Becoming A Sticky Church

On Sunday a newcomer engaged me following our worship. She spoke of her gratitude for Community and I said: “I’m really glad you found us.” With tears in her eyes, she replied: “We didn’t find you – God led us here. From the first time I walked into this building, I knew we were home.”

God is creating a church that people love to come to. But, what if, rather than just creating a church that people love to come to - what if we also created a church that people refuse to leave."

For years, the primary focus in many churches has been on the “front door”—people coming into the church. And while such an emphasis remains the Great Commission priority, our leaders are equally concerned with integrating newcomers into the life of the church.

Researchers have discovered four major factors that are at work when churches close the back door effectively. If all four are in play, the back door closed tight. But any one of these factors still contributes to more effective assimilation.

1. High Expectations

The American Church went through a period of more than 10 years when churches significantly lowered their expectations of members and attendees. The result was an exodus of people from the church. “Why would I want to be a part of something that expects nothing of me?” a former active church member told a research team. People want to be challenged to invest their lives in something that matters. We must establish clear expectations of service, stewardship and attendance, etc. We need people invested in the most important mission on this planet.

2. Small Groups

Second, churches that close the back door seek to get as many of their members as possible into small groups. Connections and life-change happens best in small groups. If you are only a Sunday attender, let me challenge you to be involved at a deeper level in our spiritual family. You will be blessed. You can find a list of our small groups on our website at www.heart4communtiy.org. It is in our small groups that we begin “doing life together.”

3. Ministry Involvement

The third key component is ministry involvement. The earlier a new member or attendee can get involved in a church’s ministries, the higher the likelihood of effective assimilation. This is a critical time-frame that our ministry leaders monitor closely. Churches that close the back door have a clear plan to get people involved and doing ministry as quickly as possible. We currently have a high guest-retention rate – one reason is that newcomers get involved in serving very quickly. Incidentally, the newcomer I mentioned at the beginning of this article - signed up to serve the second Sunday she and her husband attended.

4. Relationship Connections

Finally, the more new members connect with longer-term members, the greater the opportunity for assimilation. In an interesting twist in the research, they found that most of these relationships developed before the new member ever came to the church. In other words, members were intentionally developing relationships with people outside the walls of the church. They invited them to church after the relationship had been established.

You’ll have to judge how we are doing in each of these areas. One thing I would ask is that you help make Community a “sticky church.”

Countering Our American Culture

In college I had a really good friend named Legesse. He was from Ethiopia, and had actually spent a lot of time in the country of Yemen. When he moved here to America and eventually to college with me he obviously brought with him some foreign mannerisms. For example, in America, if there is open seating at a movie or anywhere, and you are going with a friend, when you sit down you will naturally leave an empty seat or two between you. It’s part of our American culture. We are all about space. Legesse didn’t have that. If I sat down with him in class or at a movie or a conference he would sit right next to me and it felt like almost right on top of me! At first I was very uncomfortable. I didn’t like not having personal space. But after a while it didn’t bother me. And I started to see this lack of personal space as a good thing because literally and figuratively I allowed people to get closer to me.

Why do I bring this story up? Well, there are times to embrace culture and times we need to counter our culture. I noticed we are encountering something phenomenal here at CCC. We are experiencing growth. Not just in maturity (although I think we are), but we are also experiencing God bringing us more people, and with this awesome phenomenon comes some hiccups that we have to deal with. This past Sunday for the first time I sat in the back row at CCC. I noticed that in front of me there were a lot of empty spaces, empty chairs, even some rows that were barren. I realized that just like in high school on the bus everyone seems to cling to the back! I understand Brent smells a little, but come on people! No, but hear me out on this. Imagine you are a new person coming to Community for the first time. You get there but you are a little late. As you quietly open the doors to where people are meeting you scan the crowd and see that there are no seats open in the back row. You now have two choices: 1. Make the walk of shame – you have to walk past everyone as they watch you. Find a seat right up front as you crawl over people at the end of the isles, and you have to risk someone publically embarrassing you. Or, 2. You just leave. If you were new, which would you choose, and be honest?

I don’t want people to miss out on an opportunity to possibly meet God for the first time because we were sitting in the back to have our own space. That’s not what we as a church are all about. I just want to challenge all of us, myself included, to sit closer to the front and leave the back open. To sit next to someone instead of leaving gaps in the seats. To not just nab the aisle seat because you like the aisle. Let’s consider others even when it comes to where to sit. Let’s counter our American culture.

One Month To Live Inro Video

In case you missed it, we used this video to kick off our One Month To Live Series. We have had several comments on the video, hope it encourages you on your spiritual journey toward a "no-regrets life."

Baptism Resources

Just wanted to let you know about some new study resources on the subject of baptism that have been published on Community's website. The first item is a brief article titled: Community's View of Baptism. At the bottom of the article there are two downloadable files. The first is a "Baptism Study Guide" which contains self-study materials for both teens and adults. The second download is a recent message on baptism titled: What's the Skinny on the Dip. We hope these resources will (1) help newcomers know what we believe about baptism; (2) encourage others to commit their lives to Jesus through baptism; and (3) help Christians remember and cherish their own baptisms. You can find these resources at the following link: Baptism Resources

Families Want To Serve!!!!!

I just had a very timely article drop into my inbox from the Externally Focused Church Network. It contains some research finding that might surprise you. The article is fairly brief. I hope you'll take the time to read it. I highlighted in red the text that jumped out at me.

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Survey Says Families Want to Serve Together with Family and Community Ministries Journal

In the Jan/Feb 2008 edition of Rev! Magazine executive editor and good friend of EFN, Alan Nelson, predicted 12 trends in ministry to come by 2018. One trend he predicted was that the classroom approach to learning will lessen and people will begin to learn through active service-like community service projects and mission trips. ″Connecting Scriptures with these experiences will increase…Bono and others are causing us to realize that faith without the fruit is dead,″ he writes.*

Alan also predicted that the emphasis on Family Ministry will grow. He writes, ″There is a felt need to pursue family unity and intergenerational worship and spiritual formation. Family Pastor is currently the fastest growing new ministry title and this will continue into the next decade, as churches strive to equip and empower parents to assume their responsibility.″

Well, Alan, it looks as if those two predictions are already coming true. The Family and Community Ministries Journal, published by Baylor University School of Social Work didn't just predict service learning would be important to the future church, they found that families are asking for it. In 1993, Diana Garland, Dean of Baylor University's School of Social Work, and Dr. Pam Yankeelov, professor at the University of Louisville, developed a tool called the Church Census to help church leaders understand how they are reaching families and what church families want and need. 150 churches have used this census for 12 years.* (For a full review of survey findings, see the Summer 2007 edition of the journal).

While the survey has exposed a number of insightful connections to today's church families, discovering how consistently churchgoers expressed a desire to serve was one of the major surprises for Garland. Among all denominations, socioeconomic and age groups, the most common answer to ″how can the church help,″ was ″give us ways to serve others outside our family.″

Parents must be sensing what Garland is already sure about: ″We know that children who grow up serving next to adults are more likely to attend church as young adults. It makes it more meaningful,″ she shares.

She admits that finding families wanting more service opportunities came as a bit of a surprise. Garland shares, ″We didn't expect that. Even families who are struggling themselves want to serve others. The opportunity to help others was the single most requested thing of church families, across the board. They want help living their faith. These families are telling us that the focus of church need to be centered on ways families can minister to the world. We've tended to see service as an add-on to worship, with worship being the main focus. Families are saying we need to turn that around.″

An Important Question - Your Input Requested!

I want to ask you a question. I hope you'll either email me your answer or post a comment, for others to see, at the bottom of this article. Here's the question...

Today, if you found out that you had 30 days left on this earth, what would you do?

What items would immediately shoot to the top of your personal "to-do" list? How would your life be different after receiving the news? Take some time to mull this over and let me know what you came up with.

"Go Fish" Class This Wednesday

CCC has historically offered more in-depth adult Bible studies on Wednesday evenings. That tradition will continue because we see that value of studying God's word so it can serve as the foundation for our lives. Dave Pfingst will be teaching an in-depth study titled "Beginnings" this Wednesday evening at 7PM. As leaders we are committed to CCC being deeply rooted in God's word.

Yet, we also hold strongly to another biblical mandate for leaders. A huge part of our calling as leaders is to equip God's people for works of service. Ephesians 4:11-12 it says: "It was he [Jesus] who gave some to be apostles, some to be prophets, some to be evangelists, and some to be pastors and teachers, to prepare God’s people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up." We are not fulfilling our calling as leaders if we are not also providing opportunities for our members to be equipped to follow Jesus into ministry.

One way we will try to to that is to offer an additional equipping class each Wednesday night, which will run concurrently with our in-depth Bible study. Our first equipping class is a six-week study titled: "Go Fish." Brent will lead this equipping time. It is designed to help us explore God's heart for those who don't know Him and the role we can play in introducing others to Him. Along the way we will be equipped with tools that will help us make sharing our faith a natural part of our lives. The sessions include:

Week 1: We Were All Fish Once!
Week 2: Why Fish?
Week 3: Fish Guts!
Week 4: Fishing Buddies!
Week 5: Muddy Water!
Week 6:The One That God Away!

I hope you will take a chance, offer God an evening a week, and dare to be equipped for the most significant investment of your life. Those who experience an eternity with God because of your sacrifice will be worth it all.