Greetings from the land of beer and cheese. I’m in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I’ll be doing a parenting seminar for a church here and speaking for them at their two assemblies tomorrow morning.

There was no way I was going to get a ticket to the Final Four (which is in my hometown) today, so I figured it would be better to leave town. Beat the traffic and avoid the crowds!

I got three of the final four teams: Ohio State, Florida, UCLA. I missed on North Carolina; I even had them going to the finals.

I’ve still got UCLA winning it all, but Florida has me a little worried.

How about you? How did your brackets fare? And who is going to cut down the nets Monday night?

The typical non-church-goer in the 1960s probably believed the Bible was trustworthy. They probably believed that Jesus was the Son of God.

I’m not saying they acted like it. I’m not saying they had surrendered to Jesus. I’m not saying that they based their lifestyle on the Bible. But they had the idea that maybe they should. Or at least they understood why others did.

They would have a positive image of the church and its leaders. They probably had some sort of church background that was relatively healthy. They would have foundational knowledge of the essential truths of the Christian faith. They may have even had a built-in sense of guilt or conviction that kicked in when they violated the basic tenets of the Judeo-Christian value system.

On our scale from yesterday, I’d put that person somewhere around 7 or 8.

Now think about the top evangelistic strategies churches used in 1960. Door-to-door visitation. Personal Bible studies. Gospel campaigns. Bus programs. These were all perfect for people in the context of 1960.

Door knocking, for example, was effective for several reasons. First of all, people would be at home. Second, they didn’t mind if you knocked on their door. If you did — and you identified yourself as being from a church — they most certainly would invite you in, offer you coffee and listen to what you had to say. Regardless of a person’s spiritual convictions, it would have been considered rude to not do at least that.

If you asked a person, “If you were to die tonight, do you know where you’d spend your eternity?” they would actually know what you’re talking about.

If you said, “I could show you in the Bible how you can know for certain that you would have eternal life” they would have a Bible and know where it is. If you could actually point them to, say, 1 John 5:13, they would believe it and trust what you’re saying. You had some credibility with them already.

If you were to tell them about a revival meeting (or campaign for my Church of Christ friends) your church was holding, they might actually come. There was, after all, some social and cultural pressure on people to attend these things back then.

If you were to ask them about having a home Bible study, they might agree to participate. They probably believed that knowing the Bible better was a noble endeavor. You are from a church, right? You’re not one of those weirdos out there that you hear about some times. You’re a church person, and church people are normal. Besides, we’ve been meaning to get involved with a church again. It’s just hard to find the right one.

Bus ministries were supported by parents who were willing to allow their children to board a vehicle driven by someone they’d never met, transported to some building they’d never seen in a part of the city where they’d never been for a religious event implemented by people they don’t know with only a promise that they would return the child later that day.

If you could sit with the typical non-church-goer in 1960 and share the gospel with them, it wasn’t difficult to move them from 7 or 8 to 10. It wouldn’t be unusual to accomplish that in one or two sessions.

Clearly, it’s not 1960 anymore. People aren’t where they were anymore. The church can’t do what it did anymore.

It was relatively easy to move a person from 7 or 8 to 10. How do you move a person from a 3 (or a negative 3) to a 10?

As we continue to think through radical change in the church, let’s turn our attention back to evangelism (fishing). Obviously, few churches are successful at evangelism these days. Some are. Most aren’t. Fewer than half of all churches in America will have a single new member through evangelistic conversion this year.

Something’s wrong. Let’s try to figure out where our problem might be.

Picture an imaginary number line from 1 to 10:

1_____________________________10

On the left side of the scale (1), we have someone who is completely unchurched, no relationship with God to speak of, no understanding of the Bible or who Jesus really is — possibly no real desire to understand these things.

On the other end of the scale (10), we have someone who is ready to “step across the line” — ready to make a commitment of faith — the Ethiopian eunuch in Acts 8 saying, “Here is some water; what’s stopping me from being baptized right now?”.

This is an overly simplistic scale, but I think it will illustrate the point.

Two questions:

1. Where on the scale was the average non-church-going American person in, say, 1960?
2. Where is the average non-church-going American person today?

Thanks for all your advice on yesterday’s post. Amelia’s our third, so we’ve been through this whole thing before. We’ve even developed a strategy.

Amelia should know that her feelings are important, but she also needs to know that her feelings don’t get to make decisions for the whole family. She also should know that just because she wants to do something, that doesn’t mean she has to do it. On the flip side of that coin, just because she doesn’t want to do something, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have to do it.

Also, our response is often determined by how she says, “I don’t want to.” Whining might get one response. An honest plea gets a different response. A defiant tantrum gets still another response.

Finally, there are things she simply must do. She must take her medicine when she’s sick. She must buckle up in her carseat before we leave. Things like that. In a situation where it’s something she just has to do but doesn’t want to, I sometimes resort to this method: “Amelia, you can either do this the easy way or the hard way. The easy way is daddy pours your medicine in this cup, and you drink it by yourself. If you do it with your good attitude, daddy might even give you a cookie after you’re done. The hard way is daddy pours your medicine in this cup, holds you down, forces your mouth open, pours the medicine down your throat, holds your nose until you swallow it, and you have to stay in your room for 30 minutes. If you do all that with your terrible attitude, daddy might even spank your bottom. Now, which do you choose?”

She rarely ever chooses the hard way.

Now, here’s something for us to consider: She’s three. You expect times like this from a three-year-old. But the reason we discipline her now is because we don’t want her pulling this kind of thing when she’s 15 or 23. We want her to understand that part of being a grown up is doing things we don’t want to do because the consequence of not doing them is even worse (and the benefit of doing them makes our lives better).

There’s going to come a time when we won’t be able to force her into the van and buckle her in her carseat anymore. We won’t be able to hold her down and force medicine down her throath. If she doesn’t want to take her medicine, it’s going to be her choice. If she won’t get in the van, we’ll have to choose between leaving her behind or allowing her to ruin things for the rest of the family.

Of course we’ll continue loving our child, but we will not allow her to hijack the rest of our family and sacrifice our goals and values and plans for the sake of her selfish agenda. If she refuses to participate in the life of this family, if she ever gets abusive or destructive, we may even ask her to leave. I’ve known parents who did just that, and it’s got to be among the most heartbreaking choices a parent ever has to make.

You never stop loving your child, and you always hold the door open for reconciliation. But boundaries are healthy, and healthy isn’t always pain-free.

Now, some of you may have figured out where I’m going with this.

How is this any different from dealing with people in church who simply do not want to change with the rest of us? They don’t want to pursue the same goals or values or plans as the rest of us. They don’t want to cancel Sunday night services. They don’t want to stop adult Bible classes. They don’t want to have all these strange, new people in their church. They don’t want to give up their seat for someone else. They don’t want to reach out. They don’t want to give more. They don’t want to volunteer. They don’t want to serve. They don’t really want to grow.

How should church leadership deal with those people?

This is Amelia, my three-year-old daughter. She’s the cutest and funniest three-year-old I know. But she doesn’t always look like this.

Sometimes she looks like this:

If you’ve ever known a three-year-old, you know it’s not always fun.

Sometimes we’ll ask Amelia to do something, and her new response is, “I don’t want to.”

Sometimes it’s said in a whiny voice. Sometimes it’s said earnestly. Sometimes it’s shouted and followed by the stomping of feet or just sitting in the middle of the floor. Sometimes there’s a full-on throw-down tantrum.

So…parenting experts…what should I do?

There are still lots of people pushing back at the idea that the church might need to make some radical changes. They want to believe that we can continue to tinker around a little, making slight modifications, not rocking the boat too much so as not to disturb those who are peacefully asleep right now.

I do not believe this is the right approach.

I believe now is the time for churches and church leaders to boldly step up and tear down whatever needs to be torn down so they can build up whatever needs to be built up in order to accomplish the mission God has given us. So, I’ll try one more time to provide a rationale for radical change.

There is a cumulative impact of small investments made consistently over an extended period of time.

We all understand that, right? This is why you put $100 a month in your kid’s college fund. This is why you hope your company provides you with a 401k or IRA fund and will match you up to 5%. This is why you take $50 a week and put it in a cookie jar for your vacation to DisneyWorld. We all understand: there is a cumulative impact of small investments made consistently over an extended period of time.

Neglect also has a cumulative impact.

Neglect to water your lawn. Neglect to clean out your garage. Neglect to monitor your health or eat right or get enough exercise. Neglect to take care of your marriage or build a relationship with your child. It adds up. We get that, right?

The problem is that there is rarely an immediate penalty for missing a single installment.

Hit the snooze button and sleep through your spin class today; your blood pressure won’t shoot through the roof this afternoon. Indulge in an extra donut for breakfast; your weight won’t balloon up tomorrow morning. Skip date night with your spouse this week; you won’t end up in divorce court next week. There’s rarely an immediate penalty for missing a single installment, but it adds up.

When a crisis point is reached, small adjustments are usually insufficient and radical change is required.

When your blood-pressure is sky high and you find yourself 100 pounds overweight, you can’t just “cut back a little”. When your wife says she wants a divorce, you can’t offer her a weekend away and hope to fix everything in 48 hours. When your phone won’t stop ringing because of all the creditors calling, you can’t get by with promises to send them a little something when you can get a little further ahead. In those moments of crisis your doctor, your therapist, your financial planner — they’ll all tell you the same thing: you’re not going to fix this until you make some radical changes.

The average size of the average church in America has dropped 10 people in the last 25 years.

In the last 25 years, the combined membership of all Protestant denominations declined by more than 10%, while the national population has grown by more than 30%.

Fewer than half of all churches in America add a single new member through conversion.

Most churches have one new convert per year for every 85 regular attenders.

Every year in America, 3,500 churches close their doors for the last time; fewer than 1,500 new churches are planted.

We’re going backwards. We’ve reached a crisis point. Small changes and slight modifications are no longer sufficient.

It is time to make some radical changes.

We’re going to continue with our metaphor of fishing as evangelism because…well…because Jesus used it, and most of us are familiar with the rudimentary basics of fishing. No quote from Frost & Hirsch today — just my own thoughts.

Several people responded to yesterday’s post by suggesting that perhaps the real reason why the contemporary church isn’t very good at fishing is that most Christians are just heartless and apathetic towards their lost friends and neighbors. And I think there’s some truth to that.

If we really understood that everyone we see will live for eternity in one of two states (a state of eternal union with God or a state of eternal separation from God), if we really understood the implications of this, we would probably feel a greater sense of urgency in sharing the lifesaving message of Jesus with them.

I would also suggest that our understanding of salvation is so impoverished and truncated that we don’t really understand what we’ve been saved into very well. Too many Christians think salvation is just about getting them off the hook for eternity — their idea of salvation hardly touches their lives in the here and now. They don’t live as people who have the security and freedom God offers. They don’t experience personal transformation themselves, and, thus, they cannot offer that kind of transformation to anyone else.

But I think there’s another reason why we’re not very good at evangelism these days. I touched on this in yesterday’s post, and I’m going to unpack this a little further next week. For now I’ll say this:

Fishing takes time. You simply cannot fish in a hurry.

To use yesterday’s word-picture: Fishermen in the time of Jesus spent most of their time mending nets and making sure those nets were strong enough to actually catch things. If our version of “nets” are our relationships with people currently outside our faith, few of us actually have the luxury of taking the time required to ensure the strength of those relationships in order to do anything remotely resembling evangelism.

And why do we have so precious little time?

I fear that we may be too busy doing church things to actually do that most important church thing of all.

We’re so busy preparing to teach a class or sitting in a class or helping plan the Ladies’ Retreat or volunteering on the finance committee or serving on the search team for a new Youth Minister or batting clean-up on the men’s softball team or a hundred other church activities — that we simply don’t have time to forge strong relationships with non-church-going-folks.

With all these church activities (which many church leaders expect maturing Christians to be involved in), there isn’t enough time and energy left to do any fishing. A committed Christian feels guilty about not being involved in any kind of evangelistic activity, but that same person feels guilty about all the other things they have to do in order to be considered a committed Christian.

I mean…after all…if I don’t serve on that committee who’s going to make sure the kitchen gets remodeled the right way or the right carpet in the new auditorium is the right color or the right songs get picked for Sunday morning? It’s an honor to be asked to teach that class or serve on that committee. It’s my Christian duty — my sacrificial act of service to this church.

If I wasn’t busy doing those things, what would I be doing with all my time? Having coffee with my neighbor? Playing with my kids in the park? Coaching a little league team? Volunteering at my daughter’s school? Those seem like luxuries that we cannot afford while there’s church work to be done.

But are they really?

Perhaps those kinds of activities are the net-mending, net-strengthening activities that would enable us to share the gospel with the people who live with us and closest to us.

Okay, here’s today’s question: What kinds of activities and busyness do you think churches could give up (or should give up) in order to give people the time needed to fish properly?

Jesus called his earliest followers and promised to send them out to “fish for people” (Matthew 4:19).

When we think of fishing we tend of think of a rod and reel fisherman baiting his hook and casting his line out in hopes of catching fish one at a time. If we think of evangelism through this lens, it becomes pretty crass. “Baiting our hook” makes the whole enterprise sound deceptive and somewhat violent at the very least.

Fishing in Jesus’ time was a kinder and gentler activity (although it had the same “net” result of killing fish and eating them — still, I suppose all metaphors break down eventually, don’t they? Oh, and the pun was intentional). Fishermen in Jesus’ day would cast nets into the water and gather in whatever they could. Fishing was less dependent upon the attractiveness of their bait and more dependent upon strength of their nets.

Frost & Hirsch draw a strong point from this:

“Jesus’ fishing disciples spent most of their working day, not out on the lake’s surface, but on shore, mending their nets. If their nets were strong and tight, anything caught in them couldn’t escape…. If the disciples spent so much time on their nets to ensure a catch, what might those nets be for us today? We propose that the web of relationships, friendships, and acquaintances that Christians normally have makes up the net into which not-yet-Christians will swim. We believe the missional-incarnational church will spend more time on building friendships than it will on developing religious programs.”

In the attractional/missional hybrid model that I espouse, we call this strategy: Invest & Invite.

Invest in your friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. Invest deeply in them. Help them. Serve them. Take interest in their welfare. Don’t view them as a project. Really invest in their lives.

And understand that your investment will eventually earn you the right to say some things. When your friendship is strong enough (and that will likely take longer than you think), you can look for opportunities to invite them to an environment where they can experience a taste of the life of a Christian community.

Belonging to such a community often preceeds any kind of change in a person’s belief system. This is backwards from the way we often think of evangelism and community. We usually think of winning someone to Christ and then including them in the life of the church. But people don’t usually buy the whole belief system outside of the communal aspects of Christianity. Life change happens best in groups. So, it might actually be better to bring them into our community and allow them to sample things before asking them to buy it.

Sometimes, in the process of evangelism, heavy truths need to be stated clearly. But the bridge of your relationship (to switch up the metaphor) must be strong enough to withstand the weight of truth you deliver.

Build the bridge. Mend the net. Whichever word-picture you prefer, it comes down to the same thing: relationships are the conduit for the best evangelism.

Now, some harsh reality: In an average year, fewer than half of all existing churches fail to gain a single new member through evangelistic conversion. In the average church there is usually one convert per year for every 80 members.

What’s wrong with this picture? Why are we failing at evangelism on this level? How do we change it?

So…anyone tired of talking about Sunday School?

Thanks for the lively debate. I can handle people who disagree; it’s apathy that really gets my goat.

What I’m hearing from lots of you is that you know things aren’t working the way they’re supposed to at church. Outreach is broken. Education is broken. Life-change isn’t happening — at least not on the scale we want.

There are a few places out there where things seem to be chugging along. There are even fewer places out there where things are going gangbusters. But the vast majority of churches are broken and can’t seem to fix themselves.

The problem is that you can’t get yourself out of the box with the same kind of thinking that got you into the box in the first place!

Frost & Hirsch talk about totally overhauling the church — not little cosmetic changes — a total rethink of everything. Here’s today’s quote:

“When we talk about reinventing the church, too many people assume it’s as simple as tightening a bolt here, oiling a hinge there, slapping on a new coat of paint. But we are proposing a monumental change to the way we think about being and doing church. All the tinkering with the existing model of church that’s going on will not save the day.”

I read that and thought, “Hey! That sounds a lot like something I wrote nearly two years ago.” I was doing some work with North Point Community Church as they prepared for their first conference for church leaders (called the Drive Conference). I worked very closely with Reggie Joiner in those days, and he was really struggling with what to say to all those church leaders from around the world. As my thoughts percolated, this post popped out:

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Here’s the issue on the table: so many leaders have bought into the myth that if they tinker enough with their churches they will eventually create wholesale change. But it doesn’t work like that. At some point in time, if a church is going to survive for the next generation, you are going to have to introduce radical changes.

Tinkering is for people who don’t really have the courage to make the changes they know need to be made. Tinkering allows a leader to trick people into thinking things won’t really go too far. Tinkering frustrates everyone. Tinkering says we’re not really serious about this whole project. Tinkering is a way of maintaining status quo while still managing to be irritating at the same time.

For a generation I heard people say that there are two speeds at which you can change a church: slow and slower. That’s dumb. That’s foolish. That’s irresponsible.

God doesn’t seem to be interested in tinkering. He calls men and women in the Bible to introduce radical change. Abraham. Moses. Joshua. Samuel. Josiah. Jonah. Peter. Paul.

Come to think of it, the church calls people to radical change in the most fundamental way. We do not call people to tinker with their way of life; we call them to repentance — to radical change. Why in the world would we ask people to do something we aren’t willing to do ourselves?

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So, here’s my question for you today: If we really believe things aren’t working the way they’re supposed to, why are we so reluctant to overhaul the whole system?

Research has shown that close to 70% of Evangelical, Bible-believing, Church-attending Christians cannot tell you what last Sunday’s sermon was about. Those preachers spent hours and hours poring over study materials (well…some of them did), developing a cogent outline, memorizing their opening joke, creating a PowerPoint Presentation, and most of the people will never remember a word of it.

They might remember a story or a phrase or a word-picture. But they didn’t get what was being taught.

There are a lot of reasons for this. First, the preacher probably gave them too much information. He gave them four sermons in one and asked them to remember every thing he said. Even if all of the points started with the same letter or rhymed or whatever special mnemonic device he devised, if you give people too much information, odds are you’ll get a cancelling effect where all the information gets lost.

Second, a lot of churches are still hanging on to a relatively new invention called “Adult Sunday School.” This is one of those things that was a really good idea once upon a time. And, in most places, that time has run its course. Many churches treat Sunday School as if it’s the 11th Commandment and not having it is tantamount to biblical infidelity. I think having Adult Sunday School is a bad idea for three reasons (and we can talk more about this later): (1) It has a detrimental impact on your overall educational goals; (2) It penalizes volunteers who serve in other areas; (3) It lowers the odds of someone inviting a non-churched friend to experience a church gathering.

I realize that the third reason listed above betrays my “attractional” church bent. So, sue me! I love a good attractional church, and I believe there are many of them out there. Contrary to anything I’ve heard or read in Frost & Hirsch, I do not believe the attractional model is irredeemable. I’ve seen it infused with healthy leadership and viewed as part of a much larger strategy to impact the surrounding community, and I’m a huge advocate.

Still, I think there is a third reason why no one seems to learn much of anything at church. Here’s today’s thought-provoking quote from Frost & Hirsch:

“[L]earning takes place much more effectively when the Christian faith community is involved in active mission. Too much existing Bible teaching happens to passive groups of Christians, many of whom are not involved in any kind of risky missional activity…. Like Jesus’ first followers discovered, learning occurs when we need to draw on information because a situation demands it.”

There’s a story that’s probably apocryphal (at least I haven’t been able to find a reliable source for it) about Charles Spurgeon blocking the entrance to his church because he felt that the people in it had become “word fat and obedience thin”. As the story goes, he told the people to go away and not to come back until they had applied what they already knew to do.

I’m not sure that ever happened, but it would be great to think about what might happen if it ever did! Too many people come to church, sit and soak and go home. But they never actually do anything with the information they received. They just come back the next time for more information.

Okay, enough of my personal ruminations about this problem. Let’s hear some of yours.

Why do you think people don’t seem to learn much in church?

And how would you fix it if you were given permission?