People gravitate towards vision

 

In yesterday's post I wrote that the primary reason churches close is that they have lost their vision for ministry.  They have spent so many years focused on providing services for members and survival that they forget the reason their church was created in the first place.  As I remind those who attend my workshops and conferences, the mission of the church is quite simple and is found in the Great Commission and the Great Commandment.  If a church is not actively involved in those two things it is not fulfilling its God-given purpose.  A church that is only interested in caring for its members is a church that will eventually close.  We cannot forget about the needs of our members, but at the same time our primary focus must be on serving those outside the Kingdom of God.

Pastors of small churches often complain to me that they have few people willing to do anything in the church.  It seems the Pareto Principle is alive and well in the small church:  20 percent of the people are doing 80 percent of the work.  I think we will find that to be true in many churches, but we also must ask the question of why that is.  Are the 80 percent who are not very involved merely free-loaders, lazy people who want only to have their needs met, or is something else going on?  Having served as a pastor for 20 years I have met my share of spiritual free-loaders.  They enjoy hanging around the church as long as it suits their needs, but the moment they are asked to do something they disappear.  By the way, when you read the gospels you find Jesus had his share of spiritual free-loaders hanging around as well.  But, I think these people make up only a small percentage of those who are not involved.  For these people, their lack of involvement may be the result of what they are being asked to do.

Let's be honest here.  A lot of what goes on in many smaller churches is not very exciting.  Much of what people are asked to do is to serve on the various committees that churches seem to believe is necessary.  In many of our churches, if 80 percent of their committees never met again it is unlikely anyone would even notice a difference.  (The Pareto Principle at work again!)  You are not going to get people, especially leaders who are on fire for God, to serve on these kinds of committees.  They understand, even if the church doesn't, that these committees will not make a bit of difference in either the Kingdom of God or in what should be the mission of the church.  They are not unwilling to serve, but they are unwilling to waste their time on busy-work that does not matter.  They are waiting for something bigger.  They are waiting for a vision that captures their imagination and that will draw out the best they have to offer.

I am enjoying reading Transforming Church in Rural America by Shannon O'Dell.  In the book he writes, "The model of sharing workload with capable people is timeless and indispensable if you're going to grow a rural church.  And people are all waiting in the pews or chairs or benches to grab hold of the vision and the work.  If you have vision, you will have too many people wanting to do stuff.  The rural pastor has to know the people he needs are not at the First Big Baptist down the road or Monster Methodist across the county.  They are sitting in the pews...And they are waiting.  Just cast the vision."

I completely agree.  As you know, I served a small, rural church for twenty years.  As long as we were in maintenance mode the people sat in their pews smiling and satisfied and doing little.  When we were working towards achieving a vision we believed came from God, it was all hands on deck.  Virtually everyone jumped in and made that vision a reality.

People are looking for something bigger than they are.  Most do not want to serve on a committee that will determine who prepares the turkey for the church Thanksgiving dinner.  They want to be involved in something that will change people's lives.  They want to give their time and resources to a ministry or project that will make a difference in the Kingdom of God.  They want a vision for ministry that will demand their best, and it is to that vision that they will commit their lives. 

If you are reading this you are probably a leader in your church.  It is your responsibility to seek God until you understand his vision for your church.  Once you understand what that vision looks like you must then share that vision with others until the church understands it and buys into it.  When that happens you will be amazed at what people will be willing to do to achieve it.  But, if you're not willing to do the hard work of vision discernment, then don't be surprised when people sit on their hands and their pocketbooks, and don't come crying to me that you can't get anyone in your church involved in ministry.

Why do churches close?

Because I work so much with smaller churches a common question I'm asked is how can these churches avoid closing their doors.  The question is usually asked by a long-time member of a small church that has struggled for years.  They have watched their formerly active church that had a nearly full sanctuary a few decades ago continually shrink until they are a couple dozen people or less attending services.  For years they knew something was wrong, but as they see the slide downward continue they become desperate and want to know what needs to happen to keep their church open.

These folks have a right to fear their church may close.  Although the figures aren't exact, approximately 5,000 churches close their doors each year in the United States.  That's an average of 100 churches per week that lock their doors for the last time.  Some give lower figures, but it is still a large number of churches.  Most of these are smaller churches, but their size isn't what caused them to close.  Although I've not seen any studies to back up my opinion, I believe the reason most of these churches closed is because they lost their vision for ministry.

Everyone of the churches that closed were begun because someone had a vision for a church in that community.  As people moved westward and formed communities it was not long before a church was started.  Each of these churches were born out of a vision held by a number of men and women who recognized a church was needed in this new area where they were settling.  This church was important as a place where people's lives would be changed, the Scriptures would be taught, and lost people would be introduced to Jesus Christ.  As the years went by, however, that vision was lost and a maintenance-mentality took over.  The church settled into a routine and forgot why it was founded in the first place.  At first, people slowly began to leave.  Children grew up, married, and never returned to the church where they were raised.  If they went to church at all, they found other churches to attend.  In many of these churches, the decline was so slow that it really wasn't noticed at first, and by the time someone finally did recognize what was happening it was too late.  Either the church remained open but was largely ineffective or it closed its doors when its resources were too low to keep them open.

The key for a small church to remain open is to recapture a fresh vision from God for its ministry to its community.  If a vision gave life to a church in the first place does it not make sense that vision is going to be the life of the church?  It is my belief that God has a vision - a purpose - for every church.  That purpose is not mere survival; it is to be an effective witness for God in the community in which it serves.  That vision should compel the church to go out from its buildings into the community sharing and modeling the love of God to everyone who lives there.  A church that lives out its God-given vision will never need to fear closing its doors.  To read more about this check out my book Intentional Ministry in a Not-So-Mega Church: Becoming a Missional Community.

The call to bivocational ministry

One of the search committees I'm working with recently interviewed a candidate.  A traditional question that is often asked is for the individual to explain his or her call to the ministry.  When the committee asked that question the candidate could not respond.  The best answer he could give was that a friend suggested he attend seminary, which he did, and now he is looking for a ministry but had no idea what he was looking for.  In fact, he told the pastor search committee he really didn't think he wanted to be a pastor.  Well, at least with this church, he will get his wish.

When they told me of this interview I thought back to my own sense of call to the ministry.  I had only been saved a couple of years, but in that time I had accepted a number of leadership roles in my church.  Despite the things I was doing, I always had the sense God had more for me.  One day my pastor and I were riding to a meeting when he asked if I had ever felt called to the ministry.  I admitted that idea had come to me more than once, even as a young child.  A couple of weeks later he visited my wife and me to discuss this further.  Several months after that discussion I requested that our church license me to preach, and I began to fill in at various churches when I had the opportunity.

After about a year of this a church I had attended as a youth invited me to be their interim pastor.  I served there about six months in that capacity until they called a pastor.  By that time I was convinced God had called me into the ministry.  The one problem I had was that I had a good job, a wife and two children, and no education beyond high school.  The traditional college and seminary route didn't make sense to me at this time in my life so I wasn't sure what doors, if any, God would open for me to pastor a church.

A few months after ending my time as the interim pastor I learned of a small church in our county that was seeking a pastor.  I sent them a resume, and a few months later became their pastor.  I served there for 20 years before accepting a different call to ministry.

During my time serving as a bivocational pastor of that church I did pursue some education, but I never felt called to leave bivocational ministry.  Somehow, I knew this was the calling God had on my life.  Numerous fully-funded churches contacted me during that time asking me to meet with their pastor search committees, but I never felt led to leave the church I was serving nor did I feel led to leave bivocational ministry to serve in one of these larger churches.

Os Guinness has written a very helpful book titled The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life.  One chapter is titled "Do What You Are."  In the chapter he refers to Paul's role as a tentmaker.  He writes, "But tentmaking was never the heart of Paul's calling, it was only a part, as all of life is.  As a part of our calling such "tentmaking" at worst is work that frustrates us because it takes time we wish to spend on things more central.  But at best it is work that frees us to get to that which is central. By contrast, whatever is the heart of our calling is work that fulfills us because it employs our deepest gifts."  The book offers a wonderful discussion of the importance and value of knowing God's call on our lives.

Throughout my ministry I have known that my calling was to bivocational ministry.  Never did I dream that God would allow me to publish books and lead workshops and conferences on the subject, but that was part of his plan as well.  My initial call was to a small, rural church where God placed me for two decades, and then he opened up that call to allow me to serve pastors and churches around the world through my writings and speaking opportunities.

The call to bivocational ministry is a real call of God upon people's lives.  Some resist it because they feel it is a call to insignificant ministry, but no ministry is insignificant.  Anywhere God has called a person to serve is a worthwhile place of ministry, and we should always give it our best efforts.  And, what we do not know is what God's future plans are for our ministries.  Looking back we can often see that the things we began doing prepared us for greater responsibilities later.  If you have been called to bivocational ministry, embrace it and thank God for the opportunity to serve in such a wonderful ministry.

Onward Christian Soldiers

"Onward Christian Soldiers" is a song I seldom hear sung in the church these days.  When I was growing up it was a song that we sang often, but today it's not even found in many of the modern hymnals.  Some believe it is not a politically correct song or that it presents the church as a military organization.  I don't know how many Christians read the news these days, but if they don't know it we are in a battle to preserve our beliefs and our nation, and it is past time that we begin to stand up for what we believe and stop wanting to hold hands around a campfire singing Kumbaya.

For the record, I am not advocating that we form a Christian paramilitary organization or a terrorist group.  What I am challenging Christians to do is to become informed about what is happening and be willing to stand for what we profess to believe.  Just this week I've read that one organization is challenging a high school sports team's right to wear T-shirts they have bought with their own money that has a Bible verse printed on it.  This morning the news contained a story of a school teacher who took a Bible away from a second grader who was reading it during personal reading time.  The teacher claimed it was not appropriate reading material even though the school has Bibles in its library.  Every year at this time various schools will forbid their student valedictorians from mentioning their faith.  Communities are restricting the right of homeowners to use their homes for small group Bible studies through zoning laws and restricting the rights of churches to build new facilities.  This week I read another story of an atheist group challenging the use of "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance repeated in one school's classrooms.  The list goes on and on, and the really interesting thing is that we never read of any other religious faiths having their practices or beliefs attacked.  It is only the Christians who are having their religious freedoms taken away.

I believe there are two reasons for this.  The first is spiritual in nature.  The devil knows that there is no other religious belief system that can do him and his work any harm but Christianity.  For centuries he managed to keep the Bible out of the hands of the people, but once Christian people were able to read it for themselves he found his kingdom weakened greatly.  He then began to challenge the integrity of the Bible, and people became convinced that is was nothing more than fables and myths rather than the Word of God.  Even in the Garden of Eden he revealed this strategy by asking Eve, "Has God said...?" causing her to doubt the things God had clearly revealed to her and Adam.  It is a strategy that has remained effective even today.  Today he has managed to convince many people that there is no such thing as absolute truth, so nothing the Bible says or the Christian church teaches has any validity.  People are free to believe it or not, but we are not free to try to pass our beliefs on to others as true.  In many countries of the world if Christians attempt to convert someone to the Christian faith they are at risk of severe punishment and even death.  Could such laws be enacted here?  While many are convinced that could never happen, I am no longer so sure given the direction our nation has been going.

The second reason we are losing our religious freedoms is because we refuse to fight for those freedoms.  Very few Christians voted in the last election, and it is the politicians who have made it possible for our freedoms to come under attack.  If you did not vote for persons who hold to the Christian beliefs you claim to believe in, then you are allowing others to determine who will rule over you in the political arena.  If you will not remove School board members who buckle under to every threat that comes from atheist groups then you deserve schools that take Bibles away from second graders.  If you are not willing to publicly support decency and Christian values in your community then you deserve to live in a community in which those values are slowly being taken from you.

Those opposed to the Christian faith want it removed from the public square, and we must demand our right to be there.  It is time that Christians be recognized as people who are informed voters, that we will not sell our vote for free cell phones, and that we will not accept people to serve in public office who will oppose our values and our beliefs.  But, even more important than this, we must become people who are on our knees praying for revival for our nation.  2 Chronicles 7: 14 is still true.  If God's people will humble themselves and pray and seek God, He will hear those prayers and come and heal our land.  Voting addresses the political aspect of the battle we are in, and prayer addresses the spiritual battle.  Both are critical to the future direction of our nation.  I believe our nation is worth preserving for all the future generations who will come after us.  "Onward Christian soldiers marching as to war...."  We are in a spiritual battle for the heart and soul of our nation.  God has given us the weapons to win this battle, but we must choose to do so.  Rise up church!

The need to reinvent

I was raised in a time when things were fairly stable.  Marriages were expected to last forever.  You went to work for a company, stayed there until you retired, and received a gold watch.  You could attend virtually any church in a denomination and would find the services would be amazingly similar, they would be using the same materials and literature, and offer the same programs.  I am a product of that kind of thinking.  My wife and I have been married for nearly 48 years.  At age 18 I went to work in a factory, worked 30 years there, and when I retired I received my gold watch.  While working that factory job I accepted the call to a small, bivocational church where I served for 20 years before accepting a call to judicatory ministry where I've now been for the past 14 years.  On the surface, it appears my life has been fairly stable, but in reality there have been many changes along the way.

My pastoral ministry looked much different when I left that church in 2001 than it was when I began there in 1981.  When I started it was not uncommon to make visits to church members unannounced, but by the time I left the church I visited very few people without an appointment.  When I started we would go door-to-door in nearby neighborhoods inviting people to worship services or VBS or some other special event we were doing.  We also ended that practice when we discovered that most people considered that an intrusion in the precious few moments they have at home.  My leadership style changed as our church went from being primarily a board-led church to a pastor-led church.  As I earned the trust of our congregation I was given more freedom to lead.  One of my favorite stories is that at my first church business meeting my plan to take our young people to a nearby amusement park was rejected by the members.  Several years later I made the decision, with input from three people who were with me, to purchase a new digital piano for our church.  After the piano arrived I called a business meeting to get church approval for the purchase, and it was approved unanimously.  What a difference a few years make!

I changed my preaching style three different times while I pastored that church.  When I began I stayed behind the pulpit as I was heavily dependent upon my notes.  A few years into the pastorate I began preaching from a manuscript.  That experiment lasted about 18 months when I changed to a simple outline.  That outline also allowed me to move from behind the pulpit so I could freely move around the platform.  I also began to incorporate more stories into my messages as I learned that people could often identify with the stories and connect them to their own lives.  One of my favorite comments people sometimes give me after I've preached is that I make the Bible come alive through the stories I use.  The Bible is alive, and one of my preaching goals is that people experience that.

At a meeting a few years ago with other judicatory leaders I mentioned that I feel that I enjoyed a good ministry as a pastor, but I did not believe that much of what I did during those two decades would be as effective today.  I could not pastor today as I did then; I would have to reinvent myself as a pastor if I wanted to have a productive ministry.

Working with the churches in our judicatory and with various denominations around the country I see many pastors still functioning as they did 20-30 years ago and wondering why their ministries are not more effective.  They're doing everything they learned in seminary in the 1980s not realizing that we live in a much different time.  The expectations people have of church has changed.  People move more often making it more difficult to have a stable membership.  Children's ministries have changed with the increased numbers of single-parent homes.  Children are often with their other parent half the year making them unavailable for your church activities.  As the Builder generation dies off churches see their giving levels drop because the younger generations go not financially support the church at the same level the Builder generation did.  Fewer and fewer people are available for Sunday evening and mid-week services so efforts to maintain those are sure to be disappointing in many churches.  As a pastor, you may need to take a serious look at your ministry and preaching styles and see if you need to make some changes.

The same is true for churches.  I continually talk to small churches who insist they want to reach new people, especially younger people, and yet are unwilling to do anything differently than they did in the 1950s.  Any attempt to try something new is met by a controller who pulls out the church constitution, that was often approved in the 1950s, who insists that their constitution does not permit that to be done.  I'm currently working on a new book with a working title of Straight Talk to Small Churches so let me give you some straight talk.  Your church will either reinvent itself or it will die.  If you are more interested in protecting the way you've always done things than you are in reaching the people Jesus died for, then you are irrelevant to the Kingdom of God, and God will raise up another ministry to do the work you should be doing while he allows your church to die.

Learning new skills and new ways of doing ministry are not easy, but nobody said ministry was supposed to be easy.  Pastors and churches must continually reinvent themselves if they want to successfully impact a changing world for Jesus Christ.

A shift in the inerrancy debate

When I attended Bible college in the 1980s there was much debate about the inerrancy of Scripture.  It was the hot topic on the campus I attended and played no small role in the denomination of which that school was a part making a shift from being rather moderate to becoming very conservative.  Numerous books were written at that time stressing the importance of holding to an inerrant view of Scripture.  I certainly held to that position then and continue to do so today, but today the discussion about inerrancy has shifted, and many ministers and leaders of my generation may not understand the shift.

David Fitch and Geoff Holsclaw discusses this shift in one chapter in their book Prodigal Christianity: 10 Signposts into the Missional Frontier.  They point out that the debate about inerrancy is not about the Scriptures themselves but the interpretation of those Scriptures.  Holsclaw writes, "I knew that no one my age cared about inerrancy because they were always questioning the authority of the interpretation rather than the authority of the text.  My friends all assumed that a hidden bias was always controlling the supposed objectivity of an interpretation...In their minds, every interpretation is an imperialist act, seeking to control other perspectives."

In some of my workshops I address one of the main reasons people give for not going to church: they find it irrelevant to their lives.  They believe we are answering questions no one is asking any more, and too often they are right.  In the case of biblical inerrancy, we are often giving answers to questions that people are not asking today.  If the authors of this book are correct, people are not nearly as interested in whether or not the Scriptures are inerrant as whether our interpretations are correct.

By saying this I do not mean to say that teaching the inerrancy of the Scriptures is wrong.  I believe the Scriptures remain the foundation of all we believe, and if we cannot trust that they are correct then our theological foundation becomes very weak.  But, we cannot limit our teaching to that question.  We must go beyond that and address the question that people are now asking: is our interpretation of those Scriptures correct?  In a postmodern world where there are no absolute truths that becomes a much more difficult challenge.  I can claim my interpretation of a particular passage is true while someone else promotes a completely different interpretation of the same passage, and too many today are willing to accept both as equally true.  So, how do we convince others of the validity of our interpretation?

The authors of this book point out that the way to do this is through allowing others to see the truths we proclaim to be lived out in our lives.  They write, "As prodigal Christians, we should rarely find ourselves defending the Bible's authority.  Rather, its authority becomes undeniable when its compelling reality become visible among us.  The story of God as displayed in a people speaks for itself."  The book then fleshes this out for the reader in the next chapters.

In my opinion, this is what separates a missional church from one that is merely involved in social work.  Too often, we limit being missional to being involved in one's community, but there is much more to being a missional church.  Yes, a missional church will be engaged in ministry to its community, but most social organizations will also be involved in community service.  What makes the church's ministry different is the way it lives out the Gospel before the community it is serving.

Christians often do a better job of talking about their beliefs than we do in living out those beliefs.  When we fail to walk the talk we should not be surprised that those outside the church question our interpretation of the Scriptures we claim to believe in.  If we talk about the grace of God, then they have a right to expect that we will extend grace to people.  If they see us continue to shoot our own wounded then they also have a right to question our interpretation of what grace is.  If we talk to them about the love of God we should not be surprised if they are confused by the lack of love we often show others both outside and within the Christian family.  Obviously, I could go on and on, but I think you get the point.

To convince others that our interpretation of the Scriptures is correct we must consistently live out what we claim to believe and allow them to see the impact of living such a life.  If we do this well we will have answered one of their most important questions.

Easter brings tremendous opportunities to a church

It won't surprise too many pastors and Christian leaders to be told that this Sunday is Easter.  This Sunday will probably be the largest worship attendance your church will have this year, especially if you serve in a smaller church.  Families will come home for Easter and many of them will want to attend services in the churches in which they were raised.  Some of your absentee members will find their way back to church this Sunday, and some folks from the community are likely to drop in as well.  This provides your church with a tremendous ministry opportunity if you do some things well.

Be prepared for your guests.  Print extra programs.  Have extra greeters at the entrance and even in the parking lot.  Make sure the grounds and building are spotless.  If it's bad weather have people available with umbrellas to meet people at their cars.  You may even want to consider offering valet parking especially if the weather is bad or your parking is limited.  A visitor is someone who shows up unexpectedly like a vacuum salesman.  A guest is someone you are expecting, and you should be expecting to see new people on Easter Sunday so be prepared for them.

Don't insult your guests by mentioning how you haven't seen them since Christmas.  Don't embarrass them by asking that they introduce themselves or wear name badges or ribbons or do anything that will make them stand out.  Do welcome your guests and thank them for coming to the service.  If your church has pew Bibles do print the page number of any Scriptures you will be reading in the program to make it easier for them to read along with you if they choose.  Do try to capture their names and addresses so you can do follow-up with them afterwards.  A great way to do that is to ask everyone in the congregation to fill out a name and address card so you will have a record of their attendance.  This doesn't make the guest feel conspicuous while filling out their card.

This is a Sunday to present a very simple and clear gospel message.  Easter is a time of celebration, and your message should capture that.  Jesus Christ is alive!  He wants to be Lord and Savior of every person who sits in your congregation.  He wants to provide them with forgiveness for their sins and transform them into new persons.  You should have no problem preaching a dynamic message that offers hope and salvation to all who hear it.  It is likely that some sitting in your sanctuary this Easter Sunday have never heard such a message, and you have an opportunity to plant seeds in their minds and hearts that could lead to a transformation of their lives.

Close your service with excitement and anticipation that God has spoken to people through the music, the prayers, and the message.  Send them out with God's blessings upon them.

Do not fail to follow-up with every guest in the week following Easter.  This is critical if you have any hope of them returning.  Depending on how many guests you had that Sunday you may need to ask other mature, spiritual leaders in your church to assist you in this follow-up.  You may want to physically visit some guests depending on the level of communication you've had with them, but a letter and a phone call will often suffice after their first time at your church.  Send the letter out on Monday following the service and then call them later in the week asking if they've received the letter and if they have any questions about the church.  In both contacts be sure to invite them to return the next Sunday.

Easter Sunday is often the one Sunday in the year that provides a smaller church with the greatest opportunity to touch people's lives.  If you will treat people as you would like to be treated if you visited a church for the first time you are much more likely to see them return.  This is even more likely if you have shared with them a message of hope and grace that is only available through a living Savior.