Transforming Church

For a decade and a half, scheduling a contemporary praise service on Sunday morning has paid huge dividends in outreach for countless congregations. Though there are exceptions, generally this has worked better later in the morning in the northern tier of the country, and earlier to mid-morning in the southern tier. But this style of service has been a fad mainly with the baby boomers. As we look now to reach younger generations, excitement with praise services has definitely started to wane.

In some places there is already evidence that greater effectiveness can now be achieved by looking at ways to modify the traditional service, even if it still uses classical music. Many younger than boomer generations are attracted to experience cloaked in mystery, especially with historical context. Such attraction varies, however, from one area or community to another.

A better way, and the way to avoid falling into the fad trap of boomer praise services, is to style a new service with indigenous consciousness. An indigenous style service is one designed around that which is especially meaningful to your target audience. "Target audience" refers to the unchurched in your area you have not effectively been able to reach but hope to. It is still true that most of these target audiences will not be attracted to services using classical music. While hoping to avoid yet another fad, emergent worship today constantly reminds us that worship is first about our relationship with God, that we invite everyone into an encounter with Him that will transform us to His purposes.

There are significant trends, not fads, in our society that indigenous services and even those with classical music should be addressing. Traditional liturgical styles are generally entwined more with head sense, intellect and logic, than with heart sense, emotion and feeling. Many of us grew up with a less emotional liturgical style, but today we are part of a society that is much more experiential. Remember how many of us resisted the Sharing of the Peace when it was first introduced? Today there are too many churches that miss its meaning because they are too busy hugging.

We are trying to reach an unchurched population today that is more experiential than most of us, a population that is not as interested in learning “about” God as it wants to "experience" God. Those willing to "give your church a try" are looking for the experience, not the knowledge. The traditional liturgical style will still connect with many younger people, especially if more is made of the mystery that has always been a part of it. For others, however, such doors will likely open more through their own day-to-day music, whether that be country gospel, rap or whatever.

Another trend in our society to be kept in mind, regardless of worship style, is that we are becoming more and more visual. Visual does not mean two-dimensional paper and ink books, but becomes more experiential and even relational when using projected moving and still images on a screen. And a final thought grows out of another of these "eight ways" articles, "Clinging To What We Have." As the church more effectively moves from being prophetic to apocalyptic, it needs to conscientiously assess the text that goes with the music we use. The kindest thing that could be said about the text with a number of our hymns is that they would be better rewritten or no longer used.

H. Mistaken Motivations For Growing the Church
In the last four decades many motivations have been observed for seeking growth in a congregation, each with varying degrees of success and some completely unsuccessful. When a congregation and its leaders realize only modest success or lack of it, justification, rationalization and plain old excuses often follow to save face. One gross mistake we should not even need to identify is seeking or encouraging the other-churched, those already connected elsewhere, to jump ship and come over.

When it comes right down to it there is only one true motivation that can expect assistance from the Holy Spirit as "He calls, gathers, enlightens and sanctifies"1 us. That motivation is to make disciples of Jesus Christ who make disciples. It has absolutely nothing to do with membership in a congregation. The finest posture for a pastor with this is to be content to simply let disciples minister within the congregation whether they choose to formalize their membership with the congregation or not. Congregations supporting this are easily identified because the number of persons attending worship begins to exceed the number on the membership roll of the congregation.

The two most frequent mistaken motivations for growing the church are membership based, not disciple based. The first is to seek growth "so that we have more people to help us pay for this building" or "to take care of all the expenses of this congregation." The second is "so that we have more people to help do all the work in this congregation." Both motivations are a mistake, not only because they are phony, easily recognized as such by "prospects," but also because they are misguided even if they "made sense."

If growth is realized in spite of this phoniness, the reality is quickly apparent that greater numbers means the need for even more space, and that greater numbers result in added financial expense for the congregation. Growth results in larger pieces of the fiscal pie of responsibility, not smaller, even though mistaken thinking assumes you get to divide the same dollar pie with a larger number of payees. Simply said, if either of these motivations for growth is yours, you will not achieve your goal. At the same time, if you do realize modest growth you will quickly end up further behind.

Another mistaken motivation for growth happens when congregations get caught up in the success image. This expresses itself in a number of different ways, i.e. "We need to grow to be able to relocate. We are on a small parcel of land we’ve outgrown and concerns like a shortage of parking are only the beginning of our problems," "We need to grow to support expansion of our facilities and/or staff so we can attract an even greater percentage of the new people moving into our area," "We need to be seen as 'successful' to grow even more," or "We need more facility/more staff to shore up areas where our ministry is weak and preventing our growth." A frequent expression of this last one is, "We need to hire a youth worker so that we can get more families in this church with children." Talk about a hollow motivation to grow with little or no chance to succeed, that's it.

There are many other mistaken motivations observed in lesser degrees, too numerous to list here. Suffice it to say that if your motivation to grow is anything other than to make disciples of Jesus who make disciples, you have misread the discernment of that part of your congregation's vision. Not every congregation is called to be "huge," "successful," or to excel in every possible area of ministry. Even in an area with static population, if your motivation for growth is the one that is true, given our society’s unchurched numbers across the board, you will still find disciples being multiplied rather than members nominally added.
1 Martin Luther, "The Small Catechism"

Other ways that hasten a congregation’s decline previously addressed included: "Focus On Membership Prevents Discipleship, Renaming Committees as Teams,The Copout of Asserting 'Youth Are the Future Of the Church,' Leadership In the Wrong Hands, Clinging To What We Have, and Wasting Energy Trying To Overcome Weaknesses.