Small Church Resource Site

If you lead a small church, and haven’t been to one of the websites that support / value small church vitality, you’re missing valuable insights and encouragement.

One such site is the Energizing Smaller Churches Network (ESCN).  They quote a Barna Research report that the typical church in America has an average worship attendance of eighty-nine adults, and that a full 60 percent of Protestant churches in our country are attended by one hundred or fewer adults in worship.

A hundred may not seem like a lot, but considering the strength of the house church movement, where congregations rarely exceed 30, that’s huge.  Even in the 2500-member church my family attends, ministry rarely happens in groups much larger than 40 or 50.  Discipleship is broken into groups of a dozen or less.  (There were 15 in prayer meeting last week.)

Hear the encouragement of ESCN:  “every church in every community in a strategic position. By virtue of its purpose and location, each church in each community is uniquely qualified to influence those closest to it for Christ.”

The church I used to serve at in Massachusetts is land-limited to a couple hundred attendees.  The youth groups runs a couple dozen.  Yet they were named one of the best in the country, and the youth pastor told me they found they were effectively penetrating the High School and ministering to around 200 students.  Similarly, the summer camp for 5-12 year olds maxes out each year at over 100, influencing the community for Christ, even though only a fraction are members of the church.  (That camp has drawn in some community residents to become strong leaders, and many children have been saved over the years.)

Helping smaller churches achieve this goal is the purpose of the ESCN.  I recommend it to you.

Just Love On ‘Em

The focal point of the mission trip week was Thursday night.  It’s the community carnival.  Simple games and simple prizes, plus food and a drawing.  With a double dose of relationship-building.

The games were simple.  The most polished was a putting green with auto ball return.  Others included throwing a foam football into a 5-gallon bucket, bouncing a ping-pong ball into flower pots, and rolling 6-inch balls into upside-down frisbees.  Mine was tossing home canning lids (the ring part) onto water bottles.  (The kids - and some adults - kept coming back to my game after the others had been abandoned.  I didn’t think it would work that well - but they even ran off with the rings at the end of the night!)

For food, we ordered 250 cheeseburgers from McDonalds, and served them with chips and a cup of instant drink mix (like Kool-Aid).  For dessert, we brought in a local snow-cone vendor.  Parents came and ate. 

And then there were the drawings.  A $20 bill.  A $50 bill.  A $100 bill.  And the CD player we had been using for puppet shows.  For many of these families, another $20 is a big boost, and for the family that won the $100, it’s a significant boost to household income.  We’ve done these in Virginia (larger denominations) and the winners tend to be - by God’s good planning - people with specific needs, and their winning of the money gives us opportunity to meet them and share the Gospel.  (How much is a family worth?)

Just after the drawing, but before the evangelistic puppet show, the skies opened up and it rained!  I kept moderating my ring-toss game until I saw a young (3-year-old?) boy, lost, standing in the rain with one shoe off, crying.  I grabbed him and his shoe and headed for shelter.  After a few minutes, he was getting heavy to hold and since he was hugging me tight, I sat down.  The daddy in me took over and I started rocking back and forth on the table bench, and soon he was asleep.  He got a good 15 minute nap, 20 minutes in the arms of a male adult.  He woke up when the rain stopped and I reached for the van keys, and then went home with his older sister.  I don’t know if he will remember those 20 minutes, but I will, and I pray they build in him acceptance and trust of future mission workers, enough to hear and accept the Gospel.

Ministry on Mission

Update on the Navajo Mission Trip:  While half our team led Backyard Bible Studies in three different neighborhoods, the rest of us split into two work teams to do home repair.

The neighborhood events are even more important here in New Mexico.  The city is spread out, with clusters of housing, usually according to “chapter” within one of the local tribes.  Often, someone of one chapter will not attend events in another chapter of the same tribe.  So we go to teach in their context.  It also spread our witness around the area. The teams did a craft, recreation, snack and Bible story.  Between 10 and 20 kids came to each. Several acknowledged they had accepted Jesus.

The home repairs were to show Christians helping other church members with tasks beyond their capability.  Team 1 went to one older couple’s house to build a ramp on the front of the house of her aged mother, and to repair the roof.  This is as much an act of honoring God’s servants.

Team 2 went to a mobile home of another member.  The kitchen flooring was chipped and worn, and had several soft spots where the floor sank when you walked on it.  I was on the team that removed the old flooring, cut out the rotted flooring and replaced it with new patches, and then installed new vinyl.  It was hard sweaty work, but was necessary for a quality job.  We were able to honor her request for a wood floor look with plank-patterned sheet vinyl, and were able to find and repair the leak where water was coming in to cause the damage.  When we were done, she blessed God for our efforts, and we were able to share the love of God and Christian care for one another with her kids (7 and 15).

And we had time to do repair and fix-up of the down town First Indian Baptist Church facilities.  A good week well spent.

A Good Thing

The last day of the Navajo Tent Revival, and Stanley’s voice has still not recovered.  So he called a local preacher to help.  That man was not available, but his dad was.  What a message!

Wilson Calvin told us his testimony.  I had met him over supper; there were 2 seats open, one with our group and the other with a table of Navajos.  (I didn’t come this far to talk with folks from my own church, so I got to know the preacher.)  I learned he is a church planter.  He hears from God to go to an area and begin preaching his brand of straight-talk Gospel, and when the congregation is started, he finds a man in the congregation capable and called to preach, and trains him so he can leave him as pastor to his neighbors.  Then Mr Calvin moves on.

It was not fancy preaching.  Pastor Calvin didn’t finish high school, never went to college or seminary, but he knows his Bible.  Says he reads through it a hundred times a year. And he only uses King James.  Just don’t ask him to stand still when he preaches.  Back and forth, down the aisle.  Shouting and pointing and making the Gospel plain for any to hear.

His message started with a comment about a dad.  When people brag on how well his son is doing, he gets a little closer to hear more.  He likes it when you compliment his son.  And God likes it when you compliment His son!

Pastor Calvin came to faith when a preacher, moving across the country to start a church somewhere else, broke down in his town, the very same weekend his son begged him to go to church.  That preacher broke down in front of a vacant building and was able to rent it to hold services, and Wilson Calvin was converted that day.

Calvin said we should be involved in a church.  He said you should find a good church, where the Bible is preached.  When you know a good thing is happening, you should (1) go there, (2) tell others about it and (3) enjoy it.

And when the invitation came, so did one of the church members, eager to get clean before God.  There were prayers and rejoicing.

I couldn’t live on a diet of camp meeting, but I rejoice that I was there.

Navajo Revival Meeting

It was a camp meeting, a tent revival, Navajo style.  Stanley and Mary put up a tent on their land, put a sign out by the road, and put meat on the grill.

Stanley is an older Navajo, a solid Christian.  His wife Mary helps with music at the First Indian Baptist in Gallup.  But their faith is so strong they were willing to give of themselves for the Gospel to be heard.  So he put up a tent and borrowed chairs from 3 churches - seats for 60 in the dirt-floor “tabernacle”.  And next to it, a tent with eating tables.  You know there was plenty: posole soup and chicken soup and fry bread.

Our purpose was to mix and mingle and build relationships.  I met a man who was 98 years old, a Navajo who had in his younger years traveled the country as a translator for an evangelist to the Navajos.  What a great time talking to him!  But soon, food was over and the service began.

It was a preaching service, but Stanley opened the floor for testimony.  Pastor Gary, our mission host, made sure I got up to sing, and I dragged Meredith and Bethany to sing with me.  And there were testimonies of faith.

Finally, Pastor Bobby Boyd got up to preach.  He is a Navajo preacher and brought some from his church (including the 98-year old man).    He preached because Stanley had come down with a cold, and was unable to preach that night.

Pastor Boyd uses an interesting advertising program to get his message out.  He puts baskets of sermon tapes and CDs at the local Christian bookstore and at truck stops, to be given away for free to whomever wants to hear.  And those who take them will be encouraged, and will call him to preach for their services.  His model of advertising is to give himself away and let God arrange his speaking calendar.

It was a great sermon, reminding us that we are by nature sinful, born into a disfunctional family, unable to meet the standards of our heavenly Father.  But that loving Father made a way for us to be saved.  Pastor Boyd then got to meddling - telling us we were justified and sanctified not for ourselves, but for service.  But the rewards he described, the wages of a faithful servant, is righteousness, right standing before God.

And he closed with a passage paraphrased from Ezekiel:  “If you leave here without Jesus, it’s not my fault, because I told you Truth tonite.”

Mission Trip Begins

Today, Liberty’s Navajo Mission Trip really began. We arrived in Gallup Saturday evening, did the Wal-Mart run for supplies we didn’t want to bring on the plane (like a couple of cases of bottled water). Then we settled into our sleeping quarters, the Super 8 Motel. Clean and inexpensive, with breakfast and an indoor pool area we could use for group meetings, but small for 2 adults and 2 teens. But sacrifice is the name of the game, huh?

Meredith & I began practicing our music for the morning service, and since Bethany also sings in the choir, I enlisted her to help. Mer’s choice was “It Is Well” and I had us sing a couple more.

When I got to the church building, I compared my list to what was in the Navajo song book and only sang songs that were in both. By God’s grace, it matched the sermon exactly, and I saw that the songs told a message that encouraged both Anglo and Indian participants. There were about 40 whites and 30 Navajos there - it packed the church building. And they sang us a couple of choruses in Navajo.

As we were getting ready for the service, a man came in who was visiting that day. He said he recognized me, but i couldn’t imagine from where. Turns out, he and I were in college together for a couple of years in the late 70s, in Oklahoma. His dad had died a year ago and his mom had been living with him in Texas. He was back with his mom to help pack out the house, and stopped into the church where his dad had been an interim pastor once. Unfortunately, he left before the service was over, and I didn’t get to talk with him as much as I’d like. (Truth is, I was more worried about leading music than talking at the beginning of the service, and missed my chance. My loss.)

This morning reinforced to me that those who teach prejudice in the Christian community are usually trying to sell something besides Jesus.  Though we spoke 2 languages, and come from multiple cultures, we all sang and prayed together with and for one another.  Thus begins a heart for missions.

Mixing Missions and Vacation

Friday started my vacation.  At least that’s what it looks like on my timesheet.  But after today, it’ll be work.  My family is spending a week in Gallup, NM, with a missionary with the Navajos.

(I say with, not to, because he is living among them, and a lot of ministry happens by them.  The hope is that some day, the mission church will be led by a Navajo pastor, starting other churches led by Navajo pastors.)

But since airfare was so much better into Phoenix than Albuquerque, and since this was a trip of families, the trip leader decided to give us a couple days’ vacation.  We drove from Phoenix straight north, past Flagstaff, to the Grand Canyon.  Such a sight!  I’d never seen it before, nor had my kids.  We did a little hiking, and I got pictures at sunset.  Second day was Monument Valley, just over the border in Utah.  What a great God to create such beauty.

There is a message and a strategy in doing it that way - vacation first.  We spent 2 days getting to know one another, eating together, long hours in the cars together, talking back and forth on the walkie talkies.  And we got a sense of how distant the Native peoples can be from one another.  Miles and miles of nothing but scenery, and then a house, or a cluster of 3.

And after 2 days in the car, I was ready to get to work.

Church for the rest of them

I was reminded last week over supper of last Spring’s Barna survey about church attendance. He mentioned that 28% of the population is “unattached” from a church, although two thirds of those claim to be Christian (a fifth claim to be born-again). Another 18% attend only sporadically or are homebound.

I’ve seen other surveys that suggest that half of those who claim to attend a church on a weekly basis (Barna’s 58%) do so in a non-traditional church setting. They are involved in workplace Bible studies, or a neighborhood gathering, or a weekly prayer breakfast. Traditional church just doesn’t work for them.

I have a friend from college that runs one of those non-traditional churches. It’s a MySpace cyber church. He blends worship videos from youTube and a podcast of his “normal” church sermon. And then his cyber parishioners will comment on the sermon, and he will dialog back. And from the profiles of some of those, they wouldn’t be comfortable in my church.

My brother runs another online community. He, too, is one not comfortable with the way most churches are run. So he hosts an online discussion board. There’s a prayer “room” and a Bible study area. These people, generally, don’t fit the mold of what we think of as church people.

There’s a lot more of them than there are of us who lead the normal model of church.

What will we do to capture them?

To begin with, I recommend you read Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. It’s an unconventional confessional of a man who doesn’t quite fit in the traditional mold, yet he is able to experience God, live out his faith, and share a saving word with those who are unreachable by our 4-Laws evangelism.

The main theme of that book, and my dinner conversation with my brother, is that we must be real, must accept others for who they are and enter into their world enough to hand them a lifeline into our world.

Working Against the Gospel

There are many reasons why people avoid the church, but there is emerging in my mind a common theme. Those folks wouldn’t fit in my home church. They don’t have right belief, right actions, right attitudes. And we run them off.

I have a friend who used to be a good friend. Then he started passing along spurious emails, obviously wrong, so easy to check. I once suggested that - since the topic had been debunked several years ago - that to continue to send these emails urging Christian action, it made us as a people look foolish. He got mad. Then, more recently, he sent me all the Obama nonsense, first about him being Muslim because of what his daddy named him, and second questioning his faith because of what his preacher said. We have agreed to disagree, and we don’t talk much any more - I can’t risk it.

He’s benign. Others are in the marketplace, actively working against the Gospel.

My brother has a friend who was working at a furniture store. And God was blessing her with sales. And the rest of the staff got jealous. They have a rotation there - when you get a customer, you name goes to the bottom of the list, and you move up as your fellows get their turn. But they were dropping her name off the list whenever she left the waiting station, to go roam the store, in case someone “just looking” became ready to buy. When she complained, they drafted a letter of grievance against her and she was fired.

Did I mention this is a “Christian” business? They start each day with Bible study. All the employees claim Christianity. Yet there is no love in their heart, no overflowing compassion in the “cutthroat business of sales.”

If the visitor comes to your church, and sees people they’ve seen at work, will they stay?

Save gas - meet your neighbors

Phil Tom, from the Vital Signs blog, remembers that Herb Miller wrote an article a few years ago in Net Results that listed his top ten list on how church members should reach out with their neighbors. Number one on his list was “get out of the car.”

Rather than an obstruction on the way to church, we should be treating our neighbors where we live, and - most especially - those who live near the church, as a ministry opportunity. Phil writes: “In connecting with their neighbors, this congregation responded by developing congregational and community ministries that connected with their neighbor’s deeply felt hope and needs. “

I was working with a church a few years ago that only drove through the neighborhood.  I convinced them to start walking.  For them, it wasn’t so much a gas savings, but it was to go meet the neighbors.