Church Trends with Sam Chand
Sam Chand
Before I left for vacation, I connected with several of my friends in ministry to ask them about the trends they are seeing in ministries. I thought it might be helpful to begin the year focusing on the future of the church. Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll share thoughts from folks like Brad Lomenick, Ed Stetzer, John Saddington, Jenni Catron and John Ortberg among others. Today, I’ll begin with Sam Chand.
For those of you not familiar with Sam, he’s a leadership coach, mentor and consultant and works for many of the largest churches across the country. He provided this list of trends that he’s seeing in churches:
- Staffing — Churches are reducing paid staff and increasing unpaid staff. Many if not most churches became overstaffed in better financial times. Churches are redefining “volunteerism” as to how they are “recruited” with intentionality and the very caliber of the recruit is vetted carefully along with fulfilling assignments—usually short-term.
- Transitions — Senior Pastors especially are wondering about their next chapter of life. They want to remain engaged but not with all that comes with leading a megachurch.
- Succession — This is the tsunami that has started hitting the U.S. church in particular. I’ve written a whole book on this: Planning Your Succession. However, over 80 percent of churches are not prepared or even preparing!
- Technology — The evolution of technology has always been there, but now, the pace of innovation has pastors preaching with iPads and power points are so 90s. Keeping up the pace may not be sustainable for churches when it comes to “ready—lights—action”.
- Non-Denominational Organizations and Fellowships — Denominations are pretty well marginalized and declining. Even those who belong to them see them as irrelevant—hence, the multitude of “fellowships” and “groups” with common causes and diversity in all other things.
- Non-Member Regular Attendee — This is the fastest growing tribe that I have been talking about. These non-member regular attendees will come to the same church for years and not become members. They contribute financially and attend regularly and remain low-maintenance, but will not join. Churches that draw from the membership pool for leadership will find that pool shrinking and this pool increasing with HUGE implications.
- Development vs. Training — Training is about a task whereas development is about a person. Churches are realizing they have highly trained and poorly developed leaders with built in low ceiling and capacity.
- Pastor’s Family Time — Boomers didn’t pay as much attention to their families as the younger pastors are thus skewing the expectations of church boards who still remain predominantly boomers.
- Graying of America — The number of people older than 65 in the U.S. will continue to increase creating a larger gulf in how church is processed.
To read more of Sam’s thinking on the future of the church, pick up his latest book, Cracking Your Church’s Culture Code. Visit his website to learn more about his ministry
I think the “Graying of America” is a HUGE issue that the church is going to have to face. I am all for reaching the under 30 crowd (I’m a youth pastor), but I wonder who is going to effectively minister to my parents, and reach their generation. We can’t just leave that generation without Christ.
I agree there is a large “Graying of America” crowd yet this is where we need to be cautious. These people are more likely to attend a church service than those who are under the age of 35 (Generation C).
We will still have mainline traditional churches as long as we are a country, and these people that are in this area are more than likely going to attend those. We can’t completely allow one generation to drive the church, instead we need to be multi-generational showing how to serve one another and help each other lead and develop other leaders.
These are issues that I have seen emerging and pointing out to congregations for several years now. Graying is a reality but I think many of the others are just as significant. My personal experience of taking Andy Stanley seriously about “cheating the church” and making family time off a priority for staff resulted in a major conflict. A whole contingent showed up at a church council meeting accusing me of “loving my family more than them.” It didn’t go over any better when I told them they were right and I loved Jesus more than them too. ;)
Serving as a senior pastor in an established mainline congregation, all these things are in play. At 46, I’m still young (by our tribal standards), but few congregations plan for senior/lead pastor transitions and end up with meltdowns, conflicts, and member departures because of lack of planning and understanding by the leaders.
Good article and keep them coming!
The non-member leader is such a powder keg. I would love see someone unpack that topic. I can foresee a lot more development in congregates as a whole to make sure the church continues to move in the desired direction. Sounds like we’re going to have to up our trust in God to connect us with and fill our congregations with the right people. Seems like shrinking membership pool has implications for all the other trends.
Sam, and it raises the question whether or not “church membership” is even valid in today’s culture. That should lead to an interesting conversation at your next ministry team meeting. :-)
tony
Hey Tony,
This post is timely for me and LifePoint. I am in the middle of Sam’s new book, Cracking Your Church’s Culture, and loving it. Love this stuff!
For LifePoint, we are experiencing and dialoguing about many of the trends you and Sam mention. We are wrestling with developing a Leadership Path to help solve some of our staffing issues, do better at people development, and replace the leaders we are sending out to new campuses locally and internationally. Technology for us is going to be key to accelerate people development as well as communicate across our organization so trust and momentum can be built.
Thankfully, our faith family has been through a successful succession that has allowed for our church to transition for health and growth. We are excited and humbled to begin to help others discover a similar process. Finally, as we are jumping out with some new missions and sending strategies, we are finding our church on the edge. A result of that is need and opportunity for “fellowships” and networks to accomplish huge Kingdom tasks with other like-minded churches.