By Gregg Boll, Executive Director of Missions
In last month’s article, I listed five factors (below), that we routinely find to be true of most plateaued or declining churches. In this final article, I want to offer some concrete recommendations about how you can address any of the areas below in which you believe your church needs improvement.
Challenge #1 – Missional Drift – The church has forgotten its God-given mission and reason for being. The church doesn’t see itself as a missionary to the community that continually reevaluates its ministry and strategy, but rather simply repeats its calendar of activities year after year, which over time becomes more about serving members’ preferences than accomplishing the biblical mission of the church.
Potential Strategy/Action – Participate in the Facilitating Renewal Guide developed by Resound. We can help you lead this with your key lay leaders. We can help you lead your staff and/or key lay leaders through a strategic planning exercise to help you develop a plan that gets the church back on mission.
Challenge #2 – No intentional, robust process of making disciples. There is little or no clear communication of what a disciple is or what mature disciples does.
Potential Strategy/Action – The pastor and a few key leaders should attend the Disciple Making Cohort led by Jason Allen of Life Connection, or have him come and personally consult with you and your church to establish a disciple-making culture. The Missouri Baptist Convention has resources and personnel who can help you with this. Brian or I, either one, can help you with this.
Challenge #3 – No evangelistic urgency about the lostness of people outside of Christ. The church has no strategy for, training of, or expectation of its members to share their faith.
Potential Strategy/Action – Attend the NAMB One Day Evangelistic Event on March 9, 10:30 – 1:30 at First Baptist Church of Blue Springs. Here is the registration link: https://web.cvent.com/event/544863ab-e242-437a-bced-01a3b8f0c512/regProcessStep1
Or, hold an Evangelism Training Day led by Victor Boll, pastor of Discipleship/Evangelism/Mobilization at South Haven Baptist Church. We can help you develop an evangelistic culture of identifying, praying for, connecting with, and sharing the gospel with lost and unchurched people. Lead your church to implement the strategy called The Art of Neighboring, which will mobilize the people in your church to live intentionally and on mission to the people who live in their neighborhood. Or, consider using the Love KC strategy, led by Gary Kendall, for equipping your members for greater evangelistic engagement with their neighbors. Both The Art of Neighboring and Love KC strategies can be used with the Bless Every Home app, which helps you track and have a powerful visual of how many households are being impacted by your members. Here is the link to the app: https://app.blesseveryhome.com/
Challenge #4 – The church does not engage its community with the gospel and becomes insulated from the community around it.
Potential Strategy/Action – Do the community survey as part of the Resound Renewal Process. Allow us to order a demographic study of your community to help identify unmet needs and knowledge of your community that would inform your church’s local missions strategy. Have your people prayer walk the neighborhoods around your church, stopping to ask for permission to pray with residents you encounter. Hold a “Drive In For Prayer” event in your church parking lot and do a brief survey of people’s needs before praying. Interview community leaders, school administrators, fire, and police to discover pressing community needs. Do a Member Map of all attenders and members of your church to see if most members live inside or outside the community surrounding the church. If most members live outside of the community, this presents special challenges to reaching your community.
Challenge #5 – The failure of church leadership/pastors to lead the church to prioritize, communicate, and equip their members to be on mission as disciple-making disciples.
Potential Strategy/Action – This is really the most important of all five issues that churches must address in reversing decline and correcting mission drift. There must be an intentional, coordinated effort by pastors to lead the church towards renewal and Kingdom priorities. We recommend that you participate in the monthly Pastor’s Huddle, where you will learn leadership skills and be encouraged to implement needed change in your church in ways that will not split the church or cost you your job. Next, you could take the Corpus Pastoral Readiness Assessment, which will evaluate your strengths and weakness thus allowing you to get mentoring and direction in strengthening your leadership. Read one leadership book, such as Tempered Resilience or Canoeing the Mountains by Bolsinger, Leading Major Change by Iorg, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Covey, or Leading Change by Kotter, just to name a few. Find an effective, seasoned pastor with a track record of fruitful ministry to mentor you and to hold you accountable to achieve measurable progress and goals in pastoral leadership.
