Volume 12 Week 38
A Guest Author for This
Week’s Page!
One Church's Experience with
Transformation: Lessons for Mt C?
The Board of Directors and I are
studying the life cycle of churches. By
the time a church hits seventy-five, they’ve typically gone through an original
dreaming and launching period, a period of growth, building on the original
idea, and then a time of decline and crisis.
Usually, the decline comes when the world changes and the church does
not respond.
Quite frankly, we feel
that’s the story at
This week’s edition of
the Pastor’s Page will be largely the
words of Pastor William McConnell of
This article is
reprinted by permission from Net Results:
www.netresults.org
The
Lesson One: Spiritual transformation comes first
Ours was a typical Disciples congregation filled with warm, wonderful people. However, spirituality was not something we did. Our first transformation was from being a secular church to being a spiritual church. We previously did church much like a club. For example, we prayed before board meetings but it was obvious we didn’t really expect God to do anything through these prayers. The church lay leaders and I began to challenge people to start practicing simple spiritual disciplines such as daily Bible reading, daily prayer, and family devotions, as well as to become involved in a ministry and join a Bible study group.
We now call these Life Groups, and they are somewhat different than a Bible study group. A vast majority of both leaders and congregational members took up the challenge, and an amazing transformation began. Lives, attitudes, marriages, families, and church ministries were dramatically changed.
Lesson Two: People share their faith when they sense God is at work in their midst
Evangelism became easy because people got excited about what God is doing in their lives and in and through their church. Inviting friends, family, and neighbors to worship is no longer a chore, but a joy. Members are happy to invite people to a worship service they feel ushers them into the presence of the living God. They are excited to invite people to their Life Group where they are blessed and encouraged and where they experience life changes.
Lesson Three: A church must organize to facilitate transformation
Our next major transformation was to change how we did business as a church. As we worked to expand our ministries, we soon discovered that our congregational bylaws were set up in ways that hindered getting ministry done. There were many hoops to jump through and barriers to overcome before a ministry could be launched.
Often people desiring to do ministry in the church were exhausted by the process and never got to the point of really doing ministry. We suspended our church constitution and bylaws for a year and just did church in ways that helped get to ministry. After that year we re-wrote the constitution and bylaws to reflect how we are now doing things. We also wrote into the bylaws that they would be reviewed every two years.
In that change we reduced our board from sixty-six members to fourteen and made the senior minister a voting member of the board. The board switched from monthly meetings to quarterly. The board’s responsibilities changed from doing all the church’s business to making policy. Daily congregation operations were turned over to the staff. Ministry decisions, such as expenditures, are now made by the team doing that ministry.
As long as they stay within budget, the teams can spend the money as they see fit. One major shift is that we keep people accountable but also trust them to do what is right and best. We believe that the people doing the ministry are in the best position to make wise decisions concerning that ministry.
Lesson Four: Enabling church members to do ministry transforms their lives
Instead of fourteen committees we now have five ministry teams: Worship, Evangelism, Discipleship, Fellowship, and Service. Each team is managed by a volunteer team leader. Most of those leaders are also elders in the church. Every ministry in the church is under one of the ministry teams. When we shifted from committees to ministry teams, a dramatic change occurred. The church calendar suddenly emptied of meeting dates.
Committees, by definition, have meetings. Ministry teams, by definition, do ministry. Our teams now have their meetings informally while they are doing ministry together, or on the phone, or via email. People who were not willing to invest time in meetings now gladly serve on a team that is out doing ministry on a regular basis.
Lesson Five: Life change happens in healthy small groups
Without committee and board meetings, people’s schedules are freed so they can now participate in Life Groups. As a result, almost 75 percent of those who attend worship are now Life Group members. We believe that being a part of a Life Group is so crucial to one’s spiritual growth that we require anyone involved in ministry to be consistent in Life Group attendance. We believe that if you are too busy to attend a Life Group, you are too busy to do ministry. If you don’t have time for both, then the choice is the Life Group.
Lesson Six: Transformation is not programmatic, it is a spiritual journey
We do small groups, we do contemporary worship, we do ministry teams, and we have built a new building. But please do not make the mistake of believing that these things bring transformation to a congregation; rather, they just help support and facilitate that transformation. It is changed people, living lives impacted by God, that transform a church.
There is a lot of wisdom in this
article. Every church is unique in its
history, traditions and setting. It’s
not possible of wise to try to replicate what happened in one church in a whole
different setting.
However, the themes
Pastor McConnell shares are heard consistently around the Church. I believe we have taken strides in the right
direction in recent years, and pray that with God’s blessing, we will become
more and more courageous in witness and service in days ahead.
How about you?