Over the past few years have read quite a few books relating to Church growth. I have read the statistics and the interviews and the survey results and the personal experiences and the anecdotes and have slowly been taking parts that make the most sense while filing away the ones that don't quite jibe. Man, it is a complicated issue. The factors are many and include details such as age of the church, the age of the congregation, the denominational structure, the size of the town and its demographics, the current staff and leadership and size of the church, the history of the church, and on and on and on.
What makes a church grow?
Most books identify principles and offer advice. Many tell the story about what worked for their congregation. I have read quite a few who do extensive surveys of churches, pastors, attenders, former attenders, potential attenders, etc and note the trends to highlight potential reasons for growth or stagnation. The whole topic is really very fascinating to me.
What can we physically do to affect something that is so inherently metaphysical?
Clearly it begins with the factors that are more spiritual than anything. Right living, prayer, and seeking God's will are kind of the basics that you have to start with before you can begin to address the physical, organizational issues. But what's next?
I have been thinking about this a lot this week. We had a meeting on Sunday and I was excited to hear some of the questions being thrown out. The key is finding the right answers. I have been working through things and trying to synthesize the most simple way to church growth for us. We can make a lot of changes and do a lot of good stuff and get nowhere - what does it all come down to?
My answer? Purpose, expectations, and accountability to those two standards.
I really think that most of the books and success stories ultimately point to these ideas in one way or another. It gets much deeper and more complex, but this is what I find lies at the base of it all. Different pastors and churches find vastly different ways to carry this out, but it all starts here.
Purpose statement, mission statement, simple process of discipleship, vision statement - it all basically means the same thing. What is God's plan for you - what is it that He wants to do through your church? Somehow, someway, he wants to use the Church to move people from unbelief to belief. He wants your church to transform lives of individuals into disciples of Christ.
Your purpose is not only the what, but the how. When a church has a firm grasp on their mission and process, and they refuse to let go or stray from that central, singular vision, they are on their way. It is easy though to stray. Somewhere along the way, someone will have a great idea that diverges from the path the church is on. Somewhere along the way, someone will have a personal preference that is contrary to the process the church uses. Somewhere along the way decision making will become lackadaisical and someone will become indifferent.
It is great to start out well, but if accountability isn't set up and applied, it is natural to slide away from that good start, and to create a nice comfy rut to ride in. The most disciplined, mature, and well-intentioned fall into this trap and it always leads astray. Pastors and elders and deacons and members need to know the purpose of the church and hold one another accountable to their adherence to that purpose.
Accountability is needed even earlier in the second aspect of church growth I identify with most: expectations. I haven't the time to explain why this is so important - it takes up chapters in books - but I think having clearly communicated expectations is key to church growth. Ministers need to know their role and be held accountable to doing it well. Elders and deacons need to know what their job is, not merely what the qualifications for the office are, and be held to those standards. Members need to know that being a Christian doesn't automatically make you a "member" of the local church - and they need to know what does.
If we aren't told what is expected of us in any situation, we either do nothing or we create our own patchwork standards. It is kind of cruel to not tell someone what is expected of them - they have zero chance at success when they are operating on uninformed guesswork.
Oftentimes members do little more than attend occasionally because they don't know there is any more to being a disciple of Christ within the local church. What separates a member from a visitor? We need to know!
In this case, accountability means asking questions. It means having a time and place for the leadership of the church to hold one another accountable to the clearly communicated expectations set before them and an opportunity to suggest that if they aren't fulfilling the role of the office, the name no longer applies. It means having standard to hold members to and a way to let them know that they haven't met those standards and the name "church member" is no longer practically applicable.
Starting there, it gets far more complex in how you apply the purpose and expectations of a church. All the factors to church growth I mentioned above are colored by these two principles when you really get into them - or at least they need to be. The church is about taking a person outside the church and bringing them in. It is about introducing them to Jesus and teaching them how to follow him. It is about continually reinforcing the standards set forth by Christ and continually growing as we walk that path.The church is about teaching us HOW to be happy rather than giving us whatever claim will make us happy here and now. The church is about HIS purposes over our own. The church is about His expectations of us, not merely our expectations of Him.
No comments:
Post a Comment