Jim Tomberlin

As part of the current series addressing the shifts leaders should consider making this year, I connected with Jim Tomberlin.  Jim pioneered the multi-site model at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago.  He consults and coaches churches in developing and implementing multi-campus strategies.  Here’s our interview:

TONY:  What’s one thing that leaders and/or organizations (businesses, churches, non-profits, etc.) should consider stopping in 2012?

JIM:  Stop thinking that ministry is facility-centric.  We have convinced generations of church goers that church success is centered on building a facility, the bigger the better.  As a result, we will see many half-empty megachurch campuses in the next decade as the aging baby-boomer senior pastors retire.

Facility-centric ministry focuses on what happens within the four walls of your campus and is primarily about seats, attendance, maintenance and finances.  While all of these components are important, they can easily become all-consuming.  This focus can cause church leaders to default towards inward thinking, a preoccupation on maintenance and believing that church membership exists to make all ministries happen within the four walls of the campus.  This mindset deludes us into thinking that our church facility is the center of the universe.

The first three centuries of Christianity flourished with no church buildings.  Leaders should understand that buildings are tools.  They are only a means to an end, but not the end.

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Thom Rainer

A couple of weeks ago, Thom Rainer, the President and CEO of Lifeway Christian Resources, shared twelve trends for 2012. These trends were developed based on research and observations of America’s healthiest churches. The list includes:

1. Churches have a high view of Scripture.
2. A large number of church members read the Bible daily.
3. The churches have a priority and focus on the nations.
4. The churches have a missional community presence.
5. The congregations have membership that matters.
6. The members are evangelistically intentional.

For Thom’s commentary on each of these trends, see the first article in this series. For the remainder of the list, check out this second article.

Based on your experience in healthy (or unhealthy) churches, do you concur with these trends? What else would you add?

Join the conversation by sharing your comment.

My guess is you are doing lots of events at your church, but you’re concerned those events may not be helping people take their next steps toward Christ. Why do I guess that? Because this post resonated with you. You made this the #1 most popular article in 2011. For the record, I don’t care how many people show up to your event, but I do want you to have more and more people becoming fully-devoted followers of Christ.

Are events killing the Church?

Tim shared a great post last week about “The New Normal Project” at Granger Community Church. It was a post written about what used to be known as stewardship campaigns. You should check out the full article.

This is the quote that grabbed my attention:

“We had very few extra events (i.e. banquets, home meetings) and focused everything we could around the weekend services. People are very busy with very good things–and most of them can only give us one shot a week. That doesn’t mean they are unspiritual or don’t love Jesus or the church. It just means they are living their lives, investing in their families, and contributing to society.”

Tim was writing about their specific project, but I think we as church leaders need to be challenged by Granger’s learning. Generally, churches are very event-driven. We are a one-trick pony. If we want people to take a next step, we try to gather them at a specific time at a specific location and we teach them. Then, when people don’t show up to our events, we assume they are either unspiritual or uncommitted.

Do you know why we do events? Let me give you a few reasons…

• We do events because churches have always done events. It doesn’t matter if the event actually helps people or not, we do the event because we’re supposed to do the event.
• We do events because they’re easy to measure. If more people show up, we assume the event was successful and helpful.
• We do events because we’re lazy. It’s a lot easier to just throw events on the calendar than it is to think about how we might effectively help people take their next steps…especially if that involves engaging people in relationships.

One of the free eBooks I released in 2011 focused specifically on the reasons churches get stuck. Shortly after I released this eBook, I highlighted the eight barriers to health that I routinely see in dead and declining ministries. The post must have caught your attention, because it became the #4 most popular article in 2011.

8 Reasons Your Church is Stuck

A couple of weeks ago, I released my newest eBook, The Leisure Suit Trap: 8 Reasons Your Church is Stuck. As I’ve had the opportunity to interact and work with churches over the last several years, there are some common themes. These are the challenges that churches typically face when ministry starts to plateau or decline.

1. You lack a leadership empowerment plan. We have failed as leaders in the church if we do not embrace the unique gift-mix that God designed. And we won’t fully know the power and impact of the local church until people are empowered to be the people God wired them up to be.
2. You are unclear about your vision and mission. There are lots of churches with vision statements, but I don’t think there are very many churches that really have a vision statement that clarifies who they are as an organization. A clear vision that is properly communicated will both rally and repel people.
3. You blame outsiders and external factors. Victim-thinking will only lead to bitterness and competition. Leaders who blame outsiders and external factors actually are confessing their own failure to think creatively and inspire their team.
4. Your structure inhibits growth. One of the attributes of a church in decline is a complex structure. The natural tendency of organizations is to add complexity to their structure and systems. The longer an organization exists, the more complex it typically gets.

I get questions daily from folks who are part of my network. Primarily, they come through this site and Twitter. Here’s a question that I received that ended up generating the #6 most popular article in 2011.

11 Questions Church Leaders Should be Asking

A friend in ministry recently asked me what questions church leaders should be asking. I thought about the types of questions I try to help answer when I’m working with them in the church consulting or coaching relationships. Here are the first questions and some bonus thoughts that came to mind:

1. When was the last time I heard from God? Am I doing what he called me to do? This is the “Acts 6″ question. Acts 6 is a great reminder that it’s possible to be doing the ministry of God without doing the ministry God has called us to do.
2. What should our church be known for in this community? For a moment, ignore anyone who attends your church. What does the rest of the community know about your church?  That’s a better reflection of whether or not you’re really accomplishing your vision.
3. Are we really focusing our time, money, leadership, prayer behind the things that will produce life change and community impact? If not, there’s a good chance that “fairness” is driving these decisions. Fairness never produces revolution.
4. Is our church growing both spiritually and in numbers? Churches that are stuck and not bearing fruit hate this question. As I’ve shared before, I don’t believe healthy churches are necessarily big churches, but healthy churches aregrowing churches.
5. Is there a clear path to help people take steps in their faith with the ultimate goal of them becoming fully-devoted followers of Christ? Having a vibrant Sunday worship experience is only one component of that. I’m amazed at how many churches haven’t really established a discipleship strategy beyond Sunday morning.

In 2011, I took a non-traditional approach to publishing. Through my partnership with Church Community Builder and Engage Burkina, I launched “The Leisure Suit Series” with a focus on helping churches get unstuck. Apparently that was a strong felt need for church leaders, because this post introducing the second eBook in the series was the #7 most popular article in 2011:

New FREE eBook Available Today: How to Get Unstuck

Big news today! We’re launching the second eBook in the Leisure Suit series. This one is called Hanging Up the Leisure Suit: How to Get Unstuck. Among other things, this resource includes strategies and practical steps for:

• making the necessary changes to get different results
• bridging the gap between vision and execution
• following God’s blueprint for fulfilling his purposes
• avoiding over-reliance on teaching to produce change, and
• creating healthy systems in your church

Like my previous eBooks, this one is FREE. (You can share it with your teammates.) It’s short. (You won’t have to invest much time reading it.) It includes exercises and discussion questions. (My goal is for you to have healthy conversations that lead to positive change.) And, you’ll get to start those conversations immediately–no need to visit the bookstore or wait for the Amazon box to show up on your doorstep. (Do people still read hardback books?)

[Read the entire article.]

It’s a tradition around here to recap the top posts of the year as we approach the new year. Not only does that give me a bit of a writing break to prioritize time with family, it’s fun to go back and see what created buzz in the last year. Over the next several days, I’ll count down the posts that generated the most traffic. Feel free to continue the conversation associated with each post.

Let’s start with #10…

10 Ways to Improve Series Planning

To wrap up this mini-series on series planning, I went back in to the archives and dug up this list. It contains some simple strategies to help you improve how you plan for teaching series.

1. Leverage the seasons when folks are most likely to attend church. I like to launch new series that have a more outreach focus when people are more likely to attend services and invite their friends. Those seasons are cyclical. They depend on where you are located. Obviously, Christmas and Easter are two common times when people are likely to attend church.
2. Find the right balance between “reach people” series and “grow people” series. There will always be tension here, but the objective is to try to balance out using services to attract a crowd and help people take their next steps in their spiritual journey. At West Ridge, we’ve actually color-coded our teaching calendar to make sure we maintain a healthy balance.
3. Use a variety of approaches to begin your series development. Teach on a topic one series. Teach through a book of the Bible in another series. Teach a series of messages on a specific biblical character. Use a series to teach through a specific doctrine. Mix up your approach.
4. Address questions that people are asking. Our tendency is to only deliver the information we want people to hear. People will not engage our teaching unless we are addressing the issues they are facing in their daily life. A friend of mine routinely reviews the headlines of women’s magazines to get a sense of the topics that people are discussing in today’s culture.

This question popped up again from another pastor, so I thought I’d share this resource in case others wanted it. At West Ridge Church, we are currently one church in three locations. To protect that vision for one church, we’ve embraced ten constants to keep us all pulling in the same direction.

Borrowing from a similar resource from Community Christian Church in Chicago, we landed on these campus constants. Every campus of West Ridge Church will reflect the same:

1. Mission
2. Vision
3. Strategy
4. Shared Curriculum
5. Teaching Team
6. Leadership Structure
7. Leadership Development
8. Financial Model
9. Communications & Web Strategy
10. Central Services

If you’re interested, we’ve highlighted how these campus constants are executed. Feel free to download the full document.

Has your church created a similar resource? If so, I’d love to see your sample. If you’re willing to share it, you may email it directly to me.

This time of year, I routinely get questions from folks about using free tickets for Christmas Eve services. As I’ve shared in the past, using tickets has several benefits:

1. It helps us make sure we have seats for everyone to invite their friends and family.
2. It helps us determine when we need to offer more services.
3. It makes it easier for people to invite their friends.
4. It communicates something special is going to happen.
5. It communicates these services are open to the entire community.

For more specifics on each of these benefits, check out the article I previously wrote on Christmas Eve tickets.

What’s your experience? Has using tickets helped you reach more people? What are some specific lessons you’ve learned? Join the conversation by sharing your comment.

I read an interesting article from The Barna Group the other day that highlights some recent research they’ve completed. The research was completed over five years by surveying young adults ages 18 to 29. (I remember when I was in that category.)

Here are a few of the myths they identified about church dropouts:

• “Most people lose their faith when they leave high school.” The truth is that young adults are leaving the institutional church, but they’re not losing their faith.
• “College experiences are the key factor that cause people to drop out.” The truth is the young adults begin to disconnect from church before they hit the college campus.
• “This generation of young Christians is increasingly ‘biblically illiterate.’” The truth is that there’s really no generational gap between Christians; however, older non-Christians are more familiar with Bible stories and Christian theology.

Check out the full article for more myths and additional insights.

Is your ministry connecting with young adults? If so, share what’s working and what’s not. Join the conversation by sharing your comment.