Move the church past its past

One of the challenges in turning around a church is overcoming the community’s “bad feelings” about the church.  Some is that a church is by nature often at odds with the world. But in many cases it’s because of bad choices by previous pastors or members.  These need to be addressed.

Pastor Horst Bittner of Tubingen, Germany noticed a spirit of darkness in the town when he was first posted there to take over the church.  It was everywhere, even in the church.  During a period of prayer, it was revealed to him that Tubingen had a long history of anti-semitism, and many Nazis – even Gestapo – had attended Tubingen University. Some of his church memers were the children and grandchildren of concentration camp guards.  Since ”the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children”,  pastor Bittner led his congregation to repent for the sin of oppression of the Jews.  They repented for their own families, and for their neighbors.  They took prayer walks around the community to fight against the spirits of darkness there.  When they did this, revival broke out.  He is now organizing marches of Germans from the cities out to the concentration camp sites and leading inprayers of repentance.  In some cases, the marches include former prisoners and former guards, and they are able to be reconciled.

Your church’s past is probably less dramatic.  But think of your own history.  Was the church started as a mission or church plant, or was it the remnant that left during a church split to form a new congregation?  In that case, the church should repent of the division.  There are times a division is necessary – the reformation involved disagreements between the established church heirarchy and the new congregations.  But when the honest theological differences give rise to anger and bitterness, the people slip into sin; that sin – however old – needs to be repented from.

Sometimes the issues are more recent.  Did the church allow sin to go unchecked and merely breathed a collective sigh of relief when the person(persons) involved left?  The stain of the sin remains, and should be dealt with.  Is there lingering anger between members?  Get over it and repent. 

This is not the only action needed to turn around a church, but will certainly hinder the restoration.

 

The One Thing to Do to Change Your Church

Everyone wants the secret to keeping their church vibrant and growing.  What one thing to add to their program that will amp up the return on time investment and send visitors crowding into the sanctuary?

Those whose congregations are dwindling will settle for a moment of triage to stop the bleeding, to stabilize the outflow of members and attract fresh members.

For both cases, one simple answer is to stop focusing on yourself.  Packing the pews or gaining a big donor is not the answer.  The answer lies in the geography of Israel.

There are two main lakes large enough to be called seas: Galilee and the Dead Sea.  The first is a vibrant body of water, with vital fishing and irrigation industry.  The second will not support life.  Both have an incoming source.  Only one has an exit.

What keeps Galilee productive is the constant outflow of water.    The outflow is not the result of water coming in; water leaving drops the level of the lake, creating an imbalance, an opening for new water to rush in from upstream to correct for the drop. 

What the church needs is a viable outflow.  Note I said viable.  This is spirit-filled activity that engages the congregation in ministry and evangelism in ways that expend physical, spiritual and financial energy, without having to sever membership ties. 

For some, it is taking on a social cause:  a soup kitchen, a thrift store, an after-school program, a kids’ athletic league.  While good to do, they will generally not achieve a level of spiritual return commensurate with the energy expended.  The Return on Investment isn’t strong enough.

I’d suggest more purely spiritual tasks.  If you want a spiritual – and not jsut social – return, you need a spiritual investment.  The easiest is prayer walking.  Walk through the neighborhood and pray for each household.  Go door to door and offer to pray about needs they might have. (Write the need down, but don’t leave without praying on the spot.)

Missions is also a good approach.  Adopt a missionary or unreached people group and commit to specific, focused prayers for a substantial time (daily for a month, weekly for a year, etc.)  Pray for spiritual victories, for salvation of the people, for protection of the missionary.  Make contact with a missions representative about the region and learn what to pray for, and then be super-specific.

In praying this way, you will model Jesus to them, the way His disciples asked to be taught to pray.  They will grow spiritually.  The congregation will grow in unity of purpose.  The church will develop spiritually mature leaders.  And the drop in available spiritual energy will allow God to refill the reservoir with fresh resources.

 

Turnaround Characteristics

According to a Hartford Seminary study, churches that had been declining and have begun the turnaround have several key indicators in common:

1. more contemporary worship.  They see this as a cause, rather than an indicator of willingness to be adaptable.  I see it as the latter.  Many emergent congregations are moving to chants and hymns, which are not within the “contemporary christian” genre, and even some of the more popular worship songs within that genre are recast hymns.  It is not the use of drums and guitars, but a willingness to refresh the music to match the tastes and desires of the target audience.

2.  a strong sense of identity and mission – Dorothy Campbell writes of the need for a spiritual gate-keeper.  Maxwell writes of the need for a visioning leader.  Both indicate an organization that knows who it is and why it exists.  By regularly describing that identity and mission to all who attend, they are able to shape life solutions for what’s been called a “meaning-hungry culture.”

3.  do little things well – the attention to details matters.  Basic cleanliness and reduction of accumulated clutter adds a lot to the appearance of a vibrant church.  (3-year-old magazines on the give-away rack indicate a stale church.)

4.  recognizing volunteers  – the church is built on volunteers, but people get tired of doing the same thing over and over with no reward.  we hope God will one day say “well done” but we like to hear it from time to time here on earth. 

5.  contacting inactive members. Just because they don’t come to your church doesn’t mean they go somewhere else.  For some, they just drifted away.  For others, it’s a simple issue that needs addressing, or a disagreement with someone that no longer attends (or has died); with that issue resolved, they might be disposed to return and renew their activity.

This is not a definitive list.  There is a longer discussion in my book “From the Brink: Hope for Struggling Churches.”   But this is a good start.  Any congregation can do these with little or no injection of new cash, only a change in attitude.

 

source:

http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20091002/NEWS01/910030301/Many+congregations+continue+to+shrink

 

Be a Better Pastor

Thom Rainer, currently President of Lifeway, the Baptist resource publishing house, took time this week to reflect on how to be a better pastor.  He’s pastored 4 churches, and is a student of what makes a healthy church.

In the post titled If I Were a Pastor Again, Rainer lists five thing he would do differently:

1. Pray more
2. More time reading the Bible
3. More time loving the critics than worrrying about what they said
4. More time “hanging out” with church members
5. More time getting to know the unchurched

These look like no-brainers, but we need to remind ourselves of the basics our the job from time to time.  We forget that “prayer is the work” instead of a prelude to the job.  We get so pressured to prepare the sermons and do the rest of the job that we forget to take time to read the Bible for our own benefit.

The other 3 points deal with our relationships with others.  We are to be shepherd of the church, not just the hired help to speak and administrate.  We are to have our ears open to the hurt behind the accusations (think of the kids who “act out” jsut to get attention).  And we need to know people to witness to, and lead our people by example.

This is not an all-inclusive list, of course, but it’s a good start.  As I’ve said before, you start where you are and move forward, no matter where that starting place happens to be.

(See the article here.)

 

10 Stupid Things

I watched a great video on “10 stupid things that keep churches from growing” with Geoff Surratt.  It includes many of the same simple ideas I identified in Chapter 7 of Hope for Struggling Churches.  However, in our visual culture, it sometimes helps to hear someone talk about it.

Geoff Surratt on THE SHOW from Todd Rhoades on Vimeo.

Geoff Surratt on THE SHOW

What do you think?  Is he right?

 

Have You Halved the Gospel?

What can the former assitant director of the national Council of Churches tell you about growing your churches?

In 1973, Dean Kelley took a sabatical from the NCC to study the decline in member church attendance.  The resulting book, titled Why Conservative Churches are Growing, took the stance of an outsider looking in.  His question was “why were some churches growing and others contracting?”  He wondered if there were denominational differences, differences in practices, differences in form.  Or was there something more fundamentally different, something that was universal within Christendom that would apply to any church. 

What he found was that churches had become lax in teaching their core values.  In the push to be more ecumenical in action, churches had become less distinctive in doctrine.  They were forgetting who they were.

It is the principle that you only retain 70% of what you hear, and remember barely 10% after a week.  Without systematic study, parishoner were retaining less than half the Gospel stories.  As they taught their children, the half was halved, continuing through succeeding generations until barely a sliver remained of the original.  As Dorothy Bass describes it, they had lost the shared language and legacy, and had become more like the world than the church ideal, leading many to drop out.

What can you do?  Consider your congregation.  As your average member to find some minor prophet’s book or to explain it’s theme.  If they can’t recognize the story of Elijah’s battle with the prophets of Baal, or the handwriting on the wall, it’s time to begin again.

In my seminar on “Back to the Basics, ” I describe the various models for organizing, training, equipping your church for dramatic impact in your community.  I feel this topic is essential for creating vibrant churches.  It is useful for congregations or study groups of any size.  it will transform and amplify existing outreach efforts.

I have long felt a need to share more, be more, do more for the Kingdom.  I know God did not intend for us to flounder, wither and die.  This seminar begins the restoration process.

I’ve found that most in the church share my longing.  Seminars and programs souncded good, but the people are often unable to sustain the results.  It wasn’t for a lack of trying.  But like trying to run a race car on low-octane fuel, the efforts fall short of the goals. But when these fundamentals are added, people catch the why as well as the how and begin to take the actions that restore the church.

 

Anime in Church Worship

In choir tonite we continued learning “Let the Church Rise”.  It has such a powerful message to the struggling church and the church in transition that I wanted to share it with you.

Music is a large part of my life.  I’ve done just about every kind of job there is in the local evangelical church, and in most of the churches I’ve been part of I  sang in the choir.  I have also been choir director, children’s choir worker and congregational worship leader several times.  When my children were young, I would rock them to sleep singing my favorite hymns.  Music – especially worship music – speaks to me.

The words of Israel Houghton & Jonathan Stockstill’s Let The Church Rise are instructive:

We are alive filled with Your glorious life
Out of the dark into Your marvelous life
We are waiting with expectations
Spirit raise us up with You

Let the Church rise from the ashes
Let the Church fall to her knees
Let us be light in the darkness
Let the Church rise

We are moving with His compassion
Spirit fill our hearts with You

Let Your wind blow, Revive us again Lord

And Let the Church rise from the ashes
Let the Church fall to her knees
Let us be light in the darkness
Let the Church rise

It’s a great song, with an easy 6/8 melody.  So I went looking for a youtube of the song to share with you.  What I found was an unusual mashup – an Anime video to the song.

Anime is the Japanese animation art form that is beginning to take hold around the world (in part due to Pokemon and similar shows).   It has roots in ancient Japanese myths (often from Shinto religion), but the themes are universal,  generally featuring someone of low status bringing light and power to overcome an evil force.

And so we blend old Christian themes into modern youth animation to let the message “rise from the ashes” as we are “light in the world.”

May your missional heart be stirred as you watch:

 

Facing Inaction

In his seminal work Rules for Radicals, Saul Alinsky talks in part about overcoming objections to becoming active to create change.  The book is all about becoming a community organizer to create social or political change in general, such as union organizing or fighting City Hall.  It is a “must read” for fledgling politicians on how to build a grass-roots effort to back their cause or candidacy.

Note:  Rules for Radicals is at times quite vulgar in word use.  It was not written for use in churches, and while there is much to learn from the book, the reader must be ready to skip over some of the worst 4-letter words available.

Alinsky says one of the biggest obstacles to effective organizing is individual and group rationalization for what they do or do not do.  It is a reaction by many to a perceived accusation by the organizer, wondering why they haven’t taken action to correct so obvious an offense to their personhood.  They will often times be embarrassed they haven’t taken action themselves before and will justify their inaction by rationalizing why it could not have been done before.

The job of the organizer is to discover and uncover these rationalizations, to call them out and challenge their validity.  Usually they exist as vague notions without solid reasoning, like a thin hoar frost that disappears as soon as the sun shines the first warming rays.

As pastoral leader seeking to change your congregation, you must likewise look for the rationalizations of why your people are not acting like the people of God.  It might start with abandoning your own rationalizations of why you can’t grow, in favor of a missional mindset that says you  can do “all things” by the power of “Him who is able to do exceeding abundantly more than you could have thought or imagined.”

Then challenge the people to look to what could occur, instead of why it hasn’t happened yet.

——–

Alinsky, Saul.  Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals (NY: Random House/Vintage Books, 1971, reprint 1989), pp108-112

 

Entertainment Evangelism

In the current LeadershipJournal.net, Walter Kallestad (pastor of Community Church of Joy in Phoenix, Arizona) tells how he created, and then abandoned a showtime church.

When he started at CCCoJ, he and his staff looked to build a church “for people who don’t go to church” … people who didn’t want to give anything, but only to be entertained and inspired.

The only way to capture people’s attention is entertainment, I thought. If I want people to listen to my message, I’ve got to present it in a way that grabs their attention long enough for me to communicate the gospel.

Attendance skyrocketed.  Every “show” played to a packed house.  People coming to faith was not bad, but he wondered if it was good. They were packing the pews, but not transforming the community.

“I knew we weren’t developing disciples who were taking up their crosses to follow Jesus. We’d produced consumers—like Pac-Man, gobbling up religious experiences, navigating a maze but going nowhere in particular. Too many were observing the show but not meeting God.”

A heart attack on was a wakeup call.  He realized the bulk of the effort and offerings supported maintenance of the property and the programs, but the results were not producing empowered disciples.  “We were entertaining people as a substitute for leading them into the presence of God.”
With the board’s permission, he repented – a radical shift.  They fired the professional performers, and used volunteers with a heart for worship.  Sermons went from feel-good homilies to Bible teaching.  One early sermon was simply reading Paul’s sermon at Pentecost, with an altar call.

A third of the congregation left.

Those that stayed were equipped and empowered to go be the church in the marketplace where God had called them to serve. They began to minister to their community and gave them the tools they needed.

“What does it profit a man if he builds a great church but loses community?”

 

Fear not!

Angels must be awesome creatures, because every time one apears in the Bible, he has to start the conversation by calming the person’s fears.  Or maybe that’s their job.  To be the messengers of the king of peace.

I’ve been reading a lot lately about the end of fear, in a variety of contexts.

First, there’s Rich Dad Poor Dad, a great little book about taking control of your money.  Toward the back (where I read today) is a description of why some people choose to stay poor.  It is their fear of failure.  They are so afraid to fail they never get started.  The runner runs toward the finish line even if there’s a world champion in the next lane.  He didn’t show up to admire the starting blocks – he came to run.  And even if he finishes fifth, he finishes well, and far ahead of the one who never started the race.

In church today we talked about the need for failure to grow us.  The lesson said it is unlikely you will ever love deeply if you never risk being hurt.  The sermon said that in your failures you learn the life lessons that refine you.  Psalm 23 doesn’t say God will rescue us from troubles, but that He gives peace as we walk through the trouble toward an uncertain future.  Going all the way through the troubles makes you stronger on the other side.

Tonite I let wordpress do it’s thing by suggesting random blogs, and I came upon Alli Macisaac’s posting about the end of fear.

I believe that God has a plan for all of us and these trials and tribulations are what are there to make things interesting.

Alli’s solution is to “Do one thing every day that scares you.”  She goes on to say “Even if these things don’t work out they are definitely worth it – it is only then you can say you have truly lived.”