Would the Community Miss Your Church?

I would like to pose a hypothetical question to you.  It is a very tough question to ask, that requires some serious thought.  Ready?  Here it is...

"If your church closed its doors tomorrow, would the community miss you?"

Read that last sentence again.  Did you catch what I am asking.  Do you understand the significance of the question, and, especially, the answer that accompanies the question.  How about I ask it in a different way...

"If your church closed its doors tomorrow, would your community even know?"

 



These two questions are not meant to indict your church, nor are they meant to send you down a "pity-party" road.  They are simply meant to get you thinking about your churches role in the community.  As many of you ponder the question, I am sure that thoughts of relevance, being missional, and intentionality come to the forefront of your mind. 

I have to believe that the overwhelming answer for most churches would have to be "NO, the community wouldn't miss them."  The reason for this conclusion is due to the fact that a lot of churches sit mostly empty throughout the week, including Sunday morning. 

If you are like me, the next question that goes through my mind is, "how did this happen?"  At what point did a church go from being active in the community and relevant, to be nothing more than another building sitting on a street corner? 

If you're having trouble coming up with an answer, allow me to get the ball rolling by asking you three questions.  These questions are not comprehensive, but are meant to begin the process of self-examination.

1. Does your church expect people to show up just because the church doors are open?
2. How involved is your church in community events?  (football games; carnivals; fair; etc.)
3. Does the vast majority of your outreach events involve people coming to your building or you going to the people?

May all of our churches be impacting the community in such a way that there would be a huge void if the church did close its doors.

Playing it Safe

If you were asked to come up with a simple, single sentence description of your ministry to-date, what would it be?  That's a really tough question to answer.  I know that when I began asking myself that question recently an immediate response did not pop into my head.  In fact, it took me several weeks of praying, reading God's word and talking to various people in my life.  After doing much searching, this is the phrase that I came up with:  "Plays it safe."  That is a tough pill to swallow, because I pride myself on being forward thinking and pushing the envelope to the extreme.  However, in all reality, I have always played it safe.  Let me explain what I mean.

Throughout ministry, I've never placed complete and total trust in God.  I've set goals before, but I always placed them within an attainable reach.  I've seen a lot of students get saved, but I've never fervently prayed for a movement of God to sweep across the church and city.  For the most part, most everything that's been accomplished in ministry so far has been far too "Joey-based" than "God-based".  Because of this, I've never truly experienced a super-natural movement of God.  However, why should this surprise me, when I have never sought out a super-natural movement of God?  I play it safe, and if you know me at all, you know that it kills me to admit that.

I'm currently reading a book by Mark Batterson entitled, "The Circle Maker."  There are many good things that Mark says in his book, however, one phrase stood out above the rest.  On page 78 of his book, Mark says this:  "If you've never had a God-sized dream that scared you half to death, then you haven't really come to life.  If you've never been overwhelmed by the impossibility of your plans, then your God is too small.  If your vision isn't perplexingly impossible, then you need to expand the radiuses of your prayer circles."  As I read that paragraph, I realized that was me.  That describes someone who plays it safe.

Now please understand that I'm not saying that I've wasted all my years of ministry and now I'm throwing a pity party for myself.  That is not the point of this post at all.  However, I do want to have the most effective, vibrant, Kingdom-impacting ministry possible, and I do believe that I have handcuffed myself by not relying and trusting in God to the fullest.  

So let me ask you again, if you were asked to come up with a simple, single sentence description of your ministry to-date, what would it be?  May the Lord use this post to challenge you and to spur you on to press into Christ more and trust in Him fully.  

Siloed Ministries

I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but along the course of church history leaders came up with the concept of separating out ministries into categories.  Pre-school, children, teenagers, young adults, senior adults, music, missions, etc.  The further along we move down the road, more "ministries" are created.  Now please do not misunderstand me.  I am not bashing the need to separate out ministries in the church.  I completely understand that pre-schoolers and teenagers learn differently and need to be focused on separately.  I get the fact that missions is a big part of what a lot of churches do and it is helpful to have someone who is over that area of ministry in order to make things move a little more smoothly.  The point of this post is not to belittle ministries in and of themselves.  No, the point of this post is to address a problem that arises when each of these ministries begin to compete against one another and lose focus of the overarching mission of the church.

Even though I was not there when the original concept was discussed, I am sure that competition was the furthest thing from the leaders discussion when they began down the path that has led us to how our churches are structured today.  I am positive that they saw this as an opportunity to hone in on specific needs and to help be more strategic in their efforts to reach a lost and dying world.  However, somewhere along the way ministries began to build walls between themselves, becoming focused only on their specific area and not interested in the success or failures of the other ministries around them.  I know this is true because I was a minister who functioned this way.  I thought that as long as student ministry was healthy and growing that everything was good.  During the early years of ministry I was so intently focused on student ministry that I was willing to jump over other ministries in order to ensure that the student ministry was moving forward.  I was completely caught in this trap called "silo ministry."  In other words, I had built a wall around the student ministry and wasn't interested in helping others out in the church, nor did I need help from other ministries.  I became so focused on "my" ministry, that I lost focus of the big picture.

I am curious if this might describe you as well.  Please understand me when I say that I did not even realize what I was doing at the time.  I couldn't see how difficult I was making things for other ministries and how self-centered I was.  I was trapped in a vortex and didn't even know it.  The horrible thing is this, I wasn't the only staff member who had this same mentality.  We were all trying to do our own thing, believing we were helping the church move forward when in fact we were stunting growth.  

Why would I share this thought?  Simply put:  siloed ministries hinder church growth greatly.  Open your eyes to the bigger picture and tear down the walls that you have placed around your ministry.  Ask yourself tough questions like:  "How is the ministry that God has placed me in fitting into the overall picture?" and "What might I need to sacrifice for the greater good?"  If a church staff could come together without bringing a personal agenda to the table and begin to work together in order to move forward, just imagine how that could change your church forever.  What are you focused on?  Is it your individual ministry, or the health of the church overall?  Just something to think about.