I was speaking at a church planting conference. It was an open session—lots of Q&A. The next morning I was sharing a cab to the train station with one of the participants. “I noticed last night,” he said, “we kept asking ‘do’ questions and you kept giving ‘be’ answers.” “How do you do evangelism?” “We try to be a community that is intentional about the gospel.” That sort of thing. “Was it frustrating for you?” It was, but only now did I realize why.

A ‘Be’ Church

Of course churches do things. There isn’t really a choice between being and doing. But we can get hung up on our programs, on activity, on meetings. We need to be creating a culture, a way of being Christian community, that liberates people so they can adapt on the fly to missional opportunities.

A ‘Bespoke’ Church

This might just be a British thing, but if you get a suit made up specially for you we call it “bespoke.” The opposite is “off-the-peg,” when you just walk in the shop, take something off the peg in your size and you have your suit. But if you have the money and the inclination you can go to a bespoke tailor not a mile from my house and get a suit made just for you. Made for you. A perfect fit. Just right. Many people are looking for off-the-peg models of church. They want to take whatever is the latest trend or the successful formula and drop it into their context. But we need to be creating “bespoke churches”—churches that are tailored to their members and their missional contexts.

How Do You Do It?

Or people want training programs, manuals, handbooks. People often ask, “How do you train people?” I have as many answers as I have people. It’s about life-on-life training that is tailored to each person. So let’s talk about theology, values, principles. I might even tell you how we put them into practice to stimulate your imagination. But please don’t just copy what I do.