3 Ways the Church Can Build Better Community

by Shaun Stevenson

Talking about community is good. Practicing it is better.

I slipped into thee back pew and stood there fidgeting with the Bible in the rack in front of me. The church I was visiting met in an old Presbyterian building from the time when churches actually built, huge, impressive structures complete with steeple, stained glass, and an ornate pulpit that didn’t off the stage for a worship band. I had found my way to this hip little inner-city church because people claimed it had a strong community where everyone felt welcomed and loved.

After prayer, a thirtysomething lady stepped to the front of the room, asked for visitors to remain seated and announced, “Go and greet these new people and make them feel welcome!”

Everyone started moving and talking and shaking hands and laughing, but they didn’t come my direction. I sat there like a lump as people walked past me to the coffee kiosk in the back. One older lady smile briefly at me and then hurried on.

I felt crushed.

Sometimes I wonder if community-building in many churches has fallen into the same trap that so many other things have fallen into: We talk more than we actually practice it.

We love the idea of community-everyone is engaged and involved and connected-but how any people show up like I did to the back of the church, longing for someone to reach out to them, shake their hand, and have more than a two-second conversation.

Church should be a place where people feel safe and comfortable and secure and ready to share life with others. But if no one ever initiates that conversation, how much of a community do we really have? Should it always be the outsider’s job to try and connect? Or should the insiders be more intentional about looking beyond their own cliques?

Everyone has to do their part. The insiders and the outsiders in any church community needs to be involved. There are lots of things we can do to work on our communities, but I think these three serve as a good posture to build from.

PUT YOURSELF ASIDE.

So often, one of the major roadblocks to building community is our own selves. Stepping outside of our own issues, swallowing that lump of pride, and reaching out a hand to the person next to us.

Whether you’ve been on the inside of a church or are coming in from the outside, allowing yourself the grace and awkwardness to talk to someone new is what plants a seed of community.

BE WILLING TO PUT IN THE TIME.

Relationships and community take time to build. Even if someone seems unwilling to talk, keep taking the time to engage. Don’t be pushy or force them to do something they wouldn’t want to do. Realize that building community take a lot of time. Friendships hardly ever explode into full being overnight.

WALK ALONGSIDE PEOPLE, NOT AT THEM.

One of the biggest fears many people have is the question of safety. Are they to engage in their current environment? Will they be judged for any one of a myriad of daily choices? Will this group turn on them as soon as they say or do one thing wrong?

Our churches need a reputation of arms around shoulders, walking together to face challenges of life. If people feel they’re going to be judged or ignored because of a life choice, they’re not likely to return.

Let’s build a community in the church that the world desperately needs.

It’s Time for Small Churches to Become Great Churches

Where are all the great Small Churches? Would you know if you saw one? They exist. There’s no doubt about that. There are great Small Churches in every country, serving every ethnic group and virtually every language. They worship in every imaginable style of music, and they meet in every type of building – including no building at all.

But let’s face it, while most of us may know several good Small Churches, most people don’t know a lot of great ones. Some can’t think of one.

Many people don’t even realize that a church can be both small and great. That has to change. But there’s only one way to change it. We need a lot more great Small Churches.

We Can Do This

No more excuses. It’s time for Small Churches to become great churches!

Good isn’t good enough any more. And it will be less acceptable with every passing year. If that sounds intimidating, it doesn’t need to. Every Small Church has everything it needs to achieve greatness right now. You don’t need permission or even inspiration. We already have the Great Commandment.

Here are four principles any Small Church can use to achieve greatness.

Know that Small Churches Can Be Great

Perhaps the biggest impediment to an explosion of great Small Churches is Small Church pastors or leaderships who don’t know their church can be both small and great.

You don’t need one more person, one more dollar or one more square foot of building to start being a great Small Church. Your Small Church can be great. You need to know it, believe it and act like it’s true. Because it is.

Great Small Churches Don’t Look Like Great Megachurches

People don’t come to a Small Church expecting a scaled-down version of a megachurch experience. They come to a Small Church for a great Small Church experience.

A great Small Church won’t have a smoothly-paved well-lit parking lot with parking lot attendants and professional signage leading families to hi-tech, age-segmented children’s ministries.

What people want is to give them the space to meet with Jesus.

Then do something Small Church pastors can do that megachurch pastors can’t do — hang out in the lobby after the worship service. Build relationships. Pray with and for people. Tell dumb jokes. Laugh and cry together. Let people know how much they’re loved. Be a church family.

That won’t lead you to greatness. That is greatness.

Discover What Your Church Can Be Great At

Any church can become great at the things they’re already good at.

What we’re great at won’t be what your church is great at. You may not even know what you’re good at yet, let alone great. So do what we did. Start doing the basic Bible stuff. Experiment. See what works and what doesn’t. We have 10 failures for every success. So toss the failures and keep the successes.

Refuse to Settle for Anything Less than Great

The key word here is “settle.” Do what you need to do. Including doing some things at a less-than-great level when needed. But never, NEVER, settle for “I guess that as good as we’ll ever get.”

Settling is like sin.

23 Signs of a Healthy Church

If numbers aren’t the only way to tell if a church is healthy, what else is there? I get that question a lot following a Pastor’s Project presentation. Mostly from elders and pastors.

And no, they’re not being facetious when they ask it. They truly are searching for the right answers.

sn’t that…I don’t know…a little disturbing to anyone? Have we really become so obsessed with numbers that many pastors don’t know hat a healthy church looks like, outside of crunching the numbers?

No., I’m not opposed to taking church attendance or tracking the numbers. I’m in favor of it. Numbers can help us see things objectively that we might otherwise be blind to.

But just like a lack of numbers can blind us to some critical faces, an obsession with numbers can blind us to essential truths. Numbers are not the only way to determine church health. In some situations, they’re not even the best way.

Numbers may inform us, but they don’t define us.

So, what non-numerical criteria can we use to determine church health?

Consider this as a starter list. Feel free to add to it in the comment section.

23 Non-Numerical Signs of a Healthy Church

1. Volunteers care more about doing ministry than having a title.
2. There are more ministry teams than committees.
3. Departments cooperate with each other.
4. The church cooperates with other churches.
5. The church looks like the neighborhood. (demographically)
6. The church goes into the neighborhood.
7. The congregation is getting younger, not older.
8. The front rows are as full as the back rows.
9. The bulletin isn’t just about internal events.
10. Guests feel special.
11. Volunteerism is high.
12. Ministry ideas bubble up.
13. New ideas are embraced.
14. New leadership is embraced.
15. Long-time leadership is honored.
16. The Bible is honored.
17. Worship is more than just singing.
18. People like bringing their friends.
19. Congregation members love each other.
20. Congregation members like one another.
21. People are being saved and discipled.
22. It’s a safe place to ask hard questions.
23. People pray—A lot.

Please note this list is not designed to add pressures to an already overtaxed church leadership. It’s not a you-must-do-all-these-to-be-a-healthy list, as much as here are some other ways to look at a healthy list.

So use this list as an encouragement and an aid, not a source of intimidation. Take note of what you’re doing well, strengthen the ones you should be doing better and use others as an idea list for the future.

What would you add to this list?

Can A Dying Church Find New Life?

I guess if you really want to answer this question there are questions that precede it. Like do you truly understand who’s church it really is? At what cost are you willing to pay to breathe new life into the church? Change. Are you willing to forsake tradition, most of them anyway, and be willing to change?

Now you can ask the question “Can a dying church find new life?” Well that depends on how you answered the previous questions. If you managed to answer those in the affirmative please read on. If not, move on and find the key to the front door of the building.

Here are five radical steps to be taken by key members of a struggling congregation.

1. A leader must rise and be willing to lead the church toward radical transformation regardless of the personal costs to him. That leader is typically a new pastor in the church, but it doesn’t have to be.

2. A significant group in the church must admit that they are desperate for help. This group must lead the church from denial to a painful awakening to reality.

3. The group must have an utter, desperate and prayerful dependence on God. They can no longer look at the way they’ve always done it as the path for the future. They must fall on their faces before God and seek His way and only His way.

4. The church must be willing to storm the community with love. Members must go into the community, love the unlovable, reach out to the untouchable, and give sacrificially of time, money and heart. The community must be amazed by these believers.

5. The church must relinquish control. If the church reaches the community, the community will come to the church. They may be poorer. They may have different colors of skin. They may speak differently. They may have a radically different culture than the members of the church. If the church is truly to reach the community, it must be joyfully willing to let the community have a role in the church. This attitude is radically different than welcoming the outsiders to “our church.” It is an attitude that says it is now truly the “Lord’s” church.

When these five steps occur in any congregation that finds itself struggling to survive it is often given the name “miracle.”

This May Be The Most Disruptive, Counterintuitive Truth In…

Church don’t need to get bigger to do great ministry. Many smaller churches are already doing it.

Great ideas are disruptive. They don’t follow common wisdom. But after you hear them, you often think, “of course. How did I not see that all along?”

In church leadership today, there’s no more common wisdom than this; if your church is not increasing in size, it’s stuck. And if you want to be effective, influential ministry, you have to get bigger. (Or maybe more accurately, if you are doing effective, influential ministry, you will get bigger.)

Here’s the disruptive, counterintuitive truth about that. Churches don’t need to get bigger to do great ministry. And, for many churches, being small is an important ingredient in why they’re doing good ministry.

Sometimes Bigger Is Just Bigger

Church growth is great, but it’s not necessarily a disruptive truth. Sometimes, it just means bigger. Often it’s more of the same thing.

And if we’re relentlessly chasing after more, it tends to blind us to the reality that nothing may be changing or getting better, just getting bigger.

Ask The Right Question

Take a look at the church leaders, who get the greatest amount of attention. The one’s you’ve been trying to emulate. What have they actually done? Is it truly transformative? Or is it just more? Is it just bigger?

Often it’s both. But not always.

Then assess your ministry the same way. After all, if we’re asking for transformative ministry from others, we have to start at home. It’s not fair t complain about a lack of transformative ministry in the church at large if we’re not doing something transformative ourselves.

For a lot of us, it may be helpful to ask the question in reverse. Instead of asking “Has my ministry been transformative, or just bigger?” we need to ask, “Is my ministry being transformative, even though it’s staying small?”

If so, it may not need to get bigger. If not, getting bigger doesn’t change anything. Size doesn’t transform lives, only transformative, disruptive truth does that.

A Small, But Disruptive Truth

Numerical success isn’t a disruptive truth. It doesn’t challenge the status quo. Not on its own. In fact, it often reinforces doing business as usual. Sure, it’s noticeable. It’s exciting. And it’s often a byproduct of health and effectiveness.

But that’s all it is. On its own, numerical growth doesn’t cause transformation, nor is it a sign of transformative ministry.

Disruptive truth is always transformative. But it’s not always noticeably so. The numbers aren’t always there to quantify it.

Why?

Because we can only measure what we understand, and disruptive, transformative ministry is not understandable. Not at first, anyway.

Transformative ministry usually starts in small batches. In individual lives. Step by step, not leap by leap. One life at a time. Over a long time.

One Person At a Time

The gospel changes individuals. Eventually it changes cultures, structures and societies. But that’s not the way it looks day by day.

On a daily basis, the gospel of Jesus brings disruptive, transformative, life-giving truth into the lives of ordinary people.

One person at a time.

One family at a time.

One church at a time.

It makes lives and churches better. Not necessarily bigger.

But it changes everything along the way.

Not just for now, but for the long term. For eternity.

There’s no bigger, more disruptive, more transformational truth than that.

The Small or Rural Church’s Biggest Need, Biggest Blessing,…

There is a role for churches of all sizes. Big churches meet some needs, small and rural church meet other needs.

The typical church has about 75 attendees each week.

So if you’re a pastor of a small congregation, your church isn’t broken, it’s what’s known as normal. And normal doesn’t need to be fixed.

But for the most part, the books, conferences and classes about pastoring ted to concentrate on big church principles, or on how to help the smaller churches become bigger.

That’s not a bad thing, in fact it’s expected, since we all want to learn from those growing ministries.

But when those are the only sources, we can miss a valuable aspect of church life – the vibrant, healthy small church.

Understanding The Small Church

Small churches have needs, blessings and opportunities that are specific to their smaller size. And since they are by far the most typical church, it’s important for pastors and church leaders to understand small churches better so we can serve them, the pastors who lead them, and the people in them with greater effectiveness.

Biggest Needs: Encouragement

Small churches, and especially small church pastors, labor under a great deal of discouragement.

They face a constant shortage of resources, ideas, facilities, finances, people, time, you name it, if you pastor a small church, it may seem like you ministry is practically defined by being in a constant state of need.

But what may be even worse than the shortage of supplies is the shortage of encouragement. Small church pastors often feel ignored or belittled when their situation is either overlooked and condescended to by the very people they go to for help, such as fellow pastors, church consultants, and other leaders.

It’s not a surprise that so many small church pastors leave the ministry every year. What’s really amazing is that most of them keep moving faithfully along.

More than anything else, small churches and their pastors need to be encouraged.

They (we) need to know what they do has value.

That’s they’re making a difference

They they’re not being looked down on

That they’re being prayed for

That someone is there to help

That they have as much to offer as they have to learn

As much as you may need to be encouraged today, there’s another small church pastor who needs encouragement from you. Let’s set our territorialism aside and be there for each other.

Biggest Blessing: Relationships

Small churches are not necessarily friendlier than big churches. That’s often how big churches become big after all.

But small churches do offer unique opportunities for relationships that can only happen when the crowd is smaller.

For instance, people in a small church can be known by name. Not just be a small circle of friends, but by (almost) everyone, including the pastor. The entire church notices when someone is missing, and their absence means something to the rest of the people in the church.

In many small churches, kids will have the same person teaching them every year, developing a long-term mentoring relationship with them that will affect the rest of their life.

When the relationships in a small church are strong and healthy, there’s nothing like it on earth. Every church of every size can have great relationships with other people. Every church of every size can have great relationships, as long as we make them a priority.

Biggest Opportunity: Discipleship

The greatest churches are built, not on big programs, beautiful buildings, or even great preaching.

The backbone of a strong, healthy, effective church is always discipleship. Equipping the saints for the work of ministry. (Ephesians 4:11-12)

Making and training disciples is what the elements of a great church (worship. fellowship, teaching, ministry and evangelism) are designed to promote.

Smaller churches have a great opportunity to disciple people using the greatest discipleship method ever used. It’s the method that was used by Jesus, the Apostle Paul, and the early church.

For many people being pastored by their pastor is a special and very helpful part of their spiritual growth.

We Need All Sizes Of Churches

There is a role for churches of all styles and sizes in the kingdom of God.

Big churches meet some needs, small churches meet other needs.

My Church is an Endangered Species – Unless…

Is your church’s days numbered? Many churches will not last into the next generation. At least not looking the way they look today.

There’s a cultural and financial storm underway. Unless the church anticipates, acknowledges, and responds well to it, churches will be about as rare as printed newspapers, land-line phones, and brick and mortar bookstores.

There are several reasons why many churches are in endangered. Many of which no one has really figured out yet. But, for today I’ll outline three changes we need to acknowledge.

People’s financial realities have changed.

We’re heading into an era in which at least one, sometimes both of the adults in the household will need more than one source of income each.

What people are willing to give has changed.

People no longer want to give their increasingly-hard-to-earned money to pay for salaries or church mortgages. They will however give to cause they care about.

How people relate to God and the church has changed.

They used to trust God and the church until given a reason not to. Now they don’t trust or the church until they prove that they’re worthy of it.

So…What Might Save Our Churches?

Pay the mortgage – Churches with debt will not last.

Proactive change – Churches that wait too long to react, will die. Churches that thoughtfully and prayerfully anticipate, adapt, and lead a changing culture will be healthier and more valuable to people and to the Kingdom of God than ever.

Partnering with Other Churches – The go-it-alone church won’t make it any more.

Don’t Panic, But Start Acting NOW!

It’s not all bad news. It’s not time to panic…yet.

First, whether-or-not our churches survive in their current form or a new one, the church will always be alive.

Second, churches that see the handwriting on the wall and make necessary adaptations, will not only survive but will thrive. No, they won’t look the same in twenty years. But the way we look today isn’t how we looked twenty years ago, either. It’s not a matter of whether-or-not we change. It’s a matter of how we change and who’s in charge of the change.

Third, the coming trends may actually force the church back towards a more sustainable, possibly even more biblical model. One where there’s less dependence on buildings, structures, and professional clergy – and more dependence on genuine community, discipleship, and direct reliance on God.

Autopsy of a Deceased Church

by Thom Rainer

I was their church consultant in 2003. The church’s peak attendance was 750 in 1975. By the time I got there the attendance had fallen to an average of 83. The large sanctuary seemed to swallow up the relatively small crowd on Sunday morning.

The reality was that most of the members did not want me there. They were about to pay a consultant to tell them what was wrong with their church. Only when a benevolent member offered to foot my entire bill did the congregation grudgingly agree to retain me.

I worked with the church for three weeks. The problems were obvious; the solutions were difficult.

On my last day, the benefactor walked me to my rental car. “What do you think, Thom?” he asked. He could see the uncertainty in my expression. so he clarified. “How long can our church survive?” I paused for a moment and then offered the bad news. “I believe the church will close its doors in five years.”

I was wrong. Like many dying churches, it held on to life tenaciously. The church lasted ten years after my terminal diagnosis.

My friend from the church called to tell me the news when they closed for good. I took no pleasure in discovering that not only was my diagnosis correct, but I had also mostly gotten right all the signs of the impending death of the church. Together my friend and I reviewed the last ten years. I think we were able to piece together a fairly accurate autopsy. Here are the eleven things I learned.

The church refused to look like the community.

The community began a transition toward a lower socioeconomic class thirty years ago, but the church members had no desire to reach the new residents. The congregation thus became an island of middle-class members in a sea of lower-class residents.

The church had no community-focused ministries.

This part of the autopsy may seem to be stating the obvious, but I wanted to be certain. My friend affirmed my suspicions. There was no attempt to reach the community.

Members became more focused on memorials.

Do not hear my statement as a criticism of memorials. The point is that the memorials became an obsession at the church. More and more emphasis was placed on the past.

The percentage of the budget for members’ needs kept increasing.

At the church’s death, the percentage was over 98 percent!

There were no evangelistic emphasis.

When a church loses its passion to reach the lost, the congregation begins to die.

The members had more and more arguments about what they wanted.

As the church continued to decline toward death, the inward focus of the members turned caustic. Arguments were more frequent, business meetings became more acrimonious.

With few exceptions, pastoral tenure grew shorter and shorter.

The church had seven pastors in its final ten years. The last three pastors were bi-vocational. All of the seven pastors left discouraged.

The church rarely prayer together.

In its last eight years, the only time of corporate prayer was a three-minute period in the Sunday worship service. Prayers were always limited to members.

The church had no clarity as to why it existed.

There was no vision, no mission, and no purpose.

The members idolized another era.

All of the active members were over the age of 67 the last years of the church. And they all remembered fondly, to the point of idolatry, was the era of the 1970’s. They saw their future to be returning to the past.

The facilities continued to deteriorate.

It wasn’t really a financial issue. Instead, the members failed to see the continuous deterioration of the church building. Simply stated, they no longer had “outsider eyes.”

Though this story is bleak and discouraging, we must learn from such examples. As many as 100,000 churches in America could be dying. Their time is short, perhaps less than ten years.

What do you think of the autopsy on this church? What can we do to reverse these trends?

5 Mistakes More Likely To Be Made By Small…

Different size churches serve different functions. And they face different challenges.

Here are 5 mistakes that are more likely to be made by small churches than by big ones. The smaller, the more susceptible they are.

Holding On To Stale Traditions

Some traditions strengthen a church. some weaken a church.

And some traditions that used to strengthen will eventually weaken us if we hold onto them past their sell-by date.

Some churches need to ask themselves a very serious question. Namely, ‘what’s more important to us? Holding onto traditions that are killing our church, or letting go of some traditions to save the church?

Poor, Or Nonexistent Planning

Not long ago, I was chatting with a pastor of a dying church. He was excited about his plans to revitalize it, so I asked him to send me an outline of those plans. What did he send me? A six-month calendar of committee meetings!

Having more meetings is a poor substitute for having a plan. Healthy churches will prioritize outcomes.

A plan includes a roadmap for how to get from where you are now to a better, more desirable future. Certainly that plan will change as circumstances change, so the ability to adapt and change needs to be built into the plan. But, to repeat the old cliche, those who fail to plan, plan to fail.

Not Enough Assessment Or Evaluation

After Jesus sent out the 72, He gathered them together and asked how their mission went. The He told them how to evaluate their effectiveness. (Luke 10)

Every time we do any ministry, we need to gather the leadership to assess;

What went right

What went wrong

Why it went right or wrong

What we can do to improve it the next time

Too Much Inward Focus

Many dying churches are doing so because of so many years of obvious, intense conflict.

If we aren’t willing to listen and adapt our methods (but not our core theology, of course) based on the changing needs of the community around us, we will be seen as increasingly cold, distant and irrelevant to them.

No, the church must never abandon the saints who built and support it, but if all we’re doing is a holy huddle, we’ve stopped being a light in the darkness.

Depending On The Pastor Instead Of Making Disciples

No church can survive if its ministry doesn’t grow beyond the capacity of the pastor. We need to expand our ministry base by equipping and involving everyone.

Numerical growth is not the goal. Health is. Sometimes that health will produce numerical growth, sometimes not.

The Astonishing Power of Small & Rural Churches

Let’s encourage, connect, and equip innovative small and rural churches as each one plays their part.

How can we activate the astonishing power of small and rural churches?

Over one billion people worship Jesus in small churches tucked into every corner of the globe. What could we possibly do to light the fuse that would allow us to tap into this astonishing potentials?

How would we structure it? What should we tell them to do? And who can we call upon to lead it?

Actually, we don’t need to light the fuse. It had already been lit. This is something God has done. He did it without us creating a plan for it. And He did mostly without our cooperation. He did it with many of us fighting it every step of the way.

The quickest way to kill it would be to put a person, a blue-ribbon panel or (God forbid) a committee in charge of it.

While we’ve been obsessed with building large congregations, God has been planting small churches like the spiritual seed in a thirsty ground.

There are two principles we can adapt that would help fan this flicker into a flame:

Support Small Churches

Small churches need to be; Supported Valued Resourced Networked Celebrated

And maybe most of all…

Noticed for the contributions they make to the kingdom of God.

Let’s refuse to buy the lie that size is an accurate measure of the health or strength of a congregation. Let’s try not to mess up what God is doing at this time.

Maybe the best thing we can do for small and rural churches is to listen to their pastors, leaders, and congregations.