Health Doesn’t Just Happen: 2 Ways to Avoid Drift

by: Eric Geiger

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Organizations and churches drift away from their identity and mission. Without constant care and godly leadership, drift pulls a church from her core message and mission. A church doesn’t drift into greater health or better focus.

We drift as individuals in the same manner. We don’t drift into physical fitness or spiritual growth. We drift away from those things, not toward them. D.A. Carson wrote, “People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith, and delight in the Lord.”

In terms of strategy and mission, there are two common and related drifts that plague churches.

1. Churches drift toward complexity.

As a church grows and matures, there is an inevitable pull to add layers of bureaucracy and to fill calendars with lots of events and programs. As a church drifts toward complexity, staff members become program managers instead of equippers. Communication becomes increasingly challenging because there is increasingly more to communicate. New people have a difficult time figuring out what is most important because there are so many things happening. Ministries, within the same church, compete for resources and energy. Complexity presents a plethora of problems.

Ironically, many pastors have told congregations, “If Satan cannot get you to walk away from God, he will tempt you to be busy.” Or, “Just because you are busy doing things for God does not mean you are walkingwith God.” So while lamenting the busyness of people and of the surrounding culture, many churches grow busier.

2. Churches drift off mission.

As a church increasingly drifts toward complexity, she also increasingly drifts off mission. If a church is complicated, she will not have the energy or the resources available to be highly engaged in mission. The church will spend her time existing for herself, setting up systems for herself, and communicating to herself. When you are complex, you tend to be inward. When there is so much to manage at the church building, there is so little time to think strategically about the community and minimal energy to serve those in the community.

Complexity isn’t always the beginning point. A drift off mission will result in complexity. When a mission and strategy are not clear, anything can be added to the church. When mission does not grab the collective soul of the church, something else will.

Mission drift never self-corrects. Leaders must constantly address the pull away from mission and the pull toward complexity. Here’s how:

Keep the mission central.

The core message of a church must be the gospel, the good news that Jesus saves sinners by giving us His righteousness in exchange for our sin. And the core mission of a church must be the mission He gave us: make disciples. Churches may express their mission in contextual terms, but the mission must be in constant view. Leaders must continually point people to the church’s mission and work to embed a passion for the mission into everything the church does.

Keep the strategy simple.

Strategy is how the mission is accomplished. A simple strategy fights against the inevitable drift toward complexity. When the strategy is simple, the most important environments that flow from the mission of making disciples are emphasized. An overcrowded calendar is abhorred because it would drown the strategy.

> Read more from Eric.

Learn more about strategy for your church; connect with an Auxano Navigator today.

Tags: Eric Geiger, Health, Mission, Strategy, Vision

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Crafting Your Cast: From Mission to Vision

by: Church Community Builder

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POP QUIZ: In a sentence or two, can you say what God is calling you to do – or at least the direction He has for you?

If you answered ‘YES!,’ then congratulations! You have your vision. And you can skip ahead to the neat little listicle below about how to effectively cast your vision.

If you answered, ‘No. I don’t think so. But maybe? I’m not sure,’ then congratulations! You now have the opportunity to take your nebulous idea from infancy to a full-grown vision.

Your vision should take the purpose and mission of your church and reduce it down to a simple statement that guides your church. Much like an ‘elevator pitch’ in business – wherein you spark interest in what your organization does with a brief, persuasive speech in 20 seconds or less – your words act as an all-encompassing phrase that galvanizes and motivates your people in the right direction for your church.

And the right direction for your church – and the right vision – cannot be written from your will, but only from God’s because remember this as you cast your vision: Leadership is a privilege; steward it well. Yours is a privilege that can take people to where you believe God wants to go.

So as you cast, make sure your vision is …

Simple: Be clear about your vision. Over time, you’ll learn how to communicate the vision clearly and when the vision is clear to you, you are able to clearly communicate it to others.

Solid: Make sure your vision is real and tangible; it is a vision that people can touch, see and become invested in personally.

Succinct: We live in a ‘push-button-get-banana’ world. The same is true when we cast a vision. So keep it brief – because it’s not about how much you share, but that you share enough for it to be clear.

Stimulating: Your vision should inspire action. It should also cultivate a sense of ownership. If your vision can capture hearts, people will feel compelled to help you realize your vision.

If your vision is simple enough to understand, solid enough to believe, succinct enough to remember, and stimulating enough to inspire a shared ownership, your vision is ready to rally your people to a better future.

Learn more about Auxano’s Vision Pathway process.

> More from Church Community Builder.

Tags: Church Community Builder, Mission, Vision, Vision casting, better future

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Would You Recognize Inward Drift in Your Church?

by: Thom Rainer

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All organizations tend to lose their focus and forget their original purposes over time. I call this almost imperceptible movement “inward drift.” The attitude becomes one of protecting the way we’ve always done it rather than looking back to the original purposes and reasons for existence. Numbers of stagecoach businesses failed, for example, because they thought their primary purpose was to make stagecoaches rather than to provide reasonable and rapid transportation.

The primary dangers with inward drift are twofold. First and foremost, the organization can forget the very reason it was created. Second, the drift is often imperceptible. Many organizations don’t realize there is a problem until it’s too late.

When Inward Drift Comes to Church

Local congregations are not immune from inward drift. To the contrary, the vast majority of churches in North America are likely in crisis because of the negative impact of inward drift.

Some of the labeling of congregations is unfortunate. Particularly, when we speak of “traditional churches” or “contemporary churches,” we rarely come to consensus on a clear definition. My son, Sam Rainer, popularized the term “established churches,” a term I prefer to use today. An established church is simply a church that has been in existence for a few years and is thus susceptible to inward drift. Indeed most any church three years or older will likely begin to experience some of the symptoms of inward drift.

When an organization such as a for-profit business begins to experience inward drift, it will change or die within relative short order. The marketplace will not buy its goods or services if the company doesn’t address the needs and the hearts of the consumers.

An established church, however, can exist for years and even decades with inward drift. The church may not be making disciples. It may not be reaching the community and the nations with the gospel. But it continues to exist more as a religious social club than a true New Testament church. Its members and constituents are willing to fund the congregation since it meets their perceived needs and desires.

Signs of Inward Drift in Established Churches

The signs of inward drift in an established church are clear even though the members don’t often recognize them:

1. Most of the ministries and programs are focused on meeting the desires and needs of the members.
2. The budget of the congregation is directed primarily at funding the projects and even comforts of the members.
3. Conflict in the congregation is not uncommon since members are more concerned about getting their perceived needs and desires met.
4. There is little to no focus on evangelism, reaching out to the community, and getting the gospel to the nations.
5. Leadership is weak and reticent to address the problems, because that leadership emphasis could disrupt the status quo.

Addressing the Issue of Inward Drift in the Church

I recently drove through my hometown. I lived in the same house and the same town for my first eighteen years of life. But it had been more than a decade since I visited the town. I was shocked. Businesses on the main street were closed. Some were boarded. Many of the homes I knew and loved had deteriorated greatly. The major industries had exited and left large vacant buildings. It was almost a ghost town.

Someone who had never left the town, though, told me that things were really going well there. They were serious when they said it had not changed much since I left. For me, the change was stark and shocking. For him, it was slow and imperceptible. When we fail to see the deterioration that is taking place, we will not see the need to make changes to reverse the course.

Such is the crisis in many of our established churches today. And it is that imperceptible inward drift that often makes it so difficult to lead a congregation toward healthy change. In a future post, I will address some of the possible steps to lead an established church toward change without destroying it in the process. I hope you will join me then.

Read more from Thom here.

Tags: Mission, Thom Rainer, Values, Vision Frame

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10 Ways Mission Statements Backfire

by: Will Mancini

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The idea of mission is simple: Do you and those who you lead know what you are ultimately supposed to be doing? While most pastors think they are clear on mission, most church attenders are not. And in some ways, how we use the default language of “making disciples” is to blame, even though these words represent a very important biblical passage.

To say it a different way, how church leaders cut and paste Matthew 28:19-20 as a crown-jewel text of the Great Commission is actually working against their accomplishment of it. Our church mission statements backfire on us!

Here are ten quirky realities about church mission statements that illuminate how they backfire. Which one is most applicable to your current situation?

Quirky Reality #1: No Process

Even though the Bible records many examples of leaders articulating the mission of God’s people, we fixate on Matthew’s version of it. Rather than going through a process to articulate the Jesus-given mission for our specific time and place, we parrot the words of one particular gospel over the others.

Quirky Reality #2: No Definition

By photocopying Matthew’s version of the church’s mission, we traffic in words like “make disciples” with little to no definition or context and in some cases very little actual experience. Because we get it from the Bible and preach with biblical intent, we don’t think we need to.

Quirky Reality #3: Anything Goes

It is easy for church attenders  to reinterpret their experience of church—whatever it may be—as a “making disciples” experience because there is little to no definition or context for these words. This creates a vicious cycle within the church of assuming we know what we mean as the church continues to make decisions, spend money and add ministries. A church can be anything it wants to anybody. It can do anything it wants to do with perfect justification underneath its undefined mission statement.

Quirky Reality #4: Missing Scorecard

Pastors validate the mission of “make disciples” with a scorecard that has nothing to do with whether or not a disciple has been made; that is with the scorecard of attendance and giving only. Concerts and circuses have great attendance and giving too.

Quirky Reality #5: Incomplete Competence

Because we can name “make disciples” as the “right answer” for the mission of the church, we think we know how to lead with mission. When it fact, we are substituting “a knowledge about” mission with the lifelong competency development of “leading from” mission.

Quirky Reality #6: False Assurance

Because of the notion of “mission as statement,” the written statement in our membership class or website creates a false sense of completion. Stating the mission one time becomes a “been there, done that” step.” Since it is stated somewhere, we think the work of leading with mission is done, when it has hardly begun.

Quirky Reality #7: Reinforced Consumerism

In the process of articulating a “make disciples” mission, 95% of churches reinforce consumerism without knowing it. This happens because most statements imply to the church attender that they, as the disciple, are the beneficiaries of services and groups provided by the fulltime pastors. The pastors and staff, they assume, do “the making.” Why does this occur? Simply put, the language of “making a disciple” is not accessible enough to the mindset of our culture. People don’t get out of bed and think to themselves, “I get to make disciples today.” They leave that to “the professionals” and to the “place they go” to attend church.

Quirky Reality #8: Misdirected Energy

The primary growth challenge of any church is having culture of mission. By focusing on a thousand things to grow our church, we miss the first and most important step to healthy multiplication and dynamic growth. All growth and renewal in a church comes from the process of re-founding the mission with the leadership core, which is hopefully a growing leadership core.

Quirky Reality #9: Little Transference

When a church is in its most entrepreneurial form, a culture of mission is “in the atmosphere” and little intention is necessary for people to “feel it.” The start and the big bang of the church itself substantiates the mission whether it is thoughtfully articulated or not. But once the church grows past 75 people, how you articulate the mission is critical to its transference.

Quirky Reality #10: Shadow Mission

In addition to your stated mission, every organization has a functional mission or “shadow mission.” Think of the functional mission as the unstated driver or notion of “success” that most naturally tempts us to drift off the Jesus-given mission of the church. For example a functional mission of many churches would be something like to “have more people attend worship services” or “to sustain enough giving to keep our current staff” or “to not make anyone unhappy.”

One Application: Your Own Words

Perhaps the best way to summarize this post is to recall one of the fundamental exercises of learning: “putting it in your own words.” Your second grade English teacher asked you to read something. And when she wanted to know if you understood what you were reading, she asked you to restate it in your own words.

Likewise, our people won’t understand the mission of Jesus until they can put in in their own words.

Would you like to learn more about developing mission statement that reflect your church’s unique mission? Connect with an Auxano Navigator and start a conversation with our team.

Tags: Make Disciples, Mission, Mission Statement, Mission Stattements, Vision, Will Mancini

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Is Your Mission Well-Lived and Well-Seen?

by: Bryan Rose

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Nike just released yet another great video reminding everyone of why they are one of the top apparel companies globally. In it, Nike gives a clear example of why their mission is so effective, better than most churches’ missions.

Full disclosure, Nike has long been one of my favorite and most often used examples of the difference between a mission statement and a tagline. This blog on the subject a few years ago continues to be highly searched and read.

Nike’s tagline is one of the most well-known in the world: Just Do It. 

Nike’s mission [Bring Inspiration and Innovation to Every Athlete* In The World] is one of the most unknown in the world… with two huge exceptions.

Exception #1. Nike’s mission is well-lived by the team of executives, developers, designers, marketers and salesforce within the company.

Exception #2. Nike’s mission is well-seen by every person who wears a pair of their shoes.

Many pastors tend to be skeptical of investing time and resources into working on statements of identity like mission or values or taglines, especially when things around church “feel” like they are going well enough.

They wonder if the effort and discussions are worth it, and struggle to see the tangible practicality of clearly articulated vision. They question how important it really is to capture our Great Commission mandate in a contextual, concise and catalytic way for the church.

When any organization lives their mission, the results are seen – and life change becomes possible. The marketing piece below from Nike sums up why, for them, people living out their mission is more important than people knowing their tagline. And shows how good they actually are at living it, better than most churches.

Watch the video linked below and ask yourself, or start a conversation with your team:

How much more important, and eternal, is the mandate of the church than a shoe company?

How well defined and well lived, and resultantly effective, is the mission of our church?

Does your mission create movement and reflect the heart of God for the church or is it just words on a website or worship service bulletin? 

Check out this video from Nike and see why it matters.

> Read more from Bryan.

 Do you need help with developing statements of identity like mission and values? Connect with an Auxano Navigator and start a conversation with our team.

Tags: Bryan Rose, Mission, Nike, Tagline

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Avoiding the Danger of Mission Drift

by: Eric Geiger

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There is a tendency in any organization, in any ministry, toward wandering. For a season, people might be focused and motivated to move in a single direction, but then something happens. Things catch their attention. Other priorities come up. The urgency that was once so acutely felt fades to the background. Slowly the organization drifts toward giving time, energy, and resources to ancillary matters. The mission is no longer central; the focus is no longer intense.

That’s why one of the duties of leadership is saying the same thing over and over again. A wise leader is a repetitive one.

Church leaders must not only be aware of their core convictions and mission but must also articulate them plainly before people over and over again. Church leaders must constantly be reminding.

Wise leaders look for the wandering, and quickly move to address it.

Maybe you’re sensing that right now. Perhaps something seems off. In many cases, that “something” is a deep-rooted understanding of who you are as a church, a deeply shared commitment to the theology and doctrine that undergirds all your church does. What’s missing is that sense of identity that galvanizes, motivates, and focuses your people on your God-given mission. In many cases, the “core values” or the “mission” are merely words on the back of a bulletin that lose meaning because the people aren’t reminded of the heart behind the phrases. So if something just doesn’t seem right, it’s often because the majority of members have not fully ingested the stated mission and values of the church.

So how do leaders communicate the church’s mission and values?

1) Live the mission and values.

John Kotter stated, “Behavior from important people in the organization that is contrary to the mission overwhelms all other forms of communication.” In other words, if leaders do NOT live the mission, the slogans and communication pieces are an absolute waste of time and money. Living is deeper than “modeling.” One can “model” mission because it is in his/her job profile without authentically living it.

2) Teach the mission and values.

Wise pastors look for appropriate opportunities in their messages to remind the people “this is who we are” and “this is our mission.” But teaching goes beyond the sermon. Wise leaders look for other environments, from leadership meetings to small group gatherings, to remind people of the church’s identity.

Because wandering and drift happens, leaders are necessary. And it is necessary for leaders to both live and remind the people of the mission and values that are beneath the surface of everything the church does.

Many church leaders are finding that small groups are an excellent environment for instilling core values into the people of the church. Think about it as you enter this Fall season of ministry. You have a chance to refocus your people, to bring them back to the core of who you are as an individual church. Your small groups can be an environment where those values and mission are imbedded deep into the hearts and minds of your people.

In the division I lead at LifeWay, we have a team of custom content creators who are creating studies for churches, based on the church’s unique mission and values. If that would serve you well, then I encourage you to check out discipleshipincontext.com. Be it with a study aligned to your weekly messages, or through studies that stand on their own, LifeWay can partner with you to create custom studies that perfectly reflect your core values and help you create the unique culture you are praying for and striving for.

>> Interested in customized studies for your groups? Check out discipleshipincontext.com.

>> Read more from Eric here.

Tags: Eric Geiger, Mission, Mission Drift, Recasting Vision, Values

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Missing the Mission: Looking for the Right Results While Loving the Wrong Things

by: Ed Stetzer

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All churches love certain things. Some love fellowship, some worship, some prayer. Those are good loves. Some are neutral loves. Some are not. Other churches love their building, their history, or their strategy.

Those can be good or bad, depending on what we mean by love and how we value those things. But, there are some things churches love that hurt their mission and hinder their call. Here are three I’ve observed from my work with thousands of churches.

1. Too many churches love past culture more than their current context.

It’s remarkable, and I’ve said it many times: if the 1950’s came back, many churches are ready. (Or the 1600’s, or the boomer 80’s, depending on your denomination, I guess.)

There is nothing wrong with the fifties, except we don’t live there anymore. We must love those who live here, now, not yearn for the way things used to be. The cultural sensibilities of the fifties are long past in most of the United States. The values and norms of our current context are drastically different and continue to change. The task of contextualization is paramount to the mission of the church because we are called to understand and speak to those around us in a meaningful way. We can learn much from the Apostle Paul’s example recorded in Acts 17:16-34.

So, a church on mission– in this time and place– engages the people around it. Yes, in some ways, it resembles its context– a biblically faithful church living in its cultural concept. But, if your church loves a past era more than the current mission, it loves the wrong thing.

2. Too many churches love their comfort more than their mission.

The fact is your church probably needs to be less focused on what makes it happy and more focused on what pleases Jesus. This is an easy trap to fall into because it happens very subtly.

Most churches have worked hard to get to a place where congregational customers are happy– their needs are met. The problem is that we are not called to cater to customers. We are called to equip co-laborers. When we win the affections of those inside our circles, it becomes hard to pull away from the affirmation we receive. Again, this only becomes a problem when the affirmation of those on the inside works to the detriment of our mission to those on the outside. It is a lot easier to settle down with the people who are like us than to reach the foreigner or alien among us.

So, a church does not exist for the comfort of its people. Actually, the Bible reminds us again and again that we are to “provoke one another to love and good deeds” (Hebrews10:24), to “bear one another’s burdens” (Galatians 6:2), and more. But, if your church loves its comfort more than caring for others, it loves the wrong thing.

3. Too many churches love their traditions more than their children.

How can you tell? They persist in using methods that are not relevant to their own children and grandchildren. Far too often church leaders, in an effort to protect the traditions of their congregations, draw lines in the sand on non-essential issues.

This is not to say that “tradition” is wrong. It depends on how you define it, but I think most will know what I mean. Christian scholar Jaroslav Pelikan said, “Tradition is the living faith of the dead, traditionalism is the dead faith of the living.” Churches that love tradition that way will choose their traditions over their children every time.

Too often churches allow traditions to hinder their ability to humbly assess their missional effectiveness. Moreover, they allow traditions to trump the future trajectory of their demographic. I know of several young pastors who have been exiled from their local congregations because they didn’t fit the mold of what had always been the ethos of the leadership. Sometimes this is because impatient pastors try and force change too quickly. Other times it’s because settled churches resist change so forcefully.

Undoubtedly, there are always times to defend the traditional stances of essential doctrines in the local church. But we should not have a cultural elitism that hinders passing the torch to a new generation of leaders. If your church loves the way you do church more than your children, it loves the wrong thing.

It’s time to evaluate your church.

Love is good, and everyone wants a loving church. However, loving the wrong things leads you the wrong way. Loving what is good, including our context, Jesus’ mission, and the next generation (to name a few things), moves the church in the right direction. The church should be always reforming, that is, humbly looking at itself and assessing its ability to reach people with the good news of Jesus. Sadly, many of the people Jesus devoted His time to would not feel welcome in our churches.

What about your church? What does its posture, behavior, practices, and activities communicate to your community? I think all of us want to understand the culture and community we are ministering in so we can communicate the gospel with absolute clarity. To do this we need to ask ourselves the hard but needed questions.

• Who are we reaching?
• Are we primarily reaching people who are like us?
• Are we primarily reaching people who are already believers?
• Are we primarily reaching people who understand Christian subculture and taboos?
• What about the people who don’t have a church background?
• What about the people who are unfamiliar with Christian beliefs?
• What about the people who don’t understand church subculture and behavioral taboos?

To say we are unable to reach the lost because of our traditions or preferences is simply unacceptable and antithetical to the mission of God.

Read more from Ed here.

Tags: Ed Stetzer, Mission, Vision Frame

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A Strategy that Directly Fuels Your Mission and Vision Produces Passionate People

by: Carey Nieuwhof

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One of the dreams of almost every leader is to see every person within an organization motivated by the same mission and vision.

The reality is very few organizations—and very few churches—function that way.

Most leaders have had an unsettling feeling that they might be the most passionate person about their mission, and wonder how on earth to get dozens, hundreds or even thousands of others on board instead of wandering off on their own course.

Well, you can change that. And it’s simpler (and more challenging at the same time) than you think.

Why Strategy Trumps Mission and Vision

If you really want people on board with a vision, your strategy is critical.

In fact, strategy trumps mission and vision. A great mission and vision with a bad strategy will fail.

Stripping everything back to basics will reveal why. (And I’ll use the mission, vision and strategy of Connexus Church where I serve to illustrate it.)

Mission = what we’re called to do. (To lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ)

Vision = why we’re called to do it. (To create a church unchurched people love to attend—this is why we started it!)

Strategy = how we’ll accomplish it. (The steps we’ve chosen to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus)

If you don’t clearly know how you’ll accomplish your mission, well…that’s the problem isn’t it?

Why Anything Goes…Doesn’t

Most leaders have people pleasing tendencies (I blogged about the problems with that here).

That means most of us have a hard time saying no when people ask to start a ministry or program.

The challenge with that of course, is that they often want to do things that they’re passionate about, not the things your organization or church was created to do.

So most church leaders end up with dozens or even hundreds of programs that run off in just as many directions and are sometimes only remotely related to the core purpose of the organization. Are programs like “Pets are People Too” or “Men Who Bike in Spandex Recovery Group” really central to the mission of the Church?

I’m not saying God doesn’t use them, but are those truly the best and most strategic ways to lead people into a growing relationship? They could easily be side projects people at your church engage in, rather than demand a line in the budget and organizational energy.

When you allow programs and ministries to spring up randomly, you get a misaligned organization that’s off mission.

And as anybody who has tried to shut down some of these random ministries knows, sometimes these programs can behave like fortresses. They very passionately defend their right to exist.

Engagement Is Directly Related to Involvement

And that leads us to the main problem.

If you remember only ONE THING about this post, remember this:

What people become involved in becomes their mission.

Did you hear that?

Get someone involved in something and it becomes their mission. It becomes their cause. Their rallying cry. What they wake up thinking about.

People are most engaged with what they’re involved in. 

What people become involved in becomes their mission.

So…Only Do Things That Directly Align With Your Mission and Vision.

So how do you create a great strategy that fully supports your mission and vision?

Only do the things that directly align with your mission and vision. 

If you only offer a handful of things that directly fuel your mission and vision, people will become passionate about your mission and vision.  

So at Connexus, we only do a few things.

• A weekend service that your unchurched friends will want to come back to.
• Great family ministry environments for birth-college built around small group and large group time.
• Starting Point—and environment for adults to begin exploring their role in God’s story.
• Community Groups—strategic mid-week gatherings of 8-12 adults who gather for accountability, belonging and care (okay…and cake).
• Partner with two or three local and global partners around issues of compassion and justice (foodbanks, missions etc).

When people ask what else we do…we tell them that’s it.

When they ask how they can be involved we tell them serve, give, invite a friend and be part a community group.

That’s it. That’s our strategy.

And Guess What?

That doesn’t have to be your strategy, but here’s the transferrable principle:

When you have a simple strategy that supports your mission and vision, people get passionate about your mission and vision.

They have no choice but to be. Because it’s all you do, and when they get involved, they become engaged.

It’s easy to understand, but it does take guts to implement.

Read more from Carey here.

Tags: Mission, Strategy, Vision

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Are You Helping or Hurting Your Mission?

by: Charles Arn

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One of the keys to a church’s missional success is how its members are deployed. There are two approaches—one facilitates the church’s mission; the other often frustrates it.  Few in the church ever clarify this choice, but every church makes it, and every church lives with the consequences of its choice.

The institutional approach to lay ministry begins with the needs of the institution.  Every church needs Sunday school teachers, committee members, musicians, ushers.  In the institutional approach, when a job opens up, the response is to search for a person who seems most suitable to fill it and/or is most likely to say yes.  Success, in such churches, is when a member says, “Okay, I’ll do it.”  Hopefully the person is qualified, gifted, and motivated for that ministry; but there are no guarantees.  If it turns out there is a mismatch between member and task, the result is a job poorly done and a member mostly frustrated.  “Plugging warm bodies into ministry slots in a congregation,” says Pam Heaton, “tends to increase volunteer burnout, dissatisfaction, and departure.”[i]  With the institutional approach to lay ministry, church members exist to serve the needs of the institution.

The individual approach is far less widely practiced, but significantly more effective for missional success.  Here the goal is not to fill a vacancy but to find or create a place where members can joyfully and productively participate in the mission.  Rather than beginning with the needs of the institution, the individual approach begins with the strengths of the person.  Church members are encouraged to try a position related to their interest and see how it fits.  If it does, the member may choose to spend more time in that ministry and/or receive additional training.  If the task is not comfortable, or the person does not feel a sense of calling, he or she is guided to explore other ministries that might be a better fit.  If a match cannot be found, creating a new ministry is explored.  In the individual approach to lay ministry the institution exists for the benefit of the people rather than the people for the benefit of the institution.

Consider the difference in results of these two approaches to lay ministry…

Take a Lay Ministry Check-Up…

The chart below can help you discern whether your present approach to lay ministry is increasing or decreasing the liklihood of missional success. First, write in line 1 the number that represents your total church constituency—all church members, plus regular attenders who are not officially members (above age thirteen).  Next, determine in which column your church falls on rows 2-18.  All the numbers in the chart are percentages.  Calculate your percentages based on your total church constituency (line 1), unless otherwise noted.

Tags: Charles Arn, Mission, Vision Frame

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Ministry to Millennials: An Example of Why Churches are Stuck

by: Tony Morgan

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Saw this report earlier this week from The Millennial Impact project. It identifies several trends with Millennials that should raise concerns and more conversation among church leaders. Here are some specific examples:

• About twice as many people are willing to volunteer if a peer invites them, but the church is still relying on events (like Sunday services) to encourage serving. In fact, 81 percent of Millennials prefer to be invited by a friend while only 43 percent would prefer to be invited through an event. Instead of encouraging people to tap the shoulders of their friends, we’re still relying on platform announcements and bulletin ads to fill volunteer roles.
• Far more Millennials prefer to give online, but in the church we primarily focus on giving in-person. Less than half of Millennials prefer to give in-person while 70 percent prefer online. Do you have an intentional, ongoing strategy to encourage online giving? If not, you’re probably not engaging adults ages 20 to 35.
• The number one reason Millennials have never given to a non-profit using their smartphones is because they’ve never been asked. Most churches, of course, have never even considered asking for donations using smartphones. We’re still discouraging people from using their phones in services, rather than acknowledging that most people have smartphones and tablets with them for Bible reading, giving, note taking, etc. We are still handing out paper bulletins and assuming people will write a check.

Instead of blaming young adults for not engaging in our ministries, it’s about time we start taking some responsibility. Our strategies and systems are broken. The Gospel message doesn’t need to change, but the methods we use to reach people for Jesus has to reflect our current environment.

There’s a reason why churches and denominations are in decline. We continue to be religious about using the same methods hoping and praying they’ll somehow generate different results. That’s a recipe for decline and ultimately death.

Of course, we’d rather be comfortable in our own preferences than take risks that may help us reach the next generations. And, that’s another reason why churches are stuck.

Tags: Mission, Tony Morgan, Vision Frame

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