While God might grow the church, we are responsible for cultivating an environment that supports growth.
I want to offer you five ideas. I’ve spoken about them before at www.petebrookshaw.com, and I want to reiterate them here.
Fix your attention
It is critical where we choose to fix our attention. There are many distractions. There are many things vying for our time. And in some moments there are many and varied thoughts running through our vulnerable minds.
I think, at times we've lost the art of fixing our eyes and heart upon the Lord. We mean well. We do ministry. We work hard. And some months go by and we've realised we haven't sat in his presence. We haven't discipled like it really mattered. We just got busy. We just lost our way.
We need to fix. Fix our eyes upon Jesus. As Hebrews chapter 12, verses 1-2 puts it, '...since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith.'
Start with that. Now, here's another idea to help your church grow in 2019:
Open your heart
We need to open our hearts to new opportunities. You've heard it said, that the message doesn't change, but the mediums in which we share it does. No church looks like the church in Ephesus, or the early church in Corinth. No church looks like a 13th Century monastery. No church is even the same from a few years previous. People come and go. What society thinks is important changes. The societal issues prevalent in our communities shift over time. The technology in which we connect with people rapidly changes. The theological hot potatoes of our day always move and change with the wind. Every generation has a different outlook on life.
We therefore need to be open. Open to new things. Open to exploring new ventures. Open to investing money in a different pool. Open to allowing a younger generation to try something different.
We need to be open to living on the edge of missional exploration. Even if that means some do not understand what we are doing, and why we are so passionate about it.
Isaiah chapter 43, verses 18-19 says, 'Forget the former things; do not dwell on the past. See, I am doing a new thing! Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?'
Clarity of your mission
I sense that having clarity of mission, clarity of vision and clarity of goals and expected outcomes will set apart growing and declining churches.
In a previous post on leadership development, I said that failure to set goals will mean you will always be in a perpetual cycle of vagueness. And then guess what? Without clarity, you will reach the end of 2019 and be vague about whether you achieved anything, and you'll simply end the year with a whole lot of vagueness.
And this is the truth: What happens with vagueness, stays in vagueness.
Your church consider these questions:
What is your mission?
What is your vision?
What are your values?
What are you going to stop doing?
What do you need to start doing?
Clarity is critical. And I'm beginning to be convinced that it is the big difference between healthy churches, stagnant churches and declining churches.
Understand your context
Comparison will kill you. Nearly every church leader has been there on one day or another. Smaller churches compare themselves to bigger churches. Traditional churches compare themselves to emerging churches. Cell group churches compare themselves to other cell group churches. Churches with worship bands compare themselves with other worship bands. Leaders compare their effectiveness to other leaders. And so on, and so on.
The thing is: Every church is different. Every church has a different set of problems to address. Every church has a different living and breathing kind of DNA.
Every single church.
See remember, churches are living and breathing organisms. People. People who journey together. Who try to change the world together. We cannot compare. But we can do one thing:
We can seek to understand the current context in which we minister. We can seek to learn the history of our church (each unique even to the church down the road). We can seek to understand the complexities that exist and discover how to address them. We can celebrate what God is doing, that is always unique to the church in the adjacent suburb.
I am challenged. Instead of spending my mental energy trying to compare how effective or otherwise my church is compared to other denominational success stories, I want to spend my energy understanding my current context.
Who has God called us to reach?
How has God called us to evangelise?
What social issues are the ones we need to invest our time and energy into?
What would good discipleship look like in my context?
How do I develop a passionate, faith-filled, worshipful community amid God's people?
Share your journey
I want to be honest with you right now. I think when I was younger in ministry, people were projects. I desperately wanted to see the church grow, but people were just numbers. People were there to be pastorally manipulated to achieve ministry outcomes. Volunteers helping in church ministry were just there to tick the box, so that I felt good that we had 'been successful.'
I feel like in recent years, my heart for people has grown. Relationships are now key for me. This is about people joining together, to make a difference and to do it together in the context of community. People are not means to an end to fulfil a ministry task. Rather, God's people join together to change the world.
We do ministry in the context of relationship as we love each other (John chapter 15, verse 17) and pray for one another (James chapter 5, verse 16). We share the journey together.
So take this acronym and apply it now:
Fix your attention on the Lord.
Open your heart to new opportunities
Clarity will develop; ask deeper questions about your purpose and direction
Understand the context in which your church does ministry
Share your journey with others as a church community
Pete Brookshaw is the Senior Minister of The Salvation Army Craigieburn. He has a Bachelor of both Business and Theology and is passionate about the church being dynamic and effective in the world and creating communities of faith that are outward-focused, innovative, passionate about the lost and committed to societal change. He has been blogging since 2006 at http://www.petebrookshaw.com about leadership and faith and you can find him on:
Facebook: www.facebook.com/petebrookshaw
Twitter: www.twitter.com/petebrookshaw
Peter Brookshaw’s previous articles may be viewed at http://www.pressserviceinternational.org/peter-brookshaw.html