Nothing comes close to this, in my experience:
- Get a group together doing something you all love.
- Mix together people who have a faith with people who don’t.
- Er – that’s it.
I’ve seen this so many times.
- My wife ran a youth group for 15 years. We did youthy things on Sunday nights, and on Mondays all had a meal together and a Bible study. We used to take them camping as well. We saw several generations of young people grow in faith (and some not) over the years.
- Our church organizes a men’s walking weekend each year, coupled with a monthly breakfast meeting that involves bacon sandwiches. We do curries and film nights too. Quite a few guys have been scooped up by this over the years.
- I go to a community choir in our village organized by the local Baptist church. Several people, thus exposed to Baptist threshing machinery, have also now joined the church.
- I used to be part of a book club, a place for some fantastic discussions.
- We have a board games evening every month, people of varying orientation and faith all geeking together and enjoying each other’s company.
- Once I organized a bird-watching event at 5:00am one May morning. I put it in our parish magazine. In the more than 10 years I edited that magazine, it was the only thing we advertised where the resulting crowd actually blocked the road. At 5 am! (Actually this was a one-off and did not result in a group, but perhaps it should’ve.)
Slow mission in a nutshell.