OPINION: Don’t let the ‘nattering nabobs’ keep you from casting your vision

GAINS & GLEANINGS

Part 2 of 2

I recently took a trip to Kentucky for some meetings around mission work.

Truth be told, I don’t need much of an excuse to go to Kentucky. It’s one of my favorite places, and I have a ton of friends there.

It’s also a place where I see lots of heartache. 

On the northern edge of the Bible Belt, Kentucky, like all of the Belt, is seeing the closure of many, many churches.

One reason is that for a long time a church could be founded by hanging a shingle, and sustained by ensuring the door is unlocked on Sunday.

Sure, there were hard-charging, creative, active churches, too. These churches generally grew and thrived.

Then there were less ambitious, more inwardly focused churches that did well. These benefited a lot from the rich and committed Christian culture of the Bible Belt in years past.

They weren’t doing a lot to reach folks with the gospel, yet maintained a stable core of folks and a steady flow of visitors.

Then there were churches often called “family churches.” The term refers to small, quite insular, long-surviving, never-thriving groups usually made up of the same few families who’ve been plugged in for decades.

These churches were and often are small because they send a series of signals about legacy-oriented “earned” entrenched leadership to which anyone arriving in the last 30 years need not aspire. There is usually overt resistance to even the suggestion of change or updates in methodology from both congregant and leadership alike. 

These churches can convince themselves they don’t attract more folks from the region because they remain “true to God’s word.” 

The assumption being, of course, that other, growing churches must be watering down the message to have broader appeal at the cost of weaker principles.

Surely it is true that many folks trying to do ministry walk away from biblical teaching in hopes of broader appeal, but it’s not as widespread as some folks, and their pointing fingers, assume.

In today’s world, many church buildings are empty.

Many of the givens of years past are dead and gone. 

People throughout the Bible Belt don’t belong to or attend a church anymore, and the social expectations that fed into a new generation automatically finding a church have broadly disappeared as well.

This means the inwardly focused churches dwindle as members pass on to their reward.

It means churches living by the ethos in this old joke– “How many Baptists does it take to change a light bulb? What?! We’re not changing anything around here!” – will almost certainly wither and die, as well.

Yet, there are churches not just surviving, but growing, even thriving.

What’s the difference? 

First, give God His due: the scripture says God will build his church, so any thriving, actual church is certainly empowered in its reach by God.

Other entities calling themselves “churches”’ but not holding to the basic tenets and standards of biblical Christianity may grow – by promises of wealth, creating a club of nice people interested in gathering but not much interested in God’s revelation of himself in the canonized scripture, or voodooish, attractional teachings such as “calling,” “manifesting,” or “speaking into existence” whatever desires or whims the adherent may really hope for – but these, despite what they may call themselves, are not churches in the biblical sense of the word.

So giving God his credit, and dismissing charlatanry, what else is happening that makes some churches grow in an era of dwindling attendance?

Two things: a pastor – the undershepherd of a local church body, below Christ – casting a vision for and leading the church and an empowered congregation willing to move boldly to reach their community.

Three things are key.

Theology – the understanding of God, his ways, and his historical and current interaction with humans – is to be well-studied and solid. 

Doctrine – the real life application of theological principles in how we live, worship and approach matters – must be informed and firm.

That leaves methodology as the one malleable pillar of church life. Some churches hold to methodology as if it must remain as rock solid as one’s belief in the Resurrection or God’s command to observe the Lord’s Supper, but that’s not true.

You feel like trying a skydiving Bible study club? Give it a go.

Try having preteens as ushers and teens distributing the Lord’s Supper? Sure, as long as they can take it seriously and do well, see if it works and better engages the youth.

Methodology is the one area Bible-believing churches have vast leeway to try things.

Often we don’t, because we like what we’ve always done, or because it worked in 1993 and surely it can work again. But we have permission to give new and different things a shot.

Having a pastor who casts a vision, has the backing of the church and even permission to make tactical mistakes in trying different ideas seems to be a real sweet spot for having God show off through a church’s growth and impact.

If the neighborhood has an influx of Moroccans and the pastor decides to try a Moroccan meal every month in conjunction with a missionary who speaks the language, it might bear fruit.

It also might not, and after a couple of months, it might have gone the way of the dial telephone.

The church might decide to bring in hip-hop music for an evening worship service, and it might appeal to a new generation of folks while not appealing one iota to the church’s older folks.

If those older folks show up for it anyway, because it’s about reaching people, not about the already reached having their preference in that moment, it seems to create an atmosphere in which God does big things.

Too often a pastor has an idea and the nattering nabobs shut it down. Out of dislike. Out of “we’ve never done that before.” Out of “let’s get back to how it was before cable television showed up and messed everything up.”

Those pastors often do end up leading a church into an amazing season of growth. It’s just not often the church full of naysayers that sees the fruit. It’s the next church, the one the pastor leaves there for.

I see a lot of pastors struggling with these matters, and I hear many asking the right questions and seeking the fruitful path forward.

I also get to watch some of my friends in the pastorate role model excellent, empowering, bold, vision casting leadership in churches that truly support them – and I get to watch God show off through their ministries in mighty ways.