[The following is NOT an attempt to replicate the class but to present the same material in a blog format. I’ll expand on the material quite a bit to include some thoughts we didn’t have time to cover. This will be a little out of order, but I always teach a class better the second time through.]
Let’s start with a couple of questions.
First question.
Imagine two churches, both with about 100 members.
Congregation A is the result of a church plant, about five years ago. They rent space in a shopping center. They struggle with their budget. Their members are nearly all new converts. They have a few members with more experience, either from transfers or from the original plant team, but mostly they are new Christians with very little experience and training. On average, they are very young, with lots of families and very few retirees.
Congregation B is the same size. It’s been around for 50 years. They own a very nice building that’s paid for. They make budget easily. They have members who’ve walked with Jesus for 50, 60, and even 70 years. Many members are retired, but they also have younger members with families.
Now, which congregation is likely to reach 200 members first?
During the class, the elders all quickly and decisively said Congregation A. But Congregation B has more resources — more experienced Christian members, members with more free time to volunteer, and more financial and physical resources. Why A?
The elders responded, because Congregation A is more excited about Jesus! And I asked, why would having spent LESS time with Jesus make you MORE excited? What on earth are we teaching our members that makes them LESS effective disciples of Christ as they get older?
Second question.
Think of your own congregations. Think of the young, middle aged, and older members. Among those members, which ones are the most selfish, the most self-centered, and the most narcissistic?
The elders answered — and needed very little time to come to this conclusion: the oldest members. Elders from many different states, from large and small churches, with widely differing neighborhoods and communities, all said that their oldest, most long-term members are the most selfish.
And these men were largely much older than me (I’m nearly 58). They were speaking of their friends.
And, again, I ask, what on earth are we teaching our members that makes them more selfish, more self-centered, and more narcissistic as they spend more and more time in church?
How can someone sit in Bible class and the assembly for 50 years and hear thousands of sermons and classes and become less and less like Jesus year after year?
I mean, shouldn’t our oldest members be our most Christ-like members? If we were doing a halfway decent job with our classes and sermons, wouldn’t we expect that more time spent in classes and the assembly would draw us closer to Jesus, to help us become more and more like him?
There is a deep, serious, horrible flaw in our teaching.
NOTE: Readers: Obviously, we are speaking in generalities. The elders themselves were plainly men of great submission and love for Jesus. There are plenty of older members who have learned to be like Jesus. But nearly every church that has been around a long time has a pocket of older members who feel empowered to pursue a selfish agenda.
In fact, it’s a little more complicated than that. I find that there are members who are extraordinarily generous, kind, and helpful but who refuse to submit on certain topics. Indeed, as I’ve pondered the question since Tulsa, I’ve concluded — tentatively — that the issue is not so much selfishness as a certain sense of entitlement.
We have members who’d literally bankrupt themselves with their generosity for others, who give vast amounts of time and energy to the cause of Christ, but who nonetheless feel entitled — so much so that they become great burdens on the leadership. It was easy to see that the elders felt a great weight from dealing with this subset of their members.
What do we church leaders do that creates a sense of entitlement — such that the longer our members are Christians, the more entitled they feel? Is it bad theology? Bad sermons? Bad Bible classes? Bad leadership? Bad shepherding? What’s missing?
And why is it nearly impossible for an established church to grow through conversion, whereas a newly planted church often grows very effectively through conversion? Again, what are we teaching our members to make them less effective disciples of Jesus?
Of course, it’s not impossible for an established congregation to grow thru conversion. It’s just less likely.
Part of explanation for why it’s less likely is the realities of society. As people age, their spiritual views become less susceptible to revision or change (not resistant, but less susceptible). Younger people as a whole are more willing to change.
If we could do a study on the age at which people first held their current spiritual beliefs, I suspect it would more on the young side than older side. Probably before 30 and certainly before 40.
Look at what happened with the growth rates of the ICOC (International Church of Christ). In it’s early days, when it was known as the Boston Movement (or even earlier, in it’s “Crossroads” days), it focused on evangelizing college campuses and grew rapidly.
As it’s core membership and leadership aged, the growth rate from evangelism has slowed. Largely because of decline in their focus on evangelizing college campuses.
As your elder audience observed, the younger congregation may be more excited about their faith, but they are also, naturally, associating with a younger crowd who is more willing to reconsider their own spiritual views.
It’s easy to make a case that this condition should not be true … but that does not refute the fact that it is substantially true.
A related problem is that many young people perceive the evangelistic efforts of many Christians as being either politically based or denominationally-driven (i.e., recruiting for one particular denomination). And either perception damages the effectiveness of the message.
BTW, this dynamic is not particular to the CoC. I would suggest that older members are more thoroughly inculcated with the real values of the group. So, Jay’s question about our “teaching” is near the target but misses the actual, more sobering, target. It is not a problem with our teaching, but with the actual core values of the group. Blaming this on “teaching” leaves us room to blame our effectiveness or skill in communication rather than identifying and challenging our core values. By identifying, I do NOT mean asking people what their core values are. I mean observing our actions and deducing our values from those actions. This is better done from without, but can be a self-led project if we are really desperate enough to want to know the answers.
Some of our core values which inhibit growth:
–Being doctrinally correct in all particulars.
–Maintaining our existing doctrine and protecting our organization from doctrinal deviation or changes in values.
–Faithfully observing established Sunday morning ritual.
–Distinguishing ourselves from other believers.
–Assuring that our congregation, as currently constituted, continues to exist.
Note that none of these core values is essentially negative in and of itself. But the combination holds within itself the power to sterilize and ossify any religious group. And this is not seminary theory, it is simple observation of the facts on the ground and reasonable conclusions from that observation. The CoC is a doctrine-based group, not missional or evangelical, with a long-held doctrinal teaching that error equals damnation. This logically makes the whole foundation a defensive one. Learning, growth and discovery are not positive opportunities, but a threat to our very souls. For if I find a truth which I did not have previously, under this construct I condemn myself in my existing error. The result is a fortress mentality, and the only way you grow the fortress is to terrify the surrounding villagers enough to get them to come and hide behind your walls. This is more Jonestown than Jerusalem.
Even when the fear of error is not so great, the focus on being right quickly makes for a sterile academic environment wherein we become satisfied once the dust has settled from our doctrinal debates has settled. If you are trying to be right, and then you become right, what is there to do but sit back and feel good about it? Oh, and to look down on others who have not yet arrived at this state.
Being distinctive is not a bad thing in and of itself, but taken very far it actually discourages us from interacting with people unlike ourselves, whether they are other believers or unbelievers.
Maintaining our schedule of religious ritual and the existence of our local religion club, when they become our raison d’etre, turns our focus inward and creates an atmosphere where there is little reason to even look outward. We become an essentially exclusive club, where new members are not only not needed, but are actually as much a risk as they are a resource. Only when our own resources dry up may we become motivated to look outward.
This is hard. In the past, we have blamed bad members for a lack of evangelism, then we became more enlightened and started to blame bad communication on the part of leaders. Now, we are actually going to have to face the reality that we have developed a consistent message, and that we have communicated it effectively, and our members have been buying in for years, and the status quo is the result of our existing core values, not a deviation from them. The more these values become the basis for our congregation’s life, the less the gospel gets past our walls.
If you have a congregation that has been around for 50 years and is not yet 200 members, one of two things is true: Either they have not grown significantly for 50 years, or they’ve declined from a previous peak membership. Regardless of which is the case, the members don’t really expect that the church will grow rapidly from this point. And they’ve become OK with that.
The church planting, on the other hand, expects that the church will grow, because that’s what they’ve seen it do in the past. They’ve seen people from the community become Christians over and over again, and they’ve seen lives change. Therefore they believe it will happen again, over and over. They believe it will happen, and they would be concerned if it did not.
I applaud the recognition that “the system is the way it is because it got that way” and “we created the system to be this way because we like it this way.”
We are fundamentally selfish.
Older people:
1. have more money
2. give more money
3. want more say
Is this a surprise? It is the way of the world. We live in the world and sometimes (often times?) conform to the way of the world.
Teaching themes (repeated often over many years): The way of Jesus is upside down and backwards from the way of the world. See, e.g., the last shall be first and so on.
Dwayne noted: “The way of Jesus is upside down and backwards from the way of the world.”
>>>
Yes, yes, and yes! But this should probably not be pointed out to us more often than every day. After all, many –if not most– of our ways are eerily similar to those of the world around us. Reading and re-reading Jesus’ life and teachings and how He contrasted with society around him has always left me with one impression: that it’s no wonder they killed him. Shucks, they were just like us.
Jay,
Good questions. I can put anecdotes with what you are saying – but there is no need to do so. We all have seen it time and time again.
The comments above are all useful. As he frequently does, David Himes makes a good observation about young people. This time it is that they associate with other young people, who are a demographic group that is more willing to make religious changes. To that we could add that many (not all) older Christians have very few non-Christian friends and associates. I include myself in this number, to my shame.
Charles, as he often does, correctly points out that our own fear of change in ritual or in doctrine drives us to thinking of ourselves as somehow superior to others who differ from us in either of these – and that this also sometimes makes us look strange to those outside our group (or at least makes us think that we look strange to those we seek to win to Jesus).
Alan is also right in that expectations of growth are self-fulfilling. When we expect to grow, we will; if we do not expect to grow, we won’t. At least, those are the likely outcomes.
Then Dwayne hit the ball out of the park. We are what we are because what we do (or don’t do) has made us this way. He reminded me of the “change agent” in a business whose mantra was: “Your system is perfectly engineered to get the results you are getting. If you want different results, you need to change your system.” For a church, this does not mean changing your core belief system – but it does mean changing how you implement your core belief system.
We must become more mission minded as we look at the world around us. This is not simply a matter of berating people who do not “evangelize.” It means seeing how people are hurting and finding ways to help them – and along the way sharing the story of a loving Father who cares, a Savior who gives, and a Holy Spirit who enables us to live in love, peace, and joy.
Very good questions because they expose the weakness of our traditional answers.
Jesus said it was easier for a camel to get through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. What about the rich man who thinks (under the self-delusion?) that he entered a long time ago and now only needs to protect/defend his territory? How hard is it for that person to enter the real kingdom?
Charles and other gave the characteristics of the operation of humanism in the church. It has become accepted modus operandi.
It is the natural cycle of a church. The church plant is excited because it isn’t under the bureaucracy of the older church. Like the colonies getting out from under the control of England. The church plant starts with a focused mission, which is one of times that the church has a relatively close resemblance to unity. Jesus is named as the focus, but the “shadow mission” is church growth – get the membership to 200 within 3 years. If we grow, that means we are being divinely endorsed. This is noble, and analyzing it sounds unkind, but the results of this cycle in 20 years will be much less kind. In some years, the group transitions to “stable” members (who stay and contribute), and the group climbs the ladder of capitalistic success — building, programs, organizational chart, etc. just like the model of the “mother church.” Finally the organization has personnel costs, legal obligations, debt to unbelievers, and all the rest of the worldly joys. Then the geographical area changes, membership and contribution plateau (or the fear of) and “missional” and “outreach” and “what’s the definition of a ‘member.,'” and what changes do we need to make so outside people will feel more at home in our building. Then the cycle continues and we wonder why there are entitled people who helped start that congregation and want to protect their “investment” by controlling risky decisions.
The church demonstrates over and over it is made of clay feet. Since the church is on earth, it will always have to overcome human thinking with the Spirit. But what happens when we no longer recognize the human thinking and just go “duh” when things starts down the tube? The church has parts of its structure built on the rock and part on the sand. And it has evolved with these mixed standards long enough that it doesn’t recognize which is which — they all blend together. But, when the wind comes, the part of the structure that has been build on human effort doesn’t survive. How could we know ahead of time what is human effort and what is of the Spirit. Look at past church cycles and see the commonality between what survived and what didn’t. What got sold off? What lost its value? What went down with the law of natural entropy, to which the church has sold itself out to untold years ago.
I know of several people who followed their GPS device faithfully and ended up where they didn’t intend and got lost. What happened? We’re right here where it says. Of course, that had put in the wrong address. What destination that you input is where you will end up. Our predetermined, self-selected and self-justified destination for what we think is the Lord’s church needs calibration.
Over the history of time God has used people, and there have been cycles that began in the Garden. But with the Holy Spirit guiding us into all truth, we should have had 2000 years of discerning experience to help us see wheat from tares. But how often do we still eat tares and wonder why we get indigestion?
As said in a previous post, this is not a characterization of every single situation, but I believe it is a qualitative component common to all congregations with some quantitative differences between individual ones, which may determine the length of their “cycle.” Through each cycle, God preserves a remnant with which to start the next cycle.
Cynical or realistic? Just examine the data.
Humanism in the church does not stand against the forces of the enemy. More rhetoric on another blog.
There have been lots of good food for thought in the comments made by those smarter and wiser than myself. I hesitate to jump into the discussion, but…
In practice it seem that we are more interested in making new members and less interested in making new disciples. As long as our focus is inside the 4 walls of our buildings (and our friends there) we are comfortable and any change (including new members) is seen as a challenge to our comfort.
When our focus shifts to Jesus and his ministry to “the least of these” we become uncomfortable realizing how big the task is before us and how inadequate we are in ourselves to accomplish Jesus’ ministry. When we are focused on our mission we are free to look at change as to how it affects our mission and not on how it affects our comfort.
We must be with the lost if we expect to reach the lost.
What about this: Congregation A might be at the satge of congregation B 45 years from now. One reason: Family struggles. A church, very dynamic, very young will be put to a dramatic halt as soon as tehy all marry, get children and get exhausted. Sounds sobering, doesn’t it? I have seen it happen more than once …
Alexander
Jay et al,
I have worked full time with just a couple of congregations, but part-time with several others. Both of the full-time works were with well-established congregations with similar demographics spread nearly as evenly as one could imagine through the generations from childhood through elderly. Perhaps most uncharacteristically my own experience has to do with the fact that BOTH churches with whom I did F/T work more than doubled in size, and it was the younger of the two congregations that took longer to do so.
The first one, my first F/T work, was 150 years old when I first arrived. I was only the second F/T minister they had called. We began with about 65 members and I left 16 months later due to certain circumstances with a regular Sunday morning attendance of about 140-145. Nearly all of those were members and a nearly equal amount in numerical growth from new converts and transfers.
The second one, a congregation where I had been an interim, P/T minister, was the congregation where I grew up. That congregation had been planted about 30-40 years prior to my becoming their F/T preaching minister. I was with them for just over 3.5 years and we grew from around 60 members to nearly 160 during that time. Again, the additional numbers came from nearly equal additions of new converts and transfers and some returning to their first love after years of absence from any assemblies. There were special challenges related to working with my hometown church that likely had somewhat to do with the slower pace of growth.
In BOTH cases, we did not try to focus on just one avenue of outreach and I believe that was key to the success in both instances. More important was the fact that we trusted God and planned for the increase in BOTH churches. We were guided more by vision than by history. And we made efforts to be inclusive of those some viewed as ‘hopeless’ cases and those viewed as ‘likely’ candidates as well as those none of us had really approached with the Gospel previously for one reason or another.
I have since worked with several congregations P/T, some as a volunteer and others with some remuneration. They have ranged in size from a new plant that began with just 15 of us in homes to a well-established and effective congregation of nearly 1,800 members. These other churches have varied in growth from static to dynamically growing, but have all been pretty much balanced in numbers from younger to older until the congregation I now attend (which is decidedly older in demographics). In every case it has been the vision that drove growth or the lack of vision that allowed growth to become a trickle or cease altogether.
I am in my early 50s and these have been the observations of a fellow who never really intended to become a preacher, but who followed God’s lead wherever God called. My last 50 years have been living in states from Illinois to Nebraska to Arkansas to Texas to Missouri to Illinois again and now in Northwest Indiana. With brief stints in New Mexico and Arizona, these have been the states where I have participated in ministry of the Word as teacher, preacher, or both. I have traveled more extensively – particularly while in college – among churches that surround all of these and extend beyond the borders of those states and their neighbors. And I spent one summer in England and Belgium doing mission work.
From my experience it is the vision that drives the congregation. Just ask the members to describe the perfect congregational situation and you will get a good picture of their vision for the future. Leaders can and do drive the vision, so it is important that if you want to see growth that your leaders be chosen who from among those who share that vision. Frankly, some churches are more driven by comfortable sustenance rather than dynamic discipleship where the Father gives the increase. And most, even the new plants, resist change.
My two cents’ worth,
Grizz
Two thoughts:
1) We let people become entrenched with the idea that Christanity is only about coming to church services.
2) The Elders fail to strategically make plans to involve their flocks in ministry and outreach. No strategic planning results in a low percentage of congregational involvement in ministry and outreach and ministry and outreach is the life-blood of finding excitement with Jesus.
Back to the national championship basketball game..,
From Alexander, ” A church, very dynamic, very young will be put to a dramatic halt as soon as tehy all marry, get children and get exhausted”
Absolutely! This is life. People have children and love them and try to provide a good life for them. I see nothing wrong in that.
Now, as leaders, show people how they can minister while doing these things. Show them how to minister while they are taking their kids to soccer, band, ballet, boy scouts, and so on.
When I was in New Zealand, 3 couples in our team had children. I was single (until I married while there). The children provided an excellent “gate” into the community. Even though we were all Americans, the children were in school. That gained contacts in the community that I, as a single person, did not have. Of course, I missed a great opportunity. I could have enrolled in the University there and had my own source of contacts. Part of the problem, as I see it, is that all of our friends are in the church. Many Christians have few non-Christian friends – unless they are new converts. That is one reason new converts are our prime source of outside people.
How can we change this? Be involved in the community: schools, service clubs, even politics. But always keep the inner eye focused on kingdom opportunities. God will give them if we give Him the opportunity. (It’s like that old joke about the man who prayed and prayed to win the lottery. Finally, God spoke to him from heaven and said, “Meet me half-way! Buy a ticket!”) When we meet God half-way, He will give us the opportunities.
Now a days the actual conversions of people who did not believe in Jesus before are rare and take an extreme amount of patience and understanding. Most churched members typical of what Jay descibes can’t even have a dialogue with a true unchurched non-believer. Convincing a Baptist to be immersed as an adult and observe a differnt set of doctrines is not a conversion in my book even though they may have a better understanding of scripture.
There is a church here in the DFW area that is about 300 members and has been for almost 100 years. They are looking at growth through evangelism. The first thing they realized was that the congregation generally accepted they would always be about 300 members of the same demographic.
Since church A has more recent converts of a younger age they are more likely to empathize with non-believers and become all things to all people.
Daniel was at least 70 years old when he was thrown into the Lions den. Does it no make sense that our greatest moments of faith and spiritual battles would come in the twilight of our lives as Christians?
Jay is right if you have been a Christian for a long time you should have matured not just to do or give more but be transformed more.
I find an inherent challenge in being a man who was reared in Christ by godly parents, a man who has no experience of ever being an unbeliever. For those of us who have this blessing, it may take some real soul-searching to be able to testify of our own salvation. (Not what WE did, but what happened TO us, supernaturally.) If we do not become more aware of our own testimony, and learn to understand and explain what has happened to us, we are left with some version of, “Hey, I have this holy book which you should listen to.” Which is a pretty weak introduction to the Almighty. After all, if someone approached you in an airport with that exact same claim for the Qu’ran or the Bahgavad-Gita, how stirred would YOU be to drop your existing beliefs and embrace that strange ancient book and build your life around it?
Orion and Jerry both make the needful point that we must connect with unbelievers if the gospel is to go out. I would add that understanding our own testimony of Christ is just as needful. Otherwise, we are a bit like a dog chasing a car. Once we catch up with it, what are we going to DO with it?
That’s true. But many churches that started out as a “youth-single-student’s” movement had a completely different approach to outreach. Once they settled down to a married life they often have no clue how to minister under these new circumstances. When we first met the ICoC in Vienna, it was “awsome” – so “awsome” we felt something was a bit “fishy”. At that time we were in a Brethren assembly half a generation ahead of them. It was extremely difficult to even get acquainted with our brothers and sisters there, because we were the only newlyweds without children. And while I as a brother had more opportunities to serve, my wife withered.
After 11 years and at the peak of frustration we left and joined the remnant of the ICoC which now grew half a generation older. Aside from the disappointments after 2003 (Kriete Letter) and the confusion that bewilderes them, they married and becme parents as well. Abd, boy! did that ever sklow them down.
It was not until this year that we again went on the streets to evangelize; he kids are five years older now …
Why I mention this has two reasons:
a) It was a reaction to Jay’s “stereotypical” comparison of a young/dynamic church and and old settled down assembly. I really really urge us to view church as a multigenerational family and not to üplay the “game” young vs. old.
b) The second reason is more in the direction Dwayne Philipps pointed: Even when we have a one-generation-church we need to find ways to counter or deal with the limtations of “life” without putting the Kingdom aside.
My experinces are not yours, of course, but they are real.
Alexander
Just a couple of thoughts. Younger churches often resemble the culture of the time. They don’t feel you have to sit in pews or sing 200 year old songs the way they were sung 200 years ago from 200 year old books. It is easy to invite someone to a lively worship service where people act like they are excited to worship God. Not knocking old songs, they are great, but to be truthful we sometimes we make worship into a funeral. We are worshiping a risen savior! Would we really sing the way we sometimes do if we were watching Jesus rise from the dead. I love my grandparents but I don’t really want to invite my friends to their social gatherings. My old church had a very smart choir director. He kept things up to date, but he also led a ministry for seniors. He took them to eat in different towns, spent time with them, took them to parks and movies. They loved him so they put up with his style changes. So maybe it’s a two way street. They still want to matter and we want them to still matter. Also in this generation we have to overcome the idea of retirement. If we are lucky enough to not have to work for our bread someday it should be understood that it only means we have more time to serve. I can envision a day when I can use the church app on my phone to follow sermon notes and Bible verses and maybe even a pod cast when I’m sick at home. Maybe I could invite my friends by getting them to down load the church app that would give them info about the church and so on.
Eric opens a very real point. Our society continues to re-tool and re-purpose and reorganize how we do almost everything. We must not insist on an 18th century model of meeting simply because it is the one we have. The New Guy gets his sermon via podcast from a fine teacher 1000 miles away, sends his offerings to various good works via PayPal, gets his fellowship at Starbucks with his mentor and at a Friday home group at his neighbor’s house. And TNG serves his community by driving nails for Habitat and distributing Bibles with the Gideons.
TNG is not against your local church, he is not starving spiritually, he is not “forsaking” being assembled together, he is giving and serving and learning. The church will be better off to embrace TNG and understand him instead of trying to capture him– building a better marketing scheme to get TNG back in the church building so TNG can help make the mortgage payments and serve on the stewardship committee.
I like Jerry’s mention of us simply seeing the needs of the hurting in our communities and then seizing the opportunity to tell the “story” that has changed our lives. I tend to think that our teaching lacked a clear and compelling understanding of the gift and work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers…..Charles makes a valid point that we must understand our own testimony of the impact of Jesus in our lives.
I have observed for years our awkwardness with conversing regarding the Holy Spirit and our resistance to the practice of “testifying” for some reason. I have gotten past both.
I seem to spend most of my time trying to ‘convert Christians to a greater realization of Christ in us,’ instead of sharing the good news with seekers, doubters, the curious, etc. though I do respond to opportunities.
I have boiled it down to this simple approach: I believe what is revealed to us through the bible; I know the difference it/he has made in my life; I want you to learn this and experience this, too.
My focus is no longer the Church of christ, but the Christ of the church, and it is Jesus who I want to know, to love and to communicate to others as God works in me to will and to act according to his good purpose. I am nothing apart from him.
Maybe this has already been said…just going through your Tulsa notes now. I don’t think we ever came out and said that the older you get as a Christian the more selfish you are to become. But our actions communicate that inadvertently. We communicate that when we make little to no demand for discipleship or service to others or fulfilling the one another passages in the lives of those who congregate. It is our lack of challenging people to be others focused that has resulted in them becoming more and more self-centered. It is also true that many in the church never really became that much different than the world. Maybe their selfishness never did stop once they became a Christian. At least, that is my opinion. I am sure there are exceptions.