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For decades pastors, church leaders, and
Facebook and our YouTube
congregations have wrestled with the best way to reach
Channel.
people for Jesus Christ. Any honest pastor, of any
evangelical denomination, would hopefully admit that
every local church shares the same essential mission:
helping lost people by means of the gospel of Jesus
Christ become saved people who are being disciple as
growing, committed, reproducing followers of Jesus. We
see our mission in what we commonly call the Great
Commission (Matt. 28:18-20). Sure, we’d all agree that
we share a common mission; that our what is the same.
But that doesn’t stop churches and people from getting
off mission.
Some churches tend toward an event mentality. They
host events to which people come and they hope and
pray that lost people in attendance respond to the
truth about Jesus. Other churches tend toward a
programmatic style. Life, ministry, and evangelism are
systematically organized around a set of church
programs. If you want to grow or expose people to the
gospel, it’s done programmatically. Then there are the
visitation style churches. Typically, there’s a set night of
the week when a set of congregants go visit guests or
make cold calls by knocking on doors. Of course, there
is the scholastic approach. Begin with a small
contingent of people and start a Christian school. Over
time, as the school grows so does the church. Over the
last 50 years, these styles have reigned supreme.

While there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of

these approaches, pastors and people alike remain
frustrated with the how of evangelism. For some
churches, evangelism is equivalent to church growth.
The constant tension between reaching people for
Jesus and wanting our churches to grow leads us to use
evangelism and church growth (both in terminology and
ideology) interchangeably. Many churches have
evangelistic emphasis times when they host seminars,
invite guest speakers, and try another of a million
avenues to get the “average Joe” in the congregation to
catch the vision for church growth. While it’s true that
evangelism will cause a church to grow, the inherent
truth that the two are not absolutely synonymous
yields frustration in pastors, leaders, and people;
creating an undue pressure to measure ministry and
evangelistic success by the number of bodies in the
building and the sustainability of the budget. Too many
churches grasp at straws; trying everything they can
think of to grow and expand their ministries.

This downward spiral confuses our God-given what with

our desire to see our churches grow, and gets us off
mission. It’s a confusion of the purpose of the local
church with our God-given mission.

At Northland Community Church we don’t emphasize

church growth. We emphasize a biblically simple,
organic, systemic, healthy, natural approach to our
what, our mission. We believe that everyone who
follows Jesus Christ has been put on mission by Him.
This mission is to change our relational worlds (a.k.a.
Oikos) with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We call it the
Oikos Principle.

Oikos
Oikos (οἶκος) is the Greek word meaning “extended
household.” In relation to our mission, our oikos is:

1. That group of 8-15 people with whom we share

life most closely; whom God has supernaturally
and strategically placed into our worlds so that
we might see their worlds changed by Him. It is
our sphere of greatest influence.
2. The people for whom God wants to prepare us
to become ideal instruments of His grace.
3. A microcosm of the world at large, for whom
God sent His Son – that all who place their faith
in Christ would be delivered from the bondage
of sin.
4. The most natural and common environment
for evangelism to occur.

We believe that understanding the Oikos Principle

causes us to view ourselves as world-changers –
believers who actively and intentionally encourage
people in relational worlds (our respective oikos
networks) to become followers of Christ (Acts 17:6). This
Principle leads us to become oikocentric – viewing those
8-15 people we do life with on a regular basis as our
personal mission fields.

It’s an overwhelming task if you really think about it –

changing THE world! No. We don’t teach you to change
THE world, but to change YOUR world with the
transforming truth of Jesus.

A Focus on World-Change
The Oikos Principle lets us think beyond the required
process and focus on the desired outcome. We don’t
define a challenge (our mission / the Great
Commission) simply in terms of the tasks involved.
When you do, where’s the motivation? Our mission (the
Great Commission) becomes nothing more than a
simple “to do” list. The Church’s common mission,
evangelizing the world, becomes nothing more than a
series of programs or events to bring people in and
grow our churches. The Church’s mission becomes
introspective rather than outward focused. It’s like the
line from the movie Field of Dreams; “If you build it, they
will come.” So, churches design and execute great
programs and events that allow Christians to check the
box and assume they’ve done their duty to reach the
world.

The Oikos Principle challenges the status quo and

reorients our focus. Now, personally reaching our
individual oikos networks (those 8-15 people we do life
with on a regular basis) and seeing their worlds
changed by the gospel of Jesus is what motivates us;
not just seeing our church grow. Embracing the Oikos
Principle is embracing a way of life that seeks authentic,
organic world-change – one person’s world at a time –
and causes us to see the people God has
supernaturally and strategically placed in our oikos
networks as our mission fields. Around here, we like to
remind ourselves that oikos is messy business. Truly
investing in the lives of those in our oikos networks gets
messy, ugly, and draining. But that’s where real world-
change

Getting the big picture helps us understand why

embracing the Oikos Principle is so important. The
world’s 5.3 billion people are divided into approximately
24,000 people groups. Of those 24,000 groups, 12,000
are “reached” –cultures where a viable indigenous
church movement has been established. On the other
hand, 12,000 people groups, comprising some 2.2
billion individuals, do not yet have a viable Christian
representation. These groups include 4,000 Muslim
people groups, 3,000 Tribal people groups, 2,000 Hindu
people groups, 1,000 Chinese people groups, 1,000
Buddhist people groups, 1,000 other people groups –
all with virtually no true gospel presence. Let’s face it;
there has never been a believer who has had a global
presence influential enough to reach every person on
the planet with the gospel, and there never will be.
That’s because God hasn’t tasked us with reaching the
entire world; He’s tasked us with reaching our worlds.

The Great Commission texts (Matt. 28:18-20; Mark

16:15-16; Acts 1:8) command every believer to be
about the business of proclaiming the gospel and
making disciples within his own world and to the ends
of the earth. Living on mission – Reaching the whole
world and changing it with the gospel – means reaching
our own oikos networks – those 8-15 people God has
supernaturally and strategically placed in your sphere
of influence with whom you do life with on a regular
basis – and seeing their worlds changed by the gospel.

The Purpose of the Church

The Oikos Principle changes our focus as a church. No
longer are the people who attend the church viewed as
tools to grow the church, because the Oikos Principle
isn’t about church growth per se. The church becomes
what God intended her to be; a vehicle whereby
believers are equipped, encouraged, and held
accountable so that they can be more effective in living
on mission and reaching their respective oikos networks.
Rather than viewing the church as an upward-trending
pyramid where people feed into the organization of the
church to make its ministries bigger and budget more
stable; the church is seen as a downward-channeling
funnel where people are equipped and sent out into
their relational worlds to see them changed by the
power of God. The focus of ministries and programs
shift from being self-feeding to equipping. The church
becomes a facilitator that hosts a relatively smaller
scope of events that are more streamlined to give
believers opportunities to bring their oikos networks into
contact with others who can help them know the truth.

You see, the Oikos Principle is not just another church

program or kitschy evangelism methodology. The Great
Commission was given to individual believers. The New
Testament Church is responsible for the Great
Commission only in so much as it is comprised of
individual believers. It’s not the Church’s, pastor’s,
elders’, deacons’, etc. job to reach your oikos network for
you; that mission is yours. We believe that the essence
of the gospel is people. In a very real sense, God is
Oikocentric. God created mankind, we sinned, and He
reached out to the people He created by sending His
one and only Son, Jesus, to become one of us so that
He might die to save us. It doesn’t get more oikocentric
than that! At Northland Community Church, you’ll learn
that you’re not alone. We’ve all got the same mission
and this body is here to help you reach your oikos
network.

Still confused? That’s OK. Why not come see what the
Oikos Principle is all about for yourself.

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