12 Reasons You’re Failing to Reach Young Families

You would rather shame a mom and dad for missing Sunday worship than equip them to engage other travel-ball parents with the Gospel.

You consistently make decisions based on anecdotal member happiness rather than analytical program effectiveness.

Your children’s area smells musty, or it looks worn and outdated.

Your decisions about worship style, service times or service content are made in fear of losing people rather than conviction toward reaching people.

You have tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of dollars in the bank and carpet from the mid-1990’s or before.

Your conversations about churches in your area experiencing growth are marked by negativity and insecurity.

You are close to retirement, looking for easy wins and avoiding the challenges required by a change.

Your personal calendar reflects more time spent doing ministry tasks than developing ministry leaders.

You expect parents to be the primary spiritual influence in their homes, but fail to provide any meaningful engagement or resources beyond baby dedication Sunday.

You rarely, if ever, ask the youth minister what he or she is most passionate about.

You and the team watch webinars, attend classes online and stream the latest conferences, yet refuse to live-broadcast Sunday worship services.

Your Children’s ministry security is non-existent or revolves around the “technology” of classroom volunteer facial recognition.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bryan Rose

Bryan Rose

As Lead Navigator for Auxano, Bryan Rose has a strong bias toward merging strategy and creativity within the vision of the local church and has had a diversity of experience in just about every ministry discipline over the last 12 years. With his experience as a multi-site strategist and campus pastor at a 3500 member multi-campus church in the Houston Metro area, Bryan has a passion to see “launch clarity” define the unique Great Commission call of developing church plants and campus, while at the same time serving established churches as they seek to clarify their individual ministry calling. Bryan has demonstrated achievement as a strategic thinker with a unique ability to infuse creativity into the visioning process while bringing a group of people to a deep sense of personal ownership and passion.

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comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you Ed for sharing your insights into the Church Growth Movement. I have my reservations with Church Growth models because it has done more damage than good in the Body of Christ. Over the years, western churches are more focused on results, formulas and processes with little or no emphasis on membership and church discipline. Pastors and vocational leaders are burnt out because they're overworked. I do believe that the Church Growth model is a catalyst to two destructive groups: The New Apostolic Reformation and the Emerging Church. Both groups overlap and have a very loose definition. They're both focus on contemporary worship, expansion of church brand (franchising), and mobilizing volunteering members as 'leaders' to grow their ministry. Little focus on biblical study, apologetics and genuine missional work with no agenda besides preaching of the gospel.
 
— Dave
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Thank you for sharing such a good article. It is a great lesson I learned from this article. I am one of the leaders in Emmanuel united church of Ethiopia (A denomination with more-than 780 local churches through out the country). I am preparing a presentation on succession planning for local church leaders. It will help me for preparation If you send me more resources and recommend me books to read on the topic. I hope we may collaborate in advancing leadership capacity of our church. God Bless You and Your Ministry.
 
— Argaw Alemu
 
comment_post_ID); ?> Amen!!
 
— Scott Michael Whitley
 

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