Local Predicament: A Case Study (3)

I wrote last week about how we came from a successful church plant in Virginia Beach that had two essential elements in our strategy: worship services and small groups.  We moved to Las Vegas to start another new church, assuming we would have the same strategy, but holding off our final decision until we had lived there for a year and interviewed hundreds of people in an attempt to really understand the local predicament.

One of the things we discovered is that Las Vegas is the “least neighborly city in the United States.”  People don’t know their neighbors and never go into stranger’s homes.  It’s not even common to go into the home of someone you know.  They are cynical and very cautious about making new friends.

We also learned that because Vegas is a 24/7 town, workers have crazy schedules.  Common work shifts for people who work on the Strip are 4 pm to midnight, or 6 pm to 2 am.

And all of that made us say … uh oh.  Telling everyone we reach to show up at 7 pm at some stranger’s house to study the Bible?  Small groups will be a battle, and one we could easily lose.  And it probably wasn’t the most effective strategy in our context for discipling people.

I’ll tell you how this led us to reconstruct our church strategy in a few days, but for now a question for you:  What is one unique factor about your local predicament that should be impacting your church’s strategy or vision?  Is it?  If not, what needs to change?

If you’d like to learn more about understanding your local predicament and how it should be a part of determining your church’s strategy, read Church Unique, or check out Auxano.  And definitely consider doing an Auxano co::lab.