Category Archives: Leadership

We Need a Little Christmas
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November 5, 2020

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Congregrational Ministries, Leadership, Pastoring

We Need A Little Christmas!

by Franklin Dumond, Director of Congregational Ministries

Way back in 1966, Jerry Herman released the words to a now-classic Christmas tune. It was first performed in the musical “Mame” by
Angela Lansbury and was later made into a movie featuring Lucille Ball (1974). Since then the song has been recorded by dozens of major artists who have taken up the clarion call that we need a little Christmas.

The musical was set in 1929 just after Mame lost her fortune in the Wall Street crash of that year. In the face of this bad news, Mame insists we need a little Christmas. When I looked back to the lyrics I noticed a couple of things included in some of the lines that have been updated across the years. For example, in the original Thanksgiving is still a week away and everyone back then apparently knew that a spinet was a downsized piano.

Now that 2020 is finally coming to a close we certainly need a little Christmas—right this very minute!

As paternal grandparents, we share grandkids with the maternal grandparents. This means that every year we revisit the schedule of who visits with whom on what day. This often means that Christmas for us will be on Christmas Eve or even an earlier day depending on travel schedules and the other complications of life in an imperfect world. Christmas then is not just a date on the calendar but an event to be celebrated.

If Mame needed a little Christmas in 1929 with the stock market crash, surely we need a lot of Christmas with the Pandemic of 2020! The lyrics say it so well:

For I’ve grown a little leaner,
Grown a little colder,
Grown a little sadder,
Grown a little older;

And I need a little angel,
Sitting on my shoulder,
I need a little Christmas now.

While many Christmas plans for local churches will already be set here’s a couple of observations that can either help speed up or refine those plans.

First, with social distance measures still in place and with hot spots of Covid infection, everyone must ask the question about Christmas that has been asked about every other ministry this year. “Can we safely, responsibly do what we have always done to celebrate Christmas?”

Making a list and checking it twice must become a planning tool for the church calendar just as it is for the ‘visitor’ who is coming to town on Christmas Eve. What have we always done? Who has always done it? Is it appropriate this year? Do we need to suspend some activity for the year or do we need to dispense with traditions that are no longer meaningful or engaging?

Second, we need to give some attention to some important plans. We need a plan for our theme and we need a plan for our communication.

A plan for our theme needs to look both at sermon titles and worship themes as well as other ways we communicate the Christmas message. In this troubled year, we particularly need to communicate a message of hope. Since folks are longing for the good old days we also need to be nostalgic without being trapped in the traditional. One church consultant defined nostalgia as what was fun that brings back pleasant memories. Traditional, on the other hand, often harken back to methods or styles that are now archaic and thus not as meaningful as they once were.

For example, the traditional event of caroling where a group would travel around the neighborhood singing Christmas carols to friends and neighbors was once a popular activity. Back then most everyone knew the words and tunes to the 6-8 most popular carols because that was the sum total of the Christmas music included in church hymnals. Now with the explosion of Christmas titles and with the absence of printed music, it’s hard to do that once-upon-a-time-fun-event of caroling.

So an important question to ask is: “What plan do we have for Christmas content?” Sometimes this can easily be driven by a Christmas graphic that captures the message in a timely way. However it is developed, it is very, very important that this year’s content has a healthy portion of HOPE because we need a little Christmas now.

We also need a plan for our communication. How and when will we share our content? Weekly worship is obvious but are there other ways we need to communicate our Hope-Filled Message of Christmas? Social media posts, newsletters, cards, banners, video greetings…and other communication avenues available to us need to be used.

Communication can be driven by the graphic or logo used to promote the Christmas message. This simple act of branding—using the logo with everything we do—links our efforts into a unified expression. This means selecting a graphic that is easily adapted to the video projector and the photocopier is very important.

Communication also needs to be customized to various constituencies and age groups.

Only rarely does a church over-communicate. Most often churches under-communicate.

One piece of advice that seems unusual may be beneficial this year. After being stuck at home for months of shut down, many people do not react well to the “home” theme so often part of Christmas. For the home for Christmas may not be a time of reunion and may instead bring up too many negative images of the pandemic and its lockdowns.

Developing the content and a plan to communicate it echoes the work of the angels that first Christmas when they announced to the shepherds, “Unto you is born this day a Savior which is Christ the Lord.”

Ready for the next step? Then download our e-book “2020 Christmas Planning Pack”. The 2020 Christmas Planning Pack is a Church Talk Publication designed to help stateside General Baptist leaders cope with the “new normal”.

How Churches Grow: A Platform for Growth
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September 22, 2020

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Church Growth, Congregrational Ministries, Leadership, Pastoring

How Churches Grow: A Platform for Growth

by Franklin Dumond, Director of Congregational Ministries

While specific strategies for local church growth must be customized to each church, a few general principles have application in any church location and provide a starting point for discussing growth strategies.

First, outreach must be intentional, not accidental.

On a particular Sunday evening, a first-time guest attended the service. In the course of the evening, this man confessed his desire to become a Christian. That very evening the pastor and his evening crowd were able to share the gospel with him and lead him into a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. That first-time guest had driven past 12 different churches looking for one that had an evening service. Because he found that evening service he became a believer. This accidental outreach happens once in a while in almost every church. It used to be a hallmark of a church’s evangelism. The entire community knew that the church was open and the opportunity to follow Christ was part of every worship experience.

Successful outreach in the 21st century, however, must be intentional. It must be planned, sustained, resourced, and spiritually energized. A young intern made a keen insight as he looked around the church where he was serving. “You can predict when people will be saved around here,” he said in amazement. “Every time we offer our discipleship classes people get saved!”

Second, the power of relationships and the value of invitational witnesses cannot be overstated.

People respond to friends and family they trust. They come to hear the gospel when encouraged to do so by a positive invitation. In many families, however, it has been 2-5 generations since there was a direct family connection to Christ and his church. One very important strategy for growth is Big Day Evangelism when everyone is encouraged to invite friends and family members to share a worship service with them.

Third, when leading an established congregation to new growth, building alongside is much more effective than demolishing what exists.

Changing a church’s culture or preferred way of doing things can take 8-10 years, so invest in the long haul. It is the comers-and-stayers, not the comers-and-goers that make a difference. Because churches by nature are conservative, change can be difficult. It is often much less threatening to offer something new than it is to stop doing something that is already being done.

Fourth, recognize leadership lids and growth ceilings. Limitations exist. One limitation is the leadership skills/gifts/abilities of the leader.

An effective pastor of a multi-staff church with multiple worship services may not be able to lead a single cell congregation where he must be solo and hands-on in leadership style. By the same token, churches reach growth ceilings for a variety of reasons. It may be that the population base is not present or that facilities cannot be secured. As another example, a church that regularly sees large numbers of first-time guests and new members will be more skilled and accomplished at assimilation than the church that counts guests and new members for the year on one hand.

Fifth, will a refocus, restart, or adoption be involved?

This is important since these kinds of growth require transformational growth and radical change. Each can be appropriate at different times in the life cycle of a congregation.

Refocus takes the existing congregation into a new chapter. It occurs most naturally when a congregation is approaching or just past its peak.
Restart generally occurs at the end of a congregation’s life cycle when everything that was is coming to an end. A new beginning occurs with a new direction, new leadership, new programming in a newly remodeled building.

Adoption or merger occurs when one congregation joins another. Two places on the life cycle are the most likely times for this to occur. In the early stages of development, if the newly organized group determines that their dream/vision is not viable, they may keep that dream/vision alive by merging with or being adopted by another group. In the later stages of a church’s existence, a congregation may see adoption by a stronger sister-church as a preferable option to closure. Sometimes this allows them to become a satellite campus of another church.

Sixth, for evangelism to occur, a church must build the basics of evangelism into its very DNA.

The pastor must preach evangelistically. At least 2-3 times in the year the morning message should be nothing more than a simple presentation of the gospel.

The pastor and church leaders must repeatedly explain how to respond to the gospel and must be readily available to explore questions and issues with those who are on a spiritual quest.

The new member’s classes should teach the basics of how to share a personal witness.

The church should regularly share tools with its members so they will be properly resourced to invite and to witness. This could include providing gospel tracts, sample conversation starters, and invite cards. It could also include billboard advertising and saturation mailing campaigns that provide an incentive or secondary reinforcement to encourage congregation members to regularly invite folks to attend with them.
Specific strategies, when customized to the local setting and empowered by the Holy Spirit, will result in church growth.

Three types of churches
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September 1, 2020

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Church Growth, Congregrational Ministries, Leadership

Three Types of Churches

by Franklin Dumond, Director of Congregational Ministries

Anyone who studies the local church in the United States quickly recognizes that churches come in all shapes and sizes. Business franchises and fast-food chains look and function identically no matter where they are located. Local churches, however, are not carbon copies of one another.

While no two churches are exactly the same, a functional sameness often exists among churches of similar size. This generally means that similar-sized churches of different denominations function very much alike. This is especially noticeable in regard to the ways similar-sized churches reach out to new people and include them in the congregation. Understanding these similarities can help local churches understand their growth patterns and plan future outreach strategies.

Percentages of church sizes in the US

Gary McIntosh, in his book One Size Doesn’t Fit All, uses a simple grouping of three types of churches to help explain many of these similarities. He identifies small, medium, and large-sized churches based on their average attendance. He further identifies them as a single cell, stretched cells, or multiple cells in their organization.

In a small church, everyone knows everyone else. They form a single cell. Often the common bond that links them is kinship. It is not uncommon for a small church to be composed of members from two or three extended families. These key families provide all the leadership and organization for the church’s ministry. The small church will generally be 50 or fewer in size but can easily extend to 100-150 depending on the relationships that exist within the group. For example, if an extended family that includes several generations also includes several larger families, the ‘small’ church when measured by attendance will look more like a medium-size church. Nevertheless, when measured by who are the leaders, and how close the personal relationships are, the church will qualify as a small or single-cell church.

In a medium-size church, there may be too many people for everyone to know everyone else. Often a kind of stretched cell exists where a variety of programs and ministries exist, but leaders for those programs and ministries only come from a small group of long-term members. These long term members are themselves very likely to share kinship as part of an extended family that is embedded within the congregation. A medium-sized church will generally have 100-150 in attendance but may extend to 200, 300, or even 400 depending on the expertise, leadership, and energy level of the pastor and key lay leaders.

In a large church, there are too many people for everyone to know everyone else. With numerous groups and ministries where people can become involved, the large church becomes a congregation of congregations with leadership drawn from several groups, classes, or cells. Often the large church will be staff directed or will at least have a formal board or elder structure with clarified leadership roles and terms of service. The large church will generally have 400-800 in average attendance but can include those churches of 800-2000 who are organized in similar fashions. Organizationally, the larger church of 800+ must change to take on the structures of the mega-church of 2,000+ if it is to maintain its level of operation.

A review of the number of churches in the United States shows that the median size of a US church is 75. This means that 50% of all churches have 75 or fewer in average attendance while 50% also have 76 or more in average attendance according to the National Congregations Study by Duke University. George Barna’s research also discovered that 60% of churches have 100 or fewer in attendance.

Whether large or small, churches exist to proclaim the gospel and to advance the Kingdom. But does the large church grow in the same way the small church does? Will the outreach strategy for a very large church be the same as that of a very small church? Significant frustration surfaces when a style or method of outreach that is appropriate for one size church is attempted in another size church setting. This does not mean that churches do not want to grow. It does mean that different churches will grow differently.

While the specific strategy for a local church must be customized for that local church, there are principles that will guide churches in their growth. Here are three principles that provide a foundation for growth in any size church.

  1. Understand who you are as a church. Are you a small church that features close, personal, family-type connections? Are you a middle-sized church with a capable pastor who recruits and inspires key leaders? Are you a large church with an above-average communicator as Lead Pastor and a stellar worship team that attracts crowds?
  2. Determine what it is that you do best and then do it often! Build on your strengths.
  3. Identify existing programming to find those ministries that need improvement. Begin to correct weaknesses one or two at a time.

These principles provide a foundation for outreach and growth.