Photo by Mr. Tom Lillis IV via Flickr (Creative Commons)
Here are things that I hear people use as growth limiters when they talk about the vision and day-to-day action of reaching a community with the Gospel.
- Budgets - I would do x, y, or z if I had more. More often people talk about too much money in the church being allocated for one ministry while the thing they think will really reach people is under-funded.
- Buildings – Either a ministry has too much building so they need to have programs that justify the building or a ministry has not enough/no building and they use that as an excuse to not do something.
- Boards – The board is asking too many questions. Or the board doesn’t care. Or the board cares about the wrong things. Or the board doesn’t support your vision.
- Butts – We don’t have enough people. Or, more likely, we don’t have the right people. Or maybe too many of the wrong people. But I never hear someone complain of having too many people, in general.
- Boundaries – Some congregations are limited by physical boundaries while others are limited because they have no boundaries.
All of these are just excuses.
All of these imply that the spread of the Gospel in your community is somehow tied to the growth of your fiefdom.
All of these are just as much asset as they are liability.
All of these imply that church growth is about the organization and not the individuals leaning into their walk with Jesus.
All of these imply that its our job to grow the church and lead people to Jesus and not the other way around.
This I know to be true.
When you love your neighbors, when you meet practical needs, when you speak the truth in love, and when you lay aside your aspirations for the aspirations God has for your community… nothing can stop the spread of the Gospel message. It is too powerful.
Several weeks have now passed since Easter. My hope is that by now, church leaders are scratching their heads and wondering if it was all worth it.
Easter mayhem?
A lot, LOT, of churches consider Easter to be a day for growth. For church marketing types, it is Super Bowl Sunday. With the highest attendance of the year the attitude seems to be “Since lots of people are coming let’s do something awesome and maybe those visitors will come back!”
And boy do churches go all out. They alter the schedule. They plan a special service. The kids ministry is amped up. There are meetings about the big day. There is a special marketing plan for the day. There are mailers and prizes and flowers and bands and rehearsals and... then it’s over.
Somehow in the middle of this we try to be somber and remember that Our Lord was crucified and three days later resurrected! But the truth is that staff at those churches are hyped up on adrenaline and hope that this is the year that they will reach a new attendance record.
Easter mayhem is the 2000s version of Vacation Bible School which was the 1980s version of Sunday School
I don’t know how it all got started. But somehow Easter went from a holiday we solemnly celebrated to a day where people can win a car for showing up to church.
Easter, in some churches, has become less a religious holiday and more a church growth opportunity.
Easter is the highest attended weekend of the year in most churches. But the weekend after Easter is one of the lowest attended weekends of the year. Followed by the month of May– where church attendance and program enthusiasm typically murmurs out as the school year comes to an end.
What’s the point?
The point is exactly my point. While attendance is typically at an all-time high engagement is at an all-time low.
And when you look at the return on that investment– Easter mayhem is as effective at reaching people as Vacation Bible School. There may be a whole lot of people there for the event, but does it translate to long-term attendees?
Not in my experience.
What translates to long-term attendees?
Neighbors loving neighbors. Finding a community where you belong. Community service. And other things that aren’t as sexy as giving people a car on Easter Sunday or shaving a pastors head on the last day of VBS.
Which came first? The staff who ran the programs or the programs which required the hiring of staff?
No offense to my friends who work at churches– but I wonder if their goal is to secure a job for life or to work themselves out of a job as quickly as possible?
When I read church growth strategy books and articles I’m always amazed that they only talk about getting larger budgets, larger buildings, and larger staffs. Never mind that it’s a horrible strategy. Most think tanks only think about one strategy… how to get bigger. The idea of getting more efficient is ludicrous.
When I read about the church of the first 100 years after Jesus I see a church growth strategy of “get in, train people up, and get out as fast as possible.”
Here’s a centuries old tried and tested church growth strategy we have rejected: With no staff your church will grow.
The “if you build it they will come model” of the last 50 or so years has lead to utter devastation of the church. Numbers are down big time. Sure, you can point examples of big churches. And no doubt people will leave comments saying how awesome their programs are. But the percentage of Americans regularly involved in the local church has declined sharply in the current multi-staff model.
The fact remains that a church with less staff will be forced to be the church more than a church with programs where people show up and everything is done for them. This “worked” for thousands of years. What we are doing now isn’t working and we all know it.
At some point someone decided that everyone needed to be on staff at the church. So we hired a music pastor. A worship pastor. A youth pastor. A children’s pastor. An associate pastor. An administrative pastor. A senior ministry pastor. And all of that staff required administrative support. Oh- and they’ll need offices and space– so we’ll need a bigger building.
If I put my businessman’s glasses on I examine this trend and say: You’ve added a lot of overhead. Your business multiplied by 25 times, right?
Wrong. The strategy didn’t work. But now we have an entire industry of church workers in an environment where they are reaching fewer and fewer people with bigger, more expensive programs. Now we’ve created an entitlement that simply isn’t sustainable nor is it leading to the growth long ago predicted.
It’s almost too easy for me to point to examples of this in other countries. (We certainly saw this in Haiti.) But it’s also true among the exploding Latino and African-American churches in the United States. With almost no infrastructure they reach thousands. In your own community it is likely that there is a church kicking butt with nearly no overhead of staff or a building.
I’m well aware of the biblical justifications that church staff deserve to make an income. Yes, I’ve used that myself. I’m not arguing that you have a right to claim that to be true. I’m merely questioning the strategy and inviting you to recognize that this strategy has seemingly paralyzed the church.
Even those who bring up the Pauline argument for getting paid in ministry often neglect to mention that Paul also didn’t implement this strategy in all the places he ministered. Nor did he ever buy a house and start a family.
Some questions to get you thinking
- Where does the offering at your church go?
- Where did the funds in Acts go?
- How much has your church grown in the last 10-30-50 years using the current staff-heavy strategy?
- What would it look like if say… 90% of that offering were given away in your community to feed the poor, care for the sick, take in orphans, protect widows, on and on?
- Don’t you think that would be good news to the neighborhood?
What I’m not saying
- The church is wrong to have staff
- The church should fire staff
- All of my friends who do associate level ministry are bad/dumb/hurting the ministry of the church in their community
- My own church is bad, filled with money hungry punks who make fat salaries. (Um, they all raise their own support!)
What I am saying
- A church as effective as the Book of Acts is possible today.
- Churches should ask hard questions about meeting the needs of their community.
- A lot of church growth strategies are really “church growth industry” growth strategies.
- Church leaders should challenge their assumptions of what they know vs. what they know to be true in Scripture.
- It is possible for the local church to reach 90%+ people in your community.
- We should not be satisfied to “pay the bills” and reach 5-10% of our community.
“Wake up, O sleeper,
rise from the dead,
and Christ will shine on you.” Ephesians 5:14
Right now there are a lot of people making a lot of money telling churches how they can grow. Along the same lines, there are a lot of church boards and pastors wasting a lot of time discussing church growth strategy.
An observation. Have you noticed that churches that want to grow (100 to 1000 people) flock to churches that grew 10, 20, or 30 years ago but have since plateaued? It’s like asking Bill Gates, “How do you start a software company?” Bill wouldn’t have a clue! When he wants to start a software company he buys one! In the same way, asking a church of 10,000 how to grow is a waste of time because they knew how to do it in their town 10, 20, or 30 years ago but haven’t a clue how to do it today in your town!
So let me save your church some time and money. Here are 3 guaranteed ways NOT to grow a church. There must be 20 conferences, 50 books, and 100 consultants based on these three lies.
#1 You have to have a great ____ ministry. This lie has been out there forever. A church with a great van ministry that’s really reaching people will one day go, “Hey… let’s start teaching people how to start a van ministry so they can copy us!” Same thing with student ministry, kids ministry, music ministry, puppet ministry, after school ministry, seniors ministry, etc. None of these programs will grow your church! It’s just a marketing lie to think that you can grow a church by having a great program. Having great programs is vitally important to the mission of any church (reaching and discipling people) but there isn’t a program out there that will grow a church from 300 to 1000 people! If you see a conference, book, or consultant who tells you “If you just have ____ you’ll see the growth you are looking for” just know that you’re being sold an idea that worked in one location and won’t work in yours. The best consultants will look deeply into your organization before recommending anything!
#2 If You Build it They Will Come Building stuff and remodeling stuff is highly addictive. But buildings and environments don’t grow churches. I’ve been to some real dumps that were exploding in growth. And I’ve been to some beautiful buildings that were empty. Have you ever been to Europe? There you can visit some of the best looking church buildings in the world, they are mostly empty on Sunday mornings. As a 16 year old I toured the Cathedral in Strasbourg France. Completed in 1439 the cathedral is amazing in its beauty. It was the tallest building in the world from 1647 to 1874. Talk about a city on a hill! Want to know how many people go there now? None.
A ministry will endure when it focuses on its task at hand way more than its location. Location means squat. (Just ask the Chinese!)
If someone is telling you that a new building or a new _____ will grow your church, they are either deceived or trying to sell you something. Take a tour of some of the fastest growing churches in the United States and you won’t be overly impressed with architecture, ornate decoration, or interior design. What’s on fire in those places is not the building!
#3 “You have to be more focused on reaching people than keeping people.” This is just ignorant marketing! It’s even worse pastoring.
The best thing you can do to grow a church is to lead, grow, and love the people in your church. If they are growing, being lead to deeper expressions of their faith, and feeling loved by the people of the church, they will tell their friends. That makes sense along every front a church looking to grow. Marketing, strategy, leadership.
The only church growth advice that I’ve ever heard that is truly a guarantee is “All healthy organisms grow.” That is dead on. If only the folks looking to grow their churches would focus on getting the church they have today healthy, it would grow. But to take an unhealthy church and try to grow it with a new building or a new program or a new focus is just silly.
Q for Church leaders: What do you think? Do you think I’ve captured 3 lies in church growth? Or do you think those experts out there really have something that can help you grow your church?
