There are thousands of churches across America that have beautiful facilities — and that’s awesome! We love talking with church leaders who are looking at expanding campuses and building new buildings and making room for more new faces. Growth is fun and exciting, and we’re grateful we get to be a part of it for so many churches.

The mobile strategies I see churches deploying today feel very similar to what I saw happening with websites back in the early 2000s. In those days, the common mantra was ... JUST DO IT! Everyone knew that you had to have a website if you wanted to be ‘relevant’, but little thought was given to what? How? And why? These questions were pushed aside in a rush to get something — anything — on the web. Few churches were asking how a website could help them achieve more purposeful goals like engaging people and moving them towards deeper connection and community.

I say a lot of things I don’t actually do. I don’t intend to lie, or even drop the ball. It is just that I don’t seem to be able to execute consistently what I envision in the future. The gap between what we say and what we do can be hard to acknowledge. In fact, I used to really beat myself up for this, but as it turns out, I am not alone in this gap between what I espouse and what I actually produce. Even Paul in Romans points to this gap: