How Did That Happen?

At the church I am serving we are working on systems. That sounds amazingly boring but it is, in fact, extremely interesting and exciting.

The first thing we learned is that systems produce results. Often we believe people produce results and in some ways they do. But if you have good people involved in faulty systems, you get poor results. Our natural tendency is to blame the people involved instead of the system and replace the people instead of the systems. Churches lead the world in doing this. The church isn’t growing, isn’t reaching out, and isn’t impacting the community in a positive and meaningful way. We all know how to fix these problems – get a new minister. It is traumatic getting rid of the old, ineffective one and it takes a long time to find a new one. Finally we do. Then we spend one year being so excited about how great things are going to be; one year blocking every change the new minister proposes (getting him or her in line with how we do things here); one year complaining that the new minister isn’t getting the job done; one year working on getting rid of our old minister and then two years looking for the new minister who will fix everything. Then we hire the new minister, have a reception and start the process again.

Most churches repeat this cycle over and over and over again. Then, when the church finds itself near death and desperate, they call me (or some other consultant) in for a consultation to discover what is wrong. I just want to say, “Duh!” The problem is not the minister, it is the church. Or more exactly, the systems the church is using. Now, don’t get me wrong. I am aware that sometimes the problem is leadership or the lack of it. I have met several ministers who were incompetent and were a part of the problem, if not THE problem. But that is rarer than it being a systems problem. The truth is that if a church has faulty systems, no leadership will have success and if the church’s systems are healthy and helpful, just about any pastor can be successful in that church.

If you want to know if your systems are good, look at your results. Are you getting the results you desire? If not, take a look at the system that produced that result. Let’s look at an example from real life.

A church I once served was not seeing any growth. In fact, membership had been steadily declining for almost 20 years. They didn’t like that result so they fired their pastor and hired me. They thought that I was the solution to the problem of declining membership. They were incorrect. J The problem wasn’t the preacher though sometimes the preaching is so bad that visitors will not return to endure it a second time. So, I gathered the interested parties and asked the key question: “Tell me about how you do evangelism?” In other words, what is your system to do evangelism?

After we got past their first response, which is typical, of just staring at me with blank faces, they shared their system. Their system was, “Frank stands at the door and hands out bulletins every week.” Frank was old and grumpy and tended to say things to people that put them on the defensive. That was their evangelism system. Yeeh gods! No wonder the church wasn’t adding new members. Visitors were not welcome. Or at least they didn’t feel welcome. No preparations were made to make the guests who arrived on Sunday morning feel expected, welcome or prepared for. Is this how you would treat guests that you were expecting at you home? Of course not. A very poor evangelism system was producing very poor results.

We didn’t like the results so we changed the system. We put greeters in the parking lot to meet guests at their cars and direct them to the children’s center if they had children in tow. If not, the parking lot greeters welcomed them and pointed them in the direction of the worship center. Just inside the doors of the worship center were greeters who handed them a bulletin, welcomed them to worship, directed them to some prime seating and introduced them to a few people who would be sitting near them. After worship they were invited to the Welcome Center where they were again greeted and given a bag of nice gifts as a thank you for coming. They were asked if they had any questions about the church or if there was any way the church could assist them. They were encouraged to return next week.

Monday afternoon they received an e-mail note from the pastor thanking them for coming. A ministerial staff member wrote a note to them, included a gas gift card, invited them back and mailed the card on Tuesday. Monday evening a bag of cookies was delivered to their door.

If they returned a second week, the pastor sent them a personal letter sharing some ways they could be involved in the life of the church. A lay person dropped them a note that week welcoming them to the church. If they returned for a third visit, they were sent a letter inviting them to a class to learn more about the church. If they continued to visit but didn’t attend the class, once each month they would receive an e-mail invitation to the class to learn about the church. They were placed on the list to receive the church newsletter. They were invited to join a Life (small) Group.

Just like magic guests started showing up and returning. The church began to grow. In the span of a few years attendance grew from under 100 to around 500. Same people – different system – different results. It’s magic.

Copyright © 2013, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved