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Deadly Diseases in Churches #1 – Diseases With Obvious Symptoms!

Posted in Church Leadership, tagged , , on January 27, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Some life-threatening diseases have obvious symptoms that send us immediately to the doctor. Other illnesses are what media sometimes refer to as “silent killers.” Hypertension, diabetes, obstructive sleep apnea, as well as colon cancer and heart disease are examples of diseases that present only mildly, if at all, in their early stages.

The best chance for treating and surviving any of these silent killers is early diagnosis, usually as the result of regular physical checkups! I suspect that the health of a congregation also depends on early diagnosis as the result of regular spiritual checkups.

Let’s look at some of the diseases from which congregations/churches may die, differentiating between those that are symptomatic and those that are silent.

Church Diseases With Obvious Symptoms

Heresy: I’m not talking about disagreements over worship styles. I have listened in classes where the exclusive claim of Jesus as Savior has been denied. I have heard apocryphal literature read as Scripture. I have sat in churches where the only resurrection offered was the memory of deceased loved ones that lives in our hearts.

True heresy denies the divinity of Jesus, the inspiration of Scripture, the Atonement, the Resurrection, and/or the sovereignty of God. (It’s dangerous to even start such a list because one almost immediately feels the need to include more and define each item, i.e., create a creedal statement. A blog is a poor instrument, however,  for writing creeds.)

I myself find a wonderful list of non-negotiables in Ephesians 4:  one Lord, one Faith, one Baptism, one Body, one Spirit, and one God and Father of us all. Christians do argue over the full understanding of each of these, but that in no way for me detracts from their unity and essentiality.

Immorality: If you have been a Christian very long, you know of churches destroyed quickly by immorality, often committed by church leaders—but not exclusively!  When church leaders do not address perversion and corruption among their flock, they endanger the entire church because “they know God’s justice requires that those who do these things deserve to die, yet they do them anyway. Worse yet, they encourage others to do them, too” (Romans 1:32).

Immorality is not exclusively sexual. The entire list from Revelation 21 could be included:  8 “But cowards, unbelievers, the corrupt, murderers, the immoral, those who practice witchcraft, idol worshipers, and all liars—their fate is in the fiery lake of burning sulfur. I know that’s strong language, but we are talking about people who destroy the body of Christ!

Apathy: Many churches meet out of habit or tradition. Their leaders continue to lead worship, celebrate communion, and present a homily because that’s what church leaders are paid to do. A few members attend because . . . they themselves are not yet dead! The Messenger to one church said:  “I know all the things you do, that you are neither hot nor cold. I wish that you were one or the other! 16 But since you are like lukewarm water, neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of my mouth! (Revelation 3:15-16)

If your church just really doesn’t even care if it is alive or dead, that is the definition of apathy. If your church refuses to even ask the question or take the pulse of the church, that is apathy.  If your church has no ears to hear those who warn them, that is apathy!

An Inevitable Outcome?

The angel’s warning to the seven churches of Asia is not only a great wake-up call for modern churches, but also a sign of true hope. If there were neither hope nor means of recovery, then why the warning? Just blow the candle out and put out the light!

No, our God is One who heals the sick and raises the dead! If you are afraid your church is deathly ill, turn to God and ask Him to intervene! “Won’t he leave the ninety-nine others in the wilderness and go to search for the one that is lost until he finds it? 5 And when he has found it, he will joyfully carry it home on his shoulders. (Luke 15:4-5)

Next time, I will offer you my list of the church diseases that are silent killers!

 

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13 Reasons Church Leaders Cannot Recognize That Their Church Is Dying!

Posted in Church Leadership, tagged , , on January 25, 2011| 8 Comments »

!Years ago, I was a church leader in an ill church, and I really didn’t even know it! Certainly I had my concerns about different issues and challenges that we were facing, and I threw my influence as far as it would go to help enliven the church, but never did I think that the church might be in a death spiral!

Now, many years later, I ask myself why I did not recognize the very obvious signs of terminal decline. As I have searched my own soul, the following seem to me to be some of the reasons why church leaders do not even sniff the rottenness that is corrupting the Body!

1.     Too inexperienced. Few of our church leaders are trained church leaders. They are usually excellent volunteers, but how many would let an excellent hospital volunteer examine and diagnose you?  What if they couldn’t tell a mole from melanoma?

2. Too busy leading the church! The more rapid the decline, the more work there is for those trying to keep it alive! Hard to see imminent danger because of all the people needing your immediate attention.

3.     Too optimistic! Optimism–trust in God’s victory—is a highly desirable quality, but look at how difficult it was for Jesus to convince His closest disciples that He was going to die! Facing reality is also highly desirable.

4.     Too invested! Your family is in this church; your life-long friends are in this church; you grew up in this church! Unfortunately, none of these investments will save a declining church!

5.     Too satisfied. You have a great group! The building is paid for. Sure, you are a little smaller, but it is still alive for you!

6.     Too comfortable. It takes a lot of time and energy to change things. It is MUCH easier to just keep on doing what we have always done—and maybe it will work out!

7.     Too fearful. You can’t even go to the idea that this church might go away—too much pain involved!  Too many unanswerable questions about the unknown future.

8.     Too proud. After all, you are one of the leaders and things don’t fail that you are a part of! Not on your watch!

9.     Too tradition-bound. We’ve always done things this way and we’ve had rough days in the past, so if we just keep on course and not mess with the formula, we’ll be OK!

10.   Too much ownership! Granddaddy was an elder, Dad was an elder, and now I’m an elder. This is my church and my family’s church, and we will never let it fail!

11.    Too influenced by others. We’ve talked it over at the elders’ meeting, and the consensus is that  we are OK.  The members aren’t complaining.

12.    Too short-sighted. Even if it were true, what can anyone do about it. Might as well just ride to the end of the road.

13.    Too power-oriented. I’m one of the leaders. I can’t imagine not being a leader, so I think I’ll just keep on being a leader!

Rarely is leadership blindness the result of just one of the above Such lists are always an oversimplification of complex bundles of ideas and emotions, but no item on the list above allows church leaders to see clearly the plan of God for the people entrusted into their care.

I’ll end by just challenging church leaders to search their hearts and look for symptoms of reality blindness.  It’s not a fatal disease. Leaders can discover their vision and wisdom in time to take responsible action.

“If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him. But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt.”   James 1:5-6

 

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Church Resurrection Requires Radical Action!

Posted in Church Leadership, Other, Uncategorized on January 20, 2011| 6 Comments »

Resurrection Requires Radical Action!

Sherrylee and I were just in California for a week, doing Let’s Start Talking Training and visiting with good friends and family—many of whom are church leaders in their respective congregations.  Much of our conversation revolved around the situations in which their local congregation and other congregations in California found themselves.

For instance, one congregation—very stable and financially secure—was struggling with being very stable and financially secure! Being comfortable may be the most precarious situation of all. At least one of these churches had recently hired a new preacher that was thinking out of their box, getting involved in the community and not staying put in his office!

The question for these kinds of churches is: who gives up first? Do the members give up the comfort of predictability and familiarity or does the New Guy give up . . . .just give up?

Then there were the churches discussed that had had glory days 10-20 years ago, but today they are either below or about to slip below a critical mass of members. They may have had as many as several hundred, but now they are in double digits—low double digits in some cases.

The leaders of these churches are burdened with their dilemma. They know that to do nothing is to die. They have been trying everything they know to do these last few years, and nothing seems to have stopped the constant seepage of members, moving away or going to other churches—usually the lively community churches.

The question for these churches is: in spite of the desire of the few remaining, can this congregation be resuscitated or is it time to pull the plug? As painful as it sounds, even Jesus said that sometimes death must precede life.  If planned well, the death of one congregation might even spawn multiple new congregations that have a chance at life.  But something radical must happen or life will just slip away.

What kinds of radical actions might result in resurrection of a dead church to any kind of new life?

1.            Close the doors for a year. Re-start with a new name, a new concept—and new leaders!

2.            Import new people as “missionaries.”  Do whatever it takes to support them, both financially and with permission—no, begging them to be as aggressive as they will in penetrating the community.

3.            Liquidate the assets and distribute them to new church planting efforts.

4.            Seek out a healthy church and either merge into something new or unconditionally submit to the leaders of the healthy church!

Radical is the operative word here!  Nothing less will succeed.

The faithful few who keep a church’s doors open are almost never the ones to resurrect it in any form. Regardless of the magnificence of their service or generosity in previous years, there comes a time in almost everyone’s life when they have to step back and let others lead the way. Those who do that graciously finish as great leaders and are well-loved! Those that cling to power or reputation are destined to wither with the congregation or even worse—be asked to leave by the new leaders.

The last of our church groups are those new churches, either new plants or migrations of people wanting a new start. The heady first days of these churches are full of great promise, new ideas, experimentation, fresh wind and fire.  I’ve experienced this as a church leader, and I would wish it for everyone.

Nothing is more exciting than a fresh new congregation birthed out of a desire to expand the Kingdom of God.

There are big questions for these churches as well, but for the moment, it feels like enough just to celebrate them!

Thank you for launching out, thank you for accepting the challenge of starting ex nihilo! Thank you for the courage  to risk failure. Thank you for the boldness to follow God into the Unknown.

Does your congregation fall into any of these categories? If so, what radical action are you going to take?

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Souuthlake and The Hills: A Follow-up and Three Questions

Posted in Christian Culture, Church Leadership, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 10, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Sunday, January 9 was the first official Sunday at the new Southlake campus of The Hills Church of Christ.  Sherrylee and I attended the service as did 524 other people—a number too large for the sanctuary—a wonderful problem to have!

The energy was high and the sense of anticipation strong. Lots of young families were there, lots of children! Chris Hatchett, the campus minister, did an excellent job of introducing himself to those attending the adult class at 9:00.

That things were different was obvious from the moment you walked in the door and were greeted with the bulletin and worship program from The Hills.  The worship team on this Sunday was mostly from The Hills, and even the call to prayer and benediction were The Hills style.

God provided a little icing for the cake: as the back doors of the auditorium were swung open at the end of the service, all were surprised to see that it had begun to snow during services—a Bing Crosby moment for everyone!  We left feeling the Breath of Blessing on this place in the Kingdom of God!

As I told you in the initial post about the Southlake/Hills merger, I am not in any way involved in any of the decision-making groups nor in any of the leadership groups, so whatever I report to you as well as any thoughts I have are strictly from the pew.  (But I do like to sit up front!)

I woke up this morning, thinking about the kinds of questions that these leaders are asking and praying about. I guess this kind of thinking is just in the blood of us missionary types. Sorry! I still drive by vacant commercial property and briefly evaluate it as to whether it would be a good place to locate a new church, just like we did in Germany so many years ago.

Anyway, for those church leaders who might be in similar situations—or who are thinking about being in similar situations—I suspect these are some of the questions our church leaders are facing—questions you might need to ask at sometime as well:

How alike and how different should the campuses be from the mother church? The current metaphor governing The Hills new campuses is, according to the public announcements, that the campuses will be “twins, but not identical twins!” This approach is probably based on this assumption: The Hills has a successful program, a successful style, one blessed, so why change the formula?

While this approach is perfectly rationale, I suspect the leaders have had to wrestle with some or all of the following questions—and if they haven’t yet, I think they will certainly be on their agenda in the future.

Question  1.  Is it possible that different campuses will have different demographics from the mother  church  which might require significantly different approaches?

The Hills is currently launching two new campuses, one on the west side of Fort Worth and the Southlake campus in the northeast corner. The west campus is about thirty miles from the Southlake campus. Both satellite campuses are 10-18 miles from North Richland Hills, where The Hills is located.

Having grown up in Fort Worth, my sense is that the west side campus is located in a more western, pick-up truck demographic, and the Southlake church in a suburban, SUV demographic. The mother church is enough of a megachurch to draw from a much wider area than its geographic location.

What this says to me is that you have the potential of very different subsets of people likely to attend the different campuses. If these differences are real, that would argue to me for allowing enough variety and differentiation on each campus to address those differences.

Question  2.       Is a blended church different from a new church plant? The west campus is a true church plant while the Southlake campus is a merger/blend—two very different starting points.  The Hills has provided all of the new leaders and staff for the west campus by either reassigning people from the main campus or hiring new staff.  The Southlake campus had a full slate of elders and a small staff. The elders resigned and the staff members were kept on the staff of The Hills—at least for a while–though some were given different assignments.

I kept wondering yesterday if the working assumption—a perfectly natural one– is that the main campus staff and leaders were more gifted than the ones inherited from the merged church?  I raised this question at lunch yesterday and a corporate attorney  friend  replied that in his experience,  in every takeover there is a winner and a loser and whoever takes over is the winner and calls all the shots! He said, all corporations talk about equality in the new blend—but it never happens. The winners stay and the losers go home!

I know this is true in the business world, but my prayer is that churches who are seizing an opportunity to merge or blend will never frame any of their decisions with this winner/loser framework! I don’t believe The Hills/Southlake leaders did this.

Not using this corporate framework, however, would mean that even the bigger church would be open to learning from the smaller, that the stronger church would recognize the golden nuggets that even weaker churches might contain.  What if the minister of____ from the subsumed church is more gifted than his/her counterpart at the main church? Who should be setting the agenda for that ministry? Is it automatic who goes and who stays? Could the main church be improved by the campuses?

Question 3.  Isn’t it likely that each campus will grow and change at a different rate? Won’t the need for the inevitable changes that accompany growth occur at very different moments? A good example of this is that the Southlake campus began with just one service, but probably needs to move to at least two services already. The plan currently is for two elders from The Hills to shepherd the Southlake campus, and for “local” elders to be selected sometime in the future.  Having two or three services immediately, mushrooming  children/youth programs, greater benevolence needs, unique outreach opportunities –all of these evolutions demand more leadership, more prayer, more attention and more resources.  And each campus will face them in different moments!

Finally, I’m thrilled that The Hills has had the vision, the boldness, and the courage to accept these Kingdom challenges. I’m sure these questions have been raised and discussed by church leaders at The Hills  who think about these things 24/7! It is a great time to learn from their experiences.

I also believe the option of merging churches for the good of the Kingdom will be seriously considered more and more in our fellowship, and if we talk and think and pray together, God will do even greater things than we can imagine! Thy Kingdom come! Thy Will be done!

 

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Southlake and The Hills: A Case Study for Church Leaders

Posted in Church Leadership, tagged , , , on January 5, 2011| 5 Comments »

Church leaders seem to be the center of lots of controversy and criticism—and not without cause! Today though, I can’t wait to tell you about two groups of leaders who have done things extraordinarily well in a very difficult situation.

Let me just say to start that I am not in either of these groups, nor do I have unusual access to the inner workings of these groups, so I don’t know anything but the public version of the story. I also do not intend to tell the whole story because it is not mine to tell. What I want to do is share with you two instances of great church leadership!

The Southlake church has had a pretty tumultuous history during the last decade or so. We were told that in 1998/99, this church had over 1000 attending services each week.  Then came a series of splits, some involving doctrine, some involving styles, some involving leaders, and all involving personalities.

The congregation found itself in 2010 very diminished—200-250 in attendance—and with no readily apparent means of reversing the decline.  Elders in this kind of situation usually have very limited options.  Southlake leaders certainly considered some, if not all of the following:

  • Continue to function as a large church and continue to overwork and underserve their members.   Prognosis: Rapid decline!
  • Restructure to be a small church: reduce staff, reduce programs,  and be content.  Prognosis: Slower, but continued decline!
  • Disband and sell the property.  Assimilate into other churches. Prognosis: Members and leaders alike see their work for God and His kingdom as failed. The community understands closed doors as failure as well.
  • ?????   Something else!

Praise God – these spiritual leaders at Southlake chose to explore something bold, perhaps controversial, but something that would seem to hold promise for expanding the Kingdom.  They chose to approach The Hills Church of Christ, a large, thriving congregation in the same city about a merger that would be a blessing to both groups.

Here is where I simply want to stop and praise the leadership at Southlake for the following reasons:

  • They put the Kingdom first and their own identity as a congregation second!
  • They put the Kingdom first and did not claim ownership of the church.They did not make the high value of their property either an issue or the center of conversation!
  • They put the Kingdom first and emptied themselves: all of the elders offered to resign—and did.  The senior minister took a different position in the church.  Other ministry leaders let go of their territory—gave up their keys!
  • They put the Kingdom first and did not let the minority of naysayers either lead or derail the leadership. There were those who were fearful of losing their identity. Others were fearful of losing control over their own destiny. Others were—just fearful!

These faithful Southlake leaders are setting an example for all leaders in declining churches.  Many of our churches are beginning to reach a critical point in their decline, where just keeping the doors open is a matter of concern.  The Southlake solution is not the only solution—but putting the Kingdom first and emptying yourself should be part of every solution that every leader considers!

The leadership of The Hills Church of Christ also showed boldness and great vision. Again, I am not in the inner circle at The Hills, but here is what I know from the outside:

  • At the time they were approached by Southlake, The Hills was in the middle of a 10 million dollar campaign (Greater Things) that was demanding a great deal from the entire staff and eldership! They could have easily been too busy to even look at the Southlake dilemma.
  • Part of the 2020 Vision of The Hills as well as part of the Greater Things campaign that had already been announced was the establishment of a satellite campus on the west side of Ft. Worth that was going to require staffing and over a million dollars of investment to launch in 2011.  They could have easily said that starting one new campus was enough for this year!
  • With all of the above, The Hills could have easily offered only a half-way solution or a temporary arrangement—but they didn’t! They went all the way. Even this week, less than a month after the official merge, the Hills is spending a large amount of money on renovations at the Southlake building so that it will be the same quality as the North Richland Hills campus—if not better!  Key staff members as well as selected elders have already shifted locations. Not all the foundation is in place, but it will be soon!

The result of the prayerful work of these two groups of church leaders is that two congregations are now one. Both are stronger, both are excited about the new beginnings, and rather than a funeral, the community of Southlake is going to see fireworks!

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