Category Archives: Church
“If the church was worth His blood, is it not worth our labor?” ~John Stott
“…God Himself thought they were worth dying for.” Acts 20:28 (The Message Paraphrase)
“Feed and shepherd God’s flock—HIS CHURCH, PURCHASED WITH HIS OWN BLOOD—over which the Holy Spirit has appointed you as elders” Acts 20:28 (New Living Translation)
Many people don’t have much for churches anymore. Thank God that He did.
Good Intentions
Last month the Archdiocese of New Orleans announced the opening of their first offices on the Northshore. With the announcement came the stat that 91,000 Catholics live in St. Tammany Parish. With the population estimates at 261,000, that’s about 35% of the population. However, almost 50% of the population when polled claim to be Catholic. 22% claim to be Baptist, but actual attendance roles show only 7% of the population actually attending a Baptist Church at least 3 out of 8 weeks (3.3% weekly for Southern Baptist). Dave Olson’s research of actual attendance roles reveals that 24% of St. Tammany residents attend some kind of church at least once per month, but 64% claim to attend church at least once per month in our recent opinion poll.
Researchers call this the Halo Effect. We tend to give ourselves credit for our intentions when asked without knowledge of ability to fact check. Same holds true for voting. If polled 10-25% more people say they voted then actually did each election according to the voting rolls.
Question: What if we actually followed through on our best intentions? What if we actually did what we give ourselves credit for? What if we actually lived what we believe to be right and best for our families? Would the world be different? Would I be different? Would anything change? Is there a gap between your intentions and your actions?
James 4:17 says, “whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin.”
Jesus can give us the power to close the gaps and live with intentionality, not just good intentions.
How to BLESS someone
Most people want to make a difference in the world. Ability, time, and permission is often in question among us church goers. How can I be a blessing to those around me? Here’s a simple strategy that anybody can implement. I heard this last week during the Verge Conference from Dave Ferguson. BLESS:
B – Begin w/prayer.
Pray for opportunities and open doors. Pray for the heart of God for those around you.
L – Listen.
If we’re willing to listen, people will tell us their needs, hurts, desires, questions.
E – Eat.
Build relationships. Do coffee or lunch. Invite someone over for dinner.
S – Serve.
When we listen and build relationships with people we will know what they need and can serve them.
S – Story.
It’s incomplete without sharing the story of Christ. His is the story promised to bring blessing to every nation.
What if you committed to do at least one of these each day? Just one. If so, you’d find yourself on the way to making a difference from where you are.
On Discipleship #verge2012
Got to catch a couple of sessions of the Verge Conference this week via Simulcast with some of our Northshore Church Multipliers. This conference and network has really stimulated my thinking over the past couple of years. Here’s a few big take away’s from the sessions we caught:
- “If God is a missionary God, we must become a missionary people. If God is an incarnational God, we must become an incarnational people.” ~Alan Hirsch
- The Jesus Mission = Reach, Restore, Reproduce ~Dave Ferguson
- “What if we took the words of Jesus seriously and didn’t water them down?” from the video Sara’s story. Incredible testimony. Watch it here.
- We all must live as missionaries. “A missionary sacrifices everything but the Gospel for the sake of the Gospel.” ~Todd Engstrom
- “Consumerism is a cancer that kills mission.” ~Jen Hatmaker
- “Live it or you have no hope of leading it.” ~Jen Hatmaker
- “If people imitated you, where would the kingdom be in five years?” ~Jen Hatmaker
- Does the church affirm comfort as a Christian virtue when Jesus affirmed death? ~Jeff Vanderstelt
- Most Christians are not willing to die for the one who died for them. ~Jeff Vanderstelt
- The Great Commission is to make disciples, not converts. ~Gilbert from India
- The fruit of the mango is a mango tree. The fruit of discipleship is a disciple maker. ~Gilbert from India
- Discipleship is leading people to an ongoing surrender and dependency to Jesus as Lord. ~Jeff Vanderstelt
- You will make disciples, but what are you making disciples of?
- We all look great from afar off, but are we willing to allow people to get close enough to imitate us? ~Jo Saxton
- You can’t be what you can’t see. From afar we can illustrate and inspire, but imitation can’t happen. ~Jo Saxton
Riding a Dead Horse
Remembered and shared this a few times over the past month while working on Associational Church Revi Strategies. I think I heard it first from one of John Maxwell’s Enjoy Tapes back in the 90’s. It’s passed around a lot. I guess because it’s so true. Got any dead horses around?
25 Ways to Ride a Dead Horse
The tribal wisdom of the Dakota Indians—passed on from generation to generation—says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.
Modern churches, however, have found a whole range of far more advanced strategies to use, such as:
- Buying a stronger whip.
- Changing riders.
- Declaring, “God told us to ride this horse.”
- Appointing a committee to study the horse.
- Threatening the horse with termination.
- Proclaiming, “This is the way we’ve always ridden this horse.”
- Develop a training session to improve our riding ability.
- Reminding ourselves that other churches ride this same kind of horse.
- Determining that riders who don’t stay on dead horses are lazy, lack drive, and have no ambition – then replacing them.
- Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be included.
- Reclassifying the horse as “living-impaired.”
- Hiring an outside consultant to advise on how to better ride the horse.
- Harnessing several dead horses together to increase the speed.
- Confessing boldy, “This horse is not dead, but alive!”
- Providing additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.
- Riding the dead horse “outside the box.”
- Get the horse a Web site.
- Killing all the other horses so the dead one doesn’t stand out.
- Taking a positive outlook – pronouncing that the dead horse doesn’t have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the church’s budget than do some other horses.
- Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
- Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position.
- Name the dead horse, “paradigm shift,” and keep riding it.
- Riding the dead horse “smarter, not harder.”
- Stating that other horses reflect compromise and are not from God.
- Remembering all the good times you had while riding that horse.
On Church Buildings and Portable Church
Great thoughts from Geoff Surratt on the Problems w/Church Buildings & why/how to make portable church 
sustainable. Our church has been portable since inception in 2009. There are limitations, but Surratt does a great job demonstrating that the grass is not always greener on the side of having a permanent building. I learned this the hard way when our first church plant moved from being portable and meeting in an unairconditioned fire station to owning our own property. The building sucked much of the energy out of community ministries but we had air conditioning. Interestingly enough, 6 months later, many of our leaders were saying, “I wish we were back in the fire station.” Below is a synopsis of Surratt’s comments. All the posts are well worth reading for church planters and those thinking of multiplying through multi-site:
I agree with Surratt: “Church buildings are not evil, obviously most churches have had them for the past 1700 years. But if we are going to really make a dent in reaching lost people I think we are going to have to literally think outside the box.”
Part 1: What a Building Won’t Do
- First, a building won’t make you a real church. I’m sure you realize that the Christian church built few, if any, buildings before 300 AD.
- a building doesn’t validate a church, the anointing of the Holy Spirit validates a church.
- if you have a leadership development problem, a discipleship problem or a volunteer recruitment problem now, you will still have those challenges once you have a building. If people aren’t growing at your church now they still won’t be growing when you put a permanent roof over their heads.
Part 2: The Hidden Costs
- Buildings Attract Christians – If your target audience is now sitting in someone else’s pew, then a new building is just the bait to lure them in. If you really are after the unchurched, a building might not have the impact you think it will have.
- Buildings Eat 24/7 – When you get a permanent facility you won’t have to set up and tear down any more, but you will have to pour endless amounts of cash into the care and feeding of your new money pit.
- Buildings Modify Vision – Once you have a permanent location the vision of your church will be greatly impacted by your building. A lot of what you do will be guided by paying for your box, filling up your box and expanding your box.
Part 3: 8 Ways to Make Portable Sustainable
- Realize you have meeting space now
- Lease an office space with a small to medium size meeting room
- Have multiple teams for set up and tear down
- Select the right team leaders
- Honor the setup and tear down teams
- Build community into the teams
- Create a path for advancement
- Hire the setup/tear down crew
And interestingly enough, 62% of residents in our community recently said in a professional opinion poll that they would be ok with attending church in a school, movie theater or other public building.
Thoughts? Follow-up questions? Ideas or experiences on portable church?
The Great TRANSFER GROWTH Boogie Monster, part 2
Many church leaders are afraid of church multiplication because of the Great Transfer Growth Boogie Monster that will jump out and get us if we plant new churches. We tend to assume that ALL new churches just take members from existing churches. In my previous post, I talked about why this is wrong/bad strategy and I shared some of Dr. JD Payne’s great challenge to church planters to not settle for transfer growth over reaching the unchurched. (Read all the Ethical Guidelines for Church Planters here.)
Now, a few questions for pastors and ministry leaders on the other side of this, who are poopooing on the whole notion of church planting and off campus multiplication in fear of the great Transfer Growth Boogie Monster.
- Are you practicing what you’re crying out against? When I share with other ministry leaders some of JD Payne’s principles and my own process for those who may be wanting to transfer membership, most admit that they don’t do that themselves, pointing out that there is just no time. So time is better spent talking down the planting of new churches and making unfounded accusations about church planters who are seeking the good of the city? If you gladly shake the hands with a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward transfer members, you should not use that as a reason against church planting.
- Is your fear of people leaving your church really just insecurity about your own ministry? If we believe in the sovereignty of God and his placing of people in the body as He sees fit, and if we are properly discipling people to understand who they are in Christ and their place in the body, what’s to fear? Unless we’re really just appealing to people’s consumeristic tendencies ourselves in order to “get some butts in the seats” (Whoopie Goldberg in Sister Act). There will always be a better show come to town to draw consumeristic attenders. Building ministries with robust disciple making instead of a great and attractive show may mean slower growth at first, but greater commitment to the church family on mission together.
- Is the thought of people leaving your church scarier than people spending eternity in hell? Most pastors today will admit that there are population segments in their community that they cannot and will not reach. And at the same time, not lend support to the planting of new churches to reach those people. Are we content to leave significant numbers of people without a contextually appropriate gospel witness because of fear our numbers may dip?
Transfer growth is not best for the kingdom, but the real boogie moster for us is the growing number of unchurched
Americans and those leaving the church and never coming back. We need church planters and healthy churches that will focus on making disciples through on and off campus multiplication.
We could head off transfer growth and grow the Kingdom through an effective SENDING/MULTIPLICATION strategy. That’s for a future post.
Check out Part 1 of The Great Transfer Growth Boogie Monster. Also check out my post entitled Commitment, Honor, & Transfer Growth which deals with ethical guidelines for ministry leaders to consider.
Where are the next generation of church leaders? You might be surprised…
Don’t get down about the future of the church. God’s Spirit is not done yet. Loved this post from Dr. Russell Moore.
…the leaders of the next generation might not be coming from the current evangelical establishment. They are probably still pagans.
The next Jonathan Edwards might be the man driving in front of you with the Darwin Fish bumper decal. The next Charles Wesley might be a misogynist, profanity-spewing hip-hop artist right now. The next Billy Graham might be passed out drunk in a fraternity house right now. The next Charles Spurgeon might be making posters for a Gay Pride March right now. The next Mother Teresa might be managing an abortion clinic right now.
But the Spirit of God can turn all that around.
Who is it that you’re thinking will never change? Who are you shying away from talking about faith with? How about instead of seeing people as dead ends or distractions, see them as next gen leaders for God’s continued Gospel movement. Think of the possibilities…
Read the entire post here. And follow Dr. Moore on Twitter as well.
Zero
Thinking about numerical goals for 2012 & beyond. None challenges my faith more than ZERO. How about shooting for some of these?
- Zero w/o the opportunity to respond to the gospel.
- Zero homes destroyed by addiction, adultery, abuse, neglect.
- Zero kids dying of curable diseases.
- Zero elderly residents w/o life’s necessities.
- Zero kids w/o encouragement, mentoring, and opportunity to connect w/God.
- Zero suicides completed.
- Zero kids waiting for adoption.
In our quest for numbers going up, let’s not forget to think about the ones that should be going down and add them to our stat sheets every now and then. Someone asked, “What difference does it make if our churches grow but the community continues to deteriorate?” If we’re really making disciples who respond to God’s call of engagement (Matthew 28:19-20), some things should be moving toward zero.
Changing the Scorecard for the Church
“The typical church scorecard (how many, how often, how much) doesn’t mesh with a missional view of what the church should be monitoring in light of its mission in the world. The current scorecard rewards church activity and can be filled in w/o reference to the church’s impact beyond itself”
from the introduction to Reggie McNeal’s Missional Renaissance: Changing the Scorecard for the Church. This book outlines the
shifts that must take place to make the church in America a missional movement again. The book is also full of ideas of how to engage in making these shifts. He admits to not having the silver bullet, but Missional Renaissance provides great insight for next generation ministries. I read this book when it first came out and its been bugging me ever since. The ideas are provocative and thrilling and now more and more leaders are coming to the conclusion that our measurements must change. Much is being written about this right now. Others that I’ve read and been helped by are Transformational Church by Ed Stetzer and Thom Rainer, On the Verge by Dave Ferguson and Alan Hirsch, and Barefoot Church by Brandon Hatmaker. This is a great conversation for us to have, so grab McNeal’s book and be provoked. Here’s the three shifts he suggests with a few of my fav quotes:
Shift #1: From an Internal to an External Ministry Focus. The missional church engages the community beyond its walls because it believes that is why the church exists.
- Moving to an external focus pushes the church from doing missions as some second-mile project into being on mission as a way of life.
- Internal focus is to define effectiveness by church activity and whatever it takes to be a “full-service” church.
- Externally focused means seeing ourselves as a CONNECTOR not the DESTINATION. Like an airport is a place of connection, not a destination. It’s job is to help people get somewhere else. When church sees itself as the destination the scorecard gets confused.
Shift #2: From Program Development to People Development. Moving away from the assumption that people are better off if they just participate in certain activities and processes that the church or organization has sanctioned.
- We’re learning that there is no necessary correlation between time logged sitting in pews or chairs at church and attaining Christlikeness in mindset and mission or purpose.
- a new scorecard celebrates investments in people, not just programs, and cheers breakthroughs in people’s lives, not just organizational achievement.
- McNeal’s question: “Are people better off for being a part of this church, or are they just tireder and poorer?
Shift #3: From Church-based to Kingdom-based Leadership. …thinking of kingdom impact more than church growth.
- Church based leadership is institutional, maintenance-oriented, positional, church-focused, and highly controlling.
- Kingdom leadership is organic, disruptive, prophetic, kingdom-focused, empowering.
- Kingdom leadership focuses on people development not program management and event production.
- Good questions for church leaders: Does your call revolve around a mission or a job? Have we minimized the call of God down to a guaranteed employment contract and a regular paycheck?
A few of my favorite quotes:
- The true vitality of a congregation rests in the abundant lives of its participants and in the blessed lives in the community it serves.
- To think and live missionally means seeing all of life as a way to be engaged with the mission of God in the world.
- We must change our ideas of what it means to develop a disciple, shifting the emphasis from studying Jesus and all things spiritual in an environment protected from the world to following Jesus into the world to join him in his redemptive mission.
- Missional followers of Jesus don’t belong to a church. They are the church. The missional church is not a what, but a who.
- Our job is not to “do church” well but to be the people of God in an unmistakable way in the world. Our “thereness” is what the world needs.
- Number of growing relationships with people who are not Jesus followers or church people.
- Number of personal relationships with community leaders.
- Number of venues for interpersonal service in the community each month.
- Number of hours in personal service in the community each month.
- Number of life-coaching relationships.
- Number of external, missional experiences and stories used in speaking and writing.
Lane Corley 