Five Major Trends for Amercian Churches…
There's an interesting article at the ChristianPost.com about research that identifies five emerging trends in U.S. churches.
Here are the five:
1. Our nation will see the emergence of the largest generational mission field in over a century.
2. The dominant attitude of this huge generation toward Christianity will be largely indifferent.
3. Senior adult ministries in churches will experience steep declines.
4. The large Boomer generation will become more receptive to the gospel.
5. Family will be a key value for both of the large generations.
The question is how do churches adjust to these trends? Should churches adjust? How should churches respond?
Here are some of my thoughts:
• Whatever the trends are, make sure the gospel is preached. Self-improvement messages are catchy and attractive, but the gospel is God's power for salvation.
• People reach people, methods and programs do not. Continually communicate the truth of every believers responsibility and privilege to reach out to others.
• Prayer. No matter the flow of the cultural current, prayer is the driving force that transcends culture. More prayer, more power.
• Focus on making disciples. It's our job description. It's easy to be distracted by more "flashy" programs and events because disciple-making is repetitive and lacks pizazz. But always remember: changed people change culture.
You can read the full article here.
Staff meeting agenda
I'm always interested in how other church's run their staff meetings, so I'd thought Id' share our meeting agenda just in case someone else has the same interest.
We meet on Tuesdays from 9am to 5pm. Mondays are a day off. The meeting is formatted around the three main "flywheels" GBCK is pushing on: 1)discipleship, 2)Weekend services, and 3)leadership development.
9am - 10am: Leadership discussion
We use this time to discuss a book we're reading together as a staff. Currently, we're listening to Breaking Growth Barriers by Nelson Searcy.
10am - 12pm: Administration, follow-up, discipleship
We use this time to follow-up on people and tasks. We talk about what needs to be done for upcoming events, classes, or services. We also focus on following-up with people who filled out a Connection card from this past Sunday.
12pm - 2pm: Weekend services
We discuss upcoming message series, specials, music, and anything else that involves the worship and preaching. We try to get as far ahead as possible. We're always trying to make our services more compelling and comfortable.
2pm - 5pm: more discipleship and leadership
We talk about our discipleship process. We gauge how many people are moving through the process. We look for ways to improve and tweak things. We also focus on small group leadership and ministry leadership. Currently, we're talking a lot about leadership seasons, and about developing a system for progress and feedback reports.
Change
At GBCK we are walking through a lot of change in areas of leadership, systems, spiritual growth track, and even our service times. Last Summer there was something brewing inside of me that as a church we needed to change; that is, what got us to our current state wasn't going to get to where we needed to go.
Here are some things we're learning about change, especially from mistakes we made:
• In general, people do not like change. You will always have your "early adopters", but most people adopt change slowly.
• Communication is critical to change. Communicate early. Communicate often.
• Change takes time. People don't soak up change like a sponge; change seeps in.
• Get your leaders and influencers bought into the change early. Don't assume they "got it".
• Change is a process. Plan out the steps to change and then work the plan.
• Vision is the engine to change. Vision makes change a mission. Without vision change becomes a duty.
• Change takes a lot of leadership energy at the front-end.
• Change is good, change is hard.
Clear as Mud
You can never be too clear. Like a window can never be too clean, or water can never be too clear.
Clarity is something we're working hard on at GBCK. Here are some things we're learning, and re-learning, about clarity:
• It may be clear in your head (or in your staff meeting) but it takes a whole lot of work to make something clear to the rest of the congregation.
• Clarity can never be assumed. It's safer to assume things are still unclear, and then keep working at clarity.
• Pop quizzes: one way we want to determine clarity is short "quizzes" that will help determine if something that's being communicated is going in.
• Say it often, differently, and creatively.
• Clarity empowers others and frees them to act. Lack of clarity paralyzes.
• If the leadership is unclear then it's over; what you're trying to communicate will end at the leadership level and never go to the congregation.
• Use sounding boards to gauge clarity. One of my most important weekly meetings is our "Word" meeting where Dane and I go over Friday's and Sunday's sermons. We spend a lot of time clarifying big ideas. "If there's a haze in the pulpit, there's a fog in the pews."
Here are some of the things we're trying to clarify:
1. The vision of GBCK
2. Leadership roles and functions
3. The Gospel
Again, you can never be too clear.
Breaking barriers
Yesterday Dane and I listened on CD to the first hour of Nelson Searcy's Breaking Growth Barriers workshop.
One of the first growth barriers a church will face is space. At some point your facility begins to feel full even when it isn't full. Searcy uses the "70% rule": when you are filling 70% of your seats your are full. Technically, the space isn't full, but people perceive that it is.
When this happens people
• stop inviting guests
• stop talking/connecting to others
• attend erratically
At GBCK we are facing this barrier in our 10am service. We are hovering right at 70% capacity. In order to create more space we will shift our service start times a half-hour later to 9am and 10:30am in order to give people more options to attend and to invite. The change happens on May 16.
I believe GBCK is poised to reach our next growth increment of 300, which means the Gospel is growing and bearing fruit (Col. 1:6) and that disciples are being made (Matt. 28:19).
As we heard on the CD, sometimes all it takes is one little tweak to bust through a growth barrier.
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