Ed Stetzer

As part of my current “Church Trends” series, I recently caught up with the venerable Ed Stetzer. Ed is the Vice President of Research and Ministry Development for LifeWay Christian Resources. Additionally, he’s written quite a few books about the ministry of the church. Here are a couple of quick thoughts from Ed:

TONY: What’s a current trend that you’re seeing churches across the country begin to embrace?

ED: I think that many are seeking to move from a church of passive spectators to more mission-shaped and active disciples.

TONY: How do you see this trend impacting the future of churches?

ED: I believe we will see churches adopt and implement strategies that intentionally move people from sitting in rows to sitting in circles where they will provoke one another to love and good deeds (Hebrews 10:24) to live on mission in the world.

You can follow more of Ed’s writing on the LifeWay Research Blog.

Dave Travis

Continuing the series I launched last week on trends in the church, I linked up with Dave Travis recently to get his thoughts. Dave is the Managing Director of the Leadership Network, an organization dedicated to accelerating the impact of leaders. Here’s what Dave had to share.

First of all, we use the term innovation as an idea or practice that leads to higher performance. The second caveat is that we tend to work with larger churches, so it is hard to say that this is impacting all churches right now but eventually they will.

One innovation larger churches are really getting serious about is adoption, merger and takeover. They’re using “aquimergertakeover” of smaller congregations and buildings for new sites for the megachurch as a way of reinvigorating ministry in a place. The “planting” or multi-site churches are actively seeking these sites as takeover targets. This has been going on for 20 years, but now, with the rise of multi-site, churches are starting to do this intentionally as a strategy.
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Jim Tomberlin

Jim Tomberlin began his multi-site church journey in the mid-1990s when he was the senior pastor of Woodman Valley Chapel. In 2000 he went on to pioneer the multi-site model at Willow Creek Community Church in Chicago. Since 2005 he has been consulting and coaching churches in developing and implementing multi-campus strategies.

TONY: What’s a current multi-site trend that you’re seeing churches across the country begin to embrace?

JIM: The last decade of the 20th century saw the rise of the multi-site innovator-pioneers. The first decade of the 21st century saw the wave of the multi-site early adopters with over 3,000 multi-site venues and campuses launched across North America. Now as we enter the second decade of the 21st century the middle adopters will mainstream the movement as it spreads around the world.

The multi-site movement began as a band-aid for megachurches that were out of room or limited by zoning restrictions. It quickly evolved into a growth strategy for healthy churches of all sizes and will become a revitalization strategy for stuck or struggling churches. Many of these aging churches are solid, but stuck in non-growing situations because of the inevitable social-demographic changes occurring around them and/or their inability to embrace contemporary worship styles and culturally-relevant ministry practices. Multi-siting allows stuck churches to reinvent themselves by extending in new ways and to new locations without abandoning their base. Revitalization mergers also allow smaller struggling churches to have a new beginning by being adopted by a stronger vibrant church.

The other significant development will be the rise of the collegiate model of church reproduction. This is the hybrid of multi-siting and church-planting. Church-planting churches will incorporate multi-site campuses and multi-site churches will launch church plants. Church leaders will focus less on growing their church and more on reaching an area for Christ through externally-focused multi-site campuses and “missional communities” (small groups).

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Mel McGowan

You’re going to love this connection. Mel McGowan spent nearly a decade with the Walt Disney Company, he founded Visioneering Studios, a nationwide architectural and community development ministry which was awarded the 2008 Solomon Award for “Best Church Architect”. He has been named one of the top 25 cultural influencers by OC Metro magazine for his role as an “Architectural Evangelist”.

TONY: What’s a current trend that you’re seeing churches across the country begin to embrace?

MEL: I’d say that the biggest shift that I see is a move away from the paradigm of a “campus” (what I call the “Acropolis” model) to that of true community gathering place (the “Agora” model). Increasingly, both established megachurch pastors and next generation leaders are increasingly uncomfortable with the notion of a one-day-a-week, single use, internally oriented megachurch campus in which the parking lot sits empty the rest of the week. Like the ancient Acropolis, the faithful (who have made a prior commitment to “ascend” to the sacred space) are separated from the rest of the community.

The roots of the internally oriented “campus” paradigm come from monasteries and cloisters. To the outsider, this “Christian country club or compound” can seem intimidating at best and completely dissonant with the “Unchristian” perception of Jesus (as described in Gabe Lyon’s book). To the insider/Christian, it becomes to easy for this to facilitate an insular “Holy huddle” lifestyle.

With that said, some mistake the only alternative as an “anti-building” or underground house church approach. I tend to agree with my friend Chris Seay when he told me that real estate development and building can be one of the most incarnational acts that we can join God in. The trend that I see is rediscovering the role of ecclesia (Christ-centered community) as an “anchor tenant” in the heart of our cities and communities. I hesitate to use the “Third Place” term because it has been co-opted into the old campus model to mean repainting the lobby in Starbucks colors and serving coffee on Sunday morning. The real power in the term has roots in the ancient Greek agora (the predecessor to the Roman forum, Medieval piazza, and the American town square), where sacred space was always “in the mix” of where people (believers or not) “did life.”

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Brad Lomenick

Brad Lomenick is the director of Catalyst. As someone who is in tune with the next generation of church leaders, I was really curious to see what Brad had to share on trends in the church. Here’s what he had to say:

TONY: What’s a current leadership trend that you’re seeing churches across the country begin to embrace?

BRAD: A big trend I see is collaboration. Collaboration among churches in a community, in a region, and even statewide and nationwide. With technology allowing leaders to share ideas and resources in a whole new way, I think we’ll see collaboration grow exponentially in 2011. Everything from mergers among local churches, shared staff and resources, mirrored programming, creative meetings held together, etc.

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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”. (more…)

This past summer I was preparing for a church consulting experience within one particular denomination that is in decline. That led to a conversation with someone who had worked quite extensively with declining churches. That conversation turned into what became the second most popular post of 2010. If these are the top five attributes of a church in decline, what, in your opinion, is number six?

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5 Attributes of a Church in Decline

Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to talk with a denominational leader in a different part of the country. Over the last few years, he’s personally been involved in consulting engagements with about 60 declining churches within his denomination. That grabbed my attention. Honestly, I don’t have a lot of experience working with churches that are in decline. With that in mind, I was curious to learn if there were any common themes. Within moments, he rattled off these five attributes of churches he’s worked with that are in decline:

When I work with churches for the first time, I think sometimes they’re frustrated with me because I’m not willing to help them fix something specific. Sometimes they want me to tweak their internal systems. Other times they want me to speak into improvements in their Sunday service environments. Other times they want me to provide feedback on their website or their music or their facility. I’ve found that churches can become convinced that they know why their church isn’t growing.

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The number six most popular post of 2010 was one of my personal favorites. It led to a lot of comments and discussion on the site. I’d love for you to add your perspective to the conversation.

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“And” Instead of “Or”

Why does it have to be attractional or missional? I’ve seen lives impacted by both approaches. Why can’t it be attractional and missional?

Why does it have to be evangelism or discipleship? Christ-followers need to be engaged in both. Why can’t it be evangelism and discipleship?

Why does it have to be teaching from the platform or teaching in the living room? I’ve been stretched by God’s Word in both settings. Why can’t it be teaching from the platform andthe living room?

Why does it have to be worship with an amazing production or simple, stripped-down worship? I’ve experienced powerful worship in both environments. Why can’t we do both?

Why does it have to be corporate gatherings or one-on-one relationships? I need both to be encouraged and stretched in my faith and my leadership. Why can’t we embrace both ways of connecting with others.

One of the things that most frustrates me about church blogs is the “or” approach to writing. I don’t get it. Honestly, it’s probably one of the reasons why in most cases I’d prefer to read marketplace blogs. In marketplace writing, if someone thinks they have the “right way” of doing something, they just go do it. Then they write about how it worked or didn’t work. In church writing, if someone thinks they have the “right way” of doing something, they write about how the other church is wrong.

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Will Mancini and his team

Back in August, I had the opportunity to interview Will Mancini, the founder and Clarity Evangelist of Auxano. Will is a consultant, strategist and vision architect for churches and ministries across the country. The Auxano team provides churches with consulting about the clarity of their vision, rather than marketing and promotional consulting. Here’s what Will had to say about vision and clarity in the modern church.

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5 Questions to Clarify Vision

TONY: From your experience, what does a great vision look like?

WILL: Just like wind, we can describe either the wind itself or the effects of the wind. When most people think about great vision, they think about the effects. Things like enthusiasm for being a part of something big, a real sense of togetherness or freedom to take risks. The list goes for miles.

But in describing what great vision itself looks like, I boil it down to having a clear, concise and compelling answer to five questions:

• What are we doing?
• Why are we doing it?
• How are we doing it?
• When are we successful?
• Where is God taking us?

In the end if individuals on the team don’t  “own” a common response to these questions, than vision clarity work is an urgent need that should be developed before other decisions are made. The “Vision Frame” is a great diagnostic tool to help these five clarity components stick in the daily life and leadership of the team.

Most important, we have created a question that must be answered before developing the Vision Frame. That question is, “What can your church do better than 10,000 others?” This question is important because most leaders tend to photocopy vision without even knowing it.

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The question has popped up again related to tickets for Christmas Eve, so I thought I’d take a moment to address it. Leaders from other churches are always curious to know why churches including West Ridge offer tickets for these services. I’m sure there are a number of advantages, but here are the first that pop to mind…

• It helps us make sure we have seats for everyone to invite their friends and family. Crowds are bigger at Christmas, and folks tend to have preferred service times. If everyone showed up at the same time, we wouldn’t have room. It doesn’t make sense to build bigger buildings to accommodate holiday crowds. Instead, we use tickets to spread out people in in multiple services.
• It helps us determine when we need to offer more services. If multiple services fill up, we have the flexibility to add additional services to accommodate more people.
• It makes it easier for people to invite their friends. The number one reason people show up to a worship service for the first time is because a friend invites them. Having a ticket with all the details on it makes it easier for people to have those conversations. It also gives the impression they’re offering something with value.
• It communicates something special is going to happen. We are very intentional about our service programming every Sunday of the year, but certainly we give special attention to Christmas Eve services. Having caught wind of some of the elements in this year’s services, I know they going to be an incredible experiences. Having tickets helps us communicate something unique is going to take place.
• It communicates these services are open to the entire community. This may seem obvious to church insiders, but people outside our churches sometimes don’t realize we expect guests. In fact, there are a large percentage of folks that would join us for a service, but they are just waiting for someone to invite them. Offering tickets helps us get the word out that everyone is invited.

By the way, the reason why I personally advocate this is because I’ve seen it work at all three churches I’ve been connected with in the past.  When we implemented this at West Ridge last year, we eliminated all the expenses we used to incur for direct marketing our Christmas Eve services (we saved money) and our attendance for the services jumped by almost 70%.

Ultimately, more people at Christmas Eve services mean more people hearing the message and more changed lives. We’re pretty committed to life change here at West Ridge, so we see that as a good thing.