Pastoring a Sending Church: An Interview with Pat Hood

Pat Hood explains what it is like to pastor a "sending church." |Ed Stetzer

Pat Hood is the Senior Pastor at LifePoint Church located at various campuses throughout the Nashville area, and is the author of The Sending Church, which is due out in October.The Sending Church is made up of examples from his own congregation, showing how a church isn't really a church until it leaves the building and expands God's Kingdom in the local neighborhood and around the world.

I had the opportunity to ask Pat a little bit more about his church and how they have transformed into a "sending church" over time.

Tell me about some unique things your church is doing in outreach.

I don't know if we do anything that's really "unique." I would describe our outreach as "simple." I think Jesus' was too. He simply told his disciples, to "Go, make disciples." That's what we teach our people. We challenge them to live sent lives in every domain of their life. We tell our people that we have no marketing campaign. We don't blanket the community with fliers. We don't rent billboards. We tell our people they are the--> Click Here

Is Your Church A Messy Church Or Pretending Church?

Someone asked me how things were going recently. It’s not really a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ (‘good’ or ‘bad’) question. Life in our congregation is messy. People have a wide variety of problems and many of those problems are out on the table. Are things going well when one of your members has been hauled out of a pub in drunken state? When people admit problems in their marriage? When several people are struggling with depression? And I could go on. Actually I think the answer can be ‘Yes, things are going well’. A key verse for me in recent years has been the first beautitude which I paraphrase as: ‘Blessed are the broken people for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.’ To working with broken people is to be where God’s blessing is found. I do not rejoice in people’s problems, but I do rejoice that I am working among... Continue reading.