8 Reasons Failing Churches Are Failing to Change

The closing of churches in America is a daily occurrence. Even with as much emphasis denominations are making on planting and developing new churches, the rate of decline and death is far outdistancing the growth seen in the new church initiatives. My question is, “Why, if it is possible, don’t these churches pull out all stops to reverse the decline?” In my many conversations with leaders of dying or plateaued churches, I have discovered there are many reasons. Some of those are:

1. In denial. As has been often said, denial is not just a river in Africa. It is difficult to see and accept that someone or something we love is not doing well and may be moving toward death. Our minds deal with these painful situations by denying their existence. Sometimes it is easy to be in denial because there is still a rather large attendance in morning worship. We fail to realize that those in attendance are aging rapidly and natural attrition will quickly decrease our attendance and membership. Since I have difficulty is seeing my own aging, it is difficult to grasp the aging of my friends and family.
2. Keeping our heads down. Denial is burying one’s head in the sand. Sometimes we don’t do that, but, instead, fail to look up and look around to notice what is going on. From my perspective in my little world, I don’t notice that the church is wasting away. I’m still here and my little circle of friends is still here. What more could I ask for? It is not until my circle starts to disappear that I realize the church is losing members.
3. Afraid of the truth. Many times church leaders are afraid, if everyone realizes that the church is declining, that their leadership will be questioned. We preachers are well known for having double vision when it comes time to count attendance. A recent blog by a fellow Disciples minister (Evan Dolive) suggested perhaps we would do well to stop taking attendance. Maybe we should, instead, concentrated on being a healthy church that is producing disciples and impacting our communities for Christ. I sense the attendance issue would take care of itself.
4. Change haters. It is the rare bird who likes and embraces change. For most of us, the call to change runs contrary to our nature. Beginning as small children we find comfort in repetition. There are a couple of books that, at his request, his mother and I read to our oldest son several thousand times. Like most men, I am challenged at the thought of throwing away a favorite piece of clothing. It just about can’t get too ragged for me to quit wearing it. I tend to drive to work and home again the same way day after day. (Sometimes I arrive in my driveway and wonder how I got there.) I have followed the same system of sermon preparation for years. Many of us say, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The problem with the church is that it is broken. We say things like, “If it was good enough for our parents it should be good enough for the latest generation.” For many of us that makes sense. Unfortunately, it is wrong.
5. No longer motivated to do evangelism. We have lost the vision for evangelism. As a seminary professor said several years ago, “We haven’t been nearly as good at evangelism since we canceled hell.” In our multicultural, pluralistic society, we are confronted by ever increasing populations of people adhering to other religions. As we attempt to adapt to our new world, we have become fearful of appearing narrow minded, spiritually arrogant or religiously intolerant. No evangelism no church growth. It is a simple but powerful formula for decline. Sooner or later our passing disenchanted members back and forth can no longer disguise our lack of real growth. We have, somehow, lost sight of the fact that Christianity is unique in world religions.
6. Too frightened or lazy to do what needs to be done. Changing a church – what many of us call Church Transformation – is difficult work. It takes much study, thought, prayer, teaching and trial and error. There are few models of church transformation to follow. It is emotionally draining, calls for long hours on the job, produces very little positive feedback (especially in the early stages) and takes many years to do. Frankly, it is easier to ride out what you have and pray it lasts until you are ready to retire.
7. Don’t know another way. The way we are doing church is how we have always done church. We mistakenly believe that the 20^th Century way of doing church is the way church has always been done and is the only way it can be done. We are just doing church like we have always seen it done; we don’t know another way. For some odd reason we seem convinced that if we keep doing what we are doing it will, somehow, begin to produce different and better results. To make the necessary changes that will make the church healthy, viable, and growing takes learning a whole new way of doing church. It is not that we must change everything we do; but we must come to the point we are willing to change everything we do.
8. Work from the misconception that doing church like we do it is sacred. Along with only knowing one way to do church, we often mistakenly believe that what we have inherited from our parents is the God ordained, sacred way of doing church. To do differently would be sacrilegious. This is an amazingly egocentric way of looking at things but it is very common. It helps a lot to get out of your tiny denomination box and visit churches of a different flavor. This must be done with an open mind and heart. The self-righteousness that fosters the idea that our way is God’s chosen way generally closes one to learning from others. It is easy to discount and look down on how others do church differently and rationalize that their “success” is not real. But if what we are doing is not reaching people, perhaps we would do well to be more open.

Copyright © 2014, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

Bill McConnell is Senior Minister at Lindenwood Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee and is a Church Transformation consultant and a Christian Leadership Coach. He is a frequent speaker at Church Transformation events. He can be contacted @ bill45053@gmail.com.

Leadership Takes Courage

The church of the 21^st Century in North America is struggling mightily with some significant problems and challenges. I am proud of the church for being willing to engage in such a struggle. For much too long the church chose to take the approach that there were no challenges; that there were problems, not with the church but, instead, with the culture.

Many have addressed the plethora of problems confronting the church: From a lack of authenticity, to a lack of mercy, to a lack of love, to a lack transparency, to a lack of direction, to a lack of consistency, to a lack of direction, to a lack of hospitality, to a lack of mission, to a lack of whatever. What the church lacks has been thoroughly dragged out and inspected. Except one thing. We haven’t taken a hard look at one of the church’s greatest weaknesses; one of the things lacking that is causing the church the most distress. I believe that to be the lack of courageous leadership.

When I talk about church leadership I understand that churches are led by both clergy and lay leaders. But I, as a member of the clergy, am going to only address the lack of strong leadership that our pastors are failing to provide for the church.

It is more than understandable why our pastors are failing to provide leadership for our churches. Most of us did not answer a call to leadership; we answered a call to the pastorate; to be pastors. Most of us went to school – 4 years of college and 3 years of seminary – to train for the pastorate. We learned to read and write and speak. We learned some theology, Greek and Hebrew, pastoral care, Christian education, spiritual disciplines, church administration and, most importantly, how to run a projector. We took classes in almost everything except leadership. Leadership wasn’t on the agenda and, for most of us; it is not on our radar screen.

In fact, most of us were taught to do church in reverse leadership. Instead of answering a call to a church and leading the people forward in God’s calling for that church, we were taught to go to a church and ask this question: “What do you want to do?” Like most politicians of our era, we attempt to lead from behind. Back in the crowd is a place of comfort and safety. Nothing of much consequence happens in the life of a group (or a country) when such non-leadership is exercised, but one’s life expectancy in the organization is markedly increased.

Most of us fail to lead because we were not taught to lead and leading never occurs to us. We just coast along from church to church to church wondering why nothing particularly significant happens in our ministries and finally land safely in retirement. We become so accustomed to not much happening in our churches we come up with statements like the one a dear preacher friend made to me several years ago: “If you move them and inch, you’ve done some great work.” The truth is we have worked hard but we have not done great work. We have hardly moved them. And we won’t do great work until we learn to lead our churches in the Mission God has called us to.

When we look at the topic of leadership we must think in terms of courageous leadership. Leadership that does not display courage is not truly leadership. And this, I believe, is where we have a profound problem. Like a majority of folks, being courageous day in and day out is too much to ask. We can have flashes of courage. But courage as a way of life is difficult. Because of the personality type attracted to ministry, many of we preacher-types tend to want people to like us and approve of us. More of the ministry we do than we would like to admit is done so people will like us and approve of us. Doing pastoral ministry often brings gratitude and thanks from those receiving that ministry. And that gratitude really massages the old ego. Having people recognize us in public as being “wonderful” for being there for them during a difficult time is addictive. It is not a bad thing, but it can become primarily why we do ministry. And that is unhealthy.

The courageous leadership it takes to lead a church forward often is met with opposition and sometimes with anger, unkind words and even threats of violence. It takes courage and conviction to deal with such criticism and remain on task and on target. In a vast majority of churches I have worked with, any display of opposition immediately halts the forward momentum of new or proposed ministries. We are so afraid of offending someone that we allow the most negative people in the church to “lead” the church. We abdicate leadership for fear of incurring someone or ones’ displeasure.

Bill Hybels, pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, encourages pastors to ask and answer a difficult, soul searching question. “As a leader, how often have I aborted a vision secretly because I’ve lacked the courage to do the hard thing?” This is true in far more cases than any of us would like to admit. Leading a church into change and transformation is difficult, demanding and dangerous. The possibility of verbal abuse, exhaustion from long hours of work and having people oppose every new initiative is extremely high.

Many clergy look at that and decide to not take on the challenge. Instead, we quietly exist in dying churches patiently waiting for the day of our retirement. I say, shame on us. We are afraid someone may not like us. We are afraid we might be fired. We think: Life is good, why upset this good deal? Brene Brown challenges us: “You can choose courage or comfort. But you cannot choose both.”

For those of us honest enough to answer yes to the question Hybels proposes, he also says: “Don’t go to your grave with you cool visions and dreams. Don’t die a coward.” Strong words but good words. As many have already said, I want to come to the end of life regretting the mistakes I have made instead of regretting the many things I did not have the courage to attempt.

The church in our culture is losing ground in any way you choose to measure it. Most of our churches “leaders” choose to wring our hands, bemoan the demise of the church, encourage our people to hang in there and invite others to join us in dying as an organization, and continue to do business as usual. This is not leadership. The most often repeated command from God, “Be not afraid,” was not given by chance. If you are going to be a God follower and a church leader, be of good courage. Please.

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

Motivation

Motivation. Everyone is talking about motivation. My coaches were constantly trying to motivate us to work harder, play better and win more. Bosses are attempting to motivate their workers to produce more and better goods. Parents stay awake at night thinking of ways to motivate their children to do better in school. Motivation is a big deal.

There are thousands of articles written each year, and many more talks and speeches made with the express intent to motivate us. Frankly, very few of them have much impact. And most of those that succeed produce rather short term results. Like most people, I can be motived but usually for a very short span of time. Motivation wanes if it is not produced from within. We are only motived by things that really matter to us; things we really care about.

The things that motivate us; the things that drive us to do what we need to do are called our Core Values. At the church I serve we are in the process of writing our Mission Statement, our Vision Statement and our Core Values. Many people like to believe these things are not important and it is a waste of time to work on them. A more factual statement is; these things are important and foundational and they are difficult to think about. Whether we write them down or not; whether we articulate them or not; we have a mission and core values and these are the things that drive us.

Our mission is our calling in life. As a believer in God, I have a God given mission that I am living my life for and spending my time and resources in fulfilling. My vision is how I go about getting my mission accomplished. My vision gives my mission voice and hands and feet to get the job done. And my core values are the energy that empowers me to fulfill my mission. No mission – nothing happens. No vision – nothing happens. Wrong values – nothing happens. The church must have all three and faithfully be guided by them or the church will wander in the wilderness and eventually die. Scripture powerfully says it like this: “Where there is no vision, the people perish: but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” (Proverbs 29:18 (KJV) The New International Version says it like this: “Where there is no revelation, people cast off restraint; but blessed is the one who heeds wisdom’s instruction.” Either way, it is a bad idea to try to do church well without a clear mission, vision and values. It is universally true that churches that are not motived by a God given vision are in the process of dying. We like to blame our demise on many factors but it all comes back to lack of vision.

Again, many churches have these statements. Unfortunately most of these mission and vision statements are safely filed away in a cabinet in an office somewhere on the premises or posted on a wall in the church library but consistently ignored when it comes to making the decisions that impact the ministries, mission and the future of the church. Instead of adhering to these foundational principles, we tend to just head off in whatever direction that seems right and meaningful at the moment. And we will rarely fulfill our mission and follow our vision without first taking a hard look at our values. We must ask, what do we value?

Most churches in our culture fail to move forward; fail to impact our communities; fail to fulfill their missions because the basic core value that empowers the church is summed up in the statement – I want my way. Churches expend most of their resources and energy placating unhappy members; doing what makes the present membership happy; not doing anything, (no matter if it would be something that fits the mission exactly) that might cause any discomfort or upheaval among the present membership. We spend so much time and energy making sure everyone is happy and comfortable we don’t have the resources (time, talents, money, energy) to reach out to those in our sphere of influence who do not yet know Christ. We become inward focused instead of outward focused. We are more concerned with maintaining the present membership than reaching those who don’t know God. We become self-serving. And that is not what God intended us to do and be.

Here is the difficult part of the whole deal. We need to change our core values. We need to find the motivation to change those thoughts, attitudes and ideas (values) that motivate us. Wow, how difficult is that? We must be motivated to change our motivation.

We must begin by owning our current values. This is difficult because our current values, when considered in the context of being a Christian, are often embarrassing. We must admit to being self-center and self-serving and small minded; mired in the muck insisting that having our needs met is of primary importance. But once we can own up to our immature and selfish value system we can begin to dismantle it and rebuild with a Godly value system. My counsel to the church is the same counsel I have given myself. Study the New Testament to discover what values drove Jesus to do what He did and adopt those values. This seems to make sense to me since we are called to be His disciples, follow in His footsteps and to live life as He lived life. New values do not come easily.

This is a basic, foundational change that is extremely difficult to make. It takes courage, concentration and consistent readjusting. It is my prayer we, the church, have that courage and consistency. Because if we don’t, we will surely die.

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

Systemic Evangelism

It is my belief that the church of North America is very poorly at doing this thing we call evangelism. We are bad at it for many different reasons. But at the heart of the problem is our approach. We don't do evangelism well because instead of it being a part of who we are as Christians, being a part of our Christian DNA, instead of being "Systemic," it is something we try to do. And we do it very badly.

Some foundational observations about the church in North America:

1. A majority of mainline protestant churches in North America have been suffering a decline in membership and ministry for several decades.
   
2. Many programs, processes, plans and ministries having to do with evangelism and/or church growth have been introduced over the past several decades and, generally speaking, have not been particularly productive. We have tried revivals, rallies, Bring-A-Friend Day, door-to-door canvassing, mass phone campaigns, newspaper ads, mass mailings, training classes in personal evangelism and much more. I have had limited success with several of these programs, but the emphasis is on the word "limited."
   
3. Continuing to do church 1950's style does not work in our present culture even though we insist on attempting to do so. Many churches have leaders who are primed and ready to lead their church back to 1959. Unfortunately, 1959 is gone and is never going to return.
   
4. Research has helped us understand that about 70% of the people in our culture are unchurched.
   
5. Over my years of ministry it has become clear that not everyone has a passion for evangelism and church growth. When I say, not everyone, I mean, just about nobody. Every three years or so I have a church leader suggest that, since people are so uncomfortable with the concept and the word, we should find a word to replace evangelism. We have tried several times but the reality is, as they say, "You can put lipstick on a pig, but it is still a pig."
   
6. The generally accepted view of the church has changed dramatically over the past few decades. Back in the middle of the past century, people generally saw church attendance as a good thing. If they didn't go, they felt they should and encouraged church attendance for others. Church was a good, positive and safe place. That perception has changed. The church has a remarkable PR problem and is now seen by many of the unchurched as a negative and bad place or group that wants to do them harm.

What is good about all of this change?

As the church attempts to live and grow and impact a culture that is very different than the culture of the 1950's and 60's we, of the church, are forced to reassess how we do church and how we do evangelism. As we come to terms with the reality that our culture is no longer church centered and the church has become marginalized and that our culture has, in fact, become generally hostile toward the church; when we realize that it is not unusual in some sectors of our society for a believer to keep his or her church attendance a secret, it becomes clearer that what we are doing in the area of evangelism is not working. In such an atmosphere, it seems obvious to me that the church must become much more aggressive in being the church.

Most likely the word "aggressive" sounds a bit strong to most of my readers. But I mean it in the best sense. I am not suggesting that we preach on street corners or corner coworkers at the lunch counter and beat them with a 20 pound Bible or pass out "Are You Going to Hell?" tracts to every waitress or waiter who serves us. By aggressive I am simply suggesting that we realize that evangelism is not someone else's job and we, Joe and Jane Churchgoer, must get out of the pew and out into the world to share the Good News about Jesus.

In our new and different culture we are literally forced to rethink what evangelism is and how we must do it. Evangelism is less about learning and delivering a particular canned message or about convincing others to agree with your religious tenets and much more about being Christian in a not particularly Christian culture. We must be more aggressive in connecting with people who seem to not yet know God, serving them, loving then and sharing the good news of God's love with them through our lives and life stories.

Preparing your church members for the task of evangelism

It used to be preparing to do evangelism was accomplished by attending classes that taught one to memorize a prepackaged "get saved" message and prepared the witness to answer probable problematic questions seekers might have about God and life and the church. It was about gathering information and memorizing answers. Now we realize that evangelism is about living a life under the Lordship of Christ, living a Christian lifestyle, humbly and lovingly, in the midst of those who are not and then waiting to see what happens.

Evangelism is not something we do; it is a part of who we are. Doing evangelism is no longer based on the idea of having evangelistic events or witnessing conversations. Evangelism must be based on developing intentional relationships with people who do not yet know God. Someone will certainly voice the concern, "Are you developing relationships with the ulterior motive of attempting to lead someone to Christ?" My response is "Absolutely!" It is not a bad thing. It is the best, the kindest and most meaningful thing I could ever do for a friend.

Henrietta Mears said in some of her classic Christian writing, "A Christian should be like the lifeguard at the beach. Everyone on the beach knows who the lifeguard is, but by and large, they go about their activities paying little attention to the lifeguard -- until someone gets in trouble. Then everyone knows where to go for help." People don't care until there is an emergency and suddenly they turn to the lifeguard for help. The lifeguard becomes very important to them. Connecting with the lifeguard becomes a matter of life or death. The lifeguard's task is to be ready and watchful.

We must learn to be at the right place at the right time to do evangelism. We must cultivate relationships and friendships with pre Christians. And we must wait for them to express their need for their lives to be more than a life without Christ can be; for them to express a desire for life to have meaning and purpose; for them to share the need to be loved unconditionally; to share the need to feed their spiritual nature; to share the need to know God. Our agenda must be their agenda. It takes some careful and intense listening to hear someone express that need for God. But when that need is expressed, faith sharing begins.

To impact our culture, we, the church, are going to have to do some things differently. It could be argued that we need to do everything differently. For evangelism to become something that your church does, it must move from being a ministry or a program or an activity and become a part of the Christian lifestyle that the members live. It must become systemic.

The Heart of Systemic Evangelism

At the heart of systemic evangelism is the spiritual life of the believer – the church member. It is a truth that we tend to talk about and share with others the things that we care about and are excited about. We do that sharing in very natural and non threatening ways. We are pleased with something in or about our lives and can hardly contain ourselves. We tell the people we care about the things we care about.

So, at the heart of effective, systemic evangelism is not classes that disseminate information and prepare people to "close the deal". People are not motivated to do evangelism by guilt inducing sermons. The result of such sermons it that they still do not do evangelism, only now to also feel bad about not doing it. Effective systemic evangelism happens when believers have a healthy, viable and growing relationship with the Living God. Evangelism happens when we experience the reality of God's leading and presence in our everyday lives. It happens when God is alive and real to us and we just naturally tell others what God is doing in our lives. It happens when we pray for God to lead us and give us "divine appointments" and we watchfully expect those prayers to be answered.

A key in making this process work is helping church members develop a growing relationship with God. I often tell my congregation that nobody is interested in their religion. Even I am not interested in their religion. But I am dying to hear from someone who has a living relationship with living God and that relationship is making a difference in his or her life. Such a growing relationship is encouraged and sustained by maintaining a consistent time of prayer and study, consistent whole hearted participation in worship, active participation (not just attendance) in a small group and actively pursuing a ministry. If the average person will do those four things and I can just about guarantee that God will be a meaningful and exciting life partnership with God.

We must move beyond our discomfort of talking openly and candidly with our church members about spiritual things. What better place to have spiritually challenging and enriching conversations than in the context of the family of God? As church leaders we must model spiritual growth through active participation in spiritual disciplines. And we must challenge our church members to join us in the joy of using spiritual disciplines to allow us to be in the presence of God and grow in that relationship.

It is my firm belief and experience that if an individual will pursue a vital and growing relationship with God, one will have some God stories to share with the people around them. Those God stories – you telling them – that is what we call systemic evangelism.

Copyright © 2010, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved