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August 2012

Why the Small Church Is the Future of Christianity

Church hierarchies love big churches. They offer a sense of accomplishment and power. Big churches can be featured in the résumé and portfolio of each pastor or bishop that played any hand in their growth—or who rode the coattails of predecessors.

Big churches make church leaders feel rich. There is the illusion that large churches will provide the revenue to keep things going. There is short-term truth in that. In the long-term, even larger congregations are going to have to hoard more of their offerings to keep the lights on.

Little churches seem like work. In reality, they probably demand less from the regional body. They have been forced to me more self-sufficient and the more self-sufficient they are, the less money they share with regional body—the foundation for bad relationships!

If you study church statistics, you will find that big churches are in decline, too. One of the largest congregations in our area lost a third of its members and income in the last ten years. They’ll get along fine for a while, continuing to support a large staff and plant while offerings wane, but they are traveling downhill on a wide highway. They will be sending less and less to the regional body.

Meanwhile, the self-sufficient small churches are gaining strength because the ways of the world are handing them tools that make regional bodies less important to everyone. Small churches are no longer dependent on centralized publishing houses and managers of mission services. The internet has changed that.

Large churches will have a hard time breaking from traditions, established customs and expensive obligations. Small churches have no choice but to use all the new resources to mission advantage.

The future of the church is growing today — in the small congregations.

Somewhere in church hierarchical thinking there is a tipping point where the value of the church property becomes greater than the value of the people who own the property. At that point the people and mission become expendable. And the attitude of regional bodies can change from shepherd to predator. The tipping point is reached more quickly when the regional body is, itself, scrambling to meet expenses. These are dangerous times for any church with average weekly attendance of 50 or less.

Here is what is happening in many small churches across the United States. (Our parable, Undercover Bishop, tells the story.)

  • Small churches, ignored by regional bodies, are free to redefine church.
  • When regional bodies fail to find adequate professional leadership, small congregations develop their own.
  • When the centralized church publishes worship materials and curriculum designed for use with professional leadership in graded settings, small churches develop methods that work with small, mixed groups led by members.
  • Large churches can get by with 20% of members contributing 80% to ministry. Small churches  can’t survive if they allow the bored and uninvolved to define their mission. They will seek the passionate and they will find them.
  • While members of large churches can wait for someone else to carry the ball, members of small churches scramble to recover fumbles and head for the goal.
  • They will develop leaders, recognized on the local scene, if not by the regional bodies, further alienating neighborhood churches.

The pendulum will swing back. Neighborhood ministries will be valued again. There will be a new tipping point. Land will be needed to conduct ministries in neighborhoods where they have squandered congregational assets on their own salaries. With a little luck, some of these churches will still be open.

24 Aug 2012

Does Your Community Have patch.com?

If so, use it!

Patch.com is an innovative news source, operated by AOL (America OnLine), headquartered in New York, but very specifically neighborhood-based.

Here is their corporate site explaining their philosophy and introducing their key officials.

Note their “mission” list (to use church terminology).

Patch.com allows people in their neighborhoods to:

  • Keep up with news and events
  • Check out photos and videos from around town
  • Learn more about local businesses and the people behind them
  • Participate in discussions
  • Share your perspectives via our Local Voices blogging platform
  • Submit your own announcements, photos, and reviews

Go to patch.com. You will see a box asking you to identify your state. Once you submit your state,  a list of neighborhoods with their own Patch comes up. See if your neighborhood has a Patch. Large cities will have neighborhood-specific sites. Smaller towns might have their own Patch or be linked with a nearby town or township.

Patch is the most accessible news source for churches and charities. You can submit your events to a neighborhood calendar. You can post your news stories, photos, and even videos. You can start your own patch blog and comment on things that are going on in your neighborhood from your congregation’s point of view. You can respond to dialog on neighborhood topics. You can publicize your response to local needs. You can find out about your neighborhood schools and businesses. You can reach your neighborhoods EVERY DAY!

If your neighborhood has a patch.com, you are no longer beholding to the daily or weekly print media that must pick and choose news to fit their publishing budget and space. This is GOOD NEWS for every church. You don’t have to be mindful of deadlines a week in advance!

Use it wisely! Remember social media works best when we emphasize others. You can write about yourself, but don’t upload all your photos from the last pot luck dinner. Choose one good photo from an event that impacts the community and write a newsy caption. Take 30-second videos from participants in worthy events (charity runs, neighborhood projects). Your time on Patch will be best spent responding to what others publish. Using patch.com will help churches better understand and serve their communities.

24 Aug 2012

New Life Ministries in Pakistan Sent Some Photos

Visit their page to see more of their ministry.

23 Aug 2012

Practicing Happiness Techniques in Worship: Part 5 of 5

Random Acts of Kindness

The last of the five steps recommended by The Happiness Advantage author, Shawn Achor is to practice random acts of kindness. 

What fun!

Achor starts by explaining that this is as simple as smiling at the person you pass on the street or in a public hallway. He recommends the 10-5 rule. Make eye contact and smile at everyone who comes within 10 feet. Greet anyone who comes within five feet of you.

He claims remarkable results. The idea was tested by a hospital. The program was implemented over the objection of doctors who considered it beneath their dignity.

The result: happiness spread—even among the doctors who resisted. Soon, the hospital gained a reputation of being a pleasant place that people chose to visit and staff opted to stay even when offered more lucrative positions elsewhere.

Similarly, there is a management technique that grew from the hotel industry. If a guest brings you a problem, you own the problem until it is solved — even if it’s not your job. This can be effective in any setting. In most grocery stores, a customer who asks where they will find the canned vegetables is told, “Uh, try Aisle 8.” In a popular grocery store, the employee (who might be stocking shelves or coming back from break) answers a customer query like this: “I’ll show you! Please follow me!” It makes a difference.

How does this apply to church life?

Our Ambassador visits reveal friendliness is harder than it sounds. Sometimes we stand as wall flowers in the church narthex as people pass by never making eye contact.

The most genuinely friendly church we visited was a small congregation, St. Michael’s in Fishtown. People greeted us on the street before we entered. Virtually every member approached us. The service had a greeting section built into the worship service. Friendliness is part of their culture.

A larger church, St. Paul’s in Ardmore, had an official greeting station, staffed by volunteers. They met us as we entered the sanctuary and even offered us a mug filled with candy as we left.

Both are good options, but one makes “friendliness” the job of a few. The other weaves it into their entire church life.

Churches of any size can be awkward at the social graces. Not just the laity! Often, pastors make no attempt to circulate during fellowship, often staying in a hallway or the sanctuary chatting with just one or two members.

Achor’s ideas might help us get over that. Start by enlisting and training leaders. Modeling by the pastor and lay leaders will go a long way to making it part of a congregation’s culture.

In addition to the personal greeting there is the power of greeting cards. Redeemer uses cards. We send about three a week. Our Ambassadors usually follow visits with custom greeting cards. Think what a card in the mail means to leaders, students, homebound or elderly.

Random acts of kindness can be so simple. In one church visited by our Ambassadors an older woman made it her duty to sit near us and guide us through the service. It was a lovely gesture.

It is tempting to list some acts of kindness, but listing them makes them self-serving and diminishes their value as spontaneous and heartfelt. Start with eye contact and a word of greeting and let kindness flow.

Remember: give it three months before evaluating!

photo credit: Nina Matthews Photography via photo pin cc (retouched)

23 Aug 2012

Practicing Happiness Techniques in Worship: Part 4 of 5

he meditates day and nightMeditation

But his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night.

— Psalm 1

Meditation doesn’t come easily to me, but a few years ago I took a course in yoga.

I went to class and was politely dubious. The teachers were enthusiastic and likable. They had created a beautiful studio. But I felt so sorry for them. Next door there seemed to be a factory or a workshop and the noise of the machines was terribly distracting. I wondered why they had chosen such a loud location for their lovely studio.

It was a few sessions before I realized there was no factory or workshop next door. The noise was an “oooohhm” machine. The noise was intentional and it was meant to help us meditate. 

Mediation can be unsettling. A church leader routinely called for a moment of silence at meetings when someone in the congregation died. All heads would bow. After only a few seconds he would end the meditation with a brusk, “That’s enough!”

But apparently there is something to it. Here is a link to an ABC news report and video from about a year ago.

Shawn Acher claims that just a few minutes of meditation will increase happiness, by diverting attention from our tendency to multitask. Studies show that, as proud as we are of our ability to do many things at once, it isn’t really a good idea.

Meditation is used in some denominations more than others. Lutherans tend to abhor a vacuum in worship. We fill every moment with words or music. There is nothing more awkward than an organist losing the page in the hymnal and fumbling for endless moments of nothing.

Redeemer’s experience was tempered a bit. East Falls has a fine Quaker School, which many of our children attended. They experienced the meditative ways of the Quakers—a few minutes in  kindergarten to a full hour in high school. The children claimed to like it. It influenced our members’ tolerance for meditation. There is nothing wrong with a little empty space in a liturgy.

On a few of our Ambassador visits, there was time for mediation built into the service, usually after the sermon. Communion is also a time when members can meditate while waiting for others. Some people develop the habit of arriving early at church to enjoy a quiet moment.

While many churches open Easter worship with trumpet heralds or the organ equivalent, one small country church played a nature CD with the bird calls and gurgling brook garden sounds. It was very effective!

Like every other step in the Happiness Advantage. It’s a matter of creating a habit.

How can we encourage meditation. Here are some ideas.

  • Orthodox Christians use icons to focus their meditation. Use interesting art on your bulletins as a meditation tool. There is a wealth of images available on the internet. Many simply require a credit line as permission to use.
  • Find an inspirational quote. In worship, we focus naturally on scripture. There is a wealth of Christian thought expressed by theologians and poets that can fuel meditation.
  • Open the church for meditation during the week.
  • Teach simple meditation techniques. Concentrating on breathing is key. Here are some links that might help:http://www.yogajournal.com/for_teachers/1856

    http://www.artofliving.org/teach-meditation

  • Slow the pace of worship. Build some quiet in between sections of the liturgy.
  • Use a meditation CD.

However you decide to introduce meditation into your worship, remember to give it three months before evaluating.

22 Aug 2012

Tuesdays Are Object Lesson Days

abc's of object lessonsWe never set out to be experts in object lessons, although we were major contributors to a site specializing in children’s sermons before we (and our children) were evicted from our church.

Strange things can happen on the internet. Last November we visited a small church in Fort Washington, Pa. We wrote about the pastor delivering an object lesson in a church where there were no children present. It seemed to be more popular with adults than such sermons are with children.

That post, now about nine months old, still gets daily search engine traffic. In response to this interest, we have started to post an object lesson corresponding to the lectionary readings for the upcoming Sunday. We’ve posted about six so far and aim to try to add a new post featuring Adult Object Lessons each Tuesday.

Although we use an object (most of the time) sometimes we just present ideas for interactive lessons with adults. Many can be adapted for use with both children and adults—sometimes encouraging the age extremes to engage with one another.

We leave most of the theological interpretation to theologians. We just make some suggestions on how the topic might be handled.

We’re not quite sure what we are getting into or how much discipline it will take, but we’ll make the effort. Hope it helps!

photo credit: nettsu via photo pin cc

21 Aug 2012

Prayer Request for Preaching Convention in Pakistan

A 2×2 member church, New Life Ministries, is participating in a two-day Preaching Convention in Faisalabad, Pakistan. This is a very active ministry in a part of the world where Christians are in the minority. Please pray for their special convention. I’ve asked them to send a report and pictures, so we’ll try to follow up!

21 Aug 2012

Practicing Happiness Techniques in Worship: Part 3 of 5

Cat is stretching. Exercise!Exercise for Happiness

The third suggestion from Shawn Achor’s Happiness Advantage is EXERCISE.

That’s a tough one to apply to congregational life, but let’s not dismiss it too quickly.

We Lutherans are known for standing up and sitting down. Many churches kneel and there is meaning in the physical acts. We stand to address God and honor the Gospel. We kneel in penitence and contrition. But this hardly qualifies as exercise!

At summer church camp we recognize the importance of exercise, sort of! We gather in the morning at the flagpole or cross, greet one another with a joke, read a short scripture and say a prayer. But included in the mix we do a bit of calisthenics. They are silly versions of standard exercises. My favorite is “doing squat.” As effortless at these “exercises” are, they serve a purpose. They help the camp wake up, laugh together and bond for the day’s activities. There is power in just having fun together. Exercise is a good option for making that happen.

So how can congregations exercise? In the olden days (within memory), most congregations had group exercise — bowling, baseball or basketball. Churches banded together to form leagues, creating interdenominational fellowship. This idea could be revived. Redeemer sponsored a community morning walk which catered to the less able. It was held at the community park which covers the area of two or three blocks. Those who have difficulty getting outdoor exercise on their own, met, enjoyed one another’s company and did a few laps around the park with safety and support of numbers. Playground playdates for young families are another exercise option. Yoga classes might be popular. Or teach liturgical dance! What if your liturgical dancers invited the congregation to join them!? Assign them some movements they could do in place to add to the praise of dance.

Think of what exercise options might be helpful to your congregation. Your worship experience might change if people gather having been energized during the week through social and physical benefits of exercise.

If nothing else, you can always invite the congregation to give you one or two stretches before worship!

photo credit: Kong SG via photo pin cc
21 Aug 2012

Adult Object Lesson: August 26, 2012

Joshua 24:1-2a, 14-18, Psalm 34:15-22,  Ephesians 6:10-20, John 6:56-69

It is time to make a choice.

This Sunday’s scripture readings are the climax to a series of readings centered on the sixth chapter of John. For several weeks, we have followed the gospel writer’s narrative as the tension builds.

A lot has happened. Sick have been healed. Multitudes have been fed. Much preaching and teaching has taken place.

Jesus has returned to the city from the Galilean “suburbs” and is now speaking from the temple in Capernaum. He, like Joshua, is asking his followers to make a choice.

The end of Chapter 6 is paired with the reading from Joshua where the successor to Moses stands on the ground made holy by the patriarch Abram and defines the choice before them. Worship the Gods of their pagan neighbors or worship the God of Israel who led them out of captivity.

Write the word “BELIEVE” on two pieces of paper. Fold the papers so that they fit in your closed hand. Put one in each of your hands and hold them out. Ask a member of your congregation to choose one.

Of course, as the paper is unfolded, the word BELIEVE will appear. Talk about what it means to believe. It is an order, in one sense. Or it can be interpreted as a creed or statement of fact.

Point to Peter’s creed at the end of the Gospel. Point out that Peter’s statement of faith is made as many were beginning to desert the cause!

At the end of your talk. Reveal that the other hand holds the same message. The point is that we all choose to BELIEVE something. We can’t avoid making a choice. We will face repeated temptations to stray. We can stand with Peter and believe in God or we can flee with the others and believe in a god of convenience.

What we believe and who we follow is our decision. It’s a life-changing decision that we will be tempted to abandon.

Close with Joshua’s quote. “As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”

photo credit: chris runoff via photo pin cc
20 Aug 2012

Practicing Happiness Techniques in Worship: Part 2 of 5

Write A Daily Journal Entry

An unexamined life is not worth living.

—Socrates

Shawn Acher’s second recommendation in The Happiness Advantage is to write a daily journal entry addressing in depth something that added joy or happiness to your life.

Writing things down has a power. Motivational experts often give advice to commit hopes, goals, or intentions to paper to increase the prospects of making them reality. “Post your goal on the whiteboard. Make a “to do” list.” The act of writing changes the brain’s priorities. It will help you solve problems and determine direction. Acher adds, it will also help you be happy.

There is something to the discipline of doing something daily. Blogging experts always advise posting two or three times a week. Daily if possible.

Some of the most faithful Redeemer members are dedicated daily readers of devotional books. Even in our exile we have kept up Redeemer’s subscription to the ELCA devotional book, Word in Season. Our members purchase multiple copies.

Enthusiasm for daily devotional readings doesn’t stop there. Redeemer members still stop by other East Falls churches, share extra books and pick up copies of other denomination’s devotional booklets. They often come to worship eager to compare readings from the different publications.

One recent Sunday morning we met at a local bar/restaurant. (Our eviction from God’s house leads us to the strangest places!)

We hadn’t planned an Ambassador visit that morning, but we like to get together regardless. While we awaited breakfast one member said, “Let’s read from our devotional booklets and have a prayer.” She reached for her purse and tapped her arsenal of dog-eared booklets, leafed through them, and chose some readings. We sat in that bar and had our morning worship!

Daily devotions is a discipline which has contributed to our ongoing happiness even under persecution.

But Achor is advising writing! That’s a bit different! How can this enhance congregational life?

IDEA 1:

Try asking your members to write happiness experiences in the form of devotional illustrations. Each week list the daily lectionary scripture readings in your worship bulletin. You can find them online. Invite members to share some of their thoughts based on the readings.

IDEA 2:

Here is where your web site can be put to work. Create  a “happiness” page. You might label it “Blessings.” With permission, post your members’ writings. Compile them into a weekly newsletter and email them to your followers.

Use one or two of the best in worship.

IDEA 3:

Actually mail some writings to shut ins, students, or new members — anyone that might need a word of encouragement. You can use greeting cards or letters. Physical mail can be powerful, a meaningful departure from the digital age.

Your members will be boosting their happiness quotient and sharing the joy!

__________

Remember Acher’s advice: Give it at least 21 days! Our advice, as a group give it three months.

What ideas to you have that might make happiness journaling part of your worship life?

20 Aug 2012