Tag Archives: change

10 Growth Restricting Habits
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July 21, 2020

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Church Growth, Congregrational Ministries, Leadership

10 Growth Restricting Habits

by Franklin Dumond, Director of Congregational Ministries

While churches fail to grow for a number of reasons there are several habits that restrict growth. Now that we are re-imaging our gatherings and now that we have resumed in-person worship with social distance we have a new opportunity to identify some old habits we might put aside and to develop some new ones in their place.

Habits that restrict growth can be broken or relearned without official action by the congregation. Obstacles that restrict growth generally are enshrined in the bylaws and require a specific action to change. Habits are learned behaviors taken collectively they become the church’s culture. Culture is not required performance mandated in the bylaws.

Culture can be changed without a vote but new ways of thinking and acting take time to develop.

Habits that often restrict growth include:

  1. Seating patterns. When the congregation huddles in the back one-third of the auditorium it not only emphasizes emptiness it also takes all the best seats that would often be preferred by visitors. One of the advantages of social distance in our worship settings is that we have spread more evenly through the room.
  2. Announcements. Need to be reduced or eliminated unless they apply to everyone. Reminders that are targeted for a smaller group should be shared directly with that group.
    Verbal announcements should be limited to features that impact everyone. In a smaller church, most information that cannot be written or projected can be transmitted by word of mouth.
  3. Proofing. The tendency these days to use projection systems and word processors that save files for future use introduces the need to be especially vigilant regarding errors. Errors in lyrics where words are misspelled or misused or when stanzas do not match what is being sung cannot be corrected just by saving the file for next time.
  4. Guest Friendly Atmosphere. Everything must be filtered through what a first-time guest would expect/experience. If it is confusing or boring to the first time guest then it should not be said or done.
  5. Décor. Most church décor should be simplified and targeted more toward men with fewer flowers, ornaments, and pastels.
  6. Too many hats by too few people. Often willing volunteers are few and far between. Capable volunteers may then take on too many responsibilities leaving them tired and frustrated while not making a place for new folks to serve. One of the advantages of gradually resuming ministries is the possibility of sharing the lead among a larger group of volunteers.
  7. Solo rather than team ministry. Capable volunteers forge ahead knowing it is easier to do it yourself. This results in solo ministry rather than team development and thus long term service by the same volunteers.
  8. Status Quo. Doing what we’ve always done out of habit (because we’ve always done it) rather than doing what we’ve always done because it works is a habit that restricts growth. With several months of not doing it at all, it should be easier to try something new.
  9. Dust, clutter, decay. We get accustomed to dust, clutter, and decay but fresh eyes see it and often avoid return visits.
  10. Loss of Celebration in Worship. Where there is no celebration in worship a sense of duty and obligation makes growth unlikely. Do people smile during worship? Do AHA moments happen at least once in a while? Are answered prayers reported and celebrated?

What do you think? Have you noticed now that we have returned that some habits in congregations restrict growth? What can you do to change these habits? Will your activity become a pace-setting so that the culture of your church begins to change?

Recalibrate: 10 Steps Every Church Must take this Year, Or Be Dead In A Decade
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May 10, 2018

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Church Growth, The Summit

Recalibrate – 10 Steps Every Church Must Take This Year…

Recalibrate: 10 Steps Every Church Must take this Year, Or Be Dead In A Decade

Everything but Jesus and the Bible must be on the table.
by Karl Vaters – Keynote Speaker at the 2018 Mission & Ministry Summit

The church is not dying. It’s in fine shape. Jesus said he’d build it, and he is. Relentlessly and beautifully.

But individual congregations, denominations, and ideologies? Now that’s another story.

While the church of Jesus around the world continues to move forward, chasing away the darkness with the light of Jesus, many local expressions of the church are watching their candles flicker in recent years.

RECALIBRATE CHURCH

I believe the next decade or two will be critical for the western church. The culture around us is experiencing a once-in-a-millennium shift right now. A recalibration of the way we think about everything from our morality, to our sexuality, to our identity, and our theology.

It’s only just beginning. And the pace of it is being propelled into hyper-speed by new technology.

So what’s the local church to do? We must hold two seemingly competing ideals in our hands at the same time.

Ideal #1: Stand strong on the unchanging principles of God’s Word.

Ideal #2: Adapt our methods to a fast-changing world. If we hope to do these two things well, local congregations must reinforce the following 10 principles. And the sooner we get to work on them, the better.

1. REESTABLISH THE BIBLICAL ESSENTIALS

According to a recent article in The Washington Post, churches that stand firm on the biblical essentials are more likely to be thriving, while those that compromise on them are more likely to be dying.

We shouldn’t need a newspaper article to tell us to stick to the essentials. While everything else can change, the essentials cannot. Any church that abandons biblical principles won’t just fail to survive, they don’t deserve to.

2. EMPHASIZE DISCIPLESHIP AND LEADERSHIP TRAINING

The days of hiring a team of pastors to do all the ministry of the church is dying. Finally.

Instead, churches that thrive are taking Ephesians 4:11-12 seriously by equipping the saints to do the work of ministry and raising up a team of ministers.

In the coming decades, the pastor’s main task must shift from preaching and caregiving to training lay leaders to do the ministry of the church. That has always been our calling, anyway. Events on the ground are now forcing us to do it the biblical way.

For many, maybe most churches, this will be a long-term turnaround of attitudes and methods. Start now, or you may miss the boat.

3. REDUCE YOUR OVERHEAD

By all accounts, giving trends are down and will continue to fall. Churches with top-heavy staffing, excessive mortgages and high maintenance bills will find themselves buried under their increasing weight in the coming decades.

If local congregations, denominations, and parachurch ministries hope to survive, they need to get to work on

  • Getting out of debt (including mortgage).
  • Reducing the percentage of paid staff.
  • Training and empowering volunteers to lead and serve.
  • Sharing expenses with other churches and ministries.
  • Making bi-vocational ministry the new normal and anything else that can reduce the financial burden of church maintenance.

4. RETHINK YOUR BUILDING

Until very recently, if someone wanted to start a business, the first thing they did was find or build a store, office, warehouse, or other physical structure. Not anymore. Today, the rule is to avoid the encumbrance of a physical building for as long as possible. Churches need to do the same.

If your church doesn’t have a building, don’t be in a hurry to buy one. Stay nimble as long as possible. If you own a building – especially if you’re one of the growing number of churches that own a too-big building for your shrinking congregation – be relentless about finding creative ways to utilize the space as often as possible.

For many of our churches, it’s Use It Or Lose It time. As in, use the building or lose the church; facility, people … everything.

Recalibrate5. WORK WITH STRATEGIC PARTNERS

In many places, smaller churches are banding together – even across denominational lines – to share resources, think strategically, mend old wounds, and minister to their shared community.

In addition, there is a small, but growing network of parachurch organizations that are increasingly willing to come alongside local churches for little or no money to share everything from outreach ideas to administrative assistance, to graphic design and more.

Start by asking around on social media. You may be surprised what you’ll find. Or start a network yourself. It’s easier to do now than it’s ever been.

6. ENGAGE YOUR COMMUNITY

Churches must stop being identified by the location of their building and start being recognized for the passion of their heart.

A church that’s known as “the people who love kids (or addicts, or single moms)” has a much higher likelihood of thriving and surviving than the church that’s known as “the old building on the corner of First and Main.”

7. EMPHASIZE JESUS OVER TRADITION (OR DENOMINATIONS, OR BUILDINGS, OR POLITICS, OR…)

Everything but Jesus and the Bible must be on the table. Ask yourself this question. Would I be willing to give up (insert your preferred method or style here) if it meant doing a better job of reaching our community for Jesus?

If anything you’d put in that blank makes you pause (other than the biblical essentials), it’s an idol that must be abandoned.

8. RESTRUCTURE WHAT NEEDS TO BE RESTRUCTURED

Quit fighting to keep your favorite ministry, method or tradition alive. If it’s not part of the solution, it’s part of the problem.

9. MAKE DISCIPLES, NOT JUST CONVERTS

Converts join a club. Disciples start a movement. Converts follow traditions. Disciples follow Jesus. Converts change their minds. Disciples change their lives. And other people’s lives.

10. FIGURE OUT WHY YOUR CONGREGATION SHOULD SURVIVE

If your church disappeared tomorrow, what would really be lost? Yes, that’s the hard question. It might even feel cruel and uncaring. But it’s not. It’s essential. Any congregation that can’t readily answer why they should survive, won’t.

START TODAY

It’s been said that the best time to plant a tree is 20 years ago – the second best time is today.

The same goes for these principles. If you’ve been doing them, strengthen them. If not, get started now. Then be relentless at them. Not just this year, but every year. The survival of your local church depends on it.

10 Things That Demonstrate The World You Grew Up In No Longer Exists
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May 1, 2018

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Christian Life, Church Growth, The Summit

10 Things That Demonstrate The World You Grew Up In No Longer Exists

By Carey Nieuwhof – Keynote speaker for the 2018 Mission & Ministry Summit

You know things are changing, but the real question is how quickly and how deeply.

Well, the change is pretty fast and pretty deep. In fact, unless you’re under 25, the world into which you were born doesn’t really exist anymore.

You may have heard of the Beloit College Mindset list. It comes out every year and often makes the news. The list is designed to get college faculty (and others) into the headspace of the entry class of mostly 18-year-olds. Essentially, it’s a tutorial on how much the world has changed since the people who will be teaching that class were in college.

Here are a few random snippets from the Class of 2019 mindset list (the entering students are on average 18 years old):

  1. The Lion King has always been on Broadway.
  2. They have never licked a postage stamp.
  3. Princess Diana, Notorious B.I.G., Jacques Cousteau and Mother Teresa have never been alive.
  4. Hong Kong has always been under Chinese rule.
  5. Hybrid automobiles have always been mass-produced.

Clearly, the world has changed.

It’s changed for church leaders too—radically. So what happens when church leaders move on unaware of what’s going on around them?

It’s simple. Church leaders who are out of touch never touch the culture.

Missing the change around you means you will:

  • Increasingly speak a language people younger than you won’t understand.
  • Make assumptions that aren’t widely shared or are just wrong.
  • End up answering questions no one is asking.

So what changes do church leaders need to know? I can think of at least 10.

1. CHURCH ATTENDANCE IS NOW A FRINGE ACTIVITY

With the exception of a few U.S. communities (deep in the Bible Belt), nobody asks which church you attend anymore, because the assumption is you don’t go to church.

If respect for scripture is any indication of how people feel about Christianity, according to a recent Barna study, it’s pretty clear most cities in the United States are moving quickly away from some of the historic tenets of Christianity.

That doesn’t mean church attendance is impossible. It just means it’s not normal.

Take Las Vegas, Nevada. Only 14 percent of Las Vegans both read the Bible and believe it’s accurate in its principles. Yet Vegas has more than a few thriving churches, including Central Church with eight locations and upwards of 20,000 attendees. (You can hear Lead Pastor Jud Wilhite’s story on Episode 54 of my Leadership Podcast.) Churches like Central don’t fill up because people in Vegas are looking for a church to attend. Almost no one in Vegas is looking for a church to attend on a Sunday.

Churches like Central fill up because Christians invite their friends. Increasingly, church attendance is a fringe activity.

2. “ALL WELCOME” MEANS NOTHING

Almost every dying church has an “All Welcome” sign nobody takes seriously. Think about it, if you didn’t go to church, would you take that as an invitation? Next time you drive by a church building, ask yourself, “What would it take to convince me that I can walk in uninvited and participate in what they’re doing?”

Increasingly, I think unchurched people think about walking into a church the way you might think about randomly walking into a wedding to which you weren’t invited or into a corporate retreat for a company for which you don’t work. It would just be weird. In the future, about the only way non-Christians will keep showing up at Christian churches is via personal invitation. Regardless of what any sign might say, the real welcome comes from your members.

3. REGULAR CHURCH ATTENDANCE IS IRREGULAR

The assumption used to be that if you were a committed Christian, you would go to church every week. In fact, even most growing churches still silently run on that assumption, even as the leaders admit that weekly church attendance is far from the norm.

Culture has changed so radically in the last decade or two that even committed Christians aren’t in church as regularly as they used to be. (Here are 10 reasons why. careynieuwhof.com/10-reasons-even-committed-churchattenders- attending-less-often)

Honestly, this has got most church leaders still scrambling. Many church leaders are trying to figure out how to help people grow when they don’t go.

Innovators will have to figure out how to make sure that a step away from church attendance isn’t a step away from Christ, which, despite people’s best intentions, seems to be the case more often than not. Before you start to rail on the organized church and argue that ‘nobody needs church,’ (See also, careynieuwhof.com/impending-death-rebirth-cool-church).

4. A BAND, LIGHTS, AND HAZE ARE TRADITIONAL

You might have cashed in a lot of chips to redo your church’s approach to music over the last decade or two. And that’s wonderful. But increasingly, having a band and even lights and haze is pretty normal in many churches.

10 THINGS THAT DEMONSTRATE THE WORLD YOU GREW UP IN NO LONGER EXISTS - CHANGE

In fact, as Tony Morgan first noted a number of years ago, the way we do worship music in the ‘contemporary’ church is not that contemporary. In fact, the band, guitar, keyboard, and lights is the new traditional ‘rock’ worship. The culture has moved on to other music; hip-hop, R&B, DJ, pop and so much more.

Many ‘contemporary’ churches sound like they’re programmed for 50-year-olds. Culture sounds less like Coldplay or U2 and more like Bruno Mars, Drake, or Chainsmokers.

I’m not saying we should mimic everything. I’m just saying don’t think you’re current when you’re not. If you find this irritating, trust me, it is. It’s just that self-awareness is the key to so much. So be aware.

…the way we do worship music in the ‘contemporary’ church is not that contemporary. In fact, the band, guitar, keyboard and lights is the new traditional ‘rock’ worship.

5. THE SHOW NO LONGER CAPTIVATES

If you’re over 30, you remember the church of your childhood was probably trying to be ‘contemporary,’ they just weren’t very good at it. Church often provided a fairly low level of excellence in terms of singing, production and sometimes, speaking. That has changed massively.

With the connection that’s happened online, many preachers and musicians have become so much better at their craft. Production levels have soared at local churches. And it’s not enough.

I mean it’s good that we’re doing things well. But reaching people is about more than just doing what you do with excellence. It used to be that great preaching and great music grew a church. Now it’s more like the cost of doing business. Bad preaching and bad music can kill a church, but great preaching and great music don’t automatically generate church growth.

Something more fundamental is shifting. And it’s not all bad. In fact, it could be the rebirth of the church based on God’s movement and activity. Cool church is dying (careynieuwhof.com/impending-death-rebirth-coolchurch/) and something else is connecting with young adults in its place (careynieuwhof.com/5-surprisingcharacteristics- of-churches-that-are-actually-reachingthe– next-generation/).

6. YOUR CHURCH MEMBERS FOLLOW A DOZEN MINISTRY LEADERS WHO ARE NOT YOU

Go back to 40 years ago. Chances are the only pastor a church member knew was the pastor at their local church or their neighborhood church or someone they heard on TV or radio. Even in the ’90s and early 2000s, as culture changed, to ‘follow’ another preacher meant ordering their cassettes or CDs or tracking them in a very limited way in the early days of the Internet.

Contrast that to today, when many Christians actively listen to, read and follow more than a few other ministry leaders, subscribing to their podcast, reading their blogs and otherwise tracking with their church.

Insecure pastors might struggle with this. But if you can get over your insecurity, it’s not a bad thing. Secure leaders don’t compete with other church leaders, they complement them. Most of us may never preach like some of the top leaders out there. That’s OK. We need to be us. They need to be them. When you realize it’s a compliment, not a competition, everyone benefits.

7. GOD HAS BECOME GENERIC

As the Barna Group’s research has shown, even though most Americans self-identify as Christian, almost 50 percent function as post-Christian in their practices and beliefs. In other words, what people define as Christian and what constitutes genuine Christianity may be two different things.

Communicators and leaders, take note. It changes how we use the term ‘God.’

Trying to lead people into a relationship with God can mean almost anything to post-Christians, including their own definition of whatever spirituality might look like or feel like. Leading them into a relationship with Jesus is very different. In a post-Christian culture, God is generic. Jesus is specific and personal.

8. PEOPLE DON’T KNOW WHAT THEY’RE CONVERTING TO

It’s so easy to make assumptions that people who attend your church know what they’re stepping into. After all, don’t most people know what it means to be a Christian? Well, no they don’t. This problem has become so widespread in our post-Christian Canadian culture that I recently devoted an entire series (called Non- Committal) to explaining what people are converting to when they convert to Christianity.

Church leaders will have to become far more innovative in the language and metaphors we use to help people understand the basics of the Christian faith. It’s very difficult to become a Christian if you don’t even understand what that means.

9. BACKGROUND UNDERSTANDING IS OFTEN ZERO

In the same way that people don’t understand what becoming a Christian means or why it matters, post- Christian people have very little Christian background from which to draw. Again, that’s a communication challenge for church leaders. Gone is the era where any preacher can say “As we all know…” No, we don’t all know. We don’t know who Moses was, who David was, who Sarah was, or even really who Jesus was.

But can you tell us? Can you explain it in a way we all understand? The big surprise, of course, is that if you do this well, many Christians will thank you too. Because they didn’t really understand it either.

10. NO CHURCH CAN BE BETTER THAN SOME CHURCH

Our culture has gone through a few decades of people leaving the church. Often there are stories of heartbreak and disappointment there that really sting. Just read through the thousands of comments on this blog. You’ll see many. And it breaks my heart. But we’re moving in real time away from a generation of people who are done with church to a generation that doesn’t know church at all.

You would think that’s an obstacle, but perhaps it’s an opportunity. In a recent conversation I had with Ravi Zacharias, Ravi said the reception he’s receiving in nations where people never grew up in church is greater than in nations where people left church. They don’t have any hang-ups to overcome. (That conversation is Episode 83 of my podcast – https://careynieuwhof.com/mypodcast.)

What Signs Do You See? Those are the signs I see that the world we were born into no longer exists.