An older physician, speaking recently to a civic club I attend, said, “A general-practice physician can be highly successful if located in an area serviced by specialists. In fact, for physicians, the greatest opportunity in the next twenty years is in general practice, as specialization creates a demand for general practice.”
I wondered, If he’s correct, does a parallel exist in the church world?
In the last few years we have seen most professions and institutions become specialized-including the church. Some older churches and many newer ones deliberately have identified target groups and target needs and then structured themselves to reach these groups and meet these needs. Among advocates of church growth, it is recognized as one of the most effective ways of starting a growing local church. They correctly assume, “Sheep of the same needs will flock together, and it helps us shepherd more effectively.”
As a result, in many circles the general-practice church is viewed as an antique in a highly specialized, high-tech world.
But most congregations were organized prior to the age of specialization, and a significant number of their leaders have not seriously considered (or have been unable to develop) a specialized church. This raises important questions:
Can a general-practice church survive in a specialized world?
If a general-practice church survives, can it grow?
If a general-practice church can grow, what strategies are effective?
These issues faced Tyler’s First Baptist Church in the last few years. We set out to find answers.
A Fresh Look at “Old First Church”
First Baptist Church, 140 years old, was originally organized to be an all-purpose church, and through the years it held a traditional “Old First Church” identity. The last two pastors had each stayed for thirty years and were community leaders who were widely respected chaplains to power.
During the last forty years, the community grew dramatically while the church’s attendance stayed relatively stable. During this forty-year plateau, several new, large, and aggressive churches targeted groups of people and began ministering to them effectively. Some were organized to meet the needs of specific target groups, while others saw their target groups evolve as a result of the people they first attracted. The yuppies, blue-collar folk, praise worshipers, thinkers, legalists, and local aristocracy each had their shrines. Obviously, each church had some exceptions and would display these exceptions in public services. In spite of these specialized churches, though, the total percentage of folks attending church in our city had declined.
In 1986, as part of the search for a new pastor, First Baptist surveyed members as to age, interests, and attitudes. The findings: members were older than the greater community; they held wider educational and economic backgrounds than expected; they were more willing to reach the unchurched than expected. The pastor-selection committee read church growth material and consulted with denominational leaders knowledgeable in church growth. When I was interviewed, these lay leaders were interested in my views on identifying, developing, and implementing a strategy for church growth.
After I had served a year as pastor, our staff presented a strategy for growth: to be deliberately a general-practice church. We decided to make our mission not to reach any particular grouping but instead to serve people from all the groups in our community. Now, eighteen months later, we find the strategy is working.
Why We Chose to Be General Practitioners
Why did we make such a seemingly out-of-date decision?
First, we concluded there is biblical support for the general-practice church. The church is a place where we can bond around our love for Christ rather than around our culturally developed lifestyles. (This does not suggest that specialized churches are less than scriptural. Most of the specialty churches have selected a sound biblical motif for their existence.)
Second, we became convinced there is a felt need for the general-practice church. Where there is a felt need, there is an opportunity to reach the unchurched.
What’s that felt need? With the alienation and fragmentation prominent in society, there is within us a need to come together on common ground. As one of our newer members said, “This is the only organization to which I belong in which age, economics, or specific problems are not a prerequisite for membership.” This person had participated in Weight Watchers and a local social club and found some fellowship there; in both groups, though a single focus had attracted her, a single issue could not keep her.
Third, in programming, the broad-based church can do some things a more narrowly focused church cannot. A church with a strong singles emphasis, for example, may have difficulty staffing a children’s ministry, thus leaving a need of the single parent unmet. In a recent informal survey of churches that are effectively reaching singles, more than 90 percent of the children’s teaching roles were filled by married adults, and the minister of education of each church indicated his or her church was nearing the crisis point in volunteers.
Recently a single parent confided that the healthy marriages she saw were a factor in her uniting with our church. None of her friends were good role models for her two children, and she deliberately wanted her children exposed to good marriage models. She was willing to accept the limitations of our singles ministry in exchange for the marriage examples for her children. The balance of the general-practice church meets a need for some people that is more important than well-defined specialty ministries.
Fourth, a general-practice church provides an opportunity for members to find a new niche or place of service without having to change churches. As people move through the stages of life, often the roles they play in church change. The youthful, enthusiastic teacher of junior boys will inevitably have a change in energy level and often an accompanying change in interest. But in a church whose identity is found in young families or a youth ministry, such a retiring teacher, who has led in a focus area, may feel out of place or less important. But in the general-practice church, that need not be so.
Our church had a couple who served over seventeen years with university students but who were ready for a change. They were provided a place of leadership in a ministry that assists folks in transition homes. Their new ministry is of no less significance, because the church’s identity is not associated with one particular ministry.
Fifth, a general-practice church helps cultivate a healthy tolerance of others. Generally, our members feel we can have different cultural backgrounds, preferences in worship styles, and theological vocabularies and still have authentic faith (not to be confused with a nonchalant, truth-doesn’t-matter approach).
A while back a family visited our church and were ready to join, when they found out that not all of the staff accepted their view of the millennium and the role of Israel. They were assured the staff did believe in a visible return of our Lord, but that at least three different views were held by lay and staff leaders. Even more disturbing to them was the fact the church did not feel it was necessary to have staff or leadership in agreement on this issue. The family did not believe they could be a part of this broad a fellowship, so they chose to visit other churches. Yet within three months this family united with our church, and they are now teaching. They still hold their particular theological views and discuss them openly, but they have concluded there are greater issues on which to base fellowship.
Finally, we believe the general-practice church can grow. The time is right. We are becoming more fragmented as a society. With the spread of the suburbs being shaped by financial zoning, families may have little contact with people who have different cultural fabrics. This can give a sterile, synthetic perspective and make life predictable. We are finding that many new members want a church that is unpredictable, that exposes them to new things.
In our sanctuary, we have a section reserved for adults with limited learning abilities. During worship, sometimes they sing at the wrong time or on the wrong note, or laugh at something that is not intended to be humorous. A young social worker and her attorney husband attributed their first visit to our church to the social worker’s client, who is mentally limited. This young man told her of his acceptance at our church and of his positive experience in worship. The social worker and her husband joined and remarked favorably that the service’s spontaneity was more congregation inspired than platform planned.
A professional who recently has united with our church told me he had been visiting churches for several months. He and his wife had been reared in different worship traditions and in the last eighteen years had dropped out of church. Now at age 43, with the trappings of success but an empty heart, he started to look for a church in which his entire family could be comfortable. His family agreed to come and are now, along with him, members with an authentic faith.
When people are hurting, they aren’t as interested in a specialized program as an atmosphere of acceptance and hope.
Drawbacks of All-Purpose Ministry
Although we see many advantages to the general-practice church family, we must also admit some problems and limitations.
Energy must be expended in more directions than in a single-focus congregation. One of the reasons relates to motivation: we have to use many different means of motivation simultaneously. Some people in the church are motivated by attendance campaigns; others find them to be gimmicks.
We have discovered, for example, that those who most often are angered by attendance campaigns are willing to minister to people with human needs. So rather than have everyone join the High Attendance Campaign, we must simultaneously increase attention to our ministry that serves the hungry, homeless, and impoverished in our city. As we set goals and develop plans for evangelistic outreach and high attendance, we also set goals for the number of needy families and homebound to whom we will minister. We try to give similar recognition to people involved in either. To focus on both evangelism and service at the same time is difficult and in some ways fragments the church growth process, but we believe it ultimately enhances healthy spiritual life.
A second limitation is that the general-practice church does not attract crusaders. Although there are some obvious advantages to this, crusaders provide a great amount of energy and can stir an organization to action. Tolerant individuals may, unfortunately, tolerate inactivity.
In staff discussions we’ve become aware that the people we relied on in previous churches to make things happen were usually single-focus crusaders. We allowed them to run interference for us. In a general-practice church we do not have that luxury and at times wish we had someone to sound the battle trumpet and rally the troops. We have discovered that the staff must be willing to accept the role of initiators and catalysts.
In developing a ministry to the unemployed, for example, our staff identified the need, found an interested potential leader, encouraged the leader, and structured the program. Finally the leader now sees this as his crusade. He needed our permission-and persistent encouragement-to be a crusader.
A third limitation is that we continually must explain our concept to ourselves and our members. An all-purpose church is more difficult to explain and define than some other churches. Most members want the purpose of the church to be clearly defined as meeting their most immediate hurt. To tell members we will seek to heal their hurt without organizing and mobilizing the entire church around that particular need or stage in life can sound cold and uncaring.
We have found we must preach, teach, and model balanced ministry in church publicity and from the pulpit. Each fall in our all-church stewardship banquet, my sermon is a simplified vision statement. During the banquet, we also have a video portraying the vision of the general-practice church. At least once each quarter, I include in a message a reminder of the vision. In the newsletter column, I discuss the broad aspects of our ministry at least twice a month. It appears at times that we are explaining ourselves continually, which is burdensome to the leaders. (But in a recent, informal questionnaire, selected laymen indicated this continual unveiling of the vision was a strength of the church.)
How the General Practice Can Grow
What does it take for a general-practice church to grow? We’ve found three principles that encourage it.
The general-practice church does not grow by accident but by design. We can be a general-practice church by accident, but we cannot grow unless we deliberately use this as a strategy. Unless a church is in a rapidly growing community, the human factor in the church-growth formula is activated primarily by hard work. We assume we will have to work with more intensity; our actions must be deliberately chosen to reflect and build general practice. Part of that work involves visitation, a key ministry in a general-practice church. Our staff visits by appointment those who attend any activity. At least thirty weeks a year, I visit three nights a week. Since our church has a significant number of senior adults, we have a lengthy hospital list, and someone from our church visits the hospital each day.
Also, the leaders must handle paradox and some ongoing tension. The leader in a general-practice church must be able to move from one priority to the next without feeling he or she has failed, and must live with some ambiguity.
One of our Sunday night classes has a long tradition and a low level of participation. We cannot justify in numbers the effort required by the staff to keep it going, but the class does meet a need in the lives of some senior adults. There are times when our measurement-oriented staff gets frustrated with little visible results, but when we see our church as a general-practice church, we can see where the class fits and that it does meet a need.
Third, the church must be willing to reward folks for programs that are eliminated as well as those that go on. In the all-purpose church, programs start up quickly, and then, when the need is met, the program dies. As staff, we must acknowledge and interpret program “deaths” so they are seen as healthy closures rather than fatalities.
One of the primary reasons many general-practice churches do not grow is they continue to carry excess baggage. Yet dropping programs in a graceful way is the most difficult part of the strategy to put into practice in an older church. There are sacred programs, sacred places, and sacred secrets that die with the grace of wounded swine in a china closet. When a program outlives its usefulness, we try to pass out many bouquets to past leaders and praise their wisdom in seeking closure.
Church Training, for example, is a Sunday night teaching program that is strong in tradition in our church. At the same time, our staff and key leaders felt it was ineffective and was also a hindrance to the Sunday night worship service. This program was ended, and the worship hour was moved to an earlier hour to meet the needs of young families. We celebrated the change to meet new families and praised those who had served through the years.
Reaching the Semichurched and Unchurched
It would be less than honest to say our church has made great inroads to the unchurched and semichurched, but we are touching lives in both groups and reaching more than we did in the past. We are convinced the general-practice church is a viable option for many existing churches who desire to grow.
One family that recently joined our church never had been involved in church life before. Both the husband and the wife have been married twice before and had lived openly a less-than-Christian lifestyle. They attended a Christmas program as a favor to a relative’s child. When we made the follow-up visit to their home, the couple told of the emptiness of their lives. After a series of contacts, they now have made spiritual commitments and become part of the church family. Recently the wife was describing their family Christmas gathering. Since this couple has been involved in a total of five marriages, and has children from four of the marriages who range in age from 3 to 24, Christmas in the home is like a zoo.
She said, “The Christmas Day events in our home reminded me of some of our church activities. It wasn’t smooth and polished, but everyone left feeling important.”
If that’s the case, maybe, just maybe, the general-practice church can work in a specialized world.
Gary Fenton is pastor of First Baptist Church in Tyler, Texas.
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