8 Steps Toward a Successful Church Revitalization

by: Thom Rainer

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There is one type of church revitalization that is more successful than all others. The church closes its doors for a season, and then re-opens, usually with a new name and new leadership. I know this approach is not an option for most of you, so I gathered data from the “other” category. This category includes churches that kept the same name and, for the most part, the same leadership.

Keep in mind, this information is not a step-by-step guide to revitalization. We offer that resource periodically. Make certain you are on our email list, and we will let you know the next time that training opens.

As I gathered the information for successful revitalizations, I noted eight common characteristics that took place in most of the congregations. Unfortunately, many leaders are not willing to make all the sacrifices these characteristics suggest. Those who will make the sacrifices, however, are often seeing blessings beyond what they anticipated.

1. The pastor formed an alliance of key influencers in the church. This group is not informal, nor is it closed to others. It begins when the pastor identifies those in the church whose voices are most effective in leading others toward change. I cannot remember a revitalization effort that succeeded without an alliance.
2. The alliance of influencers recognized the need for church revitalization and made a commitment to pray for it daily. Please don’t let the last part of the preceding sentence escape your notice. Each of the influencers committed to daily prayer for revitalization. They realized it could not take place in their power alone.
3. The leaders and a growing number in the congregation made a commitment to move the church to look more like the community. Such a commitment naturally involves an outward focus, because declining churches are not reaching all segments of their communities. The leadership within the church begins to look at the demographics of their community. They are willing to face reality on where the church is falling short.
4. The church began to confront the issue of sacred cows. I know of one church that had a two-hour “town hall” meeting of the members of the congregation. The leaders made a list of every preference and church activity they could recall. For example, one of the items on the list was “11 am worship.” They then labeled each activity as either biblically essential, contextual, or traditional.
5. The leadership began to work with the congregation to form a clear and compelling vision. One church, an all Anglo congregation, cast a vision to have 20 percent Hispanics in the worship attendance in one year because the community was 40 percent Hispanic. They did not reach 20 percent in year one, but they did in year two.
6. The leadership communicated a sense of urgency. One of the simplest yet most powerful communications of urgency I’ve heard is: “We change or we die.” Too many congregations are choosing to die because of their unwillingness to change.
7. The leadership, particularly the pastor, was willing to endure a season of intense criticism. This point is often where revitalization efforts end. The critics can get nasty, and the criticisms can become intense. Many people simply get mad at the idea of change.
8. The leadership of the church was willing to let go of members. I have never known a successful revitalization effort where members did not leave. Few leaders like to see members leave, but some churches have a “back door revival” before true revitalization can take place.

Nine of ten churches are either declining or growing so slowly they are not keeping up with the growth of the community. Many churches are just a few years away from dying and closing. Revitalization is an urgent need.

> Read more from Thom here.

Tags: Church Revitalization, Execution, Thom Rainer

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Scheduling: An Active Way to Pursue Obedience to Jesus

by: Michael Kelley

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I have grown to love my personal calendar.

I know different people treat their time in different ways; I’ve found that I thrive most in a structured environment. So I’ve tried in the last few months to take a more proactive role in structuring my time, particularly at work. Rather than simply having a “to do” list of tasks, I have begun to transfer those tasks to blocks of time on my schedule. So I break the day into segments, sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, and assign particular tasks for that given period of time.

For some tasks, it means multiple blocks of that time during the week. I might devote an hour on Monday, then another on Tuesday, then 30 more minutes on Friday. And at the end of each day, I evaluate the remaining days in the week and adjust the blocks of time according to what I was able to accomplish during that day… and as I’m writing this, I’m realizing that it sounds pretty obsessive. Maybe even a little compulsive to go along with it.

For me, though, this is more than a helpful time management practice; it actually has a spiritual component to it.

From time to time, I feel overwhelmed when faced with a laundry list of things that have to be done. I start to worry about the time it will take to get it all done; I begin to feel anxiety about what’s before me. And when I do that, I have to realize that my worry and anxiety is not only unhealthy; it’s actually disobedient:

“Don’t worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; or about your body, what you will wear” (Matthew 6:25).

So said Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount. He continued to hold up birds and wildflowers as those God provides for, making the point that we, as His children are much more valuable then these things. Then Jesus reminds us that worry and anxiety over the stuff of life is the characteristic of idolaters:

“…the idolaters eagerly seek all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided to you. therefore don’t worry about tomorrow, because tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own (Matthew 6:32-34).

It’s that last statement that gets me – tomorrow has enough troubles of its own. My problem is that I tend to bring the worries of tomorrow into today. But this is also the point where keeping a schedule can actually be of great aid in our obedience to the command of Jesus to be free of worry.

If we are proactive in time management, scheduling out time can help us leave the worries of tomorrow until tomorrow. So, for example, let’s say you have a massive project you have to get done at work, and you find yourself disobediently worrying about getting it all done. But you very much want to obey what Jesus said. Perhaps a practical step in the right direction would be to break up that project into smaller chunks and then schedule time into the next several weeks to accomplish each one.

You have task 1 to do on Monday. You don’t have to worry about task 2 because you know you’ve already allocated time to get that done on Tuesday. So you move forward, one step at a time, treating the day you have before you as a single day, and you’re able to put down the phone and lay your head on the pillow knowing that tomorrow you can do the exact same thing. The point of the exercise, though, is more than finding a way to get things done; it’s an active way to pursue obedience to Jesus.

And I’m finding more and more that these small, seemingly insignificant choices are the nuts and bolts of what it means to truly follow Him.

> Read more from Michael.

Would you like to learn more about scheduling and productivity in your organization? Connect with an Auxano Navigator and start a conversation with our team.

Tags: Execution, Michael Kelley, Obedience, Scheduling

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The Disconnect Between Principles and Practices at Your Church

by: James Emery White

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One of the most glaring divides in the life of many churches is the divide between principles and practices.

A principle is an understanding about how to do things; a fundamental truth about the way things ought to be. A practice, of course, is what you actually do – and ideally, as a result of a guiding principle.

Here’s the breakdown: a leader will know a principle, espouse a principle, even believe they are following a principle, but in reality (practice) they are not.

For example, I’ll talk to a church leader who will say something like, “Our services are designed for people to invite their unchurched friends to attend.” That is a principle: weekend services should be designed to be a front-door to those who are relationally far from God.

But that has teeth. It means opening the front door to someone who is spiritually illiterate, pluralistic and self-absorbed. They are simultaneously confused and dogmatic, open and closed, seeking and complacent. They have little if any background in worship (much less liturgy), religious buzz-words, theology or the Bible.

They are lost.

So when it comes to the “practice,” you would think the service they are forming around that principle would reflect who they are trying to reach. But too often it doesn’t. There may be a few cosmetic changes, but nothing substantive. There is no real sensitivity being shown toward, or cultural bridge being built to, the unchurched.

This is just one example of a breakdown.

A church might say, “We are all about children. We want to turn kids on to church, not turn them off. We want to make church and the Bible come alive and be fun!”

But five minutes into their children’s ministry, the kid wants to go home. It wasn’t kid-friendly, or particularly kid-informed, at all.

A church might say, “We are a friendly church. We are warm and welcoming.”

But five minutes through the doors and it’s clear that they are friendly to people they know, friendly to people they like, or simply friendly to people like them. They are not friendly; they are a clique.

• We throw around words like contemporary, relevant and practical but seem divorced from what that really means to the person needing it to be contemporary, relevant and practical.
• We talk of reaching a post-Christian culture, but seem only aware of the Christian sub-culture in which we inhabit.
• We speak of mission and vision, strategy and DNA, but seem unaware of what ours actually embodies.
• We talk of conversion growth when we functionally are focused on transfer growth; being contemporary when we are models of throwback Thursday; reaching the next generation when we are slowly aging out as a body.

So why the seemingly clueless gap between principle and practice? I think there are at least four reasons:

1. We have a natural default mode that we fall into. For example, when it comes to outreach, the default for most is to speak to the already convinced. The power of a principle is that it leads us away from how we might normally act. But if we are not intentional about the principle, we’ll go with our natural flow. And our natural flow is not to those outside of our doors, but those who are already inside.

2. We’re not serious about the principle. We give lip service to principles because they sound good, make us look good, make us seem on a cutting edge, but it never translates into action (read, “change”). As a result, we are like a resounding gong or clanging cymbal (I Corinthians 13), or maybe more to the point, hearers of the word only (James 1).

3. We have a terrible blind spot fed by pride. I can’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve heard a leader say, “I don’t need to spend time on children’s ministry. We’ve got that one down. What I need to know is, ….” But (as mentioned above) five minutes exposure to their children’s ministry, and it’s clear they desperately need to spend time on it. Everyone has blind spots but if they are based on pride, they will stay blind spots for a very long time.

4. We’ve been schooled on various principles, but not on the practices that should follow. This is key. Conferences and books are filled with principles, but you need to see working models, hear actual messages, to really “get” the practice side of things. You can talk about messages, music and atmospheres being oriented toward the “nones” all day long, but it takes seeing it, feeling it, experiencing it actually happen for a clear picture to form in your mind.

Espousing a principle without fleshing it out in practice is no different than having no principles at all.

> Read more from James here.

Are you ready for principles and practices that are in alignment? Connect with an Auxano Navigator and start a conversation with our team.

Tags: Execution, James Emery White, Practices, Principles, disconnect

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Open Your Ministry to the Power of a Generation

by: VRcurator

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Encouraging a healthy and welcoming community among all generations.

How is your church tapping into the power of the 20-something generation? Maybe you know you could do much better, but have been challenged by not really knowing what you can, and should be doing. The millennials are reachable. Through the voice of a 20-something, get a glimpse into their heart, and be inspired by the possibilities.

Whatever It Takes

by Heather Stevens

20-somethings seem to be leaving the Church at a rapid pace, and it saddens me because often that is due to unfortunate experiences that aren’t representative of what Jesus has called us to. It’s so easy to become hardened to Christianity because of that one person, one circumstance, or one church. Take Alex, for example. Hers is the story of so many 20-somethings today: a girl who, after seeing more negative than positive done by Christianity, decided to leave the Church for good.

The Christian church seems so incredibly and undeniably hypocritical. Not only do they bicker with other religions but among the denominations. There is no tolerance for outsiders’ or differing opinions… This is not the Church Jesus created. I recently stopped wearing my cross because I didn’t want to be associated with the angry and ignorant people who seemingly use their Bibles as weapons against people who aren’t exactly like them. 

>> Read more here.

Tags: 20-something, Execution, Heather Stevens

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What Pastors and Business Leaders Can Learn from Each Other

by: Brad Lomenick

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A couple of years ago Mike Myatt interviewed me and asked some great leadership questions. Not sure how good my answers were, but in any case, you can watch the entire interview here.

One of the questions he asked me was “what can Church leaders learn from Business leaders, and what can business leaders learn from church leaders?” Good question.

I thought I would provide a few more thoughts around this issue here.

Church Leaders, here are a few things you can learn from Business Leaders:

1. Collaboration– business is built around partnerships and collaboration. Many times you will see competitors in business partnering together if it makes business sense and they can create a profitable return. We have a tendency in the Church to be protective, selfish and isolated, whether it’s between denominations, associations, or other churches in our communities. Especially the pastor right down the street from us.

2. Excellence– if a business doesn’t create a great product, no one will buy from them and they will go out of business. And if you aren’t good at what you do, whether a designer or consultant or restaurant owner or UPS driver, then you won’t last. Sometimes in the church we have the tendency to make excellence a low level priority, and we don’t demand that staff members constantly get better. I’ve written several times about doing what you do with excellence. And pastors, don’t be afraid to ask your business leaders to get involved in helping you create excellence with what you do.

3. Execution– the business world is built on “getting things done on time.” Again, without this as a core value, businesses will fail. Church leaders can learn a ton regarding execution from the business leaders sitting in your seats or pews on Sunday morning.

4. Measure success– businesses measure their success mostly based on return on investment- the idea of creating a profit. There are definitely other factors, but that one is key. You have to measure your success in order to know if you’ve accomplished your mission. In the Church, many times we are not as intentional at measuring our success because we’re in the “people” business. But I believe the Church is doing the most important work in the world, and to not hold ourselves accountable and constantly measure whether we are creating “Kingdom” profit is not good stewardship.

Business Leaders, here are a few things you can learn from Church Leaders:

1. Relationships first– the currency of getting things done in the Church is through relationships. Many times in business we are so focused on execution and profit and margin that we forget about the relational currency we are building or not building.

2. Income for greater purposes– Business leaders- Look for ways to create a “triple bottom line” in your business. Meaning you find ways to give back and be generous and help those in need. This has become the new standard for many businesses- no longer are you only measured by what profit you make- but now measured by what kind of investment you give back to the community. Church leaders understand this.

3. Leadership– some of the best leaders in the world are on staff at Churches, especially those who lead volunteers every week. If you can get hundreds of volunteers motivated and excited and committed to serving, then there are all kinds of leadership lessons we can learn from you and implement in the business world.

4. Passion and calling– great ministry leaders have a sense of calling on their life that is inspiring. They do what they do with great passion, many times sacrificing a higher paying job or other opportunities because of the specific purpose God has laid on their life. Business leaders should have the same level of passion, purpose and calling for their vocation. There is NO sacred and secular. It’s all sacred. Your calling as a business professional is not second class, so run after it with a desire to truly live for God in the marketplace.

Read more from Brad here.

Tags: Brad Lomenick, Collaboration, Excellence, Execution, Passion, Staff

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