How do you solve the riddle Bob Roberts poses in his book The Multiplying Church:
“Let’s start a thousand churches over the next ten years, each one running a minimum of two thousand members, and in just ten years we will turn America upside down with the gospel! That would work, right? Wrong – that scenario just happened over the past ten years, and there are fewer people in church today than ever before. How can that be? How could we have spent billions to start two thousand megachurches and yet have fewer people in church and a society that largely feels the church is antagonistic?”
By the way - if you come to The Whiteboard Sessions this is basically what I'll be talking about. But, for now, let's hear what you think...
- featured on newchurches.com
Saturday, April 5, 2008
Another Survey Saturday!
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
8 comments:
From my own limited observation (I live in Dallas - the megachurch capitol of the world), it seems that most mega churches grow numerically by transfer growth, not conversion growth. That is, people leave small churches and join bigger churches, especially the new and exciting ones.
As the small churches shrink, some people just leave, and don't go anywhere.
Very few churches are doing a good job reading out to those who are not part of a church.
Yikes!
I misspelled capital, and ...that should read "reaching out"...
Yeah... what Jeremy said.
Another staggering figure is that every year 3,500 - 4,000 churches close their doors... forever.
I think the only way to combat this phenomenon is to re-define what the church is. It's not about buildings and high technology and budgets and attendance. It's about seeking and saving lost people; it's about transformed lives; it's about the glory of Jesus Christ. The American church today seems to have forgotten this.
Basically, Jeremy beat me to it. It seems most new churches just rearrange the body of believers already in existence. Very few make the body grow.
The problem, it seems to me, anyway, is that the church is inwardly focused. If, instead of planting thousands of new churches, each church in America could grow by 10% each year - if only one out of every ten people could get someone who doesn't currently come to church to start coming to their church - those numbers could be reversed in not so many years.
Here are a few lessons I've learned from experience when it comes to this riddle:
First, we must redefine success. As anonymous said, it's not about facilities, budgets, or attendance. It's about introducing people to Jesus and leading them to a growing relationship with Him--to help them become sold-out followers of Jesus.
Second, we must evaluate EVERYTHING about our churches with brutal, painful honesty. Is our Sunday service really helping us to fulfill the Great Commission? Who is it bringing in? Are we effectively assimilating new people into life-changing communities? Are our ministries leading people to deepening discipleship, or are they just dead-end programs that keep the insiders happy? Does it make the Christians in our church happy, or uncomfortable? The hardest part--if it isn't helping us fulfill the Great Commission, we've gotta either fix it or scrap it... and that will cause people to leave (a great majority of them will be churched people, and they'll find another church). The change may be as radical as completely changing your model (this is what happened to our church--God led us to completely change our model... and we're actually starting to reach genuinely unchurched people).
Third, God does and will use relationships with unchurched people as our primary mode of advertising . Vince just did a cool blog series on advertising, and admitted that it seems to be making less of an impact. We and the people in our churches are going to have to do a better job of building relationships with unchurched people. An example from our church--our church is a network of micro-churches (a.k.a. house, simple, organic). We just launched our third church two weeks ago... with a dude who's a former meth head. He and his wife became Christians at our church, and the people they've invited to help them start their new house church are not from other churches. They're truly unchurched. They came because of the relationship they have with our planter. And they, in turn, are being intentionally encouraged to start thinking this way--of investing in people they want to introduce to Jesus. We've got to model this and talk about it until we're sick of it.
Finally (I promise), we must be more incarnational/missional/whatever term you prefer. We've got to be the church, not just start churches and go to church. We must be Jesus' hands and feet in our communities--taking risks that may be viewed as financially risky, that may never see a "return on our investment" (the people we help may never come to church)... just being Jesus in our communities.
Whew... sorry that's so long!
Think out of the box. Thats how. Its not about being Mega-Church but being multi-site based on demographics. Proper demographics must be factored into the equation. We launch Life Point Church in Nov in a movie theater in Bonita Springs and we are already planning our second site in Naples. The type of service will be tailored to the 3 mile demographic model. Good stuff Vince. I want a signed book at WBC!
By the way..I have a new website for my blog....
www.henryjudy.com
click the link and resubscribe by clicking the subscribe button on top of right hand column.
Thanks
Henry
I read the answer Bob Roberts gives (p. 25-26), and it seems he doesn't fully agree with what we are saying here.
He says the primary problem is that the people in our churches are not being transformed.
That's a good answer too.
As I thought about Bob Robert's answer, I realized that on Friday, I read Neil Cole's book "Cultivating a Life for God" in which he proposes "Life Transformation Groups" (LTG). I really like what he is proposing, but still have some questions.
Has anyone on this blog used LTGs?
Post a Comment