Director of Equipping Vital Congregations
My ministry began as an eighteen-year-old high school graduate appointed as the student pastor of Riverside UM Church in Harrisburg, PA. I served the small church while attending Messiah College and was with them for four years. The church has since closed, mostly because it couldn’t adapt to the changing culture around it.
The longer I have been in ministry the more I realize that everything about being church in our culture has changed. EVERYTHING. We often find ourselves disoriented and discouraged. We want to know what happened to lead us here. And, is there something we can do about it to rediscover vitality?
My wife Kim and I co-authored a book that answers both questions from our own perspectives and experiences in ministry. You can borrow it from the Discovery Place or purchase it at Amazon.com. The book is titled, “Imagining Church: Seeing Hope In a World of Change.” I’m only going to briefly address the second question in this article: “Is there something we can do to rediscover vitality in light of the cultural shift that has brought us to where we are right now?”
Carey Nieuwhof, (pastor, author, leader and speaker), recently published an article titled, “4 Big Signs It’s Not Going to Turn Around.” I invite us to reflect on some of his thoughts but from a more positive perspective: Four things necessary to turn it around.
1. Focus more on the future and less on the past.
I recently heard someone say, “When we spend more time reminiscing about the past than dreaming about the future- the end is near.”We tend to romanticize the past and worry about the future. Nieuwhof writes, “If most of your efforts are spent trying to revive what worked yesterday, you’re probably going to have a less pleasant tomorrow.”
Be a student. Study the community around you. Read books that offer innovative models for doing church well in our current times. Become aware of the cultural trends that will impact how we do church in the years to come.
Is most of your time and energy spent trying to replicate and revive what once was in your church or to build what could be for the future?
2. Count the Right Things and Make the Right Things Count
Counting the number of persons attending worship and/or Sunday School as well as the offering each week is a helpful way to track the trends of your church but it’s also important to count some other things as well:- Number of first-time guests (may indicate outreach is working)
- Number of guests who return a second or third time (may indicate hospitality is healthy)
- New givers (may indicate a deepening commitment to the mission)
- Ages of the new people showing up (may indicate the target audience you’re reaching)
- Engagement level of people (joined a group, volunteered for ministry, inviting friends)
It’s always a good idea to interview the newer people who are coming and getting involved in the life of the church to learn what brought them here, what their needs are, what they are seeking in terms of spiritual growth. Find out what counts for them.
3. Focus on commitment to the mission ABOVE commitment to the method
Churches that are able to turn their decline around are churches that keep their mission central to everything they do and every decision they make AND are willing to adapt the methods they use to fulfil that mission.Congregations that learn their communities and pay careful attention to what the needs are around them are much more willing to change their methods in order to meet their mission.
Your current worship style, discipleship ministries, programs and events may have worked really well decades ago (and the people reached by these methods who remain in the church may become very attached to them) but may be foreign to your neighbors who ARE your mission field. Expecting newcomers to adapt to your methods and do the things you’ve always done the way you’ve always done them is not likely to have much impact on your mission field. This, I believe, is the greatest challenge of our churches today.
4. Learn from those around you who are succeeding
Study what’s working in other places—maybe even in that thriving church of another denomination in your community. What do they know about the mission field that you don’t know. Humble yourselves and be willing to learn from them.Nieuwhof says, “Adopt a critical mind, not a critical spirit. A critical mind will figure out why certain things are working and why other things aren’t. A critical spirit shuts down all learning.”
Churches that turn things around visit other congregations, pay attention to what is working well there, learn from their successes and failures AND are not threatened by them as their competition!
Obviously, there are more than these four things that lead to greater vitality. I happen to agree with Nieuwhof that these four are foundational.
Want to continue the conversation? Contact us a EVCoffice@susumc.org or phone 717-545-0525.
