The Real Reason Your Missional Dream Keeps Dying Before It Starts

You see the writing on the wall. You know the old model of conventional church doesn’t work in your secular, post-church context. You’ve watched it shrink year after year while the world outside keeps moving further away. You’ve seen the same outreach programs recycled to no effect. You’ve sat through the same committees, the same board meetings, the same “we should do something for the youth” conversations that never actually do something.

And now, you’re ready for something different — a small, authentic, relational, story-driven, safe community for secular seekers to actually explore faith without irrelevant programs, spectator events, or harmful churchy expectations.

You can picture it. A Friday night meal around a long wooden table. Honest conversation. Laughter. A space where doubt isn’t dangerous and questions aren’t threats. A rhythm of gathering that feels more like family than performance.

But then reality hits.

You look around your local Adventist landscape — your church, your district, your conference — and realize something gut-wrenching.

Not a single Adventist close enough to you is interested in doing this with you.

Not one.

You’ve got people who say they believe in mission, but the moment you suggest something outside the church building, their eyes glaze over. You’ve got others who love the idea — until they realize it won’t involve the conventional church comforts they are conditioned by. You’ve got folks who say, “Let’s pray about it,” which is Adventist code for let’s make sure this dies a slow, polite death.

Or maybe you do find someone who’s ready to go. But they’re not the right fit. They’re missional, yes. But also too traditional. Too rigid. Too busy defending the 28 fundamentals to actually connect with someone who doesn’t believe in God. Or they’re well-meaning but emotionally unhealthy — carrying control issues or an agenda that would poison any safe space before it ever begins. And as desperately as you want to get this thing off the groung, you know you can’t build a healing community on unhealthy foundations.

So you wait.

You keep showing up to your church, trying to find the one person who “gets it.” The one who’s brave enough to risk reputation and comfort. The one who doesn’t need to be the teacher, the prophet, the apologist — just a companion on the journey.

You try to spark conversations in the foyer, over potluck, in the Sabbath School discussion. You drop hints, float ideas, test the waters. You say things like, “What if we tried something different?” And they smile, nod, and say, “That sounds interesting.” Then they go back to the same cycle — the same planning meetings, the same evangelism calendar, the same path that leads nowhere new.

You start to wonder if you’re crazy. If maybe you’re just idealistic. If maybe it’s not supposed to happen here.

You imagine what it would be like if you did have a team — just two or three others who shared the same heart. People who could dream with you. Pray with you. Build with you. People who wouldn’t shut down ideas because they didn’t fit the mold. People who would sit around that long wooden table and say, “Let’s do this… together.”

But they’re not there.

And it’s not like you can just go and find them somewhere else. You’ve tried. You’ve reached out online, connected with other Adventists who get it — only to realize they live twelve hours away. You’ve joined group chats and Facebook communities and Zoom calls, but when the screen goes dark, you’re still standing alone in your city. You look at your own local church… the one you love, the one that baptized you, raised you, gave you your spiritual DNA — and you see a room full of good people who just don’t see it.

They don’t see the disconnect. They don’t feel the urgency. They don’t share the ache.

You want to do something for the hundreds of spiritual-but-not-religious people who would never step foot in your sanctuary. But all the energy, all the resources, all the conversations keep looping back inward… feeding the system that’s already full while the seekers outside starve.

You want to build something that’s safe, that’s relevant, that’s real. But you can’t do it alone.

And so you sit there, with a vision in your heart and no one to build it with.

So what do you do?

Over the next 3 weeks I am going to share a step-by-step process on how you can launch a missional community from scratch even if no one wants to do it with you.

So make sure you subscribe to the newsletter so you don’t miss a single blog!

In the meantime, I want to chat in the comments. Have you ever experienced the above? If so, where are you now in your journey of doing something new? Lets discuss below!