Remember when you were a kid and most costumes didn’t come in actual sizes, but were instead marked as “One Size Fits All”? You know, the kind of costume that tied up in the back and had a plastic facemask with one tiny slit for a mouth. It’s a wonder any of us kids made it through the eighties without suffocating on Halloween. For those readers who weren’t alive, or don’t remember the eighties, here’s a quick peekCan you tell me how to get...how to get to sesame street? at one of those costumes.

Now my problem, aside from nearly dying of asphyxiation behind a Lion-o mask, was that I’ve always been relatively small. “One Size Fits All” never really worked for me. Costumes always looked like they were going to fall off, so my grandmother eventually started making costumes that fit me. Usually she would recreate the plastic apron part of the costume, while leaving me the horribly under-oxygenated mask.

When James and I started on this crazy journey called LifePoint, we tried to emulate various ministries. Heck, we tried to downright copy what they were doing. Fortunately for us, we’ve discovered that there aren’t any “One Size Fits All” ministries. Something that works in Granger, Indiana won’t necessarily work in Mobile, Alabama. Rob Bell may have great success with something in Michigan, but that doesn’t mean that it will work in Maine. Your city isn’t exactly like any other city on earth, and your methods of ministry should be unique as well.

I’m really impressed by Lifechurch.tv and their Open Network. You can download almost everything that they’ve ever created. Sermon outlines, transcripts, intro videos, teaser videos, children’s material. One of the coolest parts about it is that you can modify any of it to suit your needs. Using other people’s stuff is a great idea, but, like my grandmother used to do for me at Halloween, we have to tailor it to fit our local culture. And I bet you were wondering how I was going to bring that back around.