Church goals

Mark Batterson blogs on Christ cursing the fig tree and what his church has set as their goals:

We have two goals for everybody who attends NCC: plug into a ministry & plug into a small group. It will never be more complicated than that. Ministry is where we get our spiritual exercise.Small group is where we get our spiritual food. We want to keep offering more and more small groups. So on one level we're expanding exponentially. We have sixty-one groups this sememester. But we try to keep it simple. We want NCCers to do two things: get excercise via ministry and get discipled via small groups.

So many times I've seen churches do great at one or the other, but not both.
In further talking about the fig tree, Mark writes:

One of my favorite Jesus sayings is this one: "Wisdom is proved right by her children." In other words, the proof is in the pudding. If you want to buzz you can't just talk the talk. You've got to walk the walk.