This post is a summary of an article written by Glenn Drysdale titled, "Addressing the Inwardly Focused Church Culture." Due to the length of Glenn's article, I've broken it up into two posts.Picking up where we left off in yesterday's post:
First, as usual, a different perspective begins with the leadership. Once the leadership team has turned over the work of the church to the church, elders can do their real job: shepherding. They are to shepherd the people and, in cooperation and coordination with the ministry staff, the mission of the church. These are our marching orders, our central purpose for existing: to lead others into a relationship with the living God. That is the mission of any Christian church. Discipleship is secondary; you can’t mature people that you haven’t first brought to faith!
If maturing the members becomes the central purpose of the church, evangelism won’t happen; if evangelism isn’t the main thing, it won’t be any thing! Elders and ministers must decide that the central vision and direction for the church will be to reach people for Jesus, and that all significant decisions in the life of the church will be made with this central purpose in mind.
If today, your leadership team would not embrace this as the church’s most central reason to exist, then your team must convene to align your church’s mission with God’s. Bring in someone from outside your congregation to coach your leadership team and to say the difficult but true things that current leaders might have difficulty saying. But realize that controllers will look for reasons not to do this, and will be threatened with a perceived loss of control; this is why leadership style issues must be addressed first.
Second, once your leadership team commits to align the congregation’s central purpose with the mission of God, elders and ministers must not allow decisions to be made that conflict with the mission of reaching people. Everything is to be evaluated in light of the mission: what ministries exist, how money is spent, what facilities are built, and what energies are expended.
Of course at this point the disclaimer must be made that we are to stay within the bounds of Scripture—but clear Scripture, not someone’s wrongly trained conscience. While it is certainly true that just because you can (Scripturally) do something, that doesn’t mean you should do it now, the goal is to create an environment where the mission is primary. What you emphasize is what you will do.
I once heard the dean of a Christian university say that whenever the advancement of the Kingdom is not given equal status with the needs of the members, then balance becomes the course of least resistance—not courageous forward progress. Elders are to shepherd the people as well as the mission.
Yet elders are often afraid to make the hard decisions (or to support the staff ministers in making them) that could result in a more outwardly-focused church because of the reactions of church members. Such decisions must be implemented with wisdom, excellent pre-teaching, and advance communication—but members who have been patiently waiting for leaders to embrace God’s mission need to see concrete changes, or they will eventually leave. If you lose those who can best help you implement the mission, the congregation can move into rapid decline.
Third, once these decisions are made and communicated to the church with conviction and determination, leaders must evaluate everything. Programming can be streamlined to eliminate pet projects that use church resources but don’t result in reaching unchurched people or maturing them (Matthew 28:18-20). New approaches directed toward serving and connecting with people in the community can begin.
Churches typically have more ministries than they can effectively sustain, and most of them serve church members. Church leader: Are you willing to spend as much money on programming that reaches out to your community as you do on programming for church members?
Fourth, look at your worship services. Run statistics and find out who is attending. Determine who God is bringing to your church, and who he is NOT bringing. Ask the hard questions: Who is welcome at your church, and who is not? Singles? Divorced? What is the typical age of newcomers? What percent of your guests are unchurched or formerly churched people? Invite an in-depth study of your congregation. Be approachable, and encourage others to tell their stories; the truth might surprise you.
In one large congregation, 97% of numerical growth in recent years has come from transfer membership. Said another way, they are primarily a caretaking ministry. The Great Commission includes delivery of care for our people, but is secondary to first reaching them. In this same congregation, several stories of newcomers being asked to move from their pews became known. Guests would enter the worship center, find seats, and then be asked to move by a church member. “Uh, my family usually sits here,” one guest was told. Some felt banished to the balcony; others never returned.
Such an inward focus on the part of church members should be addressed. Members should be taught the church’s primary mission and told that this mission is not about their comfort and convenience. Jesus talked about those who wanted the best seats.
This large congregation won’t be able to turn its focus quickly, but its leaders are attempting to make changes, and are actively supporting missions elsewhere. The leadership is finding ways for the congregation to participate in the mission of Jesus. Yet I believe that each individual Christian is to participate in the mission, and that it is the task of leadership to call everyone to embrace the mission of God in the world.
In The Externally Focused Church, Robert Lewis, who wrote the forward of the book, told the story of his own congregation’s efforts to remodel a number of schools in the urban neighborhoods of his city. One teacher’s reaction to their community service was especially telling: “If this is Christianity, then I’m interested.”
This is why we must turn our focus outward. Today, churches must establish trust and credibility with their communities before many people will listen to their message. It has never been truer that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Today, we must show the truth. And, it is difficult to do that while we remain focused mostly on ourselves.
