Notable Christians

Thoughts on Ed Stetzer’s “3 Things Churches Love That Kill Outreach”

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Ooutreach by outstretched handOver at Outreach Magazine online, Ed Stetzer, president of LifeWay Research, notes three things churches do or believe that inhibit their ability to do outreach. Obviously, outreach is one of the major tasks for the Church, so knowing how NOT to do it is a big deal. As they say in the biz, “Read the whole thing.”

For the purposes of discussion, here are the three Stetzer items:

1. Too many churches love past culture more than their current context.
2. Too many churches love their comfort more than their mission.
3. Too many churches love their traditions more than their children.

Let me begin by laying some groundwork for my thoughts.

For the past 35 years or so, the Church in America has been on a tear to reconstruct itself. In that time, we have seen major initiatives within most churches and denominations to adopt seeker-sensitive practices, to move toward church growth models, and to become more culturally relevant.

Considering the state of the Church in America today, one must be forced to admit that almost all those initiatives have failed miserably to produce more or better disciples. I’m not sure we can find any Christian leader who thinks the Church, as a whole in America, is better off, by nearly any measure, than it was before this experimentation began. Biblical knowledge, conformity to Christian doctrine, evangelism, retaining our youth, community—those initiatives mentioned above failed to produce desired outcomes in any of those areas.

I want to focus on one aspect of those initiatives especially, since it pertains to the core of Stetzer’s comments: the Church meeting as outreach tool.

When you have dominant seeker-sensitive churches confessing that their model failed entirely to make disciples, have we put too much confidence in our switch from “church for believers” to “church for unbelievers”?

I think that outcomes show us the answer is yes. Not only did turning our church meetings into a nursery for non-Christians NOT gain us the outcomes we desired for them, but we sacrificed our ability to make deeper, stronger disciples of the people we already have who already believe.

“Church meeting as outreach tool” backfired. We moved away from sending Christians out of the church to make disciples out in the world before we bring them into the church, and it cost us dearly.

What we do in our meetings must be for the edification of those who already believe. Changing that to cater to nonbelievers has been a stunningly bad decision that must be reversed if the Church is to start rebuilding itself.

My concern with the Stetzer piece is that it’s trapped in the amber of the 1980s, promoting a ministry philosophy that over 35 years has proved largely incapable of creating disciples, which is the primary mission of the Church.

Moving on…

Stetzer’s points #1 and #3 above are essentially the same, just tweaked for different age emphases. I’ll address them together.

Stetzer writes:

“It’s remarkable, and I’ve said it many times: If the 1950s came back, many churches are ready. (Or the 1600s, or the boomer ’80s, depending on your denomination, I guess.)

“There is nothing wrong with the fifties, except we don’t live there anymore. We must love those who live here, now, not yearn for the way things used to be. The cultural sensibilities of the fifties are long past in most of the United States. The values and norms of our current context are drastically different and continue to change.”

Let me counter with this Scripture:

“To what then shall I compare the men of this generation, and what are they like? They are like children who sit in the market place and call to one another, and they say, ‘We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we sang a dirge, and you did not weep.'”
–Luke 7:31-32

The modern American Church has tried desperately in the last 35 years to show itself culturally relevant and hip. Pastors drop references to The Walking Dead or Breaking Bad in their sermons. Churches have small groups based on cultural affinities such as video gaming or hip hop music. In fact, whatever is cool in culture is what drives our youth ministry. If society talks about a cultural issue, we talk about it too. Heck, like a dog, we wallow in it and then say to society, “Look how up we are on the stuff you like!”

Again, what has this gotten us when it comes to making disciples? Nothing.

Stetzer’s main beef is with tradition. I think that’s an old argument left over from 35 years ago. It’s not the point.

Going back to that Luke passage, the Church is missing that point when it focuses on being counter-tradition. What it should be is counterculture.

More than ever, I believe the fix for what ails the American Church is not culture but counterculture. I strongly believe that many people today are desperate to get away from contemporary culture and back to a slower, more personal, more meaningful place that does not shift daily at the whims of style leaders and their thought leader cohorts. That word authenticity keeps rearing its head.

In fact, I have come to wonder if the solution for the Church is to instead examine culture and then head 180 degrees in the other direction.

That mentality may also ask that we examine tradition and see if it is, in fact, already 180 degrees. If so, then rather than throwing it out because we are counter-tradition, we instead consider embracing it when it’s counterculture.

Stetzer derides being stuck in the 1950s, but I think it’s not just the elderly who are nostalgic. Young people are growing sick of modern culture too. They’re looking for counterculture, but what they’re finding instead in our churches is cultural concession. The world piped, and the American Church danced. For the last 35 years or so, that has benefited no one.

As for Stetzer’s #2…

While I agree that the mission of the Church must, in many ways, conflict with comfort, cultural concession is tiring. I may be speaking solely for myself, but when I come to church on Sunday, the last thing I want is trendiness and the very cultural crap I’m forced to wade through daily. When the Church looks just like the world, no option for a “set-apart place” exists.

Yet people are desperately searching for such a place. In a world governed by clocks, where are they to find the comfort of timelessness? In a world filled with 15-minutes of fame, where can they find the comfort of lasting meaning? They are NOT finding those essentials in a church that operates like a cultural haven, yet that kind of comfort is a necessary balm. We desperately need that kind of comfort if we’re to be refreshed to go out into the world and be countercultural.

Do you want effective outreach in your church? Here’s what I suggest:

1. Make the church for the Church. The seeker-sensitive model failed. Bring back the model that intends for Sundays to be the time when maturing believers are fed meat, not milk. Make it a safe place to practice spiritual gifts and to do the mature things a mature Church fellowship should do without fear that some unbelieving visitor will be weirded out or offended.

2. Remember that outreach means to reach out. The mission field exists beyond the four walls of the church building. Equip people to evangelize out there. Lead the lost to Christ out there, then bring them into the church.

3. Be countercultural. Instead of doing whatever the world is doing, ask if the opposite is the better, more lasting way and closer to the heart of God. You may be surprised how many people are looking to escape culture rather than to embrace it.

We’ve had 35 or more of failed outreach ideas. Time to stop doing what doesn’t work and get back to what people really need.

A Faith of One: Why the Church Must Teach to the Individual

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Fred Rogers of Mister Rogers' NeighborhoodFred Rogers of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood fame told a story about his seminary days.

Rogers and a group of his friends took a road trip to hear a famous minister preach. To their brutal disappointment, the minister was on vacation that Sunday and a visiting speaker would preach.

The replacement droned on, and Rogers grew furious. It was one of the most boring, pointless messages he had ever heard, and he cursed his bad timing.

Then he looked at the woman seated next to him. She was crying her eyes out, hanging on the speaker’s every word.

The incident proved a profound lesson for the young Rogers, who understood that no matter how badly that speaker missed connecting with him, someone other than him needed to hear those words. It was a truth he never forgot, incorporating that experience into the philosophy of his classic TV show.

If you’ve been a reader of Cerulean Sanctum long enough, you’re familiar with my rant about spiritual gifts. To sum up: I think leaders in a local church must make it their priority to assist in helping congregants identify and use their spiritual gifts. Our failure to do this on an individual basis is one reason why our churches fail in their missions. God put those people in that church with those gifts for a reason. Not employing their gifts properly hurts everyone.

It’s the truth of the Body of Christ: different people, different gifts, and different purposes within the Body.

It’s not just differences in giftings and uses, either. As Mister Rogers noted, people will react individually to different messages and different types of learning.

My degree is in Christian Education from Wheaton College in Illinois. Later, the major was renamed Spiritual Formation. Now it’s called Christian Formation and Ministry. They ought to cut to the chase and call it Making Disciples.

Just as God gives each person a special role in the Body of Christ, so He also equips us differently and by different means. No one-size-fits-all approach to making disciples exists because we all form spiritually in unique ways. I know people who came to faith through reading St. Augustine’s Confessions. I can’t imagine a more dry path, but then, it’s not entirely about me. My own conversion was quickened in part from an intimate and personal message delivered to a small group followed by time alone. That may work for some but not for others.

My college learning on this topic focused more on how Jesus taught, but even He didn’t use one means. He drew his disciples through miracles, discussion, confrontation, paradox, and friendship. He taught them by stories, Scripture, His example, and through their own personal experiences. He knew each person and reached out to each with what best grew each. And he addressed the failings of each individually such as Peter’s reinstatement and Thomas’ need to see and feel.

I don’t believe most churches take the individual into account. Spiritual growth is seen as a blanket endeavor, with blanket approaches, and blanket goals.

The problem here is that in going for blanket growth, we miss one of the most important aspects of that growth: connecting with each other one-to-one.

It takes time alone with another to find out how he or she ticks. Knowing how best to grow someone means observing that person and adjusting how we work with that individual. Parents do this naturally with their children, yet we forget personal distinctions when we approach making disciples of people outside our own households.

God asks that we individualize the way we make disciples, because in doing so, we build a connection to another life. We are forced to slow down, to observe, and to show genuine care for that one person made not only in the image of God but also made in His uniqueness and depth. It is one reason why Jesus had to go away and send the Spirit, because one person cannot reach everyone at the level needed for maturing growth.

A church with a one-size-fits-all approach to making disciples is likely also a church that doesn’t have time to get to know people. The result? A church with a stunted community. Likewise, if the interpersonal relationships within a church are shallow, the making of disciples will be also.

The individual, with all his or her quirks and distinctions, matters to God. An education and discipleship program that does not take the unique gifts, talents, and needs of each person into account cannot be effective. Such a customized approach is time-consuming and costly, but it’s God’s intention. Our balking at the cost is our failure to see with God’s eyes.

In short, the only way to counteract the anemic nature of Christianity in the West is to prioritize the needs of the one to nurture a many that can truly reach all of the world for Jesus.

Perry Noble’s “15 Signs Your Church Is in Trouble” — A Response

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Over at Outreach Magazine‘s website, Perry Noble of NewSpring Church in Anderson, South Carolina, has an article “15 Signs Your Church Is in Trouble.” It’s worth reading.

Normally, I advise to read the whole thing, but in order to respond to it, I’ll need to excerpt it. Noble explains the warning signs of a church on its way to losing its way.

His 15, with my responses following:

1. When excuses are made about the way things are instead of embracing a willingness to roll up the sleeves and fix the problem.

Translation: Old timers who love the church are hesitant to abandon the “way things are” to jump on another church fad or the “program of the month.”

Few things are more destructive to a church than leaders intent on ramming through an agenda.

There is a right way for changes and fixes. It is often slow, involves waiting on the Lord, and requires supernatural feedback. That way is taken too infrequently in today’s churches, resulting in high-falutin’ solutions to problems most didn’t see as problems, and which can derail a church.

Tread lightly and wisely here.

2. When the church becomes content with merely receiving people that come rather than actually going out and finding them…in other words, they lose their passion for evangelism!

Agree. The greater question: What does evangelism in the Twenty-Teens look like, and how do you stoke people for it?

3. The focus of the church is to build a great church (complete with the pastor’s picture…and his wife’s…on everything) and not the Kingdom of God.

You can’t build the Kingdom of God if no one knows what it is. And most people sitting in the seats are unclear. Heck, most leaders are unclear. Fix the lack of comprehension of the Kingdom first, then build that Kingdom.

4. The leadership begins to settle for the natural rather than rely on the supernatural.

I’ve written before that the leaders of most churches are running on the distant memories of long-past revivals. They’ve never seen a big supernatural move of God. You can’t rely on something you’ve not seen nor understand. Again, I’ve suggested before that church leaders in the U.S. just stop, drop to their knees, get their congregations on their knees along with them, and no one does ANYTHING new until God moves. THEN you can start relying on the supernatural.

5. The church begins to view success/failure in regards to how they are viewed in the church world rather than whether or not they are actually fulfilling the Great Commission!

I don’t think a lot of church leaders in America can tell the difference between the Great Commission and “success” in the eyes of the church world. See #2 above. This is especially true when one examines the quality of disciples being made. That we can’t seem to raise up future leaders from within our own congregations is a major flag here. Perhaps our standard of success is screwy.

Or perhaps we need to just stop talking about success entirely, because success in the church world starts looking more and more like quantity and not quality. Even then, when it is quality, quality easily becomes its own idol. Perhaps the ultimate answer is to stop peering down the block at other churches and instead discover what God considers progress for just our church alone. Then apply copious amounts of grace.

6. The leaders within the church cease to be coachable.

I would go even more simple than that. The problem with the upper leadership of large churches is not so much their lack of coachability but of approachability. One reason they aren’t coachable is that they’ve been walled off from the average guy in the pew. That average guy has ten layers of church bureaucracy and hierarchy between him and having lunch with the senior pastor. That kind of kingmaking hardens people. You can’t coach a stone.

7. There is a loss of a sense of urgency! (Hell is no longer hot, sin is no longer wrong, and the cross is no longer important!)

Agree–to a point. Some churches in America are on Rapture Watch 24/7/365; if Bibi Netanyahu gets a rash on his backside, they go into Harold Camping mode.

The problem is not a loss of sense of urgency, but a loss of sober consideration, both for the lost AND for the Church. We don’t need more hysterics brought on by ticking stopwatches. What we need are rational approaches to both reading the signs of the times AND carrying out the Great Commission WHILE coming under increased persecution. Christian Chicken Littles only ruin it for everyone.

8. Scripture isn’t central in every decision that is made!

Disagree entirely. There is not a decision made in an evangelical church in America that is not Scripturally justified. The problem: The decision is made by a select group of church leaders and then some verses are finagled as a stamp of approval. Too many decisions in our churches follow that inadequate model.

What we don’t see practiced are the admonitions of Paul in the Epistles for the entire church to come together and wrestle with tough decisions as a body of equally justified and uniquely gifted children of God. Instead, the average guy in the seats has his spiritual gifts sidelined and his voice silenced. How about we apply the actual Scriptures that encourage him to use his gift and voice as a blessing to the Body? Perhaps his understanding of the Scriptures as God reveals to him would take the decision in a different—but totally God-led—direction.

9. The church is reactive rather than proactive.

A church that is entirely natural and not supernatural can NEVER be proactive. Here is the rationalist church’s shame:

Now in these days prophets came down from Jerusalem to Antioch. And one of them named Agabus stood up and foretold by the Spirit that there would be a great famine over all the world (this took place in the days of Claudius). So the disciples determined, every one according to his ability, to send relief to the brothers living in Judea. And they did so, sending it to the elders by the hand of Barnabas and Saul.
—Acts 11:27-30 ESV

If God is not currently directing the Church in this same way, why even bring up being proactive? The Church can’t be. See #4 above.

10. The people in the church lose sight of the next generation and refuse to fund ministry simply because they don’t understand “those young people.”

???

Show me a church today that hasn’t thrown way too much money at youth ministry for way too meager results. Noble’s statement may have been true 40 years ago, but it’s not true today. If anything, I think we need to stop tossing cash at youth programs and re-evaluate the entire way ministry to people under 25 is done in America.

11. The goal of the church is to simply maintain the way things are…to NOT rock the boat and/or upset anyone…especially the big givers!

Pie in the sky. Until the Church in America ends its obsession with the coffers, it will be owned by those who fill them. Sadly, our model of successful church today demands huge cash reserves. You end the problem Nobel laments by moving money off center stage.

Meanwhile, I’ll be waiting over here by the strobe lights and the $25,000 digital mixing board for that to happen anytime soon.

See also #1.

12. The church is no longer willing to take steps of faith because “there is just too much to lose.”

If “too much to lose” means abandoning what is biblical, but not flashy, to adopt another faddish program or do what the church down the street is doing, then I can see why the average folks in the seats might dig in their heels.

Is it just me or is the message to pastors getting stronger that their congregants are the enemy of progress. That’s sick, when you think about it. No wonder those same congregants show up less and less often on Sundays.

13. The church simply does not care about the obvious and immediate needs that exist in the community.

This may be true. The horror stories abound.

Still, we have to understand that the Bible repeatedly puts the people in the church ahead of those in the community. Now the people in the church SHOULD be people from the community, but still. You have some churches that value everyone outside the church most, taking their attendees for granted, and this is bad too.

Balance, yes, but with a lean toward those inside the church walls.

14. The people learn how to depend on one man to minister to everyone rather than everyone embracing their role in the body, thus allowing the body to care for itself.

Until I see your average church service in an evangelical megachurch like Perry Noble runs move beyond 20 minutes of rock music worship, 10 minutes of announcements and miscellany, and a half hour message, I’m calling shenanigans. The entire way we do church stymies the real participation of 95% of folks who show up. The worst part is that concerned leaders who reiterate what #14 says are using models that only entrench that dependency. None are ready to let the people lead. They just aren’t. You don’t see a 1 Corinthians chapters 11-14-style church ANYWHERE in evangelicalism. Like I said, shenanigans.

15. When the leaders/staff refuse to go the extra mile in leading and serving because of how “inconvenient” doing so would be.

Really? Most people I’ve met who are on church staffs go the second mile all the time. I guess some slackers exist, but they are the minority. I think most church staff are routinely inconvenienced. All ministry is inconvenient because people are inconvenient.

What I don’t see happening: Church leaders on the national stage working actively to address the MANY aspects of American life, work, play, and culture that amplify those inconveniences. If anything, they (and we too) are leaving them status quo, which means nothing changes because they are afraid to take on the systems underlying the surface problems we see. In truth, I find that shortsighted and even cowardly. If we Christians don’t tackle the systems that imprison us, we will not go free.

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That’s my take on Noble’s 15 warnings. Please feel free to discuss in the comments below.

Thanks for reading.