A Whole New Attitude - Christianity Today

Our church was 12 years old when we noticed the listlessness. People began to complain. “It doesn’t feel the same around here.” “My small group is boring.” “I need something more.”

We had a purpose—we were “The Equipping Church”—but now, that didn’t seem to be enough.

Since our beginning in 1977, Fellowship Bible Church had been marked by a wonderful enthusiasm. There was always a new project, a new building, a new cause. But with the addition of staff and a comfortable facility where we no longer had to show up at 5:30 Sunday mornings to set up chairs, the congregation grew restless.

In 1989 we took a survey. It confirmed our suspicions. Even with more people coming, we had lost our spiritual momentum.

We wondered if there was a problem with our church’s vision. As an “equipping church,” a term borrowed from Ephesians 4, we had been equipping people to live better lives, have better marriages, be better parents, handle better their finances, and grow deeper in God’s Word. But we had never asked ourselves what was the end result of all that equipping.

On a staff retreat, one leader plunged us into crisis when he asked, “Equipped for what?”

We had no good answer.

Equipped for what?

Our survey revealed that for the first five years after people entered the church, they were excited. They loved the worship, teaching, and ministry. But eventually they reached a dead end. There wasn’t anything for them to do.

We could feel it. As leaders we felt pushed to provide bigger events and better ministries. We were dancing harder and faster just to maintain enthusiasm.

Our people, meanwhile, were fed, grown, equipped, and ready—for nothing. Our mission became, by default, keeping the people happy.

Then we asked ourselves, “Are we just about building successful people? What is the ultimate goal of the church?”

We saw in Scripture that the church was called by Christ to influence the world around it, to flavor it as salt. And if it doesn’t, “it is no longer good for anything” (Matt. 5:13).

We had missed half the mission of the church. Sure, we equipped people to be stronger in the faith, but we are also called to send them into the world, that they may see our good deeds and praise our Father in heaven (Matt. 5:16). The ultimate goal of the church wasn’t to be successful; it was to be influential.

But how?

Our self-imposed crisis

It was a slow and painful transition, from being a church focused inward to a church aiming to change the community. It took us five years to see the first fruits of our transition and ten years to see its full effect.

In a 1990 “State of the Church” address, I pointed out the deficiencies of our previous model of ministry and announced an overhaul of our mission: “First we’re going to equip you for life, and then we’re going to equip you for service. That second stage involves helping you discover your gifts so you can know where, outside the church, God is leading you to serve.”

Then we altered our ministries. We redirected people from small groups that equipped them for life into groups that would equip them for service. Ultimately, the process would move people to their own crises of faith, as each person confronted the question: “Now that I’ve been equipped, what is my mission?”

I told the congregation, “We’ve found that by the fourth or fifth year at Fellowship Bible, many people become satisfied with the church. But they become dissatisfied with the Christian life.

“It’s much like college. After four or five years, a student grows anxious to do something with their education. It’s time for a job.

“It’s time for you to get a job,” I said. “That may be frightening, but we’re going to help you. We want you to find the mission you will want to be involved in for the rest of your life.”

Our worship services, too, began to reflect the change in mission. We shared success stories, no matter how small, from people in the church who were serving others.

My sermons reflected a better balance between faith and works. In one of my favorite texts, Matthew 9:35, Jesus goes out to the villages to proclaim the good news, preaching and healing. In the past I would have focused primarily on Jesus’ preaching of the gospel. But the passage says much more. For instance, note where Jesus is. He’s not in church. He’s out in the villages. He’s in the community. And he didn’t just preach, he also healed. The real gospel is a balance of truth and proof.

Not everyone, of course, was pleased with our new approach.

“That’s social gospel”

The changes elicited some immediate objections. “Why the sudden emphasis on good works? Changing the community? That’s ‘social gospel.’ Are you going liberal on us?”

With the elder board by my side, I answered: “No, not liberal—complete. We’ve wrongly been an ‘either/or’ church, a church that believed you either preached the gospel or served people. We need to be a ‘both/and’ church, both proclamational and incarnational.”

We weren’t shifting toward any other theological tradition. “If you can show me that we’re not being evangelistic and we’re not teaching the Bible,” I said, “then I’ll agree with you.” But our service to the community only increased our evangelism and our ability to share the Scriptures.

For example, we teach life skill classes that are free to the community on topics such as managing money, raising children, time management, and more. The class may not cover overtly Christian doctrines, but the teacher will take the opportunity to say, “You’re probably wondering why I’m teaching this life skills class. It’s a service to the community, but I’m teaching because a number of years ago my life was changed by Jesus Christ. Now he’s called me to serve this community and to give away the gift he’s given me.”

The teacher does not say, “Now let me lead you in a prayer to receive Christ.” People often resent that kind of entrapment. But when we give someone something valuable, offered without obligation, that person is often open for the first time to hearing the gospel, “I did this for you because my life was changed.”

We have been invited to teach life skills classes each year to students at the medical school in Little Rock. A doctor, a member of our church, has taken this as his project. He’s passionate about giving new doctors a solid foundation for life inside and outside the hospital.

In the ten-plus years since we began the change, our outreach initiatives have impacted public schools, colleges, the police and fire departments, the poor, and the hungry with tens of thousands of volunteers and millions of dollars. In hindsight, Little Rock has been transformed through combined efforts with other churches, and our church’s Christian witness has gained credibility and influence.

Small groups doing big things

The key piece in our transformation as a church was the new type of small groups we call “Common Cause groups.” New church members, after three years in other groups where they learn the basics of the faith and establish relationships within the church, then move on to create new groups especially for service outside the church.

Common Cause groups are comprised of people who have a heart for similar needs—perhaps education, housing, mentoring, or parenting.

Initially our leaders met with the groups and said, “If you’re going to serve this area, don’t bite off too much. Keep a clear focus with measurable results.” We wanted people to know the feeling of success when they were finished and not burn out trying to change the whole world at once. When they did succeed, we had many tell their stories in front of the church.

One couple, for example, started a small group “to help the poor.”

“We’ll probably want to narrow that down,” I said. So they identified their goal to give inner-city children the opportunity to go to a Christian camp.

This Common Cause group promoted one outstanding camp to people in the community who might donate to the cause. They also organized a 5K race to raise money. And at the end of that year, they sent 60 kids to camp.

Many of those kids had never been out of the housing projects. They got to ride horses and water-ski, and some of them became believers. Today, hundreds of kids have attended this camp through the work of this one Common Cause group.

Another group had a heart to give inner city students a choice in education. They drafted a mission statement to seek parents who wanted a better education for their children, and who couldn’t afford all the costs of sending their children to the school of their choice. The Common Cause group then committed to making up the difference in tuition.

At first I thought, Maybe we can enable 20 or 30 kids to go to better schools. Within two years, they had 1,600 students in the program, most attending Christian schools. Today the program, called the Christian Educational Assistance Fund, has full-time staff and a board of directors.

In those first years of our transition, stories like these were few and hard-fought. But publicizing and celebrating those few successes sustained us.

The benefit to our church, however, is not just in the success stories, but in the change in us. When they see a need, our congregation looks for ways to meet it together. We think of church not as “where I go on Sunday” but as anywhere we can go and make a difference.

Getting our toes wet

It took a trip to the water park for our congregation as a whole to get it.

Every summer our church rented Little Rock’s water theme park for a day of fun, picnicking, and even baptisms. But when our focus shifted from inward to outward, I suggested we invite all the police of Little Rock and their families to join us.

The idea caught on. Some in the congregation said, “Let’s do more than that; let’s give their families free drinks and food.” Another added, “Let’s call out a time, say four o’clock, and have everyone in the park meet in one place to recognize the police officers.”

The police chief agreed, and we sent invitations to the officers’ homes to make sure their spouses saw it, too. Hundreds of police families came.

We let them enjoy the park all day. At four o’clock we called everybody together, recognized the officers as our honored guests, and had some policemen share their experiences—and then we cheered for them. We gave the police chief a plaque that expressed our thanks for their often thankless work. He cried. Our members went through the crowd hugging the police families.

That first big event blessed not only the police force, but also our congregation. For the first time our church clearly believed we could connect with the community.

We invited Little Rock’s school teachers to the water park the next year, and the firefighters the year after that. But perhaps most important, the vision for living out faith in service spread through our congregation.

Building on good will

Ten years later, our relationship with the police force has grown. Our church recently sent volunteers and finances to refurbish the central Little Rock police station. We built a new kitchen, canteen, and mailroom. We rebuilt the foyer around a new display honoring police officers who lost their lives in the line of duty.

The day after it was completed, we invited all the police force to join us in a celebration at a public pavilion down by the riverfront. Then we took an offering to develop a scholarship fund for any officer and spouse to attend a Family Life marriage conference, including hotel, for free. They were thrilled, and so were we.

The police chief has called our work together “a miracle.” Many police couples have attended a Christian marriage conference. And our desire to see the gospel spread throughout law enforcement in our community is being advanced.

Building cross-town bridges

One staff member involved in a Common Cause group said one day, “We need to get other churches involved in this.”

We tried a project or two with other churches, but with limited success. Then that staff member formed a group of pastors that met together just to pray and build relationships. He called it the Nehemiah Group.

Two significant things emerged. First, we discovered that with prayer as our first purpose, it is far easier to get together across racial lines. Today in Little Rock, the Nehemiah Group is almost half black, half white.

Second, through relationship building, we began to find the concerns our churches shared, and we began looking for ways to address them together. This led to our largest community impact event, Share Fest.

Share Fest was a radical idea, involving more than 100 churches. It came from a simple proposition: “Can your church tithe one weekend a year to the community?”

We purposely sought out smaller churches, so they could see what could happen in just one weekend if we worked together for community impact.

In our first Share Fest in 1999, with the combined efforts of Little Rock’s churches, 3,000 volunteers performed 105 service projects. We built and rebuilt homes across the city. In our second Share Fest, we united around education concerns and renovated or refurbished 26 central Arkansas public schools.

“Our kids have a new school,” said one first-grade teacher. “If Christianity were more like this, people would be interested. I know I would.”

Last year, I stepped to the platform on statewide television and accepted the Arkansas Community Service Award on behalf of all the churches involved in Share Fest. The news anchor announced the churches of Little Rock had pulled off the largest volunteer event ever in our state. He said, “This was one of the greatest weekend events in the history of Arkansas.”

In 1989, the community viewed Fellowship Bible Church as a preachy, moralistic, separatist group. When we went to the police chief and superintendent of schools and said, “How can we help you?” they thought we were kidding.

But then we came to help.

Now when our public schools look for people to serve as mentors, they ask Fellowship Bible Church. The administrators of the inner city schools, who once thought of our church as suburban, white-flight enemies, now think of us as their supporters.

It’s because the church said, “How can we help you?”

Robert Lewis is the author of The Church of Irresistible Influence (Zondervan, 2002) and founder of Men’s Fraternity, a men’s ministry and video series. Fellowship Bible Church hosts an annual conference on connecting churches with their communities. See FellowshipAssociates.com.