Camping

I am headed to Ord, NE for several days of camping and riding the bicycle with my wonderful wife. I plan to read "Essential Church" while I am away.

Launch team or core team

My friend Andy Wright has a great post about developing a core team or a launch team.

Customers or rules

Todd writes some good though provider for what we do as churches. How do you make a church plant a "customer keeper" while never bending on theological issues?

Are You a Customer Keeper or a Rule Keeper?

from MMI Weblog by Todd Rhoades

Alan Nelson writes, "The other day we were in a restaurant that created a truly enjoyable experience. The waiter went out of his way to bend the menu rules in order to satisfy our preferences. Then he continued this empowering table service by providing us with a taste test of a dessert and finalized it by taking an item off our bill because it wasn't quite right. Compare that with the typical service you get at any number of eateries where the frontline people provide less than enjoyable service because they follow their workers manual to a T.

The big question is "Are you a rule keeper or a customer keeper?" An empowered team understands the importance of providing front-end people with the authority to make the right decisions for the customer in a given situation. Translated to the church, the question becomes "Are my team members told that they're empowered to make decisions that make sense?" Do you affirm this by telling stories of people who do?

Every church culture is different. I've been in some churches where I could tell that the fear of the senior pastor, board, or treasurer thwarted people from being creative, flexible, and responsive to people as needs arose. Of course, the antithesis of this is a church where there are no rules and everyone just sort of does his or her own thing...

The typical result is mediocrity, sloppiness, and haphazard ministry. But there’s a powerful place in the middle where you don’t have to create a million rules to follow but keep it simple.

One of the ways my wife has done very well in our home is by conveying to our sons these three primary principles:

1. We don’t hurt people.

2. We don’t hurt things.

3. And we don’t hurt ourselves.

Pretty much everything can fit into one of these three categories. Teaching these simple principles is far more effective than teaching a multitude of rules.

One time I was on staff at a large church in the Midwest. I coordinated the first Super Bowl party they’d ever done, as a community outreach. When the crowd overwhelmed the seating, I instructed the team to go into the halls and push in the comfy couches from the lobby. The next week in staff meeting, I heard about it. I responded, “It seems like we care more about the furniture than we do about people.” My brashness may have been unnecessary, but the point was true. I later convened the first fun day on the well-groomed lawn of the church, located on a busy street, to help create a buzz in the neighborhood. People loved it. Administration frowned. Needless to say, my tenure at that church was short.

So what are you doing, inadvertently, that promotes rules over people? What do you do to make ministry difficult in your church? Have you empowered your team to do what is needed to get the job done, as needed? Accountability means you deal with a misuse of freedom, but not by creating a list of rules and restrictions. Develop customer keepers, not rule keepers.

Alan Nelson is the executive editor of Rev! Magazine, the author of a dozen books, and has been a pastor for 20 years. email him at anelson@group.com.

You can read more of Alan’s work here...

25 and under morality

George Barna gives some startling information about those 25 and under. Read about their morality. How best can we reach them with the gospel of Jesus Christ?

Ed Stezter commenting on Randy Smith and age of people in church plants

Old People and Church Health
My New Jersey friend, Randy Smith, Lead pastor of Discovery Church, says too many believe the elderly have "cooties", and that this belief is damaging our churches. He is a church planting and in many plants, we don't see a good diversity of age. Randy explains,

We are missing out on something when we ignore the older generation. There I've said it. I like old people! When it comes to church, I don't like their music, I don't like their formality, and I don't like a lot of their traditions but I like the people.

...I think we hurt ourselves when we exclude the oldsters. They have wisdom, they have time, they have energy (for short periods of time!) and for all you pastors, they usually are good stewards! I'm not advocating that you haphazardly appoint five or six AARP members to your Executive Leadership Team. Actually, I'd warn you not to do such a thing with any age group. But I am saying that we need to find ways to marry the wisdom and years of spiritual growth of the old with the energy and adventuresome spirit of the new. How that's done is your job to figure out - you're the leader...lead!

Church growth or decline

Dan Garland writes a great review about a study done regarding church growth and decline. In short most growth or decline is not based on external factors but internal factors. We often blame external issues, but this study would indicate that the greatest factor in growth or decline is internal.

Young people thinking

ARDA has an interesting report on what people are thinking.

Why attend church

Q+A :: Top Reasons for Church Attendance

from churchrelevance.com by Kent Shaffer

QUESTION:
Do you have any statistics that show the top 5 reasons why people stay or connect with a church?
- Debbie :: California

ANSWER:
In recent years, there have been several research studies hoping to discover what motivates church attendance. I previously blogged about research from LifeWay Research and Gallup. Both of those studies offer good insights but can be general.

My favorite resource on the topic is Thom S. Ranier’s book Surprising Insights from the Unchurched. It discusses the following three surveys.

Top 13 Reasons that Unchurched People Choose a Church
(research conducted by Ranier)

1. 90% - Pastor/Preaching
2. 88% - Doctrines
3. 49% - Friendliness of Members
4. 42% - Other Issues
5. 41% - Someone Church Witnessed to Me
6. 38% - Family Member
7. 37% - Sensed God’s Presence/Atmosphere of Church
8. 25% - Relationship Other than Family Member
9. 25% - Sunday School Class
10. 25% - Children’s/Youth Ministry
11. 12% - Other Groups/Ministries
12. 11% - Worship Style/Music
13. 7% - Location

Top 9 Reasons that Church-Attenders Choose a Church
(research conducted by the Barna Group in 1999)

1. 58% - Doctrine/Theology
2. 53% - People Caring for Each Other
3. 52% - Preaching
4. 45% - Friendliness
5. 45% - Children’s Programs
6. 43% - Helping the Poor
7. 36% - Denomination
8. 35% - Like the Pastor
9. 26% - Sunday School

Top 6 Things that Keep the Formerly Unchurched Active in the Church
(research conducted by Ranier)

1. 62% - Ministry Involvement
2. 55% - Sunday School
3. 54% - Obedience to God
4. 49% - Fellowship of Members
5. 38% - Pastor/Preaching
6. 14% - Worship Services

The statistics speak for themselves. Overall, doctrine, the pastor and his preaching, and the friendliness and fellowship of the congregation are the most influential qualities.

Vacation

My wife and I got back from a great bicycle vacation late last night. We traveled a little over 400 miles across the western part of ND. We had a little rain, some wind and two days in the mid 90's. We had level ground to hills. Hills that we were able to coast down at about 43 mph and others that we traveled up at a whopping 4.5 mph fighting for our breath and praying our legs would keep moving as they screamed in pain. At one point our leg muscles filed a law suit against us claim cruel and unusual punishment. The judge listen to their cry and made us get off the bike and walk up some 10% and greater inclined hills.

Over all it was a great ride meeting people from all walks of life. I was able to connect with 4 other pastors that were riding their bicycle for fun. Most of the towns we went through reflect better times in years gone by, yet the people need to hear the truths of who Jesus Christ is and what He wants to do in their life.

It is great to be back.

Great missional opportunity

David Fitch on Reclaiming the Mission posted the following article. It is worth your time to read.

The Middle In: The Unique Missional Opportunity

Saturday, July 12, 2008

The pastors group at Life on the Vine spent this early morning talking about church planting, spawning communities of mission. We resolved that we would first seek to seed missional communities in places where a.) the gospel is sorely missing (either because churches have closed, left or not yet come), b.) we could live more affordably (so we could all live beneath our means), and c.) where we could live in closer proximity to one another.

Ironically the last two criteria would eliminate the very place Life on the Vine exists. Life on the Vine has faced significant challenges in the NW suburbs regarding the issues of affordability and proximity. We have had to be inventive. The struggle in each of these challenges has just begun. Yet the suburbs cannot be abandoned. We have seen smaller churches (300 and less) close up. The mega churches grow larger. And yet there is little left for those outside the gospel who would never consider darkening the doors of a mega church (which for me includes most post Christendom peoples).

Having said all this, I think we see ourselves as sending people off in groups of ten, as missional orders into places that a.) need the gospel, b.) more affordable, and c.) allow for proximal living. We want to send especially the people who cannot afford to live here.

This gets me to the point of this entire post. In several conversations I have had with missional church planters in the past three weeks, I have discussed what is happening in their towns. They all live in towns of 100,000 or so. In each of these towns the middle to upper classes economically have moved to the outer circle of these cities. Mega churches, in some cases huge mega churches, have sprung up on the outer edges of these towns (we'd call them suburbs in a big city like Chicago.) Meanwhile, from the middle of these little cities in, churches have shrunk, died, been whittled to nothing (many times by these mega churches) left and/or closed up. The outer circle of these towns has plenty of churches and money. Yet in all three of these contexts, "the middle in" is decidedly less middle-to upper class and lacks churches relative to the population. This "middle-in" is struggling with poverty, job loss, gangs, under-education and other things. Here in the "middle-in" parts of these towns are "the poor," the ones most ready and desperate for the gospel. Here lies fertile ground for the gospel.

All this to say, "the middle in" is also a.) very affordable, b.) allows for proximity, and c.) is in need of the gospel. These are the fertile places for the missional orders we are seeking to form at Life on the Vine. We seek to send groups of 10, gifted people for ministry who can get jobs and flourish in these new places for mission. I was stunned to visit one of these places this week and find many young professional Christians, who have good jobs, tired of mega church living, doing this kind of missional living. Wow, it blew my mind.

What do you think about the "middle in" hypothesis? Are you interested? Are you already doing this?

Travel Plans

My lovely wife and I are leaving this afternoon for a seven day bicycle trip in ND. You can check out the route and wish you were along.

Interview and book to consider reading

Justin Taylor as a great interview with Tom Schreiner about his book NT Theology. It looks like it is a great book to make you think.