Eight Ways to Fill Your Pews

Eight Ways to Fill Your Pews

by | Aug 17, 2021

How to fill your pews has been a question since before the pandemic. It is especially compelling now.  As you think about this important question, keep in mind the following eight facts, and eight ways you can act. I encourage you to share this article with your key leaders and decision-makers so that you can discover the unique ways you will choose to fill your pews this year.

People are built for relationship with God.

FACT: No matter what else may be true these days we are wired for God—from our brains to our nervous systems. We need opportunities to grow spiritually.

ACT: Gather people for study, prayer, encouragement, worship, and mission.

EXAMPLE: With fall coming, this is a perfect time to start a new Bible study, prayer initiative, or relationship class.

People are social.

FACT: We survived shutdowns in very creative ways. But people suffer when they are isolated for too long. We need community.

ACT: Gather folks together around common interests and needs. Be creative by weaving the spiritual into the social.

EXAMPLE: Cooking, crafts, construction, or gardening classes can not only focus on biblical themes like hunger, creativity, building, and growth—they can lend themselves to needed community-oriented projects.

Youth and young adults need friends.

FACT: Young people generally want to spend more time with friends than family. This fact reveals their deep needs to belong. But alphas and digitals don’t belong like boomers belong. Developmentally, younger folks are in the stage of exploration, questioning, pushing the edges and finding acceptance on their own terms.

ACT: Churches can fill this need by encouraging questions, cultivating discussion, and accepting differences.

EXAMPLE: Open Space is a unique format developed by my friend and colleague Rev. Mary Beth Taylor. It’s a way of forming Jesus-based community which fosters open-ended questions and discussion about matters of faith.

The pandemic has changed our habits, patterns, and  expectations.

FACT: Don’t expect people to automatically resume their 2019 habits. We have come to expect flexibility, shorter events, and online options.

ACT: Reduce the length of worship, Bible study, and class time. Focus on making things interactive, and more interesting.

EXAMPLE: My friend, Market Square Publisher Kevin Slimp, runs a Sunday school class that has grown by 33% during the pandemic. It offers both in person and hybrid attendance options and runs a mere 35 minutes.  No matter how good the conversation gets.

The digital space is busy.

FACT: You’ll need to stand out to get and keep people’s attention.

ACT: Communicate, communicate, communicate. Don’t assume everyone gets your message in the same way. Use all channels to get your message across:  email, print, text, phone, Facebook, website, phone calls, and flyers. Regularly announce and invite people to join you.

EXAMPLE: Resurrect your snail-mail monthly newsletter. Let people know the “what, when, where, and how” of your worship, studies, and other gatherings.

The pandemic is not over.

FACT: With infections on the rise among unvaccinated populations, people need a sense of safety. You will want to ensure continuity of meeting.

ACT: Normalize mask-wearing and social distancing, as well as non-mask options. Keep your online presence alive and active. Encourage what Thom S. Rainer, author of “The Post-Quarantine Church”, calls “dual citizens” or people who comfortably inhabit both physical and virtual spaces.

EXAMPLE: Re-locate study and social groups from small classrooms to the sanctuary so people can be together and socially distance. Keep the camera rolling so others can attend online.

We don’t need buildings to be/do church.

FACT: We’ve discovered we can do without buildings.

ACT: Leverage your buildings as community assets so they don’t become the focus of inward-based congregational life once again.

EXAMPLE: Form partnerships with your community. Thom S. Rainier writes about a church that painted one of its rooms in bright colors, dubbed it The Birthday Room and offered the free space to the community. See your building as a community asset, not a church asset.

The future is surprising.

FACT: We can’t predict the future, but we can prepare ourselves.

ACT: Own your resilience. Claim God’s presence. Do away with scarcity language, and focus on abundance and enoughness. Stop saying you can’t, and practice saying, “We can.”

EXAMPLE: Now is the time to develop a bold vision, and embrace a bigger sense of God.

 

The world has changed. But your pews don’t need to empty out. Choose a few of these eight ways to adjust to the world, re-set your expectations, and prepare to serve God’s people. You can fill your pews!

Need some more help thinking it through? Join us for Creating a Culture of Renewal®.

Copyright © 2021 rebekahsimonpeter.com, All Rights Reserved.

Is Discipleship Enough?

Is Discipleship Enough?

by | Jul 14, 2021

Is Discipleship Enough?

When it comes to church revitalization, discipleship pathway systems are touted as the answer. These systems are supposed to produce disciples such as growth and thus enable churches to fulfill the Great Commission. But is discipleship enough?

In fact, I can’t help but wonder if this approach to church revitalization is short-sighted. Perhaps even problematic.

Apostleship As Training

Let’s start with the first problem. Jesus didn’t call The Twelve or The Seventy-Two or any of the others for them to be mere followers. Followership was simply the first stage in their spiritual development. Apostleship was the ultimate goal of their training.

During the three years The Twelve spent with Jesus, they observed how he thought and how he prayed. The Twelve watched how he taught and soaked up what he believed. Moreover, they watched him engage paralyzed, hurting, desperate people and they noted the way he interacted with others. After Jesus was finished interacting with others, The Twelve listened to the way he phrased things. They were privy to his miracles and glimpsed his inner relationship with God.

But they didn’t stop there. Jesus transferred his spiritual authority, agency, and accountability to them. They were to speak, act, and heal on behalf of him, and of the Kingdom. Each of these men and women were to be active agents, stewards, of the Kingdom dream.

What’s striking to me is that Jesus never hoarded his power. He freely taught others how to exercise it. After they mastered the kinds of things Jesus had done, The Twelve, The Seventy-Two and likely countless others, surpassed what Jesus had done. Not only did they heal, preach, and proclaim the Kingdom, they gathered thousands of followers, set up communities in far-flung places, and oversaw the development of structures that allowed the church to grow and expand throughout the known world.

Discipleship Pathway Systems

That’s where we get to the second problem with discipleship pathway systems. We’re not going to be any good at making the sort of disciples Jesus made until we are decidedly better at making the kind of apostles Jesus made. After all, it is apostles who make disciples, not other disciples. You can see this shift in the Great Commission. Jesus commanding the disciples to “Go therefore into all the world,” signaled the ontological change in their status.  From this moment on, they were no longer followers. Their sending signaled they now functioned as apostles.

Yet in the church, we do not teach people, even our leaders, how to be apostolic:  stewards of the dream, agents of change.  We do not teach people that they are co-creators with God. That their words have creative, divine power.  That they are more Christ-like than they know.  Instead we teach people to give God all the glory.  I’m not sure if God wants all the glory.  Nor does Jesus.  The way I read the New Testament, Jesus expects us to surpass him, to do even greater things than he did.  The only way to do that is to own our God-given agency and our authority.  Settling for discipleship without apostleship undercuts the ultimate meta message of the Gospels.

So before we get too invested in discipleship pathways, we would do well to build apostleship pathways, too. Interested in knowing more about how to do that?

In my work with Creating a Culture of Renewal, I’ve discovered that apostleship starts with Kingdom-oriented dreams. 

When church leaders know how to dream like Jesus, align others to the dream, and realize the dream, then the dream can expand and draw others to it.  Now there’s a discipleship pathway system.

Adapted from Dream Like Jesus: Deepen Your Faith and Bring the Impossible to Life © 2019

Copyright © 2021 rebekahsimonpeter.com, All Rights Reserved.

 

Has COVID Undone Church Decline?

Has COVID Undone Church Decline?

by | May 27, 2020

As churches prepare to re-open, it’s fair to ask if COVID has undone church decline. Over the last two months, your congregation has gone through a transformation. You have created new forms of worship, established new means for people to give, and launched new communication forms. Most importantly, you have found a new purpose in your communities. Bottom line: your congregation has gotten unstuck.

When your church opens up again, will you still be dealing with the dynamics of decline? Or has the coronavirus turned all that around? The news is promising, but not without risk. In this article, you will discover three ways to solidify the gains your congregation has made so that you don’t allow this crisis to go to waste.

Before COVID: Indicators of Church Decline

In my culture-shifting work with congregational leaders across the country, I have identified a handful of reliable indicators of decline, which I write about in Dream Like Jesus. These indicators are concentrated in the areas of worship, ministry, and congregational culture. When a church is in decline, worship tends to be uninspired. For example, prayer feels perfunctory, and faith-sharing lacks authenticity. This lack of spark translates into declining numbers. As the active presence of the Spirit diminishes in the gathered life of the church, worship attendance lags.

Overall, giving stagnates—the number of giving units declines. The number of people involved in active ministry slides until fewer people are doing more and more work to stay afloat. Underneath all of these indicators is a congregational culture that is more focused on survival than outreach. As the church tries to save itself, relationships become problematic. The need for harmony supersedes risk. Disagreements simmer just under the surface, and when expressed, take on a hidden or surprising form. Decision-making is cautious, slow-paced, and unlikely to support visionary action.

Church in the Time of COVID: Signs of Promise

With COVID, the church has found itself in the surprising position of being in high demand. The church has responded by reaching way out beyond its walls and its usual forms. You now have a more substantial presence—appearing online, in parking lots, drive-in theaters, and captured forever on FB live and YouTube. Not only that, with the shared danger of the pandemic, people have revealed a new level of transparency and honesty.

Congregations have tried new things—willing to risk everything to retain some semblance of normalcy. In this environment, worship has taken on an immediacy. Even though mediated by screens, once boring services have come alive again. Prayers are passionate—laced with compassion, sweetened with urgency, and more relevant than ever.

The church has experienced something of a resurrection. But this miracle is not guaranteed to last.

When your church opens up again, will you still be dealing with the dynamics of decline? Or has the coronavirus turned all that around? Read more here: Share on X

Three Ways to Outwit Decline.

Stay big. Once your building re-opens, you may think you no longer need online worship or online giving. Not true. You have expanded your footprint, attracting new followers, views, likes, and virtual visits. Don’t expect these folks to follow you back to the building. They may or may not. Continue to make online options a viable means of participation.

Stay visible. Don’t retreat into your office once the doors are propped open. Your current partnership in the community is more necessary than ever. Look for new opportunities to serve and new ways to be engaged. Likely you won’t have to look far. Listen to what people say to discern the next need. While you’re at it, ask how you can serve their spiritual needs as well.

Stay vigilant. Crises generate both chaos and miracles. Be sharp in navigating the clutter so that you can tap into the blessings the pandemic has opened up. To help you stay vigilant, give yourself the gift of claiming all that you have learned during the pandemic, and celebrate your newfound capacities.