Bill Easums Observations

In studying church planters over the past decade, I’ve discovered two keys to explosive growth:

1. the  pastor is fixated on evangelism.  Pastor, if you want your plant to grow then in the early stages of your plant you must set the example and do one-to-one evangelism.  You also have to spend more time out  in the public than with your flock.
2. and the pastor is healthy enough to hand-off ministry responsibilities to others the moment a person with leadership potential emerges.  Effective leaders know that they can grow the church only so far. If they want their plant to outgrow their ability to grow it, they have to empower others to share their faith with their networks.

Recently the Lilly Foundation did a study titled “New Church Development in the 21st century.” It was a study of over 700 church plants in seven denominations. They compared the habits of highly effective planters to those who were far less effective. Their findings backed up my two observations. You can read about the study in Extraordinary Leaders in Extraordinary Times.

Not long ago wrote an article about the secret to growing a small church or new church plant that got picked up and circulated through Rasnet. It seems as if my article stirred quite a controversy as well as some personal rationalization for failure. One such response was:

“I can’t help but believe that thousands of faithful pastors of small struggling church reading this article have just dropped into depression or into feelings of failure. I know many churches with evangelistic pastors and yet the churches continue to remain small (and the reverse is also true; church growth in spite of the pastor’s efforts……

It appears this article suggest the lack of church growth is the pastor’s fault, and the converse would also be true, if the church grows it is due to the pastor’s effort… which is something great to talk about a pastor’s conferences.

Kent and Barbara Hughe’s book , Liberating Your Ministry From Success Syndrome redefines success as faithfulness, serving, loving, believing, praying, holiness, and attitude (it’s a great read).

I believe direct evangelism grows churches, but to make it all about the pastor’s evangelistic activity seems short-sighted.  I believe that church growth is more than adding numbers to the roll or notches on a belt; it is about the people of God, on mission with God, making disciple for God, in order to make a difference in the life of the world and the kingdom.”

Here is my response:

I guess you would have to define faithfulness.  I define it as sharing one’s faith so the Kingdom can be expanded.  One isn’t held accountable to how people respond, but one is help accountable to both the Great Commission and Commandment. Faithfulness is far more than how one conducts one’s life.

The study doesn’t make it all about the pastor. The hand-off of ministry also includes one-on-one evangelism.  However, if the pastor isn’t concerned about evangelism then the church usually doesn’t grow, so there is a direct correlation between what a pastor does and how the church grows.

Remember, this study was about church plants.  Churches simply don’t grow if the pastor doesn’t do most of the work in the early days.

I’m also not prone to allowing anyone off the hook when it comes to our Lord’s last will and testament -”Go and make disciples” and “be my witnesses.”

Bill Easum”

Now, I wish to add more.  The last thing we need are more books like the one from the Hughes that define faithfulness in such a way as to remove all responsibility for the mess in which we find the U.S. Church. The last thing I want to do is liberate any Christian from the success syndrome, much less the pastor.  We’re in a mess my friends. We have enough mediocrity in the church today.  We have enough churches closing for lack of leadership. I’m fed up with pastors who are willing to spend their entire ministry changing spiritual diapers and caring for every spiritual hangnail that comes along. We’ve had enough failure. It’s time we took responsibility and led the Church home.

I want to commend all of those faithful pastors who labor each day to bring someone into the Kingdom and grow them forward. And I want to give a swift kick in the butt to those pastors who are content with spending all of their time baby sitting self-centered church members. Shame on you. God expects so much more from us. 

For much of the past three decades, denominational officials have been promoting seminars and programs aimed at revitalizing the church. I know because I have been the speaker or consultant to many of these groups. For many of these leaders, their goal was to breathe new life into churches experiencing declining memberships and lack of commitment. Yet after years of trying to revitalize these churches, the vast majority of them are still declining. What gives?

Reformation, renewal, and revitalization assume some preexisting foundation of faith from which to raise up a new church. But what if that assumption isn’t correct? What if the assumption is part of our problem? What if being a member of a church for 40 years doesn’t automatically guarantee any spiritual depth? What if holding every office in the church doesn’t automatically mean someone is a disciple of Jesus Christ? Do we dare look deep enough into our souls to find answers to these questions?

Based on the conversations and actions of the thousands of Protestant leaders with whom I worked over the years, I have concluded that most of them are spiritually dead and their institutions have ceased being the church. They have the form but not the substance of what it means to be the church.

Let me define what I mean by spiritually dead churches. If your church spends most of its energy on itself and its members, it’s spiritually dead.

Such churches are living corpses. They are physically alive; some may even be growing; but they are spiritually dead to the mission of the New Testament church—to make disciples of Jesus Christ. They’ve turned inward and exist solely for themselves. They look for ways to serve themselves, and the kingdom be damned.

They’re like baby birds sitting in the nest with their mouths open waiting for momma bird (pastor) to feed them with no concept that Jesus intends them to feed others. Oh, they might collect money to send away to some distant mission field, but they’re all thumbs when it comes to sharing the good news with their neighbor or community. What growth they might experience is not of their doing—it just happens because of the population growth around them.

Here are eight death clues. Spiritually dead churches:

1. Have lost their sense of mission to those who have not heard about Jesus Christ and do not pant after the Great Commission;
2. Exist primarily to provide fellowship for the “members of the club;”
3. Expect their pastors to focus primarily on ministering to the members’ personal spiritual needs;
4. Design ministry to meet the needs of their members;
5. Have no idea about the needs of the “stranger outside the gates;”
6. Are focused more on the past than the future;
7. Often experience major forms of conflict;
8. And watch the bottom line of the financial statement more than the number of confessions of faith.

Bringing life back

The starting point for unfreezing a stuck organizational system is the development of a solid community of faith that includes spiritual leaders, the absence of major conflict, trust, and a desire to connect with the unchurched world.

True spiritual maturity is approached when people turn their attention to those outside the church and seek ways to spread the good news rather than exercise their entitlements as members. Unfortunately, too many pastors assume their church has spiritual leaders and skip right over this starting point. It has become apparent to me that most church leaders do not understand that the decline of their church is due to the lack of spiritual depth on the part of their leadership.

So, now, I want to go deeper on the spiritual issue. It’s not just that our churches are stuck; they are spiritually bankrupt!

I know. These churches are filled mostly with good Christian people, but there’s no discernable spiritual power, just good Christian people—and we all know what Jesus said about being good. (Mark 10:18)

So it’s obvious. Isn’t it? The only solution for spiritually dead congregations is resurrection. You can’t revitalize something that is dead. They must be brought to life again! And that is resurrection.

Revitalization is a waste of time. You can’t breathe life into a corpse. Only God can do that, and that is resurrection.

My experience has taught me the resurrection of a church happens in three stages. It begins with a new pastor. Either the pastor experiences a personal resurrection or the church actually gets a new pastor. Next is the resurrection of the leaders of the church either by transformation or replacement. Finally, the church itself is resurrected and turned around through some tactical change. Then, if resurrection happens, our behavior changes:

1. The church turns outward in its focus.
2. Jesus, not the institution, will become the object of our affection.
3. The Great Commission will become our mandate, and we will measure everything we do by how many new converts we make rather than whether we have a black bottom line.
4. Membership in the Kingdom will replace membership in the church.
5. Pastors will cease being chaplains of pastoral care and will become modern-day apostles of Jesus Christ.
6. And those who try to control the church with an iron fist or intimidate the church at every turn of the road will be shown the door.

The primary reason society is shunning the institutional church is because for the most part it is spiritually dead. Spiritually alive churches, no matter what their form or where they are planted, always grow. That is the nature of the beast. That is the kind of church God honors. That is what the church was put on earth to do—spread the good news. When a church faithfully does that, it grows. Period.

Adapted from “A Second Resurrection” by Bill Easum from Abingdon Press  

People who have followed my writings know that I was one of the first proponents of churches having a permission-giving attitude and ministry. My book, Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers, clearly defined how churches developed a permission-giving compared to “We’ve always done it this way” attitude.  As a result of this attitude, healthy churches usually developed multiple ministries, and grew because of the variety of ministries offered.

Now, however, I’m finding many strong churches who are doing just the opposite. Instead of lots of programs or ministries, they do only two things- worship and small groups that meet in homes. These churches usually do so for two reasons: one, they believe that small groups is the best way to disciple and retain people; and two,  because of the time crunch most Americans find themselves in.

I just finished reading Sticky Church by Larry Osborne, pastor of North Coast Church in Vista, CA. The premise of the book is that it is more important to close the back door than to keeping trying to open the front door wider. Instead of focusing on bringing in more people it is better to focus on giving great care to the present participants. And the way they have closed the back door at North Coast is by doing sermon-based small groups, and not much else. Worship and small groups seems to be a growing tide in the U.S.

Upon reflection, I feel the two different approaches have to do with type of church I might be consulting with. In most mainline churches that have been around more than 10 years I strongly recommend the permission-giving attitude because most of them are mostly stuck in the past.  However, for a new church plant or a very progressive church I recommend the church only do two things- worship and small groups.

I strongly recommend this book to those who are working with time crunched Americans.  It has a lot of wisdom to share on how to disciple them. The book will surprise many long time church goers.

Bill Easum

Many church leaders fail to understand the outreach importance of Christmas Eve.  It is one of the two or three main return points for lasped Church members as well as one of the main times people who have never been to church decide to go for the first time.

So, it is important that three things happen on Christmas Eve.

• The members are ready to recieve new people and to go out of their way to make them feel at home no matter how they might show up - belly-button rings and all. They need to know that hospitality is a God thing required of all Christians and they need to go out of their way to show it.
• The service including the message be designed with them in mind so that they can hear the specific story of what Christmas symbolizes.  Don’t make the mistake of thinking that singing some carols and reading some Scripture is sufficient; it’s not.  they need to hear the Gospel message of hope and grace that Christmas shouts to those who understand what it took for God to act.
• A follow up within 48 hours is planned to those who share their home information with you.

You should expect almost double the number of people  on Christmas Eve that you average during the year.  Can you really expect to ignore the latent potential of this day and simply make it an inhouse event? I don’t think so.

Bill
www.easumbandy.com

I like to read books that connect ideas and contexts in history … usually balancing “airplane” reading and “home” reading. My “home” read was What Would Jesus Decontruct?” by John D. Caputo (the most recent 2007 addition to “The Church and Postmodern Culture” series from Baker Books). I love Caputo’s style: witty, subtle, and powerful. I like to write across theological and professional sectors too, but dialogue with Caputo is like fencing with d’Artagnan. He disarms you with swift thrusts of reasonableness.

Jesus, he says, would deconstruct the church as a “self-authorizing institution” with the “poetics of the Kingdom”. Christ is the “hauntological” principle that reveals the radical contingency of our present situation. Even the doctrines, polities, and propositions that churchy people have fought over for centuries are shattered by the “event” of incarnation. Jesus’ justice deconstructs law; his forgiveness deconstructs the economy of fair play; his hospitality deconstructs capitalist reciprocity; and his love deconstructs modern possessiveness. Something momentous is going on in history, all right, but it can’t be contained in an ecclesiastical box.

Meanwhile, my “airplane” read was An Introduction to the Desert Fathers by Jason Byassee. This little gem just released in 2007 from Cascade Books (Wipf and Stock) helps Protestant skeptics understand the origins of the monastic movement. These monastics (4th – 6th century men and women of the Egyptian desert) were already doing what Caputo is talking about today. Just a few decades after Constantine, the church’s victory was revealed to be Christ’s defeat. These monastic leaders rejected the self-authorizing official church for soul-searing companionship with Jesus. Many of these monastics were middle class Romans fleeing the emptiness of life for the fullness of Christ. The desert is an admirable place to get away from distractions if you are really serious about faith. Since I am writing this in the midst of another North American Christmas consumer binge, it’s looking pretty good now!

The impressive thing about monastic Christianity is that faith and culture are radically disentangled. This is exactly the terrifying de-construction that the event of Jesus always brings about. While the churchy church has been inextricably caught up in culture since the 4th century, pre-modern and post-modern Christianity sheds property for hair shirts. Faith and lifestyle merge. The chapters of Byassee’s book are not about polities, doctrines, and Christian art … but quietude, compunction, self-control, fortitude, sober living, obedience, humility, charity … oh yes, and visions. Just imagine! One monastic lives in the desert beside a little stream for 30 years and never notices the water! Christ is sufficient to quench his thirst.

These two books led me to dig around in my library (finally stable over the Christmas holidays when nobody needs a consultant) in search of In His Steps by Charles Sheldon. Written in 1898 from small town Kansas, it sold an estimated 30 million copies. We tend to forget his book inspired prohibition and future evangelicals for social action, because the books subtitle (“What would Jesus do?”) also inspired jewelry and bumper sticker sales in a capitalist Christian frenzy of self-congratulation later in the 20th century. Along with Caputo, I remember the book as poignant and simplistic, but Sheldon’s heart was in the right place (namely in the “desert”, deconstructing with Jesus).

Sometimes divine providence mysteriously designs unusual Christmas reading. The pre-modern and the post-modern can make a powerful combination if you want to go beyond Christmas to incarnation.

Tom Bandy
www.easumbandy.com
www.netresults.org

 Friends,

In a subsequent consultation, we encountered a classic mistake made by so many established churches. They mistake “property rental” for “Christian Mission”. (see my book “Moving Off the Map“) Churches assume that by renting or giving away space for community use, they are actually doing evangelism. They do not realize that authentic evangelism is about relationships, not property use.

It is an obvious dodge to avoid personal investment in hands-on mission. This mistake is usually compounded by an obsession with “depot” ministries (clothing depots, food banks, and other forms of “collecting things”). Church people think they are doing mission by warehousing goods, but they never actually come into contact or build relationships with the needy people they say they want to help.

Another manifestation of this mistake is the belief that hosting Boy or Girl Scouts, or housing non-profit organizations, is also Christian mission. It is as if the Cancer Society should decide the best way to use their facility would be to rent it out for pot luck suppers. The Cancer Society volunteers would have no place to meet and train, but, gosh, what a lot of fun and fellowship they could have!

Ironically, the mistake can be easily remedied. Leaders are trained to use space only in ways that 100% align to the mission of the church and nothing else. And they have a church policy that states “No property will be rented or used by outside groups unless a team of church members is actively involved in the planning and implementation of the program. Never rent property without sending a team. Relationships are the key. Now the team can shape the planning and implementation around specifically Christian mission. If the outside organization doesn’t want that (which is almost universally true for Boy and Girl Scouts), then the church does not offer property.

Tom Bandy

 Friends,

Swept away by travel and consulting, I’ve been remiss about posting from the mission field. Thanksgiving allowed me to catch up. This is from my notes …

A persistent question from would-be transformational leaders is this: Is it really possible to change the consumer, “Me First”, attitude into an authentic Mission Mindset? (see my book Fragile Hope).

My answer is yes, but it may take seven years of doggedly persistent and opportunistic leadership. This alone is hard for many established churches, because many pastors have no intention of staying that long. They are, in fact, driven by personal decisions (family expectations, school systems, retirement plans) or by career decisions (appointments by a bishop, moving up the ladder of success). That very reality reveals that the biggest difficulty about transforming a church attitude lies in the unwillingness of leaders to transform their personal attitude.

However, praise God that there are leaders ready for the challenge. They still ask: Can it be done?

My answer is yes (again), if you rigorously pay attention to the following leverage points and do not allow yourself to be sidetracked. The list is not intended to be exhaustive, but it includes:

v      Begin by mentoring leaders;
v      Hold leaders accountable for mentoring volunteers in there sphere of influence;
v      Preach it;
v      Upgrade training for newcomers and all leadership teams (beyond skills to train attitude);
v      Clarify vision, mission, and core message;
v      Intervene to break control;
v      Seize opportunities or “mentoring moments” to illustrate the mission attitude;
v      Have courage, and build personal support, to endure stress;
v      Develop a profound, visible, prayerful, personal spiritual discipline.

The real key to changing attitude is not program development … unless we think of specific continuing education or mission action. It’s really about taking relationships to a deeper, riskier, level. The word “accountability” does not begin to cover it. It is about “intensity” more than “intentionality”, because it is the intensity of eye contact, behavior modification, personal reinforcement, and modeled self-sacrifice that is important. In the end, you need to embed a kind of “Ur” story … a paradigmatic story-line of death and new life … in the hearts of members.

Tom Bandy

Which do you think is the most important for the growth of your church - Advent, Christmas, or the Super Bowl?Well I rank them in this order, Super Bowl then Christmas. What happened to Advent? I wouldn’t even rank it because it is absolutely a waste of time.

Yet I bet in declining churches Advent is celebrated more than the other two combined. Why is that - because most declining churches are more focused on themselves than the world around them. Declining churches are more focused on churchy things than worldly things.  And finally, most declining churches blindly do what they been doing all along. In some odd way they think that they can continue doing what they’ve been doing and get something different than they been getting. Odd isn’t it. 

If you want your church to grow focus on the pagan calendar and forget most of the church events. That is the way to draw more people into your church. Focusing on the Church calendar just reinforces most churches tendency to focus inward instead of outward. But focusing  on the pagan calendar causes church leaders to think about what is going on in the world and what happens to be on most people’s minds at the time. 

Why not throw a Super Bowl party. Add extra worship services on Christmas Eve, wrap Christmas packages in the Malls for free during December, have a Haunted House at Halloween, throw a block party for Mardi Gras, but by all means please forget Advent. No unchurched, dechurched, or non-believer gives one whit about Advent or even knows what it  is.

Now having a Super Bowl party at your church must be a great idea because made the NFL leaders furious last year. Read the article about how the NFL forced a church to cancel their plans last year. You know it has to be a right on idea if the world wants it canceled. 

Go ahead and throw a party, have your pastor thrown in jail, and see how much great publicity you will get from it. I’m serious.The church didn’t have the party but another church in the same town decided to have the party. As a result the NFL gave churches permission as long as they didn’t charge.

Think of all the publicity those churches received when all of their papers ran the stories and there were several stories before it was over.

So, whose going to throw the first ball?

Two of the metaphores I use alot are National Park for the 20th century and Jungle for the 21st Century. You can let you imagination run wild or you can click on one of them to see the comparisons.

 The journey from the National Park into the jungle will change most things from now on. Having a firm grasp on the key leverage pieces to the future is incredibly important. So here goes.

Assuming you have your DNA and spiritual life underway in your church, there are three things that must occur in the 21st century jungle to cause a church to flourish. Here they are

First, We all know the first one is indigenous worship. But just what does that mean in the jungle. It sure doesn’t mean Praise music anymore. Indigenous worship must be in the language, technology, and culture of the people you are trying to reach. So, if we are truly in the jungle then the following applies.

1.If it isn’t hard rock it probably won’t feed people much past the next five years.
2.If it doesn’t wow people it probably won’t have much retention.
3.If it isn’t loud it probably won’t motivate and if the teaching isn’t basic and down to earth, it probably won’t grow people. (I know the emergent folks don’t always feel this way, but remember I don’t think they will be a major player in the new world, at least not for the next 30-50 years. For now they will be only one nitch among many.)

4.These services will not be as linear as in the past and they will be different from week to week which means the need for stage props and setup and tear down teams.
5.Teaching and music are no longer THE important elements; now you have to add ambiance, fun, and the unusual. The more kids play video games the harder it will be to provide them a worship setting where they can experience faith.

Second, a children’s ministry that is designed first: to provide atmosphere, second to provide fun, and third to help children grow in their relationship with Jesus rather than God or Christ. This means the classroom and printed curriculum are out and the large venue and video is in. It also means fewer teachers and a need for some degree of competent acting on the part of the leaders of the children’s ministry.  So instead of Sunday School it is children’s worship designed for children both to worship and to learn. You can see some of these examples on our website . The more kids play video games the harder it will be to disciple them at church without embracing their culture.

Third, intimate settings/groupings will be essential for the 21st century person to find their true destiny. This could mean small groups, ministry teams, coffee house environments, missionary journeys, market place ministries, you name it.  I think it will be far more eclectic in ten years than it is right now. It would be more eclectic today if small groups weren’t working so well that churches don’t feel like experimenting beyond what they know is working.

Folks, one of the things that surprises me about people is how hard it is for most folks to concentrate on leverage. I know prayer is important and that should be a given in anything we do.  I know spiritual development is important and should be part of anything we do. But what I constantly see people do is to focus on these things and never get around to the one thing that has to happen if growth is to take place- indigenous worship. Prayer is essential but it is never the kind of leverage I talk about in my book Unfreezing Moves.  Spiritual development is essential but it is never leverage. You can pray all day and all night and no one will be transformed in irrelevant worship. you can grow people spiritually until the cows come home and it wont grow a church. want to know why? Ill tell you a story.

There once was a pastor who took his people deeper and deeper into the faith. Night and day he prayed for their spiritual development. every Sunday he preached his heart out while praying that aunt susie didn’t die while playing the organ oh so sloooooooow.

One day he went to church and found that half of the congregation was missing. when he began calling those who werent there he found that they had tried another church that morning. when he asked why, they said, “because our worship no longer feeds us. it doesn’t address our issues; it bores to tears the friends we bring with us who need God. We love you and we thank you for taking us deeper in our faith, but we need a place of worship where people can experience God.”

You see, if you take people deep into their faith they will always begin to think about the spiritual condition of others- that is always the result of biblical faith- those who  dont feel that way havent yet discovered the depth of God’s heart. So when you take people deep, they have to worship, not just sit in a  pew and soak, but experience a moving moment with God. that is why worship is the leverage.

So this pastor prayed hard and developed spiritual giants and lost his congregation. Give it some thought.

Keep this post in context.  worship is the main  leverage piece. Leverage means the one thing that makes everything else rise or fall. Sure small groups are important. but here’s the kicker. Willow didn’t have a small group emphasis until they had several thousand in worship. In the early years they focused on having the most relevant worship they could possibly have.  the church I go to now and then, bay area, didn’t focus on small groups until they had 3000 in worship.

The primary reason most pastors dont grow churches is they cant get their heads around this one simple point- if worship doesn’t shine, nothing else matters.  it that plain and simple. if worship doesn’t shine, it doesn’t matter what you do with small groups, Sunday school, single ministries, period. If you want to grow a church this is what you must do.

Here is where the water hits the wheel - pastors who  dont get this dont see the desperate need for a full time worship leader. so they hire a youth director, or childrens director and the church doesn’t grow. both youth and children are important but they aren’t the primary leverage- eveything is a support to worship, everything. that doesn’t mean they arent important. it just means they arent the primary leverage.