There are a lot of reasons people come to church, but the church grows through the gospel only. The primary issue is not how to make our small churches large or larger, but to be faithful and see our small churches playing a large role in southern California. The priority remains the gospel, and our churches are not transforming our culture with the gospel.

According to Steve Bruce, 75% of evangelical growth is coming from our own children, and the other 25% is coming from those leaving mainline churches. He gleefully predicts that Christianity is in for a real struggle in the 21st century, because we are so out-of-touch with the culture.

Rick offers three suggestions:

Restore Credibility to the Church

Modern Christianity, particularly evangelicalism and fundamentalism, has a bad reputation in our culture. We need to ask what our critics are saying that is true of us. While much is hogwash, propaganda, false accusations, or misinformation, we still need to know why we have lost our credibility. Ignoring valid criticisms has created the environment for unfounded lies about Christianity and made our critics heroes.

Two major criticisms we must deal with to restore our credibility:

1. We have not seriously addressed our sins. We have a reputation of self-righteously pointing our fingers at the culture while minimizing our own capital sins. We need to repent to our culture, especially for the sins of division, exclusivity, racism, and many others.
2. Our critics say we are divided by race. Studies have shown this to be true — local churches tend to reflect the racial makeup of our neighborhoods. The church is modeled after secular culture, and not after the gospel. It is not OK for churches to mirror the racial makeup of our neighborhoods. Steve Bruce claims that evangelical churches thrive in large part because of racialization. This does not reflect the radical racial reconciliation which is central to the gospel.

Restore the Truth of the Gospel

From Galatians 2:11-14, where Paul labels Cephas as a hypocrite for the way that he was acting. Not acting according to "the truth of the Gospel." The issue at hand was Peter not eating with the Gentiles. Circumcision was a racial issue, not just a religious one.

The gospel was more than just a creed to be believed, but a social reality to be experienced. It was seen in Jews eating with Gentiles in Jesus’ name — cultural and racial reconciliation with the two most unexpected groups in the ancient world. This is what the church is supposed to be, but largely fails to do in north America. Our culture needs to see this lived out in the church.

Restore the Lord’s Supper

Specifically, we need to restore Paul’s version of the Lord’s Supper — the leadership of the church intentionally including people of other races and ethnicities in the meal.

Under this model, hiring a Spanish-speaking pastor to start a separate congregation is not living out the gospel. Hire someone to preach and teach in Spanish, but come together in the Lord’s Supper as a model and example of racial and cultural unity resulting from our transformation in Christ.

Appreciate and learn from each other’s cultures, but Christ comes first.

How does this compare to the "gospel" of multi-culturalism, especially within the secular university?

Many good things that we, as followers of Jesus, can affirm. The university does want to serve and save the world, but it has rejected the gospel of Jesus. Tolerance is a good thing, but it is not the gospel of reconciliation.

Ben shared lessons from his 80+ years of life and decades of ministry…

Prayer: A Prayer Emphasis and a Prayer Council

The prayer council meets every Saturday, both to pray, and to organize prayer throughout the congregation. The group has two foci: getting the church to pray and teaching the church to pray.

Summertime Evangelism

About 19.2% of the people move every year. 64% of those will move between mid-May and mid-September. Yet often they visit churches “at our very worst” — when we reduce our ministries and programs to a minimum.

Ben puts a strong emphasis on not writing off the summer, but emphasizing the opportunities to connect with those new to the community. One example — a month-long “Harvester Goes Country” theme.

While the ebb and flow in California is different than the midwest, the principle is the same.

Benevolent Program

Harvester is located in a river bottom, an area with great pockets of poverty. The church became a licensed food pantry, which required building a new building to house the program. They have since started houses for battered women, give away about 15 cars a year, and many other benevolent ministries. The church has faced challenges in helping these people take responsibility for their own souls, but the church continues to be driven by both grace and generosity.

The church’s benevolent efforts haven’t necessarily resulted in the recipients becoming followers of Jesus and church members, but instead has resulted in other people, who want to be a part of a church like this one, making those decisions as they see the church engage in community benevolence. Today the church invests $350,000 a year in community benevolence, all given over and above the general giving to the church and its other ministries.

First Christian Church of Monrovia started in 1904, peaked in growth with over 500 in the 1950s, and then gradually became a very small congregation of older adults with an average age in the 70s. During the 1990s, under new leadership, the church began to thrive and grow to about 150 people. David Mack came through the church’s recovery ministry and was called into ministry in 2002.

In 2004, just two weeks after David started his ministry degree, the senior pastor retired suddenly, which created a shock wave in the congregation, and the church quickly went from 34 to 17 people. He now serves as a bi-vocational pastor.

The church has opened its doors to other congregations to share space with them — sometimes four different congregations are meeting in the same building, including Arabic, Latino, and Anglo gatherings. They turned the empty parsonage into a recovery home; host a recovery ministry with over 1000 in weekly attendance; feed, clothe, and offer showers to the homeless in their community; and started putting 10% of all income into local and global missions.

The church’s motto comes from Matthew 25:31-40 about serving “the least” in their community.

My summary/notes of Daniel’s presentation at the Southern California Coalition of Community-Based Christian Churches.

East Hills had a legacy of debt — going into and out of ownership of their own building, for over 25 years, struggling to make the payments on a $1 million mortgage. In the summer of 2004 Great Beginnings voted to keep its doors open by a 15-12 vote.

The two churches came together as Northeast Christian Church in January of 2007. The old East Hills building was sold, clearing over $700,000. The leadership decided to give 10% of the net gain to fund the start of Kaleo Christian Fellowship in Bakersfield in January of 2008. In addition o Northeast, two other churches — Life Journey Christian Church and Christ’s Church of the Valley — collaborated to form a church planting network with Stadia to launch Kaleo.

Northeast then decided to set aside an additional $425,000 with the Church Development Fund in an account specifically earmarked for church planting. The interest on the account — over $30,000 per year — is used to further church planting. The church dreams of planting a new church every two years.

Daniel believes that, if the church is to be salt and light, it makes more sense to spread the salt and light throughout the community instead of putting it all in one pile.

“It has not been an easy path. One plus one did equal two — but one-and-a-half. One of the two pastors resigned. The church has met its operating budget only once in the last twelve months,” but Daniel says, “But through it all, I can sincerely say it without any hesitation, that not once have we considered keeping that money, even though the interest alone would more than make up the deficit this year. We know that if we want to start a new church every two years, we won’t be able to do it without some labor pains.”

The tendency to become a “second commandment” church

• Small churches often think they are loving people well, but are often only loving each other.
• They are not loving the newcomers, and not also loving God with excellence in worship and teaching.

Failure to involve people in service

• Shepherding programs will always fail
• We do not lose involved people
• Unleash people to serve

Danger of a “set” program

• Assess the felt needs of your people and

No emphasis on “fellowship”

• Doesn’t have to be elaborately planned — should be spontaneous
• Getting people together and talking

Failure to staff the church

•   For a church to grow it must be overstaffed. Staff motivates volunteers to serve and start new ministries.
• The Church Growth Movement is unintentionally deceiving you on the subject of staff. (CGM says 1:100 ratio, higher with a large number of youth and children. That is 100 regular attenders — defined as someone who comes once a month.) We tend to take the 1:100 ratio and apply it to average attendance.
• Staff, properly hired, will pay for their own salary with 6-9 months. The exception is the youth minister, as it takes longer to attract the parents of teens.

I’m attending the Southern California Coalition of Community-Based Christian Churches at Hope International University, a conference for churches less than 300 in weekly attendance. Our church planting organization, Stadia, is co-sponsoring the conference.

Speaker Ben Merold is the lead minister at Harvester Christian Church in Saint Charles, Missouri, and was pastor at Eastside Christian Church in Fullerton, California for many years. Ben’s topic for today is evangelism that results in church growth. The theme verse was Ephesians 1:18 — which reminds us that the same power which raised Jesus from the dead is available in our churches today.

Ben presented questions to ask, challenges to overcome, and

Questions to Ask

1. Do you really want your church to grow?
   • Most everyone will answer “Yes” to this question, but the real issue is whether people are willing to make the changes needed to grow.
2. Are you willing to take some risks?
   • Every missionary has to get out of his or her comfort zone.
   • Set goals. A goal is “something you intend to do for God with His help.” A goal needs to be big enough that it can only be accomplished with God’s help.
   • You must allow leadership the freedom to fail.
3. Is you leadership leading? Or trying to control?
   • A study of church leadership meetings:
     • In declining churches, the leaders talked about “things” — a mindset of control.
     • In growing churches, the leaders talked about “people” — a mindset of service.
   • A study by Howard Hendricks found that:
     • 84% of people in churches were willing to change in order to grow.
     • 16% were unwilling to make such changes.
     • 70% of the formal leadership of the churches studied came out of the 16% who were unwilling to change!
4. Are you willing to broaden the base of your church?
   • Purdue University study:
     • Group #1: Went home and started one new class in each department. Within one year, each new class was as large as the average class, without taking anything away from the existing classes.
     • Group #2: Went home and merged classes any time lost a teacher. Within one year, the merged class was no larger than the larger of the two classes prior to the merger, resulting in a net attendance loss.
   • You have to broaden the base with new ministries, new groups, new classes, etc.
5. Will you teach stewardship?
6. Will you pray for the power of God?

That’s why it was so much fun to watch my friend Daniel Barrett of Northeast Christian Church in Bakersfield, California receive a church-planting award at Tuesday night’s Stadia dinner at the Exponential Conference.

Daniel’s church isn’t large (about 150 on a Sunday morning), but they have a large vision for church planting.

Northeast is the product of a merger between East Hills Christian Church and Great Beginnings Christian Church in 2007. As part of this merger, they gave 10% of the proceeds from the sale of their land to help launch Kaleo Christian Fellowship in Bakersfield this January. In addition to this one-time financial gift, Northeast is a regular monthly contributor to Kaleo and are full participants in Kaleo’s management team.

But the most remarkable part of the story is that Northeast also put aside $425,000 dollars in the CDF Church Planting Fund, and the interest on that money will go to fund church planting in California’s Central Valley each year. Most amazing to me is the bold decision of Northeast’s leadership — if they haven’t grown enough within three years to need the money for their own land and building, the full $425,000 will become a permanent gift to church planting and generate interest forever!

Northeast Christian Church is living proof that an “ordinary” church can be fully engaged in church planting. I love Daniel’s humble spirit — he truly doesn’t see this as anything special — just hearing the voice of God and then following in faith. He gives all the credit to Jesus, and minimizes the way that God has used him and his church to do extraordinary things. He was totally surprised and shocked when the award went to his church — further testimony to his humble and gracious spirit.

Defining Attractional

Alan Hirsch: “It’s not that you shouldn’t be attractive — all Christianity ought to be attractive. Instead it’s about a missionary stance towards culture.”

Neil Cole: “We live in a capitalistic culture with a consumeristic church… the idea is that the church and the people of God are sent into the world to bring the message of God.” Attractional is “trying to draw people to the church ministry by trying to impress people that Christians are strong.”

Sally Morgenthaler: “Is it image-based?”

Neil Cole: “The approach is symptomatic. We’re driven and led more by our definition of church — a event which takes place on Sunday morning…the whole premise [of attractional approach] is built on a faulty understanding of church.”

Darrin Patrick: “You see things as buildings and technology as things in culture which can be used, and that people like to come and corporately worship, both Christian and non-Christians…and that those who have gifts of teaching, that God can use those in large groups. You see that in church history….[What is incarnational?] Christians live out the gospel in their context. Just as Jesus tabernacled among us.”

Greg Hawkins: “If you’re just trying to attract to get big, that’s nasty — that’s weird to me.”

I’ll be blogging this week from the Exponential Conference in Orlando, Florida — the largest gathering of church planters in North America.

Today and tomorrow I’m attending a panel discussion on Attractional and Incarnational Church Planting with Sally Morgenthaler, Alan Hirsch, Greg Hawkins, and Neil Cole.