Five Key Reasons Many Churches Struggle to Reach Their Communities

Many churches today are declining because they are too inward focused. In this episode from October 4 2019 Thom and Sam from the “Rainer on Leadership Podcast” discuss engaging the community around the church.

A few episode highlights include –

• The call to pastor a church is the call to pastor a community.
• Established churches can become busy with programs and get distracted from serving the community.
• If you are going to reach the community there needs to be an intentional plan.
• God honors churches that put prayer as a priority.
• The pastor needs to take the lead on inviting people.

Also emphasised are the five key reasons why:

1. Busyness with activities
2. Lack of intentionality and priority
3. Scarcity of tools
4. No prayer about or for the community
5. Leaders and members who fail to become an active part of the community

Check it out for yourself by clicking on the link or copy and paste the following url:

https://thomrainer.com/2019/10/five-key-reasons-many-churches-struggle-to-reach-their-communities-rainer-on-leadership-577/

Read Full Post »

How Can We Reconnect With Our Communities

Last week, I introduced the challenge that as the church (as The Salvation Army) we need to reconnect with our community, to re-engage with society within New Zealand. Drawing from The Wilberforce report and the data that shows that ‘No Religion’ has officially overtaken Christianity in the 2018 NZ Census it represents a huge challenge to the Church.

The thing is, this is not just a challenge for us in New Zealand ‘Secularisation’ is affecting the church in the Western world as can be see by this article in the Daily Mail; “Losing our religion: Christianity in Europe is dying out as young people turn away from the church, research says” and this one exploring The Christian church: Dying out or thriving like never before? As noted last week in the article by Carey Nieuwhof the church is also starting to see the effects of secularisation in Canada also. But what can be done about it? Can we turn this around?

And if you’re not happy about the numbers, what are you going to do about it?

This is not only a huge challenge facing the church it is an opportunity for us to look at ways in which we can reconnect with the people of our communities. Sharing the Life, Hope and Love of the Gospel Message in ways that impact the hearts and minds of those that we come across. A personal response might well be that in every opportunity that you and I get, we will ensure that we are not ashamed of sharing the part that God has played in bringing us to a particular place and time, in a way that is non intrusive but unapologetically of Him. Afterall, we are each here by His grace!

So how can we reconnect with our communities and reach a growing number of people who are learning to live comfortably without God? This is a question that Carey asks in his article and he goes on to provide 3 approaches for Christian Leaders to explore:

Build Relationships – Jesus was deeply relational, and it seems he liked relationships with people outside the ‘church’ more than he liked hanging around with people inside the ‘church’. Encourage ‘your’ people to build relationships with people in the community; get the Christians in your church to get involved in their kids schools, to play sports in a community league, to get to know their neighbours. Salt only realizes its purpose if it gets out of the box and into the food it needs to season. You can’t influence people you don’t know.

Speak to Success, Not just Failure – In your preaching and in your conversation, if you are only prepared to speak to people in their moments of weakness and despair, you’re going to miss a big chunk of your city. If every example you share is of someone in a crisis or who has deep problems, you will never connect with people who like their lives or who have decent marriages, even without God. 

Value the Good You See – The everything secular is evil attitude of many religious leaders is not only a bit off base biblically, it’s also ineffective. Common grace is still at work in the world. If you read Acts 10, God appears to have valued people like Cornelius for his prayers and his gifts to the poor, even before his conversion. Jesus never started a conversation with an outsider by condemning them (that’s actually how he started his conversation with insiders… think about that for a moment), even if he finished it with a challenge (“go and sin no more”). Maybe that’s because Jesus actually loves unchurched people.

Detlef Pollack, a professor of religious sociology at the University of Münster in western Germany wants church leaders across Germany to rebuild a close connection to church members, and to get Christians involved in the community. He quotes the leader of the Protestant reformation, Martin Luther, who in the 16th century called on Catholic priests to listen to the needs of the common people and not remain stuck in past traditions that no longer fit the present day.

Now that may well be a challenge for the establishment and the traditionalists – However, as the co-founder of The Salvation Army once said: “If we are to better the future we must disturb the present.”

So what things can you do to re-engage, to reconnect with your community? Do you need to go to the people and find out what they think and want? What do we need to be doing differently to appeal to younger audiences? How do we engage with the disenfranchised, the outcasts, the submerged tenth, those that have never been to a church?

One of the fascinating aspects of The 2018 Faith and Belief in New Zealand report, commissioned by the Wilberforce Foundation, which explores attitudes towards religion, spirituality and Christianity in Aotearoa, New Zealand is that ‘almost three in five Kiwis (59%) talk about spirituality or religion when they gather with friends‘. And when drilled down further ‘younger generations are more likely to talk about spirituality and religion, with seven in ten Generation Y (69%) often or occasionally discussing spirituality and religion with friends‘. So their is a desire to explore faith and belief – but many do not turn to the church to get their answers.

Another theme that comes through is that a high number of respondents do not know their local church, in the case of The Salvation Army I would imagine that not many know that we are a part of the universal church. 56% do not know the local church at all, 25% only know it moderately / slightly well. So we, as a church have a bit of work to do, if we are to have any effect within the community! How do we get our message heard? By getting out there!

Reports of Christianity’s Death in Europe Have Been Greatly Exaggerated. There have been increasing signs of a real and sustained revival of Christian-themed enthusiasm in Europe, hardly reported and barely noticed in press across  the pond. I would hazard a guess that this is the same here in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and across America. We just need to find better ways in which to connect with people in our community. Emphasising God’s role in our everyday lives. Are you up for the challenge?

Read Full Post »

We need to reconnect with our community

In one of my previous posts “‘No Religion’ officially overtakes Christianity in New Zealand Census.” I mentioned that we as the church (as The Salvation Army) need to reconnect with our community, to re-engage with society within New Zealand. And that this emphasis on ‘Religion‘ (dare I say concern around our ‘Spirituality‘) presents us with a wonderful opportunity, but the church has to re-engage in very different ways and communicate to our communities in a way that they can comprehend the importance of God in our Society.

This is not just a New Zealand issue it is something that the church in Western Europe has been struggling with for a number of decades and statements such as ‘The Church is dead‘ have been bandied around for years. Although in this environment Jesus has remained a focal point that people still seek out, God or at least our understanding of a Higher Power is something that people are still trying to comprehend. And the appreciation of church leaders such as the Pope has increased as he tackles some huge issues within the Catholic Church.

In a recent article by Carey Nieuwhof “How to Reach Unchurched People Who Don’t Think That They Need God” he shares his concerns about the number of people in Canada who profess ‘no religion’ as it is now at 24%, up from 16.5% a decade earlier.

He goes on to say that “That’s a massive shift in a mere ten years. As I reflect on it all, I’m left with this growing realization. People are learning to live comfortably without God.”

“Want to see where this might be heading? Go to Western Europe, where people have very comfortable lives and only a splinter regularly attend church. They just don’t see their need for God. Rather than being met with a wall of hostility, Christians are mostly being met with a wall of indifference and perceived irrelevance.”

I wonder if we in the church have circumnavigated this very train of thought, or by not confronting it, we have actually fed into ‘this wall of indifference and perceived irrelevance‘ when we rarely if ever praise, glorify, honour and even worship (in the true sense of the word) our Father in heaven for his part in our lives. We pat ourselves on the back for all the works that we have done with very little, if any, recognition of God, and our need of Him to make certain things come to pass so that we can do the works of His hands. After-all we are his hands and feet are we not?

All too often we sing the songs of worship and thank each other (or not as the case may be) for contributing to the weekly service, and walk through the doors of His sanctuaries (all around the globe) to the outside world and very quickly forget what we have supposedly learnt from the word of God and go to our everyday lives barely even allowing God a look-in to our world. We rely on our own strength and rarely if ever discuss the important things of life with Him, let alone our Christian brothers and sisters, who are apparently there to help encourage us and build us up in this life, so that we can be all that He would have us be.

Very rarely do we point those that we come across towards a loving God who wants nothing more than to have a personal relationship with them, and use us as His people to not only impact the world but make a real difference in the lives of anyone who would come to the Father.

Carey goes on to say: “I believe that means a massive shift in attitude and approach for those of us in leadership in the local church. Much of the church’s outreach over the last 60 years has been based on a few assumptions that are less and less true every year:

• Young adults will return to church when they have kids.
• People will turn to God when they hit a crisis.
• Most people will come back to what they left when they were young.
• When people have spiritual needs, they will look to the church to fulfill them.  

Instead, here’s what I see as increasingly true among unchurched people who are learning to live comfortably without God:

• Affluence (even many of our poor are affluent from a global perspective) has left people with a sense they have all they need to face life.
• People don’t always turn to God in crisis; they honestly don’t think the church can help.
• You can only come back to something you knew; when you are on your second or third generation of ‘unchurch’, there is nothing to come back to for many people.
• Personalised, google-able spirituality doesn’t demand the assistance of anyone or anything else.

So how do you reach a growing number of people who are learning to live comfortably without God?”

We’ll explore this theme and how we can reconnect with our communities over the coming months and as we do maybe we can each work out what it’s going to take for us to rethink our cultural assumptions as we move into this next era.

If you haven’t checked out the 2018 Faith and Belief in New Zealand report, commissioned by the Wilberforce Foundation you can view it here.

Read Full Post »

The Leadership Challenge…

It has been quite some time since the last ‘Leadership Challenge’ but as I sit here in Kathmandu after spending some time contemplating the first few days of my International Emergency Services Deployment I’m reminded of the resilience of people when faced by adversity and what they are prepared to do to help those around them, forgetting at times the risks and just doing what they can to survive and help others to do likewise.

John Ortberg in his book Soul Keeping: Caring for the most important part of you says; “Sin is not just the wrong stuff we do; it’s the good we don’t do. It’s the starving children we don’t want to look at, the volunteering we avoid, the poor we don’t want to serve, and the money we don’t want to give. How can good church folk turn their backs on the people Jesus called ‘the least of these’?”

Hiding behind man made rules and regulations that sometimes prevent us from doing the stuff that we know is right is no excuse either. Just because we might get a bad wrap or even have to work through the risks, doesn’t mean we should attempt to make a difference in the lives of others. Accepting that by doing nothing is safer than doing something and that we don’t have to be held accountable for something that may just be difficult is a far cry from what Christ is going to be holding us accountable for.

The thing is rules and regulations are put in place to protect US, yes in some form they also protect those that we are trying to help but all too often they end up preventing us from doing what we know we should do until we have ticked all the boxes.

We need to do whatever we can whenever we can to provide the kind of love that Jesus expects of us and that may even mean opening up our own houses to those that don’t deserve it. Risks yes, but it may just save a soul. What I have experienced thus far shows that as humans we are very resilient and we will do whatever we can to survive. At times putting ourselves at risk to help others.

Sin is not just the wrong stuff we do; it’s the good we don’t do.

So lets not get bound up by the rules and be afraid of what may happen because we haven’t quite got everything worked out, instead lets look at the lost soul that needs a bed for the night or the hungry blighter that needs some food in their belly and do what we can to lift them in their situation but more importantly in the spirit, sharing with them why it is we do what we do.

But the question for us especially in the western world is how do we overcome the fear of retribution for doing good?

Read Full Post »

Leadership Retreat

Over the past weekend we were privileged to have Major Malcolm Herring (R) spend time with our leadership team @ Camp Columba. This leadership retreat was an opportune time for God to speak into the lives of our leadership while providing some specific teaching around the topic of discipleship.

To commence the weekend I had prepared a presentation on the life-cycle of the church, which highlighted where we are at currently. This also helped to raise the awareness of some of the issues associated with the direction going forward and what we need to do as a leadership team as we attempt to integrate all aspects of the ministry. This incited some healthy discussion around our responsibilities and what it will entail leading the church in the years to come.

The following morning Malcolm shared about his experiences within his 31years of Corps Officership and how he had been intentional throughout to ensure that people got to know Christ in every aspect of ministry that he over-sighted. This was followed by an explanation around a discipleship process that he had developed so that people didn’t get to a point in their Christian journey where they felt as if they had arrived. “None of us can say that we have matured in Christ as we are always ‘maturing.’”

Russell Healey our Corps Sergeant Major (CSM) spent some time in the afternoon sharing what he had learnt in the area of prayer from his involvement with the Centre for Spiritual Life Development.

Saturday evening we spent some time looking at the Corps calendar reminding ourselves that “we can become so busy doing church that we side-line God.” We need to ensure that every ministry, programme, and activity needs to focussed on the main thing which is our Corps mission statement; “We exist to bring people into a life-changing relationship with Jesus Christ.” If we lose sight of this then we may as well shut the door.

Sunday morning we were blessed by a short service focussing on God working in and through us. Followed by some further teaching around prayer, that we were then encouraged to practice.

“Lord, we have heard of your fame; We stand in awe of your deeds, O Lord. Renew them in our day, in our time make them known; in wrath remember mercy.” Habakkuk 3:2 (NIV)

Read Full Post »

Food for thought…

Did you know that more than 80 percent of those who call themselves Christians read their Bibles only once a week? And that’s usually on Sundays, at church. They come to church to get their spiritual fill, and then snack on devotional tidbits for the rest of the week (if we’re lucky). Food for thought…

The following excerpt is from ‘The Divine Mentor’ by Wayne Cordeiro. It left me wondering how the church is faring in the whole area of discipleship, life groups and Bible Reading; as well as how well am I doing in this area personally…  

“What would the people in your church look like if they snacked on meager food morsels during the week and ate only one good meal on the weekend? You know the answer, don’t you? You’d find yourself surrounded by emanciated, gaunt people in desperate need of nutrition.

And how would these undernourished believers fare against a demonic adversary? Can you imagine how this army would look? You’d see threadbare skeletons with hollow cheeks and sunken eye-sockets, lined up like phantoms. Weakened by famine, that shriveled militia could barely stand at attention; each would struggle to find strength to keep his or her bony frame upright.

Could this ‘army’ conquer an opposing foe? No way. No earthly general would send them out to fight.

Well, then, how about the army of the Lord? What of those who gather on Sunday mornings? Are they spiritually nourished to fight the battles ahead? Considering what most members of God’s army subsist on – an occasional tidy snack from a devotional book and perhaps an average-sized meal on Sundays to satiate conscience – you’d have to conclude that God’s fighting force has some serious training to do.”

This is something that we all need to start looking at seriously; both individually and congregationally as we grow in our faith. Especially when we consider that the Word of God is food for our souls.

Read Full Post »