The First Step...

It would seem to me that if we are to get serious about this business of growing churches, we must at least admit that there is a problem. Say it with me, “The first step towards dealing with a problem is admitting there is a problem.”

I recognize that this is difficult. It is difficult for my own church to accept. But for my church, which has outperformed the denomination by declining over 55% vs 33 % in the last 18 years, the facts are the facts. And no amount of happy talk will change that. Still people cling to the things that have defined our congregation from the beginning as if doing more of the same will somehow, miraculously, generate a different result.

It’s not that the people in my church are foolish. Actually, they are a very smart and well educated group of folks. It’s that the world in which they founded and grew this church, well, that world doesn’t exist anymore.*

We’ve all read the books that talk about post-modernism and church growth and ten easay steps to mega church success. I’ve read tons about how new churches are doing new things. I’ve been to several and loved how they do what they do. But from where I’m standing, as a local pastor in a once healthy and now declining DOC church, they really don’t have a lot to tell me.

So I got to wondering, from where will my help come?

From God says the psalmist, and I don’t disagree…but how will God present that help?

This congregation has been studied to death. Generally, regionally and locally. We’ve paid our money and we’ve gotten the reports, but the same thing always seems to happen.

Nothing.

So it occurred to me that we might be approaching this thing all wrong. Taking a page out of the Martha Grace Reese playbook, I thought that instead of having people study us, what if we could study other churches? Find a few examples of a great church that was in our position and rebounded and see what we could learn? Surely we could find God's hand moving there?

It turns out this is easier said than done....



* Post modernism, blah, blah, blah – here’s a real world example. When the neighborhood around my church was built in the 1950’s, a guy (and it was a guy) with a high school education and a good job could afford a house here. It was mostly middle managers, low–end professionals and upper-end tradesmen. Nowadays, average house price is over $500,000 and that represents a steep discount in this market. To even qualify for that loan in this market your household annual income would have to be over $180,000 .

This means that the people who are moving into this neighborhood, and who moved in over the past decade, these people are usually high-end professionals; doctors, lawyers and top-tier sales folks. These people are different than the people who founded and still run this church. They have different expectations about say, for instance, facilities or music. Not better, not worse, but different. Almost one under the age of 70 in my congregation lives in this neighborhood.

We are a neighborhood church that is cut off from the neighborhood by the vagaries of the California real estate market.