Declining Churches Need Empowered Members

The young shepherd boy, David, went to battle against the giant enemy. David took charge of the battle and did not wait for the generals to sound the charge.

When Christians begin looking around it appears that Satan, our enemy, is winning the war. He has certainly won many of the battles.

 

Why does it look like the enemy is winning on many fronts? Doesn't the Bible declare the Church victorious? Why has the church reached a plateau and started to decline?

 

To be fair, not all churches are declining, however, most of the churches that are growing are getting bigger at the expense of other churches--transfer growth is not growth. When we begin to realize this, we will all be more motivated to do something about it. Many pastor's whose churches start syphoning off others members use the excuse, "Its not my fault that they prefer go to my church than their old one." I have heard pastor's us the phrase unchurched or under-churched to describe people that may attend a church, but are not fully engaged into the body and mission of the church. The truth is, it is just easier to attract Christians to church than non-Christians. If non-Christians were easy to reach, then all churches would be growing.

Psychologists have a term for when a person has conflicting values and try to reconcile them--cognitive dissidence. The conflict that pastor's have is that in their heart they do not like the notion that they are stealing members from other churches, but they also want to grow a church and more members means more resources. They are seduced by the thought that they are preferred to the others. It plays into their pride. They say to themselves that when my church grows large enough, then I will have the resources we need to evangelize.

Back to my question--why are churches declining?

 

I want to make several observations from my experience, from what the Christian leadership literature says, and from personal discussions with pastors and church members.

 

1. Churches decline because they have lost their ability to impact their community.

 

Many churches are not impacting their community and don't seem to know how to make a difference in the lives of the community. This is a leadership problem. In my opinion, one of the problems is that most of our churches are led by men whose primary gift is pastor. If a church is led by a man whose primary gift is pastor, they should surround themselves with men with other gifts. Pastors whose churches are growing have done this either on purpose or by accident. We need church leaders with strategic insight that can target and impact their communities, many pastors lack this strategic ability or are too busy shepherding the flock. The lead person (usually called pastor) must put together a team of gifted individuals to lead the church.

2. Churches decline because we are not training leaders that can impact their communities within their areas of gifting.

For all of the literature and discussion on Ephesians 4:11-13, it seems few churches are actually good at it. The current teaching says that the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher are given to the church to train workers to build up the body of Christ. If this teaching is correct, I know of only a handful of churches in my community that does it well. If those with the gift of apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, and teacher cannot impact their community, how then can we expect those that they train to do much better?

Am I saying that we should never change churches?

Glad you asked...that is NOT what I am saying.

Assuming that the doctrine of the church you are attending is acceptable to you and there are not obvious signs of heresy, discord, or immorality, then you should stay and make a difference. "I am not being fed," is the most common excuse that I hear for a Christian to change churches. When I hear that, I really hear, "I am not satisfied at this church and this is the only excuse that puts the blame on the church and not my dissatisfaction."

The only good excuse for changing churches is for an opportunity to use your gifts for the glory of God. Some churches have enough people with your gift that you may not have a place to be used. If that is the case, there are many churches that need mature Christians that know what their gifts are and how to use them--go there, they would love to have you.

What is the Lord saying now?

Don't wait for the generals (church leaders) to lead you into battle. Be like David and take the fight to the giant.

Empowerment, Innovation, and Sliced Bread

Organizations must learn how to change to respond to the world as it is in the Twenty-first Century. The world is rapidly changing and organizations must adapt or innovate to this change. Adaptation is making adjustments to existing practices for improvement. Innovation on the other hand tends to look for future trends and make preemptive changes to grow their customer base. The hope is that these improvements will meet the expectation of the consumer. Innovators often create things that customers didn't even know they needed. No one knew that they needed a device to store and play their digital music until Apple develop the Ipod. They created a solution to a need, before the need even existed.

Innovation is empowering!

 

Innovation comes from a person's creativity or their ability to create. Although most organizations do not encourage their employees to create, every employee should be able to offer creative solutions to their companies that make their jobs easier and faster, satisfy the customer, or bring in more revenue to the company. Many organizations have seen the benefits of encouraging creativity and have developed programs and have started to establish a culture of creativity. Creativity and innovation is the key for organizational success in the modern world.

Apply this to the church

 

For a few years now, I have been studying change. I have seen many churches struggling to grow in today's world, while other churches seem to be thriving. Many researchers have studied this phenomenon and have written many good books on the  subject. The facts speak for themselves. The majority of growing churches are less than twenty years old. Many of the large archetype mega-churches, although have a very large weekly attendance, have leveled off. Many mega-churches that are making a difference and seem to keep growing have adopted the multi-site paradigm. Meanwhile, every church is faced with change. The simple fact of the matter: every established organization, church or otherwise, must change with the times or continue their decline.

That leads to my other interest; understanding why some churches struggle to change and others don't seem to? We all can agree that change is inevitable. Looking in the mirror each day and watching our children grow up tells us that life is always moving forward and that everything changes. As it turns out, this is a very complex question and not easily answered. It is safe to say that I will not be able to answer the question in one blog. However, I have one observation that will help.

Churches must innovate. I heard one church health expert say that churches must adapt or die. This is true, but I am suggesting that churches should not merely adapt, they should innovate. The definition of adapt is to become adjusted to new conditions. The definition of innovate is to make changes in something established, especially by introducing new methods, ideas, or products.  You might be thinking that they sound the same. However, there is a nuanced difference between the two concepts of change.

First, adaptation is doing thing differently to solve the problem. For example, a church that has leveled off starts to decline. All the church leaders and members notice the drop off in attendance and offerings. They begin looking for something or someone to blame. All of the usual suspects are named--economy, possible conflict, the non-denominational churches that have lured many away, spiritual warfare has been waged against them, the location of the church, the state of their facilities--the list goes on. The next obvious step is to look at the churches nearby that seem to be growing and learn from them. Established churches cannot change their core values or their doctrine, but they can change other things that seem to attract people, so they begin adapting according to what "seems to be working" in other churches. They change worship style, they begin small groups, they start a children's ministry in the park, or change their name with the hopes of reversing the declining trend.

 

Many of the adaptive changes some churches undertake do not make considerable differences. I can list over twenty churches that I know of personally that have undertaken adaptive changes with minimal results. They instead should be innovative and look for different ways to accomplish their mission in creative ways. Churches that adapt, see the their problem as losing members, but their real problem is what it always has been--reaching the lost and ministering to the hurting, and discipling new converts. The reason that the church was founded is the same today as it was then. The solution is to find creative ways to accomplish their mission.

 

One innovative church in New Mexico found a creative way to reach people in their community especially the youth. They started a nonprofit organization. The purpose of the nonprofit was to help stop unwanted teen pregnancy in their community by promoting abstinence. This message was one that they could take into the High Schools and Community College. The nonprofit was awarded a grant to purchase a truck that the bed raised up into a rock climbing wall. They would set this truck up at parks, local events, fairs, and anywhere youth would assemble. All events were co-sponsored by the church and all of the workers at the events would wear shirts with the church name and logo. Depending upon the venue, they passed out tracks, shared their faith, and invited them to church. Since the nonprofit was its own entity, they did not receive money from the church and had the ability to raise their own funds. If memory served me, the nonprofit eventually paid the salary for the youth pastor who served as the Director of the nonprofit also.

This church didn't adapt, it found an innovative solution to accomplish its mission. It didn't just find a new way to slice bread, it found an alternative to sliced bread. 

Do you have a story of how a church found an innovative way to accomplish their mission? I what to hear about it!

Please submit the story below.....

 

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Empower Your Dreams

 

Do you know what it takes for you to be able to achieve the dreams that you have for your life?

 

A fact of reality that comes with getting older, is looking back at our lives and seeing the things that we wanted to accomplish go unfulfilled. Sure, some of the things we wanted to do were out of our control and sometimes doors that we wanted to open remained shut. Reasons for unopened doors often remain hidden to our understanding. I also look back at opportunities I let go by and wonder. I wanted to be a foreign missionary. I had an opportunity in my twenties to work for Teen Challenge in Germany--I turned it down. Maybe I should have looked at that opportunity more closely. I was also asked to start a church in West Texas, but didn't feel ready for the task at the time. I wonder where I would be today if I had chosen another path. I choose, however, to dwell upon the things in life that I have accomplished. I can honestly say that, although I look back and wonder about paths not taken, I have no regrets and I love the place in which God has placed me.

 

I have more dreams I will accomplish in the near future and know that there are five things that will get me there.

 

1. Determination

 

Our plans for the future should be directed by God. God directs our plans if we allow Him. Once we have a direction from God, we should follow that path with determination. Often the paths that we believe God is directing stops or changes direction. These unexpected changes are usually from God. He seldom gives us the whole picture and usually the way that we envision the future seldom comes true in the exact form we imagined. We may dream of teaching in a University,  but God may have us teaching a small group on Thursday nights. We may have dreams of writing the greatest novel in the twenty-first century, but can only manage a weekly blog. I watched a video of a couple that felt from the beginning of their relationship that they were going to have a daughter and that her name would be Chloe. After years and years of trying to have children, they only had heartache. After they decided to adopt, they found that the mother of the girl they were going to adopt wanted to name her Chloe. They had thought that they would give birth to Chloe, but realized that God had different plans. We may have dreamed of marrying Veronica, but ended up married to Betty. The circumstances of the dream God gives us may change, but the essence of the dream remains in tact--having a child, having a spouse, teaching, being a missionary, etc. We need to be determined in seeing the dream God has given use come true and not necessarily the circumstances as we planned them.

 

2. Responsibility

 

Our life is our responsibility. This includes our dreams. Our life is not the responsibility of our parents, our families, our friends, our spouses, or even God. It is ours. Self-leadership and self-management are vital keys for realizing dreams. They are defined as having the ability to lead and manage yourself. Leading and managing your life means taking responsibility. If we have gotten off of track, it is important to understand that we can do little to change past decisions. However, we can repair damage that may have been done, mend or heal our current situations, and plan our future decisions. Important to self-leadership and management is making informed decisions. That brings us to the third thing.

 

3. Education

 

Education is defined as the process of receiving systematic instruction, but it is also defined as having an enlightened experience. Regardless of what your dream is, there is a level of knowledge and understanding that is needed. The old adage says that knowledge is power. In our pursuit of this power, look for mentors. Look for someone who is or was where you want to be and ask them to mentor you. I cannot stress this enough. One of the great failures of not accomplishing our dreams is not having good mentors. Many people who are qualified, do not place themselves in the position of mentoring others. When they do, they often choose others and may not think of mentoring you. That is when we need twenty seconds of insane courage to approach that individual and ask them to mentor us. If they say no or they don't have the time, don't take it personally. They can still mentor you by observation. Each boss or supervisor that I have had were my mentors. I observed them and asked questions and learned from each of them. Although I didn't always have an official mentoring relationship, they were all my mentors.

 

4. Attitude

I will never forget. I was walking down the hallway of a hospital and passed a man pushing himself in a wheelchair. The man had on a t-shirt that said, "Attitude is everything." It was clear that this man's ability to deal with his handicap was because of his attitude. The difference between this man's life and the life of someone that has lost the use of their legs and gives up on life is in their attitude. The attitude in which we approach life determines not only the destination, but also how smooth the ride getting there will be. People whose attitude is right are successful. People whose attitudes are informed by faith, trust, and belief in God are unstoppable.

5. Motivation

Motivation explains why we do the things we do. This is important. We need to have the proper motivation that will put us in a situation to accomplish our dreams. Those of us that have college degrees have them because we were motivated enough to endure everything that is required to get that diploma. Accomplishing our dreams directly relates to the motivation to accomplish that dream. The right motivation supplants every force bent on stopping our dream. Psychologist talk about intrinsic and extrinsic motivational forces. A person that is intrinsically motivated is motivated from within themselves. They have an inner desire for accomplishment. A person, on the other hand, that is extrinsically motivated gets their motivation from external forces--a paycheck, the threat of punishment, fear of being fired, or that large bonus for a job well done. Both motivational forces are legitimate. Sports athletes are internally motivated to succeed, but often need that coach in their face to insure they are doing their best. I will suggest a third kind of motivation; God-motivation. Every Christian, regardless of internal or external motivation, should be motivated by God. He is the one who designed us and knows for what we are best suited. God sent the Holy Spirit to live in us and guide us. We should be motivated by His Word and by His Spirit.

These five things can help us achieve our dreams.

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Will you do me a favor?

I feel that there are many people that need some encouragement. Some people have lost sight of their dreams and God's plans for them seem far away to them. I feel that God wants us to encourage them. GOD IS NOT THROUGH WITH ANY OF US YET.

 

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