The Present Future

New Reality Number Two

The Shift from Church Growth to Kingdom Growth

The church growth movement exploded about 35 years ago now. Coming out of World War II the church was booming. People were moving to the suburbs at alarming rates and it was really just a matter of putting a few churches in a growing areas and the church would grow. The church was at a favored place in our culture, a time when people attended just because that what people do. Starting in the 1960’s the church began to lose that favorable place in culture, thus putting pressure on church leaders, birthing the church growth movement.

The church growth movement made people make up to realize that people were no longer beating down the doors of the church to enter but rather it was the church’s job to go out and get them. Unfortunately much of the “growth” was the migration of Christians from one church to another, mega-churches cannibalizing the smaller. There will be a predecessor to the Church growth movement…what will it be?

For 35 years now we have been asking ourselves; how do we make this church better? And for 35 years we have received the same answer…silence. Listen to the statistics and the diminishing attendance of people in church. It appears people don’t care about rock-n-roll worship, drama, or a built in health club. This consumer mentality has not grown the church!

Our intentions are pure; we want to see people come to a saving relationship with Christ, I believe this and find it increasingly important to believe this the longer I am a pastor. So how to we transform our community? If they will not come to us (it appears they won’t) then we must go to them. We can keep offering what we think they want or we can start offering what they need.

The church that wants to partner with God on his redemptive mission in the world has a very different target: the community. In the past if a church had any resources left over after staffing Sunday school, and so on, then it went to the community. IN the future the Church that “gets it” will staff to and spend its resources on strategies for community transformation. Members obviously have needs for pastoral care and spiritual growth. It is critical that these be addressed. However, I am raising the question of how many church activities for the already-saved are justified when there are people who have never been touched with Jesus’ love? The answer is a whole lot less than we’ve got going on now.

I have heard that going to the “mall” is on the way out and people want to return to the “strip-mall” type system. Rather than go to one building that houses all their shopping needs they would rather have the option of only popping into one or two stores to get what they need. Notice fast food places beginning to partner with places like Wal-mart and Target to offer food to people while they shop. The point is where people are are at and why isn’t the church going to them. Remember asking them to come to us is not working.

Why not host a reading club at your neighborhood bookstore?
Why not have a truth seekers study at Panera?
Sunday school in McDonalds
Baptism at the county pool
Church service in the Park

There are two incredibly dangerous things about this mentality to the current church. The first is that it is comfortable to come into our club every week, see the same people and learn the same lessons, to banter back and forth in Sunday school and greet the few visitors. It is very uncomfortable to go out there and do these things where we may be stared at ridiculed or just not understood. The second dangerous thing is that we are so used to bull horning to people that they are sinners and going to hell, that being administers of grace seems scary. After all we don’t want to send the wrong message to homosexuals that we love them and so does God. We don’t want to let abortion clinics to know that God’s grace is extended to them as well. We don’t want the “nasty” people of society to hear about God’s reckless love for people because then we might have to see them in heaven. Secretly we want people to go to hell, because that’s what they deserve.

It is not our job to convict people of sin. According to Jesus the Holy Spirit will take care of that (John 16:8). It is our responsibility to tell the good news. John 3:16-17 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

People do not listen to you until they know you genuinely care about them and not about advancing your own cause. Yesterday I was getting my monthly haircut and I decided to try a new place on my side of town. The conversation was going well but I felt a burden to turn things to the spiritual. I told her that I was a pastor and she sounded a little interested but there was a wall. Through the natural course of conversation I began to ask her about her hopes and dreams, about her family and about paying the bills. She saw that I genuinely cared for her as a person, not just someone I was trying to “pastor”. I did genuinely care for her and she knew it!

The church must genuinely care for people and THEIR needs not our own.

posted by Nick @ 9:10 AM