2_07: Cory Hartman – Stop wasting words convincing people to show up

Breakthrough ideas with Cory:

• How can you use the written word to extend your reach?
• Is there a way to leverage your weekly content to make disciples?
• What are the best possible ways to shape and leverage your content for disciple-making outside of your Sunday service?
• The church is a content factory every week, creating a ton of content, yet we’re not taking advantage of it outside of the sermonic moment.
• Are you maximizing the channels to communicate the gospel?
• The one who works longest is the one who is most devoted to the ministry of the word, right? Maybe not.
• How do we give gospel-shaped answers to the questions that people are actually asking?
• There seems to be a divide in the philosophy of preaching with felt need, seeker-sensitive on the one side, and expositional verse-by-verse gospel-centered on the other side. I don’t see why those are two sides.
• The questions that people are asking, they have deeper questions in life. We’re all walking around with the more profound questions in life.
• What does it mean to have a gospel-centered, gospel-shaped Biblical answer to the question is my boyfriend cheating on me, and how do I know?
• When we can speak to a surface-level tension, there’s an avenue to this more significant, kind of gospel-centered question.
• When you look at the messages that you send: your bulletin or worship guide, look at your website, look at your social media feed, and look at all the different ways that you’re communicating to other people. The call to action is to show up.
• Show up to Sunday morning worship, show up to the small group, show up to vision night, show up to community outreach, show up to youth group, show up to whatever.
• Did Jesus tell us, “Go ye into all the world and tell people to show up?”
• Jesus did not say: “Guys, whatever you do, as the father has sent me, so I am sending you to get people to show up, you have to get people to show up.”
• When the vast bulk of our content is telling people to show up, what are we communicating there?
• Is our primary message akin to what the Lord told us that our central message was supposed to be?
• How are we sending a “grow up” message to people in their personal and spiritual growth according to the Good News that the Lord has given us?
• Communicate opportunities to grow up into something as much as you communicate opportunities to show up for something.
• You don’t have to wait for Sunday or wait for the right Sunday. You don’t have to wait for that to try out the Christian life. Just try it.
• We can talk to the skeptical person; we can speak to the secular person, we can talk to the person who’s disaffected from church and say, “Before you even come to church, try this Jesus thing. Just take this one teaching of his and put it into practice in your life this week and see what happens.”
• People are showing up to church less, but they still maintain the same level of perceived connectedness.
• They still call it “my church” even though versus ten years ago, attendance rates are down. And in some cases, giving is remaining the same, which is fogging the lens on what’s happening.
• It is more biblical to say a disciple is someone who shows up. So rather than put the attendance ahead of discipleship, we need to put discipleship forward of presence.
• How is the church going to make disciples in the networks of people’s relationships beyond the four walls?
• Social media is one of those networks, one of those networks that our people are in, apart from the four walls of the church, that sharing the gospel should take place.
• If we’re diligent about posting helpful enough content, maybe we are equipping our people to share with the people around them that are hurting