Riding a dead horse

While going through my files recently I came across an interesting note I had copied years ago about what we should do if we find the horse we are riding has died. There are several options a person can choose.

• We can whip the horse harder.
• We can study programs that offer to teach us how to ride dead horses more efficiently.
• We can tell everyone "This is the way we've always ridden dead horses."
• We can move the horse to a new location.
• We can buy a new bit and bridle to make the dead horse look better.
• OR, we can dismount and climb on a live horse that can run.

Which one do you think would be the best option?

Much of what the church is doing today is riding a dead horse. Many of our programs and ministries have not produced good fruit in years, and yet we insist on maintaining those programs and ministries. In fact, we form committees to protect these dead horses to make sure they are not replaced with something living. We ask people to spend valuable time and resources to oversee these dead horses, and then we wonder why they don't have the time to give to new ministry opportunities that might actually be productive.

What ministries in your church is actually producing results and which ones need to be replaced? We read that at least 50 percent of the population in every county in the United States is unchurched. We have a huge mission field that is not being reached by what we are currently doing. Every church needs to ask itself which is more important: protecting the dead horses that we are trying to ride or finding new ministries that will better reach this unchurched population. Jill Hudson asks the question another way in her book When Better Isn't Enough. She asks, "Will the church in the postmodern world become a museum or a movement?" Great question each church will have to answer for itself?

Be encouraged

Yesterday was a rough day. After sitting in meetings for the past two days I came home to a number of phone messages. I listened to stories of difficult issues churches are going through right now and of pastors whose lives are in major upheaval. As one pastor said, "Satan is really at work right now."

Yes, he is, but then again he is always at work against God's people. His sole purpose is to steal, kill, and destroy, and he is very good at his work.

I just want to encourage my readers this morning. While it's true that Satan is at work, so is God, and our primary focus needs to be on Him. He has already won our victory at Calvary, and while the devil can be a difficult foe, he is already defeated. If the work you are doing wasn't so important, the devil wouldn't spend so much time trying to sidetrack you. I know how easy it is to get sidetracked when everything seems to be falling apart all around you. In fact, I'm going through a very difficult time personally myself. I'm certainly not saying we need to ignore the personal challenges in our lives and pretend they aren't there. That's not realistic. I am saying that we need to keep our focus on Jesus Christ and trust Him to bring us through whatever challenges we may be facing right now.

God loves you very much. I truly do not believe we have the capacity to fully understand just how much He does love us. Even when we cannot see it happening He is constantly working behind the scenes in our lives. He has not abandoned you nor has He turned His back on you. If you are going through a rough time right now please say to yourself, "God loves me more than I can possibly realize." Keep reminding yourself of this great truth throughout the day. I know I intend to.

Church guests

I was recently asked by the pastor of a church I had visited to give him an assessment of the church. He was especially interested in the friendliness of the congregation towards people who did not normally attend the church. It was a great question that demonstrated he understood the importance of hospitality. From my experience of visiting well over a hundred churches in the past nine years I believe that hospitality is one of the areas in which many smaller churches need to improve. Many people visiting a church for the first time will decide within the first seven minutes whether or not they will return. This decision is often made well before the service even begins. What are some of the ways your church can make a positive first impression on your guests? I recently heard Nelson Searcy speak on this issue at a workshop, and I'll share with you from the notes I took.

Hospitality begins by your congregation seeing every guest in your church as a gift from God. They did not have to attend church that morning, and they certainly did not have to attend your church. It is likely they passed other churches closer to their home to attend yours, so it's important to believe their presence in your service is a gift from God to your church. The question then is, how will your church treat that gift?

There are four things that will make a positive first impression on these guests. The first is how they are greeted. The first thing that greets your guests is your property. Drive around your church property and look at it from the perspective of someone who has never been there before. Is the grass neatly cut? Is the door clean and painted? Is the parking lot clean of debris? It is no accident that McDonald's has someone pick up the trash from their parking lot every morning. What about the persons assigned to greet people as they enter the building? Are they friendly? Have they been trained in how to greet people? Do you have your most personable members serving as greeters?

The second thing Searcy mentioned was how guests are directed. Do signs clearly point the way to the nursery, to the bathroom, and to the sanctuary? If someone asks for direction to some location in the building are they pointed in the way they need to go or does someone take them? The correct answer is they should be escorted to their destination.

The third quality is how they are treated. Have you ever gone into a restaurant bathroom and found really nice paper towels neatly folded on a clean countertop, mouthwash or mints, and nice soap containers filled with soft disinfecting soap? Have you gone into a bathroom and found water and towels all over the floor and countertop, soap dispensers half-hanging on the wall and often nearly empty, and those stupid air machines that couldn't dry your hands if you stayed in there for a half-hour? Which bathroom made you feel better about the place where you were eating, and which one would cause you to want to return to this restaurant? Now, what should your bathrooms look like? How are your guests treated?

The fourth and final one for this posting is how they are seated. After a room becomes 60% filled it becomes harder to find a seat. Most guests won't be comfortable sitting on the front pew or row of seats. Our members are not comfortable sitting there so why should we think guests would want to sit there. The seats next to the aisle are usually filled which forces late arrivers, including guests, to have to interrupt people to get to an inside seat. This often causes guests to feel very uncomfortable. Once the sanctuary begins to fill up it becomes important for the ushers to seat their guests. The usher can ask people sitting on the aisle seats to allow these individuals to get to their seats taking the embarrassment from the guests.

One final thought Searcy shared with us...women will often decide whether or not to return to your church based primarily on two things: the cleanliness of the facility and the security of the childcare. Again, take a walk through your church and look at it through the eyes of a first-time guest. What are they seeing when they see it for the first time? Is it clean? What are the security features of your childcare? The answers to these two questions may determine how many of your first-time guests return.

Growing leaders grow churches

Although there are many factors that enable a church to grow, one common factor you will find in nearly every growing church is that it is being led by a growing leader. Leaders who become satisfied with where they are in their personal lives are unlikely to ever grow a church because they have stopped growing themselves. These non-growing pastors are easy to identify. Their sermons become stale and they show no passion for ministry. They merely go through the motions doing the minimum required to keep their job. Such leaders lose their vision for the church and are willing to settle for a maintenance mindset. If you want to lead a growing church you must first be committed to personal growth and pursue that growth each and every day. How can you do that?

Like anything else you want to achieve in life, personal growth requires a plan. It isn't going to just happen; you have to prepare for it and create a plan that will allow growth to occur in your life. Do you have such a plan? What are you doing intentionally that will result in your personal and professional growth in 2009?

What books are you reading this year? Do you have a list of books that you will read between now and the end of the year? Is there a reason you selected those books? For my devotional reading right now I am reading books on prayer in order to deepen my prayer life and my personal devotion time. As a result of my reading I have changed some things in my prayer life that I believe have improved it. This year I have also read a number of good books on leadership as a way to improve as a leader. Perhaps I am prejudiced because of my love for reading, but I believe a person who doesn't read good books cannot grow.

What workshops have you attended or plan to attend this year? Every minister receives countless invitations to workshops and seminars every year, and many of these are excellent opportunities to learn new skills and knowledge. In addition to leading several workshops this year, I have also attended several. At a recent gathering I led a workshop on the first day of the conference and attended workshops led by other presenters on the other two days. When I walked in one workshop someone who had attended mine the day before said, "Well look, he also goes to workshops!" You owe it to yourself and to others to attend at least one quality workshop each year. Even as a bivocational pastor I could find time to attend one or two, and each workshop I attended contributed to my growth.

Who have you invited alongside to help you grow? Mentors and coaches are essential at various times in our lives. Every minister has found times when he or she just felt stuck. Nothing seems to be happening in their lives or ministry and they have run out of ideas to try to reverse that. It is during such times that we need to invite a coach or mentor to walk with us through those dry valleys to help reach the other side much quicker. More than once I have gone to an experienced pastor when I just couldn't find the answer to my problems myself. More recently I have turned to a personal coach. It is amazing how much clarity a good coach can bring to a person in only a few sessions. Some people think having a coach is an expense they probably can't afford, but it is really an investment in your life and ministry. To put it in business terms, a good coach will provide you with an excellent return on investment.

There are more factors leading to personal growth than these three, but they are a good place to start. Let me ask the questions again. How have you planned to grow this year? What books are you reading this year? What workshops have you attended or plan to attend in 2009? Who have you invited to walk alongside you to help you grow as an individual and as a minister?

Sermons outlines now available

Bivocational ministers are some of the busiest people in the world. Some weeks it can be very difficult to find the time to develop a sermon, and if you serve in a church where you have to preach two or three times every week it can be really rough. To help you with that I have added a new resource to my website. Every week or two I will put a new sermon outline on the web site that is free for you to use.

I encourage you to take the outline and make it your sermon. Use your own stories and illustrations. Use different texts that will better fit your congregation. You will likely find that my outline will trigger some thoughts leading to other sermons that will be much better than what I've provided. I found in 20 years of preaching to the same congregation every Sunday that sermon ideas can be found in some of the most unlikely places. One sentence in a book has led me to develop a whole series of sermons. Reading a sermon someone else wrote or listening to an audio of a sermon has help me develop a different sermon.

Each of the sermons I'll include have been preached by me to good reviews. Most will have been preached several times to different congregations. Go to the website and check out this week's message on discipleship, and please let me know if this is helpful to you.

Are you ready for a coach?

In the past few weeks I have talked to a number of bivocational ministers who are feeling extra stressed these days. They feel frustrated that their churches are not growing. Some are dealing with family issues, and in some cases the ministry is making those issues worse. A number are dealing with financial problems. They feel stuck as a person and as a minister.

I know how they feel because I have been there more than once. It's not a fun place to be, and it can be very difficult to feel there will ever be better days ahead. The last time I was dealing with some of those issues I was fortunate that I had a good coach to help me work through some of the challenges I was facing. Because of the benefit that I received from coaching I became interest in helping others as a coach. Since then I have had the opportunity to coach a number of fully-funded and bivocational ministers. The success of these coaching relationships led me to decide to do my DMin project on coaching bivocational ministers for greater ministry effectiveness. I am about half-way through that project and more convinced than ever that coaching is a great tool to help someone be able to again be moving forward in his or her life and ministry.

Right now I am able to coach two more persons who are tired of feeling stuck and are ready to move forward once again. Because I see coaching as part of my ministry to bivocational ministers my fees are much lower than most coaches charge. If you are feeling frustrated with your life or ministry right now I would encourage you to see those fees as an investment you are making in yourself.

If you are ready to again move forward with your life and ministry and believe having a coach might help you do that, please contact me for further information about the coaching relationship. You don't have to settle for being stuck.

We are not keeping up

I just finished reading a challenging book by Stephen Gray and Franklin Dumond called Legacy Churches. The book was challenging for several reasons, but one of the most troubling things I found in this book was how quickly the church is losing ground in its efforts to reach the world for Jesus Christ.

The authors reported that it is widely accepted that 40% of Americans attend church on a regular basis. However, they quote another researcher, David Olson, who found that the average church attendance in actually around 17.5 percent! They go on to tell us

"In 2007 the American population climbed to over 300 million. However, the attendance averages within most American churches has remained unchanged for well over a decade. In 1990, approximately 52 million American attended worship each week. Fifteen years later, in 2005, the number remained relatively unchanged. While the United States population continued to explode from 1990 to 2005, the average worship attendance, as a percentage of the population, declined almost 3 percent...According to Olson's research, if the trend continues, by 2020 the percentage of Americans attending worship could drop from 17.5 percent to 14.7 percent."

The church already has lost much of its influence on society, and if these numbers are correct we are in danger of having even less impact in another ten years. The question I keep asking myself is what will the church do about this? Are we going to continue on doing the same things we have been doing which have already proven to be not very effective, or are we going to honestly assess everything we are doing as churches and denominations and prayerfully seek new visions from God for the future?

Our churches are growing older every year because we are not reaching younger people. Our values continue to be pushed out of the public arena because we have become so weakened that a large majority of the world no longer takes our values and beliefs seriously. We are failing to fulfill the Great Commission to the point that we will soon see 80% of our nation's population unchurched. We are being replaced by Eastern religions, cults, and a mixture of beliefs people combine to create their own religious system.

We have two choices. We can wring our hands, talk about how bad things are getting, and hunker down and hope to survive until the Rapture, or we can decide to become the church God has intended all along. At some point in history, a group of people shared a common vision to establish your church in order to reach your community for the Kingdom of God. It is time to recapture that vision. If the church is going down, let's go down fighting the enemy for every soul we can capture for the Kingdom of God. I bet your church sings "Rescue the Perishing" several times a year. Let's start doing that instead of just singing about it.

Two choices. Which one will your church make? Let me know.