These are the ways that Andrew Jones (Boaz Project) describes his ministry and I love it! Here are some of my thoughts/responses to that. This is part 2. Been a long time coming.

Throwing Parties

Just the idea behind party is a good one! Who doesn’t like to go to a good party? Would you rather go to a party or go to a church service? Well that’s not a hard answer for most of us. Jesus uses celebration, party and feast/banquet language all the time. In fact it is one of his primary metaphors for the Kingdom of God.

Which begs a couple of questions: 1) why aren’t our services more like a party/celebration? 2) what would it look like if they were? To simplify (perhaps overly) a bit, let’s go down the elements of a good party.

Friends are very important. Both friends you know now and friends of your friends who you’d like to meet and become friends with. So let’s invite our friends and their friends to our party.

Attitudes of joy and giving are important to a party. So let’s stop moaning and groaning about the end times or abortion or whatever else and tell the stories of how God is at work and play music together, and eat together and enjoy each other’s company! This involves a lot more people I think and lessens the pressure on the “service” planners!

Changing hosts. With great friends we throw the party and then they throw the party and then this other friend throws the party. Fun stuff. This not only diversifies leadership, it involves everyone at different times and in different ways, their ways.