Stay on Mission: How Skyline Is Experiencing Growth Through Evangelism and Discipleship

I reconnected with John about a little over a year ago, and he’s become my mentor. In fact, I was just with him last week. He’s just been so helpful, and just staying connected with him has been very special. He came and spoke for a couple weekends in a row, and he’s awesome. 

Reflecting on your experience of merging churches, what markers of health would you look for that indicate a merger would go well? 

I did a couple of things early on. I was very clear on what we’re doing as a church, and so if people didn’t want to be part of it, if they didn’t want to pray for their oikos, their relational network, if they just wanted to come and sit and soak, this wasn’t going to be the church for them. Immediately people got on mission, so we started to see growth immediately. And that was something, after years of decline for Skyline, to all of a sudden see the switch turned, people started to go, “Hey, wait a minute, maybe this is gonna work.” 

We have a high invite culture. I say it all the time: An invite can change a life. That’s our first step. Just invite somebody. 

There are always unhealthy people in church, right? I mean, we’re a hospital for sinners, not a country club for saints. We’re going to always have people that need help, but they have to want help too. I’m not going to put up with people that are just causing problems to cause problems, and so I’m very clear on what we’re doing, why we’re doing it. 

We have a membership class. A lot of churches don’t do membership. We do, and it’s not so much to get people in; it’s to filter people out. I want the people who understand what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and where we’re going. It’s OK if you don’t want to be part of our church. If you don’t want to be a member, that’s OK. But here’s where we’re going. 

We say all the time, your growth is our goal, even if it’s not at Skyline. It takes all kinds of churches to reach all kinds of people. This may not be a fit for you, but let us help you find a church. Because as a believer, it’s not optional. You need a church, and so we talk about that, and that keeps us really healthy. People see what we’re doing, and that we’re planting churches, and we have campuses, and we’re doing all that. And they’re like, “Man, this is healthy. This is growing.” Because healthy things grow. We fight really hard for our culture and for what we’re trying to accomplish as a church. Stay on mission.

A Culture of Invitation

You mentioned oikos. Can you explain what that is and how it fits into your vision and strategy for discipleship?

I learned that from my senior pastor in the high desert. His name is Tom Mercer. And Tom learned it from Charles Arn, the church growth expert who came up with the concept—oikos. In the New Testament, it means household. The way we say it is, you have 8-15 people in your relational world. These are people that you have some relational trust with. 

All we ask you to do is to make that list and just write down the name. It may only be one, it may be five, but we say most people have 8-15 people from their work, neighborhood, family, sports events, whatever. Write their name down, and ask God to open their heart. Then, at the right time, you’re going to invite them to one of our events. 

We use events as an easy on-ramp, because a lot of people won’t just come to church the first time. They’re intimidated. So, we’ll do a lot of what we call oikos events to get people to invite their people. That’s often easy on-ramp for people to do that. And oikos is very simply having a new lens. You’re looking through a different lens. All of a sudden, my job isn’t just my job; it’s my mission field. All of a sudden, my gym isn’t just a gym; it’s my mission field. 

But instead of thinking, I gotta go to this gym and win everybody to the Lord, or, I gotta give them the four happy hops to heaven before I’m done with my workout, we say no, build the relationship. Do the harder thing.