog, I want to show you a matrix that was created by Mike Breen.

On the matrix of Invitation and Challenge, most churches and people individually fall into the High Invitation and low challenge quadrant. We call that quadrant the cozy or lazy culture. It is a funny way to describe it. The congregants are cozy or lazy, but the leadership is extremely stressed out. On the flip side of that, churches that fall in the stressed culture are just the opposite. The leadership is doing nothing but challenging the crap out of the people and there is little or no result. Then, there are the churches we do not like to speak about. We have all been in a church that is dying. Low challenge and low invitation churches have no mission and no will to bring in new people. They like their church the way it is and do not want anything to disturb their world. The place all churches should be striving to be is in the empowered quadrant. Being a high invitation and high challenge church means you are functioning as Jesus did. Let’s think about the adulteress who was going to be stoned. Jesus did not just accept her and leave it at that. Jesus accepted and loved her, but He also told her to go and sin no more. To have a true discipling culture in your church, you must have a culture that is highly inviting and also highly challenging. Otherwise, it will all just be window dressing.