These Kinds of Slow Growth are Actually Healthier

by: Sam Rainer III

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Every church has a pace built into the culture of its people. Some churches move more slowly. Some move more quickly. While most established churches likely need to pick up the pace, a slow pace does not necessarily mean the church is complacent.

Complacent churches are self-satisfied and are unwilling to address problems. Unfortunately, far too many churches are complacent. But don’t confuse complacency with a slow pace. Some congregations are willing to move forward; it just takes them a little longer. A few factors may influence the slow pace of a church.

The community may move at a slower pace. The church is simply reflecting the greater culture of the community. For example, rural communities tend to change less quickly. A church that moves too quickly in a slow-moving farming community may actually become less relevant.

A slow pace may point to stability, not entrenchment. It’s hard to move rapidly and also be stable. Slow-moving stability can be better for some church cultures. The downside of this pattern is it can create ruts of entrenchment, but it doesn’t have to be the case. When used strategically, stability can advance discipleship, sacrificial giving, and equipping—none of which point to complacency.

Leaders may guide the church methodically. Not every leader is designed to push forward with intensity. Not every church needs a hard-charging pastor full of ambition and ideas. Some church leaders plod thoughtfully, with intention and strategy. Plodding leaders are not complacent leaders.

The season of a church may necessitate a slower pace. When a church needs to heal, it almost always needs to slow down. A church may go through months, if not years, of a slower pace. This intentional slowdown may be the opposite of complacency. It could be the problem is the fast pace.

Passion is not always fast. Restoring an antique car takes time. It’s a painstaking process. The slowness of the restoration process is a sign of passion, not complacency or apathy. The same principle applies to the church. Pastors who revitalize churches may move slowly, but it’s an indicator of their passion and love for the church, not a mark of complacency.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming all slow-moving churches are complacent. In fact, many established churches require plodding leaders who are willing to take the time to revitalize them. These pastors are passionate, not complacent.

> Read more from Sam.

Tags: Church Growth, Growth, Sam Rainer

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The Power-Full Life Part 2: Blessed to Be a Blessing

by: VRcurator

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Generosity is a testimony of God’s grace in your life. It affirms your faith and it is how God desires to work around the world. You are declaring your faith again and again every time you give. When you then give extravagantly, you are truly participating at a high level in the advancement of the gospel mission. You perceive in an increasing way, what is important to God, how He works in the world, and desires to partner with you.

But where do you start in developing a generous life?

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Michael Frost, Surprise the World!

Christianity is a surprising religion. It has changed the world in remarkable ways throughout history simply through Christians living out their faith. More recently, we’ve become afraid of a habituated Christianity, thinking that routines will rob our faith of its vitality. The net effect is that we’ve replaced the habits that surprise the world with habits that mimic the world―and both we and the world suffer for it.

Integrating the five habits in the BELLS model―Bless others, Eat together, Listen to the Spirit, Learn Christ, and understand yourself as Sent by God into others’ lives―will help you spread the gospel organically, graciously, and surprisingly.

Michael Frost, a world-renowned expert on evangelism and discipleship, makes evangelism a lifestyle that is fulfilling, exciting, effective, and easy to live out!

A SIMPLE SOLUTION

Christians should be different: we should challenge convention and stand out from culture. Too often we stand out for the wrong reasons. Why not lead lives that cause the world to question how we love and serve so well?

We’re all familiar with the many and varied short-term or one-off programs designed to get us sharing our lives and faith with others. While these are commendable, there’s something much more powerful that even a church-wide concentrated effort. It’s the challenge of finding regular rhythms and habits that can transform our everyday lifestyles.

Evangelistic mission works effectively when we are living generous, hospitable, Spirit-led, Christlike lives as missionaries to our own neighborhoods. We need the impetus to propel us outward, into the lives of our neighbors, but also upward, into deeper intimacy with Jesus. Can we develop a new set of rhythms or habits that foster a missional lifestyle that intrigues others?

The first habit to consider embracing is that of blessing others. I’d like you to bless three people each week – at least one of whom is a member of your church and at least one who is not. The third can be from either category. From my experience, blessing another generally takes three different forms.

Words of Affirmation – the simplest way to bless someone. Send them a note, write them an email, or text them. Send them some words of affirmation and encouragement, letting them know you’ve noticed something worthwhile about them.

Acts of Kindness – who doesn’t feel blessed when someone does them a favor or provides some kind of practical support? Exercise your soul and bless others by doing them a good turn this week.

Gifts – the recipient of a gift thrives on the love, thoughtfulness, and effort behind the gift. Almost everything written on the subject of love indicates that at the heart of love is the spirit of giving.

Even if no one asks about our motivations, we resolve to live out a habitual rhythm of gift giving, time spending, and affirmation sharing. We will be humble, gentle, loving, and consistent.

All this implies that blessers must become students of those whom they bless.

Michael Frost, Surprise the World!

A NEXT STEP

In a journal, dedicate three pages to the three categories of Words of affirmation, Acts of Kindness, and Gifts, titling a page with each.

Words of Affirmation

Create categories for family, friends, work acquaintances, and people in your everyday life.

Daily for a period of three weeks, give a word of affirmation to at least one person on the lists. List the date and a brief description of the affirmation.

At the end of the three weeks, reflect and review your journal pages.

• What positive things have you learned?
• What things do you need to correct?
• What comments have you heard from others?
• What has this exercise meant to you?

Acts of Kindness

Create the same lists as above: family, friends, work acquaintances, and people in your life.

As above, for a period of three weeks, make it a point to provide at least one act of kindness each day to one or more of the four groups.

At the end of the three weeks, reflect and review your journal pages.

• What positive things have you learned?
• What things do you need to correct?
• What comments have you heard from others?
• What has this exercise meant to you?

Gifts

Create the same lists as above: family, friends, work acquaintances, and people in your life.

As above, for a period of three weeks, make it a point to give at least one gift each day to one or more of the four groups.

At the end of the three weeks, reflect and review your journal pages.

• What positive things have you learned?
• What things do you need to correct?
• What comments have you heard from others?
• What has this exercise meant to you?

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 65-2, published April 2017

This is part of a weekly series posting content from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders.

SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. Additionally, a practical action step is included with each solution.

As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS Remix provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

>> Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: Blessing, Michael Frost, SUMS Remix, Surprise the World!

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These 5 Ideas Help Build Owners of Church Vision Instead of Renters

by: Bryan Rose

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• Confidence. This may be the hardest requirement, and where the majority of leaders miss out on transferring vision.If you seek approval, you will rarely gain acceptance. Great leaders are confident in one thing: that they are following God, in who He created them to be. Then, they lead others to do the same. If you do not have confidence in the vision He has called you to, here are two gut-check questions: 1. Are you sure it is God’s vision and not your own (or some other pastor whose podcast you listen to regularly)? 2. Is right now the right time, or should you and your team spend more time and prayer and the Word?
•  Fallibility. In his heart, a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps. If you cannot accept that no plan is perfect and are scared to share the vision for fear that other leaders may point out changes, you cannot succeed. Letting others see and shape next steps builds ownership for the long-haul. The road to success is more often than not paved by failure.
• Humility. The first step toward your next failure is forgetting your last one. There is no such thing as a sure thing. When you assume that a group of leaders are “with you,” it often leads to rushing and “winging” vision roll-outs. Underdeveloped preparation creates uninspired participation. Without humility, it is easy to “look ahead” to the next meeting and forget to lead with humility and open-handedness in the moment that God has, in His wisdom, set before you. People will not own what you have not already cared for and proved to be of value.
• Patience. Vision ownership will always take more time than you want, easily require more resources than you have, and ultimately ask more from your leadership than you thought. Etsy founder Rob Kalin, says it this way: “The last 10% it takes to launch something takes as much time as the first 90%.” Without patience, a leader resorts to transferring information, rather than informing transformation. More than wordplay, the difference is critical. There are no shortcuts to leading your congregation to be doers of the word, not just hearers.
• Faith. Finally, building vision owners requires real-time steps of obedience. Every example of faith, especially in Hebrews 11, clearly illustrates movement forward without the benefit of seeing everything clearly. Many high-capacity lay leaders do not operate like this in the marketplace. They poll, they test, and they only move forward with initiatives with absolute certainty. God rarely operates in this way. Your faith enacted, in turn, builds faith in other leaders, and then cements ownership. This may be the greatest contribution and action of discipleship you will ever make for your deacons or elders.

Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn more about “building” owners of vision.

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Key Learnings from a Massively Multisite Church

by: Rich Birch

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In the early 2000s, I started on my multisite journey. In those days, we were just trying to solve a space problem at our growing church. We had some innovative volunteers at our church who asked if they could take the video that we were using to run an “overflow” and host a small group, 45 minutes away from where we were meeting. It was an incredibly simple idea that flourished to the point where I’ve seen thousands of people connected to the churches I’ve served at through this approach to “doing church”.

Since then, I’ve had the honor of being at the forefront of fourteen campus launches. We’ve seen around 1,500 volunteers join our mission and actively work to see those campuses launched. Today, over 9,000 people attend the campuses that sprung from our efforts. It has been a privilege to have a front row seat to this amazing approach to reaching new people with the message of Jesus. Seeing a revolution from the inside gives one a perspective that is second to no other!

As incredible as it’s been to see this movement from the inside, there are some lessons I wished I had known before we started this journey. These facts have been birthed over years of launching different sites and I wanted to share them with you here. These tips will help to save you time, effort and energy as you launch new locations! Lean in on these lessons and you are bound to find a few shortcuts to reaching more people in your community.

I’m still as much of a “fan” of the multisite church approach today as I was all those years ago when I was setting out to launch with so much hope in the first campus. I really do think that every growing church should consider this approach to multiplication. It’s been breathtaking to see this movement in a few churches grow to the point where one in six churchgoers in North America now attend a multisite church! Wowsers! I would have never predicted that back when we started sharing our video with that small group 45 minutes away!

The size and health of your launch core is the critical success factor.

Having watched so many different dynamics associated with these launches up close, I am convinced that the campuses that launch strong have a large and healthy group of volunteers kicking it off. In fact, when I talk with churches who have struggling campuses the problems can often be linked back to a lack of passionate people on the launch team. Moreover, it indicates that the volunteers weren’t trained enough before the campus started.

Yes, you can launch too quickly.

The best volunteers are not early adopters but are, counter-intuitively, the “late majority” folks because they are most likely to stick with the campus long term. The problem with that is that most church leaders are more “innovative” than the people they need to make that campus work. Innovators love the pressure of getting the campus out of the door but the vast majority of volunteers prefer to take time and need to be “wooed” into the process. Once you win these folks over, they will stick and stay for the long haul. Too many churches rush the launch process and miss the opportunity to build long-term leadership teams.

Campus Pastors are hard to find … but are most likely found within.

I wish I could get back all the hours I wasted worrying about where we were going to recruit campus pastors from. There is a clear evidence that campus pastors are being found within the church that is launching the campuses. In fact, 87% of campus pastors are found internally. [ref] This means you should get busy considering that fact that your next campus pastor is most likely already attending your church. Instead of looking far afield for them, invest your energy in identifying them and bringing them up.

It’s not about video-driven campuses.

Too many times people assume that all multisite churches are just pumping video from one campus to others. However, what we’re seeing is the majority of multisite churches are doing some combination of both local live and centralized video teaching. [ref] It’s healthy and good for local campuses to get a chance to teach on a regular basis in “video-driven” multisite churches. (Of course, “regular” is up for discussion and debate.) In churches that do some form of “team teaching” where the campus pastors do most of the communication, it’s valuable to have occasional video messages to keep the church rowing together. The fact is, the bigger the church and the more campuses you have the more video you are going to use among your locations. [ref]

Student ministry is hard in multisite.

At its core, the idea of multisite church is about delivering a smaller and “closer to home” experience. For adults, if there are 150 or 1,500 people in the room, the experience is a close approximation. For most kids, the small group leader is the key to delivering the best experience possible. For students, critical mass matters. If there are 20 people at an event or 100 people at the event, it’s not 5 times better but more like 50 times cooler! This is challenging in multisite because it tends to subdivide your church into small communities. Lots of churches struggle providing student ministry in this approach.

It’s way more financially efficient.

Multiple times over the years I’ve been in the situation where we are building a large box to house one of our campuses; at the same time as working on new “portable” locations. When you do a side by side financial comparisons of “cost per seat” to launch a new “big box” versus launching new campuses, the new portable locations are in an entirely different language on the cost structure. Many churches are driven to launch new campuses rather than build a bigger “box” because the cost structures are just so compelling. In fact, when talking with organizations that build a lot of churches they just aren’t seeing people building the “big box” churches anymore as a direct impact of the multisite movement.

Think Regional not National.

There are a few churches that have used this model to launch campuses across the country. These should be seen as an exception, not a guideline for you to follow. Those churches usually have a uniquely gifted communicator with a national platform that can speak to that audience. Most multisite churches should be thinking about how they can use this strategy to saturate the region they are from. As a rule of thumb, that region usually extends to where people cheer for the same sports teams. First, figure out how to reach people in that region before jumping to national aspirations. (By the way, why do so many multisite churches in the north have campuses in Florida?)

Nail it before you scale it.

You’ll get more of whatever you multiply through going multisite. If you have problems with parts of what you do, those parts will just grow. If there are aspects of your ministry that are full of pain in the process, you’ll just have more pain. Before you head out to launch make sure there is a modicum of health.

Teaching is the biggest “non-issue” long term.

There is a lot of conversation and discussion up front about how to deliver teaching at most multisite churches. Teaching pastors do a lot soul-searching around them being the “face on the screen” all over town. Campus pastors jockey for more stage time and want to get in the saddle and teach. However, long-term this becomes the smallest issue in launching, sustaining, and growing a multisite campus. All of the “people” issues are much more pressing realities in making this approach work. Developing teams, connecting people to the community, raising financial resources and attracting new guests are far more pressing issues for campuses than how you’re going to deliver teaching.

Don’t launch a campus but launch a system for launching campuses.

At last survey, 85% of multisite churches are stuck with less than two campuses. [ref] This is a shame for kingdom impact. These churches have started down the road of multiplication but stalled out. Imagine the impact this movement would have if we could move all of those churches to launch a few more sites! My conviction is that the reason that most churches are stuck at that point is because they just launched a campus or two but didn’t build a system for regularly launching new locations. They need a multisite church launch flywheel to help them in this endeavor!

Small towns are the horizon for multisite.

This movement started in relatively densely populated suburban areas but I’m seeing a new movement among churches reaching small towns and rural contexts. These communities are often places where no viable gospel oriented church exists and so these new multisite churches are leading the way to inject the message of Jesus back into these locations. I look forward to learning from these trailblazing churches in the coming years!

There is no better way to drive engagement at your church than launching new locations.

Campus expansion is a robust way to engage new volunteers at your church. Typically, we’ve seen that 2/3rds of the volunteers in new campuses haven’t served in the church before. I’m convinced that there is no better recruiting tool than to launch new locations. In fact, I haven’t seen anything in all these years that comes close to driving up volunteer engagement at a church than launching new locations. If you are wanting to see more people engaged in what your church does, get busy launching new campuses!

Fall is the best time to launch new campuses.

Generally, there are three windows that we see new campuses publically launch, sometime in the fall, early in the New Year and at Easter. The best time to launch is in the fall because you get a few “growth periods” before that next summer season comes along. The first summer can be a tough time in the life of a new campus as attendance and momentum naturally wane a little bit. When you launch in the fall, you are maximizing your ability to see momentum built before that happens.

Again, the size and health of your launch core is the critical success factor.

I can’t overstate how important this factor is. Your launch process needs to be built around the single factor of building a large and healthy volunteer team. Everything else is secondary to that decision. In fact, I would suggest that every decision during the launch process needs to be made in light of this one overall driving factor. Build a big and healthy team and your campus will thrive for years to come. If your team is small and weak the campus is almost certainly destined to limp for a long time.

Read more from Rich.

Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn more about multisite churches.

Tags: Multisite, Rich Birch, multisite church

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This Kind of Giving is Actually Harmful to Your Church

by: Thom Rainer

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If there is a topic that reaches me with frequency, it is the topic of church members designating funds. And the common theme is one of regret. The pastor or other church leader wishes the door of designated funds had never been opened.

For clarity, I am not speaking of designated funds approved by the church body as a whole. Many churches have excellent stewardship approaches that encourage members to give to a building fund or a mission fund, as two examples.

Instead, I am referring to those designated funds given to the church by a single or few members with guidelines not approved by the church as a whole. For example, one pastor shared with me about funds the church received with the strict stipulation that the church had to use them to buy stained-glass windows. The only problem is the church did not want to purchase stained-glass windows.

In another example, a pastor shared with me about a member who would only give designated funds to the youth ministry. The problem is that the youth ministry already had funds in the church budget, but these designated funds gave the youth ministry disproportionate funding compared to the other ministries. To make matters worse, the youth ministry was encouraging the donor to make the designated contribution.

So designated funds are not an intrinsic problem themselves. But they can become a dangerous precedent for several reasons. Here are five of them:

1. They circumvent the will and the plan of the church as a whole. Designated givers are basically saying they don’t like the unified budget of the church, so they are going rogue and dictating their preferences over the church as a whole. A church with numerous designated funds can find it has a budget with no teeth.
2. They create division in the church. Each designated giver is doing things his way or her way. Others tend to resent the imposition of will the person demands. Disunity is thus a natural consequence.
3. They create an environment where advocates of a particular ministry or need of the church solicit designated funds. The youth minister in the example above spent an incredible amount of time and energy currying the favor of designated giving to the youth fund. Instead of ministering to the students, he was spending as much time becoming a fundraiser.
4. They often come with stipulations that are difficult or impossible to comply. I recently heard from a pastor whose church had a designated endowment fund. The donor to that fund, however, established investment guidelines many years ago that required certain investment instruments that no longer exist.
5. They often hurt the budget giving of the church. The person who designates to the youth fund is likely taking dollars that would have normally gone to the budget as a whole. In many cases, each designated dollar is thus a dollar deducted from the overall budget.

I encourage church leaders to develop clear guidelines for dealing with designated funds. It will make saying no to a potential donor much easier. And it will also send a clear message that the church seeks to move forward in stewardship unity, rather than different members deciding what their own financial preferences and whims are.

Read more from Thom.

Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn more about Generosity at your church.

Tags: Designated Giving, Thom Rainer

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Making Great Decisions, Part 2: This One Step Changes Everything

by: VRcurator

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Does your lack of organizational focus keeps everyone too busy, especially you?

Do you feel like most days you are running on a ministry treadmill? You know the feeling – it’s when the busyness of ministry creates a progressively irreversible hurriedness in your life as a leader. The sheer immediacy of each next event or ministry demand prevents you from taking the time to look to the future horizon – and sometimes even today’s calendar – until it crashes in on you.

All too often, today’s demands can choke out the needed dialogue for tomorrow. When this occurs, your multiplied activity accomplishes little of value and prevents you from ministry with a clear sense of what God has called you to do.

THE QUICK SUMMARY – Escape Velocity, by Geoffrey Moore

In Escape Velocity, Geoffrey A. Moore, author of the marketing masterwork Crossing the Chasm, teaches twenty-first century enterprises how to overcome the pull of the past and reorient their organizations to meet a new era of competition. The world’s leading high-tech business strategist, Moore connects the dots between bold strategies and effective execution, with an action plan that elucidates the link between senior executives and every other branch of a company.

For anyone aiming for the pinnacle of success, Escape Velocity is an irreplaceable roadmap to the top.

A SIMPLE SOLUTION – Execute Your Vision

While forecasting the future should be seen as a necessary action for ministry today, Auxano Founder and Team Leader Will Mancini believes that for every leader who surfs the waves of cultural change there are a hundred who are stuck in a whirlpool vortex – and they feel they can’t keep their heads above the waters.

The world outside us is not stuck. It is changing rapidly even as we find ourselves sinking deeper and deeper into the comfort of yesterday.

It’s time to go back to the drawing board for vision, strategy, and execution.

The larger and more successful the enterprise, the greater the inertial mass, the harder it is to alter course and speed.

What if there is some hidden force that is working against your best efforts? What if this force is operating inside your own company, with the full support of your executive team, your board, and indeed yourself? What if this force is able to mysteriously redirect resource allocation so that it never quite gets deployed against new agendas? That force is the pull of the past.

To move beyond the pull of the past, you must organize and shape your approach to the planning effort of next year with three goals foremost:

• Articulate a compelling vision of the future that others will want to support.
• Set a strategy consistent with your vision.
• Resource your execution so that it can accomplish your highest aspirations.

To free your organization’s future from the pull of the past, to escape the gravitational field of your prior year’s operating plan, you need to apply a force that is greater than the inertial momentum of current operations.

Newton’s first law of motion states that an object at rest tends to stay at rest and an object in motion tends to continue in the direction in which it is currently moving. The same goes for resource allocation.

When organizations begin their strategic planning effort by circulating last year’s operating plan, they reinforce the inertial properties of the resources as currently allocated. This is not a good outcome, but to be frank, there is no help for it.

What you can do, however, is get yourself and your colleagues out in front of it. Execution is acting and reacting in real time to an ever-changing set of circumstances, all the while maintaining your strategic intent. Execution power, by contrast, is created in advance of the real-time moment of truth and focuses on getting the right resources in the right position for maximum impact and efficiency.

Geoffrey A. Moore, Escape Velocity

A NEXT STEP

It’s time to develop a visionary state of mind by practicing two essentials. First, you need to grasp that clarity isn’t everything, but it changes everything. Too many times, church leaders are making decisions and having conversations without the vantage point of clarity first. Is there anything greater that we should be working on? Why would we put our foot on the gas petal before the fog lifts? All activity is not progress. In churches today, it’s all too easy to be busy without intention or direction.

Second, we need to state our vision framework before we frame our vision statement. Leaders must work from a common template to understand and communicate vision, or everyone will stay confused. The story and vision of the church won’t work its way into staff meetings, volunteer training, membership moments, casual conversations or our prayer lives.

Introducing the Vision Frame

No leader should lead, no team should meet, and no initiative should start without understanding the Vision Frame. In short, the Vision Frame reminds us that there are five irreducible questions of clarity. Your church’s vision isn’t totally clear until your leadership team can answer all five questions in a concise and compelling way:

• MISSION as Missional Mandate: What are we doing?
  The missional mandate is a clear and concise statement describing what your church is ultimately supposed to be doing.
• VALUES as Missional Motives: Why are we doing it?
  Missional motives are shared convictions that guide the actions and reveal the strengths of your church.
• STRATEGY as Missional Map: How are we doing it?
  The missional map is the process or picture that demonstrates how your church will accomplish its mandate on the broadest level.
• MEASURES as Missional Life Marks: When are we successful?
  Missional life marks are a set of attributes in an individual’s life that define or reflect the accomplishment of the church’s missional mandate.
• VISIONPROPER as Missional Mountaintop + Milestones: Where is God taking us?
  Vision Proper is the living language that anticipates and illustrates God’s better intermediate future.

When you commit to clarity, great things happen. You empower a movement of people to tell the story of what God is doing in and through your church. You can seamlessly share the what, the why, and the how.

Don’t let all the different vision terms and concepts excuse you from being an everyday visionary. It’s time to stop stabbing at the future with a few short phrases. You can guide your church with stunning clarity. Remember Jesus. He walked on Earth with total clarity about His identity, His mission and His destiny. Shouldn’t His body today do the same?

Download a Vision Frame Overview and work through it with your lead team.

Start a conversation with an Auxano Navigator today to learn more about how the Vision Frame can help you execute your vision.

Excerpt taken from SUMS Remix 64-2, released April 2017

This is part of a weekly series posting content from one of the most innovative content sources in the church world: SUMS Remix Book Summaries for church leaders.

SUMS Remix takes a practical problem in the church and looks at it with three solutions; each solution is taken from a different book. Additionally, a practical action step is included with each solution.

As a church leader you get to scan relevant books based on practical tools and solutions to real ministry problems, not just by the cover of the book. Each post will have the edition number which shows the year and what number it is in the overall sequence. (SUMS Remix provides 26 issues per year, delivered every other week to your inbox). 

>> Subscribe to SUMS Remix <<

Tags: Church Unique, Execute your vision, Geoffrey A. Moore, SUMS Remix, Vision Frame

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It Takes This to Truly Be a Church for the Unchurched

by: James Emery White

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When people hear that Mecklenburg Community Church (Meck) experiences more than 70% of its growth from the unchurched, their mouths drop open. They want to know what we do to achieve such a ridiculously high percentage. There’s obviously a host of things we do, but I tend to answer in one simple way.

I say that everybody talks about being “about” the unchurched, but we really are. In fact, those who hang around Meck from other church backgrounds almost always comment (after even just a few weeks), “Wow, you guys really are after the unchurched.”

The reality is that most churches have outreach in their rhetoric, but not in their reality. The decisions we make at Meck to stay focused on our mission would floor most church leaders, as they fly in the face of raw “numbers” that we could have obtained. Yes, we are a very large church, but we would be so much larger if we focused on transfer growth.

So what does it mean to make the countless decisions we make for an unchurched guest who has been invited by a friend (which is the number one way the unchurched come into our orbit)?

This past weekend I received an email from a member of our staff following our Saturday night service describing the experience a friend of theirs had at Meck when attending for the first time that evening. I offer it in the hope that it will be eye opening to what it really means to be a “church for the unchurched.”

Here’s the email:

I had first-time guests here tonight… He is a Christmas/Easter Catholic and she (raised agnostic) said she never went to church before she married him. I was SO curious to see what they would say about the service.

They were super kind about the whole experience. They mentioned the building and how they were taken aback but yet completely at ease coming in with what appeared to be other “normal people who seemed like they weren’t being dragged to church.” They mentioned being greeted and thought it was just because they were guests, but then realized everyone was getting the same kind of greeting (that really stood out to them). They left the kids with the sitter but were asking me about MecKidz because they saw a “ton of kids running ahead of their parents to… church? Are they giving them free candy or something?” (Which, of course, was a great conversation about MecKidz). They stopped in The Grounds… and said they loved the coffee and the whole vibe. They loved the music and mentioned the diversity on stage… he is Iranian so he “saw himself” up there. I asked him about the music and they said while they didn’t know any of the songs they really enjoyed watching people who did know the music engage it. They of course asked if the band was hired and where they played during the week (ha!). They loved the “personal-ness” of the whole service.

He told me he’s never been to a church service where he didn’t feel guilted into giving money. He couldn’t believe we’d say “don’t give” and then not say “but give to this” later! He told me he actually leaned over to his wife when you started [the message] and said, “How long before he starts talking about money?” He was shocked you didn’t! He said about 10 minutes into the message he forgot to even be listening for it.

I asked him how he felt about the message and he said what I can only attribute as the highest compliment I can give. I’m paraphrasing, but it was something like this: “I knew the message was about me – I mean he said that right at the beginning. And while I should’ve maybe felt awkward or uncomfortable about that, I kind of felt… cared for. I mean, it’s like he said, ‘If you’ve got something you think I need, how much do you have to hate me not to tell me about it?'”

Your stature and being a “man’s man” made him feel like this “Jesus/church stuff” wasn’t a big emotional crutch (which is the conversation we have regularly). And then before they left, they both turned to me and said, “Thank you for inviting us.”

Wowwww.

I forgot… he also said “going to church, you expect to hear about God; I just didn’t expect it to be so compelling.”

I could tease out the various dynamics this person experienced into teaching points, but I think you can do that yourself. The point is that the ultimate test of whether you are a church for the unchurched is simple:

… if an unchurched person thinks you actually are.

> Read more from James Emery White.

Want to know more about becoming a “church for the unchurched?” Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn more.

Tags: Church for the Unchurched, James Emery White, unchurched

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4 Habits that Develop Credibility as a Trainer

by: Mac Lake

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In 1987 I choose to go to Dallas Theological Seminary based on one thing- I wanted to sit under the teaching of Dr. Howard Hendricks. In this video I share 4 habits we can develop that will help elevate our level of credibility with those we mentor, teach or train.

If you’re trying to develop leaders for your leadership pipeline these four habits will help you stay fresh and teach with passion, which will increase your credibility.

Habit #1 – 2:00 – Position yourself as a learner

Habit #2 – 3:02 – Always carry a learning journal

Habit #3 – 4:34 – Always be growing in your area of expertise

Habit #4 – 6:30 – Always teach the freshest things your learning

Discussion Questions: Share the link to this video with your team and schedule a time to discuss the following questions. LINK: https://youtu.be/dr0knhlv9f4

Q1 Who is a teacher, trainer or mentor you were excited to learn from? What was it that excited you to learn from them?

Q2 What do you look for in those you want to learn from?

Q3 What are other habits a trainer can develop that will help them build or maintain high levels of credibility?

View more developing leaders videos from Mac.

Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn more about developing leaders.

Tags: Leadership Credibility, Mac Lake

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Three Perspectives of Using Data in the Church

by: Eric Geiger

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Leaders have never been able to access so much data and have never been encouraged so strongly to let the data direct them. In recent years there has been an avalanche of books, articles, and conferences on leveraging big data. Data scientists are hired to bring their expertise to companies and “machine learning” is being utilized in organizations. So what is a leader to do? There are three common approaches leaders take with data and only one of them is healthy and wise:

1. Ignore the data.

Some leaders foolishly ignore data. They choose to “trust their gut” or “go with their instincts.” Some ministry leaders have viewed looking at and learning from data as unspiritual and displaying a lack of faith. It is not unspiritual to look at data and it is unwise not to. While data does not tell the whole story it does tell part of the story. It can help leaders understand the context, the challenges, and the opportunities. Data can help leaders know where to invest more resources and where to pull back.

2. Obsess over the data.

For an unhealthy leader data can be a drug. Unhealthy leaders can live from report to report for their worth and their identity. They can lead reactively, based on the latest spreadsheet, instead of proactively setting a direction. Leaders can easily obsess over the less important data points. And their obsession over those data points can cause them to lead with only those data points in view. It is unwise to ignore data and unhealthy to obsess over it.

3. Learn from data.

Professor and management consultant W. Edwards Deming quipped, “In God we trust, everyone else must bring data.” He captures the reality that leaders do not lack people offering them ideas, perspectives, and opinions on which direction to go and what decisions to make. And data can help. Data can help leaders look at the options objectively. Data can help leaders avoid being persuaded by the best sounding approaches and push toward the actual best approaches. Data can help teams learn and adjust tactics. Data should be a strong voice in the room when leaders make decisions.

Wise leaders avoid the two extremes of ignoring and obsessing over data. Instead they learn from it and view it as a tool they can use as they lead and serve their teams.

> Read more from Eric.

Tags: Eric Geiger, data, using data in church

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Five Giving Trends in Today’s Church

by: Sam Rainer III

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Much about church giving is changing. Worship attendance, conversions, and baptisms are often the most scrutinized metrics, but giving trends are close behind. Below are five macro trends that are affecting most churches in the United States.

Trend 1: Millennials will have less giving potential than their parents. Unless an unexpected economic shift occurs, Millennials will continue to be poorer than their parents. Numerous reasons are the cause. Tuition at colleges has tripled since 1980, even after adjusting for inflation. Household income has risen four times more quickly with the older generations than with Millennials. The federal government now spends almost $7 on programs for seniors for every $1 spent per capita on programs for children. The young poor are getting poorer. The chart below demonstrates that poverty was largely among the older generation prior to the 1970s. Now poverty is largely among the younger generation. The Millennials will make less—perhaps much less—than previous generations, which means their giving capacity as a whole will be less.

Trend 2: Giving will be more concentrated at the largest churches. The biggest 10% of churches hold about 50% of all monies given to congregations, and this concentration is intensifying as more and more people are going to larger churches. In the future, larger churches will continue to garner more of the total resources given to churches. Many will bemoan, if not outright condemn, this trend. I understand the sentiment. However, I believe any church—large or small—can be a resource giant.

Trend 3: Independent funding mechanisms will increase in popularity. The ubiquity of the Internet creates a climate in which anyone can be connected to everyone. Smart phones make this connectivity mobile. Churches no longer need a denomination to create a system of connectivity for funding ministries and missions. Are there reasons a church should stay with a denomination for funding missions or other ministries? Yes, but needing a system of connectivity is no longer one of them.

The problem is many leaders within denominations have continued to champion “the system” of funding even though churches don’t need it any more. At the same time, denominational loyalties are in decline, which exacerbates the declines in giving to denominational work. Additionally, operating costs are increasing in local congregations—it’s more expensive to run a church than it used to be. The result of these factors converging is the rise of independent funding mechanisms. I can more easily support my friend serving in Rwanda than I can my denomination, and I have more of a personal connection to her anyway. I like her Facebook page, not my denomination’s Facebook page (actually, my denomination doesn’t even have one!). I get personal emails from her, not leaders in my denomination.

Trend 4: Giving patterns in churches are becoming less consistent. People are still giving, just not asconsistently to churches. In fact, churches are getting less of total charitable giving. Overall, charitable giving is on the rise in the United States, but churches are receiving a smaller portion. In 1987, religious organizations received 53% of all charitable donations. In 2014, religious organizations received only 32% of all charitable giving, a 30-year dramatic downward slide.

Trend 5: Digital giving is the future. Mobile devices now account for over half of all Internet traffic. Digital giving is the future. And to some degree, it’s a discipleship issue. The spiritual discipline of giving will become completely digital in the future. Gifts of pure gold became coinage. Coinage became paper money. Paper money became checks. Checks are already going digital, especially with younger generation. Digital giving tools help people with the spiritual discipline of giving.

Many pastors feel a shift occurring in their churches. Their intuitions tell them the future of church giving will be different. Perhaps your instinct leads you to believe giving patterns are changing in your church. Most likely, your instincts are correct. These five macro trends, in particular, are affecting many churches and will continue to do so in the future.

This post is an excerpt from a research article I wrote for Church Answers. It’s part of a premier coaching ministry with Thom Rainer.

Connect with an Auxano Navigator to learn more about giving in your church.

> Read more from Sam.

Tags: Generosity, Giving Trends, Resourcing, Sam Rainer

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