Below is an outline of what we covered in Part 2 of today’s webinar The Strengths of a Small Church. In the comments section, share how your own church approaches the planning of programs, as well as any questions you have for our presenters, Brandon O’Brien and Chuck Warnock. Also, take a look at Part 1, Authenticity, and Part 3, Equipping.
Part 2: Lean and Nimble
Brandon:
I think it is fair to say that the current prevailing model for local church ministry is the megachurch model. And one of the characteristics of a megachurch is that it is able to provide specialized ministry and programs for every age and stage-of-life demographic you could think of. Now, it’s easy to blame the megachurches for making life and ministry difficult for the rest of us. But I think the impulse to provide ministries for people of all ages and needs is a good one.
In the late 1960s and into the ’70s, parachurch movements like YoungLife and Campus Crusade and others were at their peak. This presented a real challenge to local churches; instead of attending church programs, teens were going to parachurch rallies. Churches responded by beginning to offer programs in-house that could compete with these parachurch ministries. The megachurch movement–or church growth movement–which took off in the late 70s and early 80s, drew heavily from parachurch strategies; in a way, they offered a bunch of parachurch ministries under one roof.
The trouble is, small churches just can’t do programs like megachurches can. They don’t have the money or a big enough pool of volunteers. And yet I feel like we have an impulse to try to keep up with the bigger churches. So we overtax our resources and our volunteers in order to run the programs we think we have to run in order to be successful; when that happens, nobody wins.
Don’t misunderstand me–I think programming is necessary and biblical. Acts 6 offers what I consider something like a prototype for church programming. At this point, the church is growing the point that it needs some formal procedures for doing some of its ministry–in this case, distributing food to widows fairly and efficiently.
When I was researching this very issue, I came across an online news outlet called Voice of San Diego. This is a little bitty news source–something like 10 employees. But they recently won the most prestigious award for investigative journalism. They were freed up to do good work because they have a pretty strict policy about what they spend their energy and resources on: they will only cover stories that 1) they can cover particularly well, or that 2) no one else is covering.
If churches were to take this advice to heart, it would mean running fewer programs–including only things your church can do particularly well or that no one else is doing.
Examples:
Redeemer Presbyterian (particularly gifted)
Edgewater Baptist Church (no one else doing it)
5 questions to ask of your programs:
1. Does the program meet a legitimate community need?
2. Do we have qualified and interested people to oversee it, so that the leadership can be committed primarily to “the Word and prayer?”
3. Will it result in the spreading of the Word and the growth of the Kingdom?
4. Is anyone else in our broader community already meeting this need?
5. Are we uniquely gifted to address it?
Chuck:
Brandon’s exactly right that newspapers and magazine publishers are trying to figure out how to survive in an age when how we get our news is changing by the minute. Churches have a similar problem, and small congregations are able to navigate these changing times more nimbly than megachurches. Which is another way of saying, “Small churches can try a lot of stuff that doesn’t work faster than bigger ones!” Believe me, I’ve been there.
I have mentioned already that we tried direct mail with less than spectacular results. But we also tried adding an early service (only the golfers came); we tried hiring part-time staff; we tried movie nights (well attended); children’s Christmas parties (not well attended); changed our constitution and by-laws (painful); and reorganized our committees (like re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, only not nearly as exciting). We have tried lots of stuff. The good thing is that when something didn’t work, we could hit the “kill” switch about as fast as we started it.
The best thing I have done in trying to figure out who our church is, and build on those passions and gifts, is following a technique called “appreciative inquiry.” Usually when we do church surveys, we’re focusing on what’s wrong and how to fix it. But appreciative inquiry focuses on what is right, and how to maximize it. I believe the technique was developed in Cleveland, but I got my orientation to it through Mark Branson’s book Memories, Hopes, and Conversations: Appreciative Inquiry and Congregational Change.
Here’s how it worked: I chose six church leaders to talk to one-on-one. I asked them questions like:
What are your best memories of Chatham Baptist Church?
Who do you remember as outstanding leaders, and what did they do?
When did you feel most involved and fulfilled at our church?
What are your three wishes for the future of our church?
I was amazed that people told stories of what the church had done in the past; of leaders of long-ago who taught children and youth; of moments when our church rose to meet a challenge and succeeded. And the wishes for our congregation were hopeful, outward-looking, and encouraging.
From that experience, we planned our 150-year celebration and told some of those stories, celebrating the lives and ministries of those who had gone before us. Our theme was “Praise for the Past, Faith for the Future,” and we looked back so that we could have the courage and hope to look forward.
Finally, Brandon talked about cooperating with other churches and groups in your community. We did that when we started the Boys and Girls Club. You can cooperate without compromising your core convictions, if you have that conversation with your potential partners early in the process. My interest in helping to start the Boys and Girls Club was to have access to the kids in our community who came to our building. If we could not have engaged with the kids, I don’t think we would have partnered with that organization. So when I asked if we could offer programs, get to know the kids, and provide some opportunities for fellowship with their families like cookouts, I was told we could, but that the kids would attend our programs on a voluntary basis. In other words, they couldn’t be forced to come to art or music or crafts that we provided, but they could choose to do so freely if they wanted to. That was all we needed, and a wonderful partnership developed. I wrote about our experience for Leadership journal, in the article “Learn to Partner.”
We also partner with five other churches for a community VBS. When I came, our VBS was running about 60, but we partnered with other congregations, moved it to evening hours, and had over 200 in 2005! Since then we’ve run between 150 and 200 each year. We rotate between churches each year and have a VBS planning workgroup made up of the pastor and two volunteers from each church to coordinate.
We have also found that conducting special one-time events, rather than establishing on-going ministries, is more sustainable for us. And we’ve found that we can handle about one major event per quarter, and have enough volunteers and resources to do it well.
As Brandon suggested, we have avoided doing programs just because they are popular or another church is doing it. AWANA is a great program, and about 3 churches in our area already have AWANA programs. We decided that we did not want to compete with those, and so made the deliberate decision not to. Same for our town Easter egg hunt, which is sponsored by the United Methodist church two blocks from us. We collect candy for them, but we promote their event and several of our families attend.
