Innovative Ministry

7 Reasons to Stop Staring In Your Church’s Rear-View Mirror

/ 6 minutes of reading

What do all these quotes have in common?

“People have stopped singing in church. We need to use hymnbooks again.”
“No one wants solid bible teaching anymore.”
“People used to have respect for God’s house. Now they show up late with a coffee in their hand, like they just rolled out of bed.”
“The church started collapsing when we stopped holding Sunday evening evangelistic services.”
“Pastors in this day and age aren’t preachers, they’re entertainers.”
All those quotes have two things in common. Three, actually.

First, they were all said or written by fellow ministers recently.

Second, they’re all backwards-looking.

Third, none of them are true!

The False Idol of “The Way It Used To Be”

Sure, the church of today has problems. But that’s nothing new. The church has always had problems. Half the books in the New Testament were written to address problems in the first century church – a church we’re guilty of over-idealizing to the point of idolatry, sometimes.

It’s a myth that the church was ever an ideal place of pure worship and fellowship. Not in the first century. Not when we were kids.

It’s also a myth that the way to fix the problems in today’s church – both real and imagined – is to go back to the way we used to do things.

Of course we need to constantly re-establish our faith in Jesus, our teaching of the bible and our obedience to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.

But none of those things are old or backwards-looking. They are the most forward-looking, paradigm-shifting, inertia-busting principles the world has ever known.

Every car needs a rear-view mirror. So does every church. But you can’t move forward by staring into it.

The past is gone. The future is coming – fast.

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The ABCS of Church Change (Always Be Changing Something)

/ 4 minutes of reading

Change is healthy. Change is good. Change is normal.

All living things change. Or they die.

The church is no exception to that.

No, we don’t change the essential doctrines. They are our foundation. Messing around with the foundation doesn’t bring change, it causes collapse.

As I outlined recently in Kill Your Church Traditions Before They Kill Your Church, everything but our biblical essentials must be subject to change.

Just as churches that change the essentials will collapse, a church that isn’t willing to change on non-essentials will die.

But how do we implement change in a church that has always resisted it? That is one of the great challenges of pastoring.

One key element in that is what I call the ABCS of change – Always Be Changing Something.

Here’s an example.

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Do Ministry FROM the Church, Not Just IN the Church

/ 5 minutes of reading

If your church is blessed to own a building, everything you do with it – and especially outside of it – tells people something about your church’s priorities.

For example, last week I was at Starbucks with a church member when he introduced me to a friend. The friend asked me, “so what church do you pastor?”

Me: Cornerstone.

Him: Where is that?

Me: Just around the cor-

Random guy coming up behind him: The one with the skateboard ramps.

Yep, that happened.

If your church is blessed to own a building, everything you do with it – and especially outside of it – tells people something about your church’s priorities.

Our Church Is Too Small

Why is our church known as the one with the skateboard ramps? Because ministering to the youth of our community is a high priority for us. There are a lot of skateboarders around us, but no other skateboard parks in town.

Your see, our church building is too small to hold all the ministry the Lord wants us to do.

Every church building is. But it’s especially true in churches with a small building. Or no building.

If you were to visit our church and sit in the last row, there would be no more than five rows ahead of you – with all the chairs set up. It’s a small room.

For years, I butted my head against a wall (sometimes literally – ouch!) trying to trying to get a bigger building for our church to worship in.

But we live in an expensive city. If we sold our current church property of less than one acre, we could get an easy $3 million for it. But it would cost us an extra $3 million to buy a property double this size, $6 million to triple our size. And we’d still have less than three acres. If we could find three acres – and that’s a big if.

So we started asking ourselves a few questions. If we could find such a facility and if our middle-class church of 200 could somehow raise the extra $6 million, would that be the best use of all that time, energy and money? We decided it would not be.

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Church Buildings Should Serve People, Not Vice Versa

/ 6 minutes of reading

Our church building wasn’t designed for type of ministry God is currently calling our church to do.

If your church has that challenge, this post is for you. The answer our church found is something I call hauling rocks in a Volkswagen. (Keep reading. It’ll make sense, soon).

This year marks the 50th anniversary of our church facility. That’s not old as far as church buildings go, but it’s old enough to matter.

Back when it was built, most people came to church three or four to a car, wearing suits and ties or dresses. They sat politely in the choir loft or the pews, singing from hymnbooks led by an organ and piano.

Wednesday was family night. Mom and dad sat in the main room hearing a bible study, while the kids went to the back rooms for flannel-graph bible stories and the youth memorized verses for the upcoming Bible Quiz contest.

On Thursday morning, the women met for a quilting club to send blankets to missionaries. On Saturday morning the men met for a prayer breakfast.

Not anymore.

Today, people come one or two per car. Some arrive on bikes and skateboards. Everyone is dressed casually. They bring a coffee cup into church with them, sing worship songs led by a band with drums and guitars, reading the words off a screen. During the sermon, they follow along in the Bible from their phone or iPad, tweeting or Facebooking sermon points as they happen. Those who are sick or travelling check in to our live stream of each service.

Today is better.

Why? Because yesterday is gone and today is happening now.

But today has challenges my predecessors never dreamed of when they built our tiny, landlocked building.

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4 Steps to Find, Support & Grow Your Church’s “Hidden” Ministries

/ 4 minutes of reading

Are you frustrated with trying to get people in your church to step up and do ministry?

I know there are churches with bad histories (and a bad present) where this is a legitimate issue. In fact, I pastored one. But in many churches, there may be more ministry happening than many pastors realize.

Pastors must learn to see, then support and promote ministry that’s already occurring within the church membership. But we often miss it because we have a far too limited view of what ministry really means.

Here’s an example.

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Done With Church? Don’t Quit It, Change It

/ 5 minutes of reading

There’s a large and growing number of people who say they’re done with church.

These aren’t the Nones – those who who are increasingly checking the box marked “none” on religious affiliation surveys – these are people who often self-identify as Christians, but have intentionally stopped attending church.

According to several recent writings, including The Rise of the “Dones”, by Tom Schultz, the Dones are a growing percentage of society. Many of them have come from the clergy.

Yes, I know what many of you are thinking. This is just more evidence of our entitlement culture that doesn’t want to make commitments or be held accountable. I have to admit that thought occurred to me, too.

Certainly there are people leaving the church who fit that description. But there are regular church attenders and leaders who fit that description, too.

The Dones aren’t like that. They’re not lazy, apathetic or self-serving. Often they’re just the opposite. As Shultz says in his post, “To an increasing degree, the church is losing its best.”

Many of them may be like the kid in class who’s acting up and getting bad grades, not because they’re not interested in learning, but because their learning style doesn’t fit in a classroom setting. They want to leave, not because they don’t care, but because they hate having their time wasted.

Almost everything I’ve read from within the church about the Dones (and it’s a lot), has been written from one of two standpoints: 1) What can we do to win them back?, or 2) An attitude of “good riddance”, with an underlying, sometimes directly stated attitude of “they’re just lazy people who want everything done their way.”

I think that second attitude is inaccurate, dangerous and arrogant. But the first attitude may be missing the point too, since it feels a little like a salesman trying to woo customers back with a semi-annual sale. Either way, we don’t get it.

But everything I’ve read by the Dones (including conversations I’ve had with them) tells a different story. They’re not lazy or self-serving. And they’re not looking to be won back. They’re tired, frustrated and hurt. And they truly are done.

So this post isn’t written to church leaders to offer ideas about what we can do to entice the Dones to come back. Today I’m talking to the Dones or almost-dones, maybe even to fellow ministers in one of those groups, with a simple message.

If you’re done with the way we do church, don’t leave it, help us change it.

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Kill Your Church Traditions Before They Kill Your Church

/ 4 minutes of reading

When people start attending the church I pastor, there are a couple realities we tell them early and often. Here’s one of them.

Don’t fall in love with anything but Jesus, the bible and the people. Because everything else is up for grabs.

If you’re coming to our church because you love the way we sing, the architecture or location of the building, the way we run our youth program, or the way I preach, that’s nice. But if you love any of them so much that you’ll leave the church or fight with other members when it’s time to do things differently, you might want to find another church now. Because at this church, all of those things are subject to change.

When do we change them? When they stop working. Or when we find something that works better. And we’re always assessing what works and what doesn’t.

If changing important, but extra-biblical church traditions bothers you, you may not want to read the rest of this post.

Seriously.

I don’t want to get into an argument with people who like their church’s traditions. I’m not saying my way is the only way. But it is the best way for our church. And, if you’re curious enough to want to read on, it might be good for your church, too.

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Want to Build a Great Church? Stop Burying the Lead

/ 3 minutes of reading

No church can do everything. Not if we want to do any of it well.

But every church can do something really well. Maybe a couple things. That’s what makes a church great. Knowing what we’re called to do and doing it really well.

Especially in a Small Church.

But too many churches waste unnecessary time and energy trying to copy other great churches instead of doing what they’re called to do. Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s no way to build a great church.

So how do we build a great church? Find out what you’re called to do, then do it really well.

And make sure that the thing you do well isn’t buried beneath things you don’t do as well. In publishing, that’s called burying the lead.

Churches bury the lead all the time. We hide our best stuff beneath layers of things we don’t do well at all.

Why? Because we have a template in our head of what a church is supposed to look and act like. But, more often than not, that template is based on churches we look up to, or churches we were raised in, instead of what God is calling our church to be and do.

We all need to figure out what our church is supposed to be about, then feature what we do well.

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Are You a Slave to What’s Popular? Or to What Used to Be Popular?

/ 4 minutes of reading

“People don’t want good teaching anymore, they just want what’s popular!”

That statement was made on a Facebook page for ministers recently. The conversation was about using the King James bible in church. Looking for a fight? That’ll get you one.

The pastor was insisting that the decline in the use of the KJV was a sign that the church has grown weak and shallow.

As soon as I read that line, my gut reaction (which I did not write in the comments) was “But the KJV was the most popular bible on earth for centuries! What does its popularity have to do with its value?”

Things become popular because people like them. Things used to be popular because people used to like them.

Sometimes when we complain about the way church is done today, we’re just longing for things that were popular when we were young. But, instead of admitting that, we try to convince ourselves and others that we’re sticking with the old ways because they’re better. And if the old ways were better, the new ways must be wrong.

So we blame “the church these days” for following the latest trends and putting popularity ahead of truth.

Certainly there are churches that bend their theology to suit the latest fad. But more often than not, churches are just adapting their methods to speak the Gospel in today’s language.

So what’s worse? Being a slave to what’s popular? Or being a slave to what used to be popular?

I say we stop doing both. And do what works.

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Innovative Churches Have Pastors with a Healthy Curiosity

/ 4 minutes of reading

There are some really boring pastors out there. Boring pastors of bored churches.

At least I assume so, because I’ve heard the tales from their church members – usually former church members.

But, despite all the stories, I haven’t actually met many boring pastors.

Because boring pastors tend not to hang out with other pastors. They don’t come to conferences. They don’t read books or blogs. They don’t do much of anything, because they lack one vital ingredient that’s found in pastors who are always open to new ideas and vibrant relationships. A healthy curiosity.

(To be fair, that’s not the only reason many pastors don’t read the latest books or go to conferences. Many Small Church pastors would read the latest books if they could afford them, and most bivocational pastors would go to conferences if they could get the time off. They’re not the boring ones. They’re the unsung heroes.)

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