Christmas trip

Yesterday evening my wife and I returned home from Austin, Texas where we had spent a few days visiting our son and grandson. We don't get to see them as often as we would like, but we always try to make it down there a few days before Christmas. We enjoyed some great Texas bar-b-que at Terry Black's famous bar-b-que restaurant. We go there every time we are in Austin because it is some of the best bar-b-que I've ever eaten. We go shopping and do some other things, but mostly we just hang together as family.

I often think back to previous Christmases when I was younger. Extended families got together which meant there were plenty of cousins to play with. Later, after Faye and I married, we spent part of Christmas Eve with her eight brothers and sisters and all their kids. Her brother had a nice pole barn which we cleaned up and used for the get-together. He and I would go out into the woods and cut down a large cedar tree and take it to the barn. It was so big we had to pull it behind a tractor. When we put it up we tied the top to the rafters to make sure it didn't tip over. Tables were set up, and a big feed was enjoyed by all. Afterwards, there were lot of presents to unwrap. We would then leave there and go to my parents for a much smaller celebration.

I cherish those memories because it's not possible to repeat them today. My wife's remaining siblings got together last Saturday, and my brothers and sisters will get together the Saturday after Christmas. Many members of the family won't attend because they live too far away. Just like our recent trip to Austin, we were not able to see two of our grandchildren because one is in school in Pennsylvania and another one works in Maryland. You adjust, but it's not the same as the memories I have from my childhood.

Life happens, and change is inevitable, but many Christmas traditions remain. Churches will present Christmas programs, choirs will sing anthems, live nativity scenes will demonstrate to the world what that first Christmas might have been like. Churches will see increased attendance this coming Sunday.

But, most important of all, Christmas will happen. We will be reminded that because of this babe born in a manger, there is hope in the world. Despite everything happening, we have hope because the Son of God came to earth as a babe lying in a manger. Joy is available to all who believe in Him despite the junk that may be happening in their lives. Lives can be transformed because because over 2,000 years ago a Jewish child was born in a little, insignificant village in Israel who just happened to be the Son of God.

My prayer for each of you who reads this blog is that you have experienced the transforming power of Jesus Christ in your life. You do not have to live with the guilt you feel over the things you have done wrong in your life. You do not have to live with a fear of death because you do not know what eternity holds. This Christmas season is the perfect time to ask Jesus Christ into your life to be your Lord and Savior. Allow Him to cleanse you of every wrongdoing in your life. Experience the freedom of knowing that your sins are forgiven and the joy that comes knowing that you are part of the family of God. If you do this, I can guarantee this will be the greatest Christmas you will ever experience.  

Church traditions

 Unless your church is a new church startup, it has a number of traditions that have served it well over the years. Even new churches will sometimes reflect the traditions the new church planter knew in former churches. Some of these traditions serve the church well and should be maintained. Others may need to be replaced if we are to reach a new generation of people.

It's important to remember that church traditions arose because they became convenient ways of doing things when the tradition was started. Chances are, they replaced older traditions that no longer worked well in a new culture. It is even more likely that the new ways of doing things were resisted by some who wanted to continue with their older traditions. Now, the traditions that replaced the older traditions are considered sacrosanct by the current membership despite the fact they are now a hindrance to the church.

Several years ago a rural church discussed paving their parking lot. Some in the church resisted believing that the gravel parking lot was sufficient. The pastor reminded them that before the gravel was added years earlier, the parking lot was dirt. This was fine when many of the members rode buggies and horses to church, but it became a problem when most of the membership started driving cars. Who wanted to get stuck in a muddy church parking lot? Today, the expectations of people, and especially the younger people churches claim to want to reach, expect better facilities. Who wants to walk through a muddy, or snow-covered, church parking lot when they don't have to do? They don't when they shop at their favorite stores. As an added example, the pastor reminded the congregation that it had only been a few decades ago that the church replaced their outhouse with an indoor restroom. He asked if anyone wanted to return to the outhouse. The church voted to blacktop the parking lot. Over the next couple of years it had to add additional parking because their lot had filled up.

What traditions does your church have that no longer add value to the church and may be limiting your growth? I can almost guarantee your church has them. Will it be easy to eliminate them? Probably not, but it will be necessary if you are to reach a new generation of people for Jesus Christ. 

The enemy of success

One day while I was serving as a Regional Minister in our denomination I was attending our monthly staff meeting. We began to discuss how ministry was changing and the problems many of our pastors were having with those changes. I commented that I felt that I had enjoyed a good 20 year ministry in my previous church, but I was certain that if I returned to pastoral ministry, I could not repeat doing what I had been doing and have a successful ministry. I also shared that I wasn't certain I could make the changes necessary to have an effective ministry in today's climate.

John Maxwell reminds us that "the greatest enemy of tomorrow's success is sometimes today's success." We think we can just keep repeating what has worked in the past or is working now, and it will work in the future. That's not always the case. Ford no longer only offers its cars in black. Families no longer watch television programs in black and white. Things change. People's expectations change. New and better ways of doing things are constantly being developed, and, yes, this even includes the church.

There is nothing especially wrong with traditions unless they block progress. Many churches are driven by their traditions, and any attempt to circumvent the traditions is often met with great resistance. What we forget is that many of our traditions today were challenges to the traditions of the past. Those older traditions had to be replaced by new ways of thinking and acting for the church to move forward in its culture. The same is true for today's church.

One of the great needs of today's church are people who are willing to think outside the box. Instead of just learning what the traditions of a church are we need people who will ask why those traditions exist and do they continue to serve any purpose. Do they help or hinder the church in fulfilling its purpose in today's world? When we find traditions that hinder we then need to have the courage to replace them with new ways of doing things.

I realize how scary that sounds to some people, even leaders. Many pastors like church traditions because they know what's expected of them and they don't have to learn new ways of doing ministry. But, this is not a mindset that leads to successful ministry. This kind of thinking does not lead to changed lives.

Someone once said the seven last words of a dying church are "We've never done it that way before." In 14 years of regional ministry I have seen those words played out in too many churches who would prefer to die than change. We used to hear people say that if something wasn't broken, don't break it. A better saying might be "If it isn't broken, break it, because it will soon be obsolete anyway." Not all traditions need to be discarded, but most churches would be well served to take a look at their traditions and determine if they are helping or hindering your ministry. Boldly replace the ones that hinder ministry and prepare for a greater harvest than your church has perhaps seen in years. 

The challenge of ministry in traditional churches

So much of ministry depends on traditions. Older pastors, like myself, were taught to do ministry a certain way that may have applied to people in previous generations and in previous contexts. I recently blogged about ridding my library of a lot of books. Many of them reflected the thinking of the past and were really outdated for the 21st century. (Some were outdated for the 20th century!) When I told someone I had tossed them into a dumpster I was asked why I didn't give them to a young pastor starting out. I responded that they would be of no value to that young pastor or to the church he or she might lead.

Existing churches struggle to find pastoral leadership, especially smaller and mid-size churches. One reason for this difficulty is that many younger pastors want to serve in more non-traditional settings. They feel led to new church planting to avoid the growth-limiting traditions found in many existing churches. Some are drawn to churches after the planter leaves to start another church. Few desire to go to a 150 year old church with few or no young people. Others are unwilling to deal with the challenges of ministering to three or four generations who have different expectations of their minister. We may not agree with their thinking, but it is the reality that older, existing churches face.

Pipe organs, hymnbooks, liturgies, denominational Sunday school literature still meet a need for some people, but the numbers of those people decrease every year. One church with two services each Sunday, one contemporary and one traditional, see fewer numbers each year in the traditional service. A gentleman I know who attends the traditional service in that church asked me once what they could do to see that service grow in attendance. I responded that no one in that service is having babies, so the only way I knew of was for them to begin inviting their unchurched friends. He was not encouraged because his circle of friendships was growing smaller each year, and the ones who were left all attended churches. I imagine this story could be said of many churches.

I have read one church growth person who suggested that churches should close down after 50 years. I can understand his reasoning, but I don't think it's necessary. What is necessary is that churches, and pastors, may need to reinvent themselves to better reach the younger generations. This will impact how we preach, the music we use in worship, our worship styles, the way we structure the church, its outreach and discipleship ministries, and virtually every system in the church. Traditions that limit our ministry effectiveness need to be abandoned. Other traditions can be used as foundations upon which we can build new ways of doing ministry that will impact people's lives and the Kingdom of God.

Churches on life support

Most of my readers know what I'm about to share, but for anyone new I want to give a backdrop for this post. I am 75 years-old and have been in ministry since 1981. I served one church for twenty years before spending the next 14 years as a minister in our judicatory with direct responsibility for 133 churches. Since retiring from that ministry I have served three churches as their Transitional Pastor and am currently serving the third church. From my experiences I agree 100 percent with what Reggie McNeal wrote in The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church.

The current church culture in North America is on life support. It is living off the work, money and energy of previous generations from a previous world order. The plug will be pulled either when the money runs out (80 percent of money given to churches comes from people aged fifty-five and older) or when the remaining three-fourths of a generation who are institutional loyalists die off or both.

The sad thing is that most churches are not aware of this. They realize things have changed, but they still hope that some day people will come to their senses and return to church. All they have to do is to keep doing the same things they did in the 1950s and everything will be great. That's not going to happen. Many churches are living off savings from the money that came from the Builder Generation, a generation that is growing smaller every day, and when that money is gone they can turn out the lights. 

Some churches do realize what is happening, and they are seeking new ways of doing ministry that will be appropriate in their context, but these churches often run into a lot of opposition. The current members like things the way they are. Their needs are being met. Change will just produce conflict, and many church leaders are very conflict-avoidant. Some pastors who see the hand-writing on the wall are counting down the days until retirement. Others are simply leaving the ministry and seeking other employment.

I'm painting a rather dismal picture, but it is a reality for many churches. What is especially sad is that every church is in the midst of a huge mission field. We know from studies that a minimum of 50 percent of every county in the US is unchurched, and in some counties it can be as high as 80-90 percent. Using just the 50 percent figure, we have a potential mission field in the county in which I live of 16,000 people. I seriously doubt that if every church in our county was full that we could hold that many more people in addition to the ones who already attend our services. We need new churches, and we are seeing some being started. But, what we also need are our current churches getting serious about the Great Commission and becoming missionaries to this mission field God has given us.

At some point, our church members must stop thinking only about their own needs and preferences and being to think about the eternal fate of those who will die without Christ. We must become willing to put aside our wants in order to present the gospel to the unchurched in a way that will speak to them. This will often impact our worship styles, our music, our programming, our traditions and many other aspects of church life that many of us take for granted.

One thing that has helped me is to remember that many of our church traditions were once new ideas that were developed to serve a new generation. Those new ideas were often rejected by those in the church at that time, but eventually they prevailed and enabled the church of that time to reach the people of that time. Now, many of those traditions have become a roadblock to reaching a new generation.

In a doctoral class I took Elmer Towns reminded us that every church has created walls that keep people out. Often, these walls were unintentional, but they were built anyway. He challenged us to tear down those walls and begin to build bridges into our communities by which the gospel can be shared. What walls can you identify in your church that keep people out? Are you willing to tear them down. If your church is on life support, you don't have much time.

Traditions

 I can't remember when we first watched The Grinch on television. It may have been in 1966 when it first came out. I do remember my wife and I sitting in a motel room around 1968 watching it on the TV. I was in the Navy and could not come home for Christmas. She flew out to California for a week to spend Christmas with me, and we watched the Christmas specials together. We've never failed to watch The Grinch since then. When it came on the other night our daughter called to make sure we knew it was on so we quickly changed the channel to watch it.

At one point I mentioned to my wife that there was one scene that used to be the spot for the commercial break, but they had taken the commercial break a little sooner. Another point in the show I noticed that one scene had been cut out. We laughed at how we had watched this show so many times we recognized the small changes between this presentation and previous ones.

We are thankful for the traditions that our family has developed over the years. Those traditions are special only to our family, but they serve to remind us of the years we've spent together. Traditions become glue that binds a family together. They are the memories one has of the past that brings a smile to the face and become the stories that are told when a loved one passes.

My wife's family had a tradition on Thanksgiving morning. The men in her family went rabbit hunting on her father's farm. That tradition is no more. I am the only one still alive from that tradition, but I can assure you that early on this past Thanksgiving morning I thought about those mornings we would all gather for our annual hunt. It brought back a lot of happy memories.

I hope your family has some traditions that you observe on a regular basis. Even the ones that seem rather insignificant can result in some great memories and become part of your legacy. While some traditions will change over time, new ones can be created to take their place.

One tradition that every family needs is to attend church regularly. While Christmas specials and rabbit hunts can become wonderful traditions, nothing will impact your family's life more than being involved in your local church. A loving congregation committed to a relationship with Jesus Christ and to one another will be a source of comfort and transformation.

If attending and being involved in a church is not part of your family's traditions, I encourage you to consider making it so in the coming year.