Does your church burp, sneeze or neither???

While here in Portland, I stay in my favorite Hampton, in the world. Every morning we have one of the finest breakfasts rated higher than all the others. This morning I'm enjoying my breakfast when all of the sudden sneeze, sneeze, sneeze echos from the food preparation area. Deliliah has a bad cold! All of the sudden what was a perfectly wonderful breakfast didn't quite taste that good. Actually the thought of sneeze blasting over my food ended it for me. I'm not in the least bit hungry.

On the other hand, a good sneeze can be exhilarating. I love those 3 sneezes that hit me every morning. It's a great and freeing experience. How about you?

When I consider sneezology I am reminded that the church engaging the mission of Making Disciples who Make Disciples needs a healthy dose of sneezing that leads to infecting that leads to more disciple making movements that end up with God birthed Churches. We must do this over and over again until all Christ followers are infected and so that those who do not know Jesus can be infected with Him.

Sneezing is what we do in Disciple Driven/Making Movements! The spittle scatters in a sneeze and so in this movement we sneeze, stuff scatters, people are infected, new disciple making movements emerge and God birthed new sneezing Churches have life to sneeze again and again.

I'm not too impressed with burping churches. A burp never started an infection that I have ever seen or heard of. I don't like burps. There are reasons I don't like them, some I cannot share here. A large church is going well, so they burp out another church and then they burp out another church. But before we rave over the Burps there are reasons why we burp! It has to do with making room for more! This is not always a good thing.

But back to burping! People burp because they have too much unwanted gas! Gas is the result of taking in and taking in and as we do something has to come out, so we burp! Burping churches have gas that needs to come out. I call this unnecessary baggage that weighs us down. Burping churches plan, develop strategy's, gather a core and burp out a new church just like them. Same old spiritual gas causing buffet and consumer driven burping out just another gas causing spiritual buffet filled with consumerism.

Now can I ask you somethings? Are you a sneezing church or are you a burping church?

Sneezing infects and scatters infectious disciple making movements. Sneezing spreads out the mission infectiously all over the place.

Burping let's out unwanted gas to make room for more feeding frenzies! Burps are localized and burp only when they have to in order to make room for more and more and more.

Are you a burp, a sneeze or neither and please tell us why?