community

Congregations have personalities. It may not be obvious to you but it is to every visitor.

Often congregations think that their congregation’s personality is an extension of their pastor’s personal charisma. Sometimes that’s true, but no church can rely on this for long.

If your visitors sit through a worship service led by one or two leaders who never stray from the script (so to speak), they will sense that the congregation’s attitude is one of submission—a place where the only way to fit in is to follow.

If your worship leaders open the experience to each person in attendance, visitors are far more likely to envision themselves as participants in community.

It’s a matter of attitude. That’s part of branding.

Apple makes a great product but it’s branding is all attitude. Advertisements do little to list product features. Instead, the classic Mac/PC television ads pit the stodgy office worker named PC to the casual, likable, without being know-it-all, Mac.

That same difference can be sensed in church by worship visitors.

A lot of this has to do with self-confidence. Are people afraid to speak up in worship? Are they timid to greet visitors and engage in conversation with strangers?. You can’t evangelize without this. But it’s rarer than you might think. Redeemer’s Ambassadors have visited 50 congregations and only about a third of them have made any attempt to talk with us—and very few of those who did were pastors.

As you start to develop your branding/mission campaign, work with your people to help them break from their comfort zone. It can work magic.

This week on the television reality show X Factor, the judges set out to eliminate all but 24 from a field of about 60. The talent level is high and the process was difficult. After grueling debate four judges chose 24 relieved contestants to move forward in the competition.

Judges’ remorse set in quickly. They called about 15 eliminated contestants back. All but two of them had entered the competition as solo artists. The judges put that aside and gave them one more chance, but this time they would perform as members of a group.

This exercise changed the competition’s playing field. These contestants suddenly had to switch from trying to best each other, to trying to complement one another. When they performed together for the first time four days later, they had been transformed. Each contestant had discovered something new about themselves. The collective performance out-shined their individual efforts.

Find ways to mix things up a bit in your congregation.

• Make an effort to talk to different people at fellowship.
• Ask people who don’t usually work together to take a leadership role together in a short-term project.
• Hold a pot luck dinner but ask people to sit together by birth month or season or just have them pull a table number from a bowl. Give each table a skit, song, or activity to perform together at an impromptu talent show after the meal. This is an icebreaker and it encourages them to work together in a fun setting.
• Have a progressive dinner at holiday time, where you visit each other’s homes.
• Ask members in what way they’d like to participate in worship, Don’t give them a list of things you want them to do (although there is a place for this, too). For this purpose, you want to find out what’s on their minds and how they, if given the chance, would shape the worship experience.
• Ask two or three people to do the job usually done by just one.

Such activities build community. This will help your congregation’s personality to develop and shine. Your mission will radiate with every kind work, act or smile.

Soon your church will be a church with attitude — and that can be a good thing. Attitudes give mission definition. People want to know there is something behind the words.