Church Wake-Up Call

A Ministries Management Approach That is Purpose-Oriented and Inter-Generational in Outreach

William Benke, Le Etta Benke, Robert E Stevens, David L Loudon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317720102
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Negocios en general

Is your church viable in the changing marketplace of today--and tomorrow?Today's church market is comprised of four cultural paradigms--Youth, Baby Busters (Generation X), Baby Boomers, and Pre-Boomers. Each has unique characteristics in terms of attitudes, spiritual orientation, values, emotional needs, moral perspective, and lifestyle. This implies significant changes for the church--new approaches to ministry and different methods of communication and interface. Church Wake-Up Call's unique "Ministries Matrix" approach provides effective management techniques to help you define and evaluate duties, priorities, and remedial actions for the future of your ministry in today's multigenerational context.Church Wake-Up Call will inform and enlighten you on these subjects:

• understanding and using the Ministries Matrix to define purposes and priorities for your church
• eirecting your ministry toward a particular age group without compromising the church's message
• increasing your church's visibility
• structuring your church's management organization
• creating an effective outreach program... and more!

Although the book is oriented toward churches and their leadership and has been written largely from an evangelical Christian perspective, the descriptive information regarding each of the generational categories that comprise today's populace is applicable to all Christian organizations, whether they be evangelical or mainline Protestant, Catholic or parachurch. Similarly, the management system, which integrates defined purposes, priorities, and programming options into a well-coordinated plan of action, can be applied by all such organizations.

 

Chapter 1

Introduction and Overview

 

 

The scene is a familiar one. The church board is meeting with the Building Committee to consider the recommendations from that committee on the proposed Christian education building. The committee presents a thorough and well-written report complete with architectural drawings, cost estimates, financing options, and a construction timetable. The excitement heightens as the pastor endorses the project and encourages the board to approve the plan.

The board votes unanimously to “take this step of faith.” Immediately the Building Committee goes into action. A congregational kick-off meeting is held. Plans are made to make personal visits to each member’s home to communicate the building plans and solicit pledges. A huge “thermometer” display, which is updated weekly, is erected in a corner of the social hall, showing the financial progress of raising the needed funds or commitments. A careful search is made for the general contractor who will do the best work at the lowest price. Subcontractor bids are reviewed, related negotiations carried out, and contracts signed. The maze of local government permits, environmental impact statements, and other regulatory paperwork is eventually accomplished and the necessary approvals are obtained. Financing arrangements are worked out with the lending institution, and community meetings are held to answer questions and allay fears that the building program will cause neighborhood disruption and traffic problems. The local newspapers are alerted and somehow men and women freely give of their time to attend long evening meetings to work out the thousands of details associated with a building program. God blesses, it seems, and there is a collective enthusiasm and commitment of purpose that soon converts plans, financial targets, contracts, and schedule deadlines into realities. In time, the building is completed. A dedication service is held with denominational dignitaries—and then the pastor and his church leaders return home to get reacquainted with their families!

Another scene is just as familiar. It is the monthly church board meeting that carries out routine oversight functions of the church. The typical focus of these meetings centers on verbal reports by leaders concerning various ministry areas, with the primary purpose of addressing problems, decisions, and approvals that rise to the church board level of responsibility or authority. It also deals with unusual spiritual problems or congregational needs that may surface. The underlying philosophy is to leave well enough alone if things are running smoothly, and to focus primarily on problems and nonroutine situations. Except when problem issues or special situations arise (such as the new building program), the collective wisdom can be summed up in those well-known adages, “Don’t rock the boat,” and “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” This philosophy of the status quo has the tendency to delay decisive action until programs become moribund and ministry rigor mortis begins to set in. In today’s environment of dramatic societal change, this management style is a formula for stagnation and decline.

The paradox between these two scenes suggests that often different management styles exist for different types of church functions. One is the general administrative functions, such as financial management, recordkeeping, capital expansions, building and grounds maintenance, secretarial and clerical support, and other similar overhead functions that provide the setting or environment for the church to operate. The other major category is church ministries. This refers to all of the programs that, in one way or another, reach out to, communicate with, or serve people in the church and community. The two different scenes described demonstrate how two different management styles often prevail over each category. A proactive approach, such as that described for the Building Committee, is frequently the case for the administrative category or special projects. The ministries category, however, tends to be characterized in many churches by a reactive approach (reaction to problems), such as that described for the church board meeting, where maintaining status quo and persistence in an outdated ministry paradigm is the norm.

Imagine what might happen if the church board adopted the management style of the Building Committee in the current environment of cultural change in which churches must adapt to new ministry approaches if they are to remain vibrant and relevant. One in which programs and ministries were critically reviewed, planned, financed, approached with enthusiasm toward well-defined purposes, and then monitored in terms of compliance, as was the building program. The impact on the non-Christian community would likely be quite dramatic. Unfortunately, churches often fall into a pattern of running ministries based on tradition rather than on current relevance.

In many respects, the church board is to the church what the board of directors is to the commercial corporation. However, there is one glaring difference. The primary focus of the corporate board of directors is on a single bottom-line criterion—profitability. Almost everything, directly or indirectly, revolves around this key index. Expected financial results are either achieved or serious attention is promptly directed toward changes to programs or personnel, or possibly both. The stockholders demand such action.

Most churches do not have such a “bottom-line” mentality when it comes to ministries. But they can and should. A bottom-line approach for churches, however, must center on their spiritual purposes. This is the subject of Chapter 5. For most churches, these purposes have to do with evangelism, discipleship, worship, fellowship, mutual caring, community service, and other people-oriented outreaches. But how can such considerations be translated into a “bottom line” that provides the basis for monitoring, evaluating, redirecting, canceling, revitalizing, or replacing current programs or ministries, as appropriate? Some individual ministries lend themselves to the use of statistical measures of performance, and this is addressed elsewhere. But the effectiveness of the church ministry as a whole cannot be reduced to a single statistical index in the way that is possible for commercial corporations. However, church ministries can be reviewed periodically in terms of their individual and collective effectiveness to the “bottom-line” spiritual purposes of the church and the relative priorities of those purposes. For example, if, after a process in which the church’s purposes (the reason for which it exists) are clearly defined and prioritized, it is determined that evangelism is a top purpose and priority, then the orientation and focus of an appropriate number of programs ought to be geared toward that end, and new converts should be the result. If an evaluation of program ministries reveals otherwise, there is an obvious problem. Namely, an imbalance exists between the desired spiritual emphasis—the “bottom-line” purposes of the church and its relative priorities—and the way the church is utilizing its people and resources. The corrective action called for may be to reorient certain programs or ministries, launch new ones, or possibly cancel and replace others in order to bring evangelistic outreach back into proper balance.

Sounds simple enough. But in reality a wide divergence will often be found between the typical programs that collectively comprise the total church ministry and the spiritual purposes for which it exists, once they have been properly defined. Part of the problem is that most churches never get around to defining in specific terms the purposes and the program objectives into which purposes must ultimately be translated. Often programs and ministries are sustained because they have always been done that way. They become institutionalized on the basis of time and tradition and are never critically reviewed or challenged as to current relevancy. It is like the proverbial frog placed in cool water that is gradually heated until it reaches a boil, and the poor frog ends up cooked without realizing the gradual change in environment that led to its demise.

Another corollary is the traditional Sunday 11:00 a.m. worship hour, even though this time slot was apparently originally selected to accommodate farmers who needed to milk their cows before attending church. No criticism is intended concerning the 11:00 a.m. worship hour. The intent is simply to illustrate that choosing 11:00 a.m. as the best time ought to be based on today’s considerations rather than when cows need milking. We fall into these “ministry ruts” based on past tradition rather than current relevancy, and the result can be very negative. This tendency is reinforced by our natural human inclination to resist change.

The role of church leadership in evaluating, monitoring, and assuring programs that fulfill its spiritual purposes is essential if the church is to adapt to societal changes that in recent decades have been quite dramatic. During the past twenty-five years or so, the Baby Boomers (those born from 1946 to 1964) have been the dominant influence in American society and in recent cultural changes. Coming to the forefront today is Generation X or the Baby Busters (those born from 1965 to 1984) and the youth generation, and with them further changes in attitudes, values, and cultural influences. The cultural changes being ushered in through these generational groups, the nature and implications of which are discussed in later chapters, are dramatic and must be accommodated in a positive way if the church is to remain relevant. In this cultural transition, a significant portion of the population has bought in to the new worldview of postmodernism. In this viewpoint, philosophical relativism is embraced and, since it rejects scriptural authority, no absolute truths or moral standards exist, at least none that we are capable of establishing or grasping. This philosophical shift has ushered in the trend toward religious pluralism, sexual perversion, and increasing violence—even among children, as schools replace the teaching of traditional values with postmodernist philosophy, the devaluation of human life, and increasing opposition to Judeo-Christian ethics based upon biblical truth. With these societal changes comes the need for ministry changes. Determining the appropriate nature of such changes is complicated because we live in a multicultural rather than a culturally monolithic society. “Multicultural” is used here in the context of differences between the four generational categories referred to, namely, Youth, Generation X, Baby Boomers, and Pre-Boomers. Multiculturalism, or cultural diversity, also exists today in terms of racial, ethnic, and other considerations that are not generation based. This other aspect of multiculturalism is not the focus of this book. Generational multiculturalism transcends other cultural differences in that all racial and ethnic groups also embody the generation-based cultural dimensions.

The ministry of the church must be structured to accommodate these considerations and communicate the Christian message to all generational categories. This may imply different methods of interface and communication to each. But it does not imply the need to compromise the message. Culture changes but God does not. We do not have to be shaped by our culture, but we will find it increasingly necessary to exchange comfortable familiarities for new approaches that are better adapted to the change.

The challenge before the church today is greater than it has ever been. Although surveys differ somewhat in their findings, it appears that as many as 60 percent of all American adults do not currently attend church on a consistent basis. With an adult population of about 200 million, this equates to roughly 120 million adults who do not attend church regularly, compared with about 80 million who do. Surveys by George Barna’s research organization indicate that only about half of all churchgoers are born-again Christians and, of those who do not attend regularly, about 17 percent are trusting Christ alone for salvation.¹ Based on these statistics and a little arithmetic, the picture depicted by the Exhibit 1.1 matrix emerges and suggests the following:

1. Seventy percent of American adults are not born-again Christians and, as indicated above, about 60 percent are unchurched. This translates into a huge mission field and outreach challenge to the church.

2. Since 10 percent of Americans do not regularly attend church but are professing Christians, the church apparently is failing to effectively minister to the needs of a large segment of believers.

3. Since 20 percent of Americans attend church but are not Christians, they are either involved in churches that do not proclaim an evangelical Christian message or the message is not getting across. In either case, this segment also represents a huge outreach opportunity.

The purpose of this book is to provide some simple but effective techniques and principles for church leaders interested in considering a more systematic and proactive church management style to meet this challenge of change, as opposed to the more informal reactive emphasis that is often the norm. It is intended as a tool for reflective thinking, group discussion, and sharing by local church leaders as they contemplate where they want to take their church in the days and years ahead. By design, the book is relatively short, easy to read, and the basic ideas for church planning and oversight are quite simple. But sometimes the simple, and what becomes the obvious, once recognized, needs to be called to our attention since, as the old adage goes, “We lose sight of the forest for the trees.” This book seeks to stimulate those in church leadership roles to take a fresh look at things in an objective way that may lead to some creative thinking and new strategies for ministries that will help steer their church to new heights in terms of fulfilling its mission.

EXHIBIT 1.1. The Market Challenge

Such a fresh look, along with the techniques outlined in this book, are believed to offer the potential of stirring the same degree of enthusiasm, energy, and expertise that we experience in building programs and other administrative functions to the areas of evangelism, discipleship, mutual support and encouragement, and other spiritual outreach ministries. These ministries, after all, also constitute a building program. “[W]e will in all things grow up into him who is the Head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work” (Ephesians 4:15–16 NIV).

The next two chapters focus on the market and information concerning ministry priorities that appear to be relevant in this market. The balance of the book then addresses a ministries management process, which is designed for use by churches in establishing a purpose-oriented ministries program.

A brief word to those in the ministry. Because you are people and program oriented, you will likely be much more comfortable with the first part of the book that deals with the market and ministries than with the latter part that focuses on a management process. But this process is a vital missing ingredient in the church today in terms of establishing a dynamic structured plan for a total ministry that responds to well-thought-out purposes, once these purposes are clearly defined. It involves a thought process that is lacking in the church today, largely because spiritual leaders are not usually business oriented and also because seminaries and Bible schools do not teach Management 101. But the local church is a human organization, and to function effectively it needs to adopt many of the same time-proven management methods that commercial corporations employ. So please take the time to understand the process, and then the portion of the book that deals with people and ministries will take on added significance as they are viewed in the context of a structured total plan.

Chapter 2

The Market

Effective use of any ministries management system begins with an understanding of the market, namely the population to which the church seeks to minister. In describing this market, we have relied upon those much more knowledgeable than ourselves on the subject and refer frequently to their findings and writings. Our purpose is to provide an overview perspective of the market, as well as a synopsis of the key characteristics of its several components. This is foundational to evaluating current ministries and the devel...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• About the Authors
• Contents
• Preface
• Chapter 1. Introduction and Overview
• Chapter 2. The Market
• Chapter 3. Priorities
• Chapter 4. A Word About Management
• Chapter 5. Purposes
• Chapter 6. Using the Ministries Matrix
• Chapter 7. Developing a Ministries Strategy
• Chapter 8. Visibility
• Chapter 9. Organization
• Chapter 10. The Challenge of Change
• Notes
• Recommended Reading
• Index