Gospel.com Blog

Last month, Adam McLane posted an attention-grabbing idea: “Here’s a centuries old tried and tested church growth strategy we have rejected: With no staff your church will grow.”

He observes that despite the number of people on church payrolls around the country, the church in the US isn’t growing. By contrast, in countries where churches lack the resources to support a full staff, the church is growing rapidly. Adam isn’t arguing that a church shouldn’t have people in charge of its different functions, but that there should be an emphasis on church members doing things for the church without being paid.

He describes the church experience that prompted this idea:

At some point someone decided that everyone needed to be on staff at the church. So we hired a music pastor. A worship pastor. A youth pastor. A children’s pastor. An associate pastor. An administrative pastor. A senior ministry pastor. And all of that staff required administrative support. Oh- and they’ll need offices and space– so we’ll need a bigger building.

If I put my businessman’s glasses on I examine this trend and say: You’ve added a lot of overhead. Your business multiplied by 25 times, right?

Wrong. The strategy didn’t work. But now we have an entire industry of church workers in an environment where they are reaching fewer and fewer people with bigger, more expensive programs. Now we’ve created an entitlement that simply isn’t sustainable nor is it leading to the growth long ago predicted.

It’s almost too easy for me to point to examples of this in other countries. (We certainly saw this in Haiti.) But it’s also true among the exploding Latino and African-American churches in the United States. With almost no infrastructure they reach thousands. In your own community it is likely that there is a church kicking butt with nearly no overhead of staff or a building.

Adam qualifies his statements at the end of the post, so be sure to read the entire essay.

Do you agree with Adam? How would your church be different if there were fewer people on the payroll?

Have you ever been disappointed by your church?

Few churchgoers can say they’ve never been upset or disappointed with their church. Much has been written in recent years about the mass exodus of young people from the church, and I’d bet that for every departing church member who left over a theological disagreement, several more leave quietly in disappointment that church failed to engage them or acknowledge their needs.

So what do you do when the church disappoints you? Is leaving the only or the best option? A post by Kevin DeYoung at The Gospel Coalition challenges disappointed churchgoers to ask themselves a series of questions before they call it quits. The core question lurking behind each is this: have you done your part to help the church help you?

Here’s a few of his questions:

1. Did I ever ask for help? Pastors and elders are not omniscient. Even with the best shepherding strategies people will fall through the cracks. So if you really need help, don’t be afraid to ask for it. I know everyone wants to be noticed. But it’s hard for a dozen guys to notice five hundred or two dozen to notice two thousand. Help your leaders help you.

2. Have I overlooked opportunities to fit in and get to know people? Before you complain that you’ve been at the church six months and still don’t know anyone, think about ways you could get known in the next six months. Is there a small group you could join? Could you attend the smaller, more informal evening service? What about volunteering for the nursery next time the sign up sheet goes around? Have you tried the potlucks and picnics and prayer meetings? Giving love and being loved is 90% just showing up.

7. In general have I found this church and these leaders to be unloving and unsupportive? If the answer is yes, and [you're confident that you're not at fault], then you may need a different church. But if the answer is no, consider giving your church and your leaders the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they just botched this one. We all get it wrong sometimes. I know I have. Maybe they were too busy and dropped the ball. Or maybe you don’t know the whole story. In any event, don’t let one misstep color your whole impression of their ministry.

There are some very useful messages in these questions, but that last question is especially important: when you’re upset or angry at the church leadership for a failure, misstep, or act of neglect, simply giving people the benefit of the doubt can be the most powerful response at your disposal. It may be that the church has indeed made a conscious and unfixable error… but it could also be that they just messed up and need a bit of extra grace.

When is the last time the church disappointed you? Did you ask yourself questions like these—and might the situation have turned out differently if you had?

Yesterday, churches around the world held special services to celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The worship service I attended was one of the most energizing I’ve ever participated in. After the sermon, the congregation read the Apostle’s Creed aloud together, then shared communion and ended the service with over 20 baptisms. Each person emerged from the baptismal water to the sound of clapping and singing, and found hands reaching out to embrace and pray for them.

It was just the sort of triumphant celebration that I imagine the early church held in recognition of Christ’s return.

What was your Easter service like?

Humans want to belong; we yearn to be considered a valuable part of something bigger than ourselves. We go to great lengths to find acceptance—sometimes even changing who we are in order to fit in. And even when we’ve been accepted, we still nurse doubts about whether others really want us around. Might they just be tolerating us?

This devotional from Lifetime Guarantee Ministries talks about how Paul—the self-proclaimed worst of sinners—was chosen for Christ’s team. Because of the forgiveness offered to him and everyone in Christ, he found acceptance in a community that once feared him:

Being a member of a winning football team can become so important that anything it takes, ignoring my family, cutting back on my scholastic achievements, getting up early and staying up late building my body through blood, sweat, and tears, that’s okay. I want so desperately to be a part of the team!

Then there’s Paul. Paul knew who he was in Christ; he knew he was totally forgiven; he knew that he was now a righteous, holy, blameless person, all of those beautiful things bestowed on all of us as Believers, but he could never quite get over the incredible fact that God had allowed him to become a part of “His team.” Not that being a part of His team guaranteed status, comfort, plenty, or safety. It was important to Paul because he admired the Master so much and wanted to have his name on the list of apostles.

Because of his violent persecution of the Believers, Paul felt unworthy in his position as an apostle and apparently felt the necessity to defend his position.

For I am the least of the apostles, and not fit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God (1 Corinthians 15:9). [...]

Paul’s dream came true . . . to be on God’s team and his final words tell us that he accomplished his dream: The glorious fight God gave me, I have fought. The course I was set I have finished, and I have kept the faith (II Timothy 4:7 PHILLIPS).

We’re on His team. He has chosen us. How wonderful! How incredible! And He has assigned us as His apostles to do certain things. Do we consider this awesome tribute the way Paul did?

Read the rest of the devotional at lifetime.org.

Do you consider yourself part of God’s team?

Are people with disabilities welcome at your church?

“Of course,” you might say—no church would turn somebody away simply because they’re disabled. But it’s quite possible for a church to unintentionally make disabled visitors feel unwelcome. Structural features like wheelchair ramps and elevators are obvious ways to help, but things like keeping worship services punctual and making sure that off-campus activities are accessible to disabled churchgoers are also important.

How does your church fare in this regard? Would a disabled visitor feel welcome, able to fully participate in worship and church life? What does your church need to do better?

Share your thoughts!

Ed Young, pastor of the 20,000 congregant Fellowship Church, was recently accused of keeping financial secrets from his congregation by WFAA, a Dallas/Fort Worth news organization. Among the report’s claims are that Young owns a private jet and has a 10,000 square foot home valued at $1,500,000.

Oh, he also reportedly makes a million bucks a year from the church.

Suffice to say, the claims put forward by WFAA have been summarily rebuffed by Young and a few of his church’s board members. You can see Fellowship’s side of the story in the 25 minute video below. The truth seems to be that they lease the plane because of Young’s international speaking engagements and tight schedule, and the home is closer to 7500 square feet. The salary? Not so much.

Regardless of who is right in this circumstance—and from what I can gather from a token amount of internet research, the facts seem to be stacked in Fellowship Church’s favor—this presents a great opportunity to discuss an issue that I think is becoming increasingly important in the Internet age: how should a church handle critics?

Most churches over a certain size and age have had to face a PR nightmare of some sort. Maybe not on the scale of Fellowship’s, but a nightmare nonetheless. Perhaps, it’s something as simple as a bad reputation, or perhaps as terrible as a high profile scandal. More likely, the pastor is just really good at incensing a very vocal and disagreeable crowd.

That’s when blog posts, newspaper articles and gossip start. Pretty soon, googling the church’s name brings up the church’s homepage as number 1 and number 2 is a slanderous news or blog article. In the case of Fellowship, they chose to directly answer the criticism, but other churches ignore the naysayers.

How do you think a church should respond to critics? Do you think that Fellowship did the right thing in this situation? How have you seen churches effectively handle criticism?

Are there any sinners in your church?

Of course there are—no matter how well-dressed they are or how sincere in their worship, everyone in the church struggles with sin in their personal lives. Lust, anger, greed, jealousy… we know for a fact that these sins plague us all, and yet it’s all too easy for us to look at the congregation gathered around us and imagine that there’s nobody out there who has these “issues”… or even worse, to feign shock and surprise when sin comes to light in the church.

This devotional from Delve Into Jesus asks us to imagine how our churches would respond if the congregation knew all of your secret sins:

If all those gathered at your church on a Sunday morning knew of these sins, would they be as gracious as their Lord who suffered and died for these very sins He forgives?

There would certainly be a great deal of hushed whispering between friends in empty hallways, but most of it would consist of feigned disgust and manufactured outrage. We all know from personal experience that sin remains an ongoing problem after we give our lives to Jesus, yet many remain incredulous that anyone at their church could be battling any given particular sin. It makes them uncomfortable but at the same time it’s interesting and curious. And so, in order to maintain the pretense that everyone in their own circle of friends, at least, would never indulge in that particular sin or vice, they reassure one another that it’s a heinous sin to which none of them would ever fall victim. When this phenomenon gets really bad, as I’ve seen on a few occasions, the whispers escalate into staring glances and loud talking which halts abruptly when the person who is the topic of conversation walks into the room. The people being stared at and talked about are not oblivious – they know exactly what’s going on and what’s being said about them behind their back. It won’t take long before these people move on to another church where they can battle their sin in loneliness and anonymity.

There is only one acceptable motive for talking about someone else’s battle with sin, and that is to ask, “How can I help?” If there is something tangible which we can do to help, then we have an obligation to offer that help. An offer of help does not in any way suggest that we condone the sin. It’s entirely possible to demonstrate great love and compassion even as we let the person know that what they’re doing is at odds with God’s will for their life and that we want to help if we can.

Read the full devotional at Delve Into Jesus.

The proper response to sin when it crops up in the church is to offer love, prayer, and help—not disgust, outrage, or smugness. When sin appears in your church, which reaction is more common?

Martin Luther King, Jr. famously declared that “Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week.” Is it still accurate to say that about the American church in 2010?

A Time article recently explored this question and discovered that racial segregation is still a fact in the church… but megachurches like Willow Creek seem to be making the most progress in bridging the racial divide. Willow Creek’s efforts have not met with complete success and raise plenty of questions, but over 20% of its congregation is made up by racial minorities—a ratio that leaves most churches (regardless of their predominate racial makeup) far behind:

Call it the desegregation of the megachurches — and consider it a possible pivotal moment in the nation’s faith…. David Campbell, a political scientist at Notre Dame studying the trend, says that “if tens of millions of Americans start sharing faith across racial boundaries, it could be one of the final steps transcending race as our great divider” — and it could help smooth America’s transition into a truly rainbow nation.

Hybels and his Willow Creek church are already headed down that path. Though Willow is not the most advanced example of multiracial church, it makes an excellent window into the new desegregation because of its size, its influence and the ferocious purposefulness with which Hybels has deconstructed his all-white institution. Willow may also be emblematic in that Hybels appears to have stopped short of creating a fully color-blind church. His efforts illustrate both the possibilities and the challenges that smaller churches may face as they attempt to move beyond black and white.

The key questions are, of course, how segregated is your church today, and what is it doing (or not doing) about it? Simply replicating the success of a megachurch like Willow Creek isn’t an option for the average American church; megachurches have resources and reach that most churches don’t.

My own church, for example, is relatively small and located in a part of town that is predominiately white; the congregation is, by a vast margin, primarily white. Nobody in the church would disagree that “desegregation” would be a wonderful thing for the church, but how does an established, comfortable church (in a city already packed with every type of church you can imagine) take steps toward that goal? And is achieving racial desegregation in the church a a critical end goal in itself, or is it a secondary goal that churches should welcome but not invest too much time in pursuing?

That’s a lot of questions. The article paints a hopeful picture of a desegregated church, but it’s a challenge to connect that dream to the everyday, non-megachurch congregations that encompass most of American Christainity. What do you think?

I recently moved and am in the process of finding a new church. In doing research and visiting churches, one thing that’s surprised me is how is how each church seems to have a target demographic: student, young professional, middle age, kids, no kids, asian, black, white, etc.

You name it, there seems to be a church out there for you. Oddly enough though, most—if not all—of them purport to value the diversity in their congregations. Do you think that churches should target specific demographics?

Share your thoughts!

How important is it for Christian parents to keep their children involved in church activities and education? It’s difficult to get a handle on a question so broad, but the issue has seen some debate recently. You may recall a much-discussed study commissioned by Answers in Genesis that found that childhood Sunday school attendance did little to keep people from drifting away from the Christian faith later in life.

However, there’s a new wrinkle in the debate, in the form of a Barna survey also examining the links between church involvement as a child and faith later in life. It’s an interesting read; here are some of the conclusions:

How do childhood and teen engagement connect to adult spirituality? The research examined four elements of adult religious commitment: attending church, having an active faith (defined as reading the Bible, praying, and attending church in the last week), being unchurched, and switching from childhood faith.

When it comes to church engagement, those who attended Sunday school or other religious programs as children or as teens were much more likely than those without such experiences to attend church and to have an active faith as adults…. In comparison, less frequent participation as a teenager correlated with less frequent adult participation.

Measures of disassociation – being unchurched and changing from childhood faith – were also correlated with activity before age 18. The highest proportion of unchurched adults was found among those who had never attended as children or teenagers. Weekly activity as a child and weekly or monthly activity as a teen were connected with the lowest levels of disconnection from church attendance. 

The study also found that people who were “heavily churched” in their youth are less likely to switch to a different religion as an adult.

All very interesting, although the question is so big, and the nuances of “religious” and “active faith” so varied from person to person, that it’s hard to know how to interpret it all. But at the very least, if you were worrying that forcing little Johnny to attend Sunday school every week was going to damage his faith in the long term, you can breathe a sigh of relief. (The jury is still out about whether or not youth group games of dodgeball inflict permanent psychological and spiritual damage on the participants.)

How do these findings resonate with you? Were you heavily involved in church activities and education, and if so, do you see that experience as one that strengthened your faith over the long term? If you came to the faith without the benefit of childhood religious education, do you think your faith was stronger or weaker as a result?