I stumbled across this funny yet challenging post by Lainie Petersen (whose blog I will be checking out now). I'm posting it here because I think it's great, but you can find the original here.

Top Ten Ways to Fail at Being Missional

10. Be very annoyed that some people belong to religions other than your own. Express this annoyance freely.

9. Don’t bother becoming a “regular” at local businesses. Just shop/dine/get- your-clothes-drycleaned at whatever place has the best sales that week. If, by some unfortunate coincidence, you do become a regular at a local business, don’t get to know the owner, employees, or other patrons.

8. Fixate on the quality of your missional targets: Focus on the local Unitarian Universalist minister, Mormon bishop, and Wiccan high priestess (who also owns your town’s only occult bookstore). Don’t give a second thought to that rather ordinary looking lady who you see every morning on the train. She doesn’t have a large enough sphere of influence.

7. If you see a problem in your community, don’t bother to check out what other organizations or individuals are doing about it. Just start your own project: You’ll get a lot more accomplished if you are in charge!

6. Don’t waste your time reading the blogs of other missional folk. So what if they share their own struggles, hurts, joys, and ideas freely? You take all your instruction from God, directly.

5. Never, ever, check out primary source materials produced by representatives of other cultures, subcultures, and religions. Christians have already written all you need to know about those unbelievers, and besides, cult members will have a bias that you want to avoid.

4. Avoid being “unequally yoked” with unbelievers by not engaging them in conversation, learning about their families, having lunch with them, inviting them to your home (or accepting a similar invitation), or working together to address community issues of common interest.

3. Be sure to email (from your work account, while at work) your “unsaved” work colleagues (especially those that you don’t normally interact with) with regular invitations to your church and its activities.

2. Never consider offering financial or material support to other folks engaged in missional work. After all, you need all your spare cash for your own personal ministry. Besides, most of them don’t have their own 501 (c) 3 corporation, and not getting a tax deduction would be poor stewardship on your part.

1. Learn every evangelistic technique, theory, and strategy out there, and work hard to perfect your practice of them, even to the neglect of every other area of your spiritual life. What does the Holy Spirit have to do with drawing people to God, anyway?

Labels: Fun Stuff, mission