Tag: church growth

Reasons for a Second Service

Posted on September 11, 2008

Here’s the other side of the coin in considering the addition of a second service:

1. Why turn away people from hearing the gospel of Christ? If more people will come to our gatherings to hear the gospel preached, who am I to turn them away? Jesus went out of his way to keep the unregenerate masses around to hear his sermon on the mount. He went out of his way to feed them and broke them into small groups to share his provision. Peter addressed thousands. Paul packed out houses with people falling out of windows (acts 20:9). As Jacob Vanhorn said, “The first century church didn’t get to put their finger in the dam when God added 1,000’s of new, clumsy believers. I don’t think we can either.” The challenge is to keep preaching the strong gospel of Jesus, and to not accommodate increased consumerism that people bring with them.

2. See the second service as another gathering of the church during which people can be discipled into gospel-centered missional community. Daniel Montgomery once asked me which form of the church was most pure, missional communities or Sunday gatherings? It was a loaded question. He avered that, if done well, both can be “pure” expressions of the church, and I tend to agree. The challenge, however, is to spend as much time recalibrating gatherings as we do recalibrating smaller communities. Austin City Life is in the process of trying to develop a more intentional “liturgy” whereby Sunday gatherings become more of a discipleship experience, not just a service. Missional, steady state, gospel-centered community should happen through public and private gatherings.

3. A second gathering will increase business for the coffeeshop in our building, enabling us to futher support local business. The unoffical slogan of Austin is “Keep Austin Wierd,” which is multivalent. One of the things it means is keep things indy, support local business. We like to do that when possible to be a blessing to our neighbors and city.

4. A second gathering will enable volunteers to serve and to worship every Sunday.

To Start or Not to Start a 2nd Service?

Posted on September 9, 2008

We are wrestling through whether or not to start a second service. For most people it’s a no brainer. If you have enough people, start a second service! Or, follow the 80/20 rule–if 80% of the seats filled, then start a second service because the other 20% will be intimidated by the lack of space. I don’t like either line of reasoning. Here’s why…

  1. Just because you max out seating capacity doesn’t mean your church is ready for more people. How many of the people in our services really get church the way we are trying to be the church? How many understand and embrace that we are trying to raise the problem of mission, solve it with the solution of the gospel, in the context of community? If they get it conceptually, how many of them are actually living this way practically? If there is a gap between concept and practice, is this a product of consumerism, poor leadership, or brevity of time? If there is a significant gap between our theoretical and functional ecclesiologies, then why add more people ignorant of your ecclesiology into a service that isn’t church to begin with?
  2. To start a second service is to commit more resources to an event, not a gospel-centered missional community. Will the demands of a second service so tax our spiritual, emotional, and physical resources that we end up reinforcing church-as-service, instead of church-as-gospel, missional community? Will a second service propagate discipleship anonymity, not missional church tenacity?
  3. Who cares about the 80/20 rule; it just reinforces individualistic comforts. I say “squeeze in”; meet your neighbor; love the church, swallow your individualism and take a bite out of community. Sit on the floor, just don’t fall out of a window.

Keller on Managing Church Growth

Posted on July 22, 2008

Tim Keller has an article on “Process Managing Church Growth” in the newest issue of Vineyard’s Cutting Edge. In it he offers some very practical advice on how to manage stages of church growth and adjust church culture accordingly. I will summarize some of his points:

  1. Every church has a size culture that goes with its size that has to be accepted. For instance, to impose the small church expectation of lead pastoral accessibility upon the lead pastor of a large church will “wreak havoc on the church and eventually force it back into the size with which the practices are compatible.”
  2. Everyone knows that at some point a church becomes too large for one pastor to handle. The threshold for hiring another pastor varies from context to context, with “white collar communities demanding far more specialized programs”  thus requiring an earlier hire.
  3. With growth comes increasing complexity which requires increasing intentionality in communication. Here Keller emphasizes a lot of “increasings.”
  • Increased growth requires increased communication–informal, grassroots is no longer effective. This requires more deliberate and systematic assimilation; visitors are less visible. More well-organized volunteer recruitment becomes necessary.
  • More planning and organization must go into events. Higher quality is expected in larger churches and spontaneous, last-minute events do not work.
  • More high quality aesthetics must be present. People enter a service without a knowledge of the ungifted singers who are appreciated “because we all know them.” Visitors are looking for a vertical, not horizontal encounter, with a sense of transcendence.

The whole article is well worth working through and can be found online here. I sense a tension between wisdom and convention in this article. For instance, there is no doubt that I need to think much more about intentionality in all the areas Keller mentions as our church grows. Organic, frayed at the edges kind of stuff can only work so long. However, Keller’s advice seems, in places, to assume a largely staff driven church. For instance, if people are sufficiently trained can they not perform a considerable amount of the “pastoring” without lowering the expectation of pastoral accessibility. Can we not change the expectation to expect pastoral care from one another in the context of a gospel-centered missional community? I’ll be reflecting on this article for a while. You can subscribe to a free copy of Cutting Edge here.

American Church in Crisis

Posted on March 5, 2008

The American Church in Crisis answers the questions church leaders are asking: Why are these trends occurring? What can our church do to reverse its pattern of decline and decay? How can we make the gospel story come alive again to new generations? How must Christian leaders change their values, habits, and priorities for the American church to grow in health and influence? By following a four-step process of observation, evaluation, introspection and action, readers will find hope in the possibility of God rebuilding and restoring his church.