I appreciate what you’re getting at here. I just finished Assessment/Ministry Discovery a couple weeks ago with the goal of planting. I’m certainly more “traditional” or “confessional” when it comes to subscription and worship questions, and it’s easy with that mindset to plant a church that mainly caters to already P&R folks. It can become a harbor for Reformed people who are dissatisfied with their current Reformed church to go to a new Reformed church. That is not the case across the board, and in a Reformed church plant you *do* want already solid, Reformed people there who will be formative for the new local body and give newcomers and new believers something to assimilate to and aspire towards. But, I think you’re spot on that in our circles we need to have an extra intentionality and commitment to reach the lost and non-Reformed. Our goal has to include all 3: the misled, the underfed, and the spiritually dead. And we have to continually be focused on reaching the lost or we’ll fall back into our comfort zone of attracting the already Reformed folks. As I like to say, we can’t just let the Baptists do all the outreach and evangelism and then hope that those people start reading and become Presbyterian.

Chad Van Dixhoorn on how hospitality can act as a bulwark against ministerial failure. For so many pastors that fall, it comes out afterwards that no one really knew them — how they were in their private life and with their families. Pastors: open your homes. Congregants: encourage your pastors to show more hospitality.