A friend just recently sent me a copy of a Lifeway survey entitled, “Our Ministry to Families.” It is a diagnostic tool for churches to see how well they are ministering to families. Here’s what’s on the diagnostic: On the one side are categories of plans and ministries (read programs) that churches might offer, and then there are some spaces for rating whether the church currently has this program, intends to have it, how they rate their program, and how well the congregation knows about it.
I appreciate Lifeway, and the many services that they provide us as Southern Baptists. However, it seems like the paradigm that this tool was built upon was clearly a program-based church ministry. Program-based ministry simply doesn’t work in the long run. (I imagine Dr Rainer — author of Simple Church — didn’t sign off on this one).
Program-driven ministry doesn’t work because it assumes that church activities are the same as spiritual health. The fact is that this simply is not so. While we have traditionally thought that those who were in the church “every time the doors were open,” were the most spiritually healthy, lately more and more churches are recognizing that spiritual maturity doesn’t (indeed can’t) get accomplished simply through programs at a church. Individuals must have personal growth as well, and this means far more than simply doing stuff at a church.
To learn more you can check out some of these resources:
Simple Church
Purpose Driven Church
Seven Practices of Effective Ministry
What do you think?
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March 16, 2009 at 5:51 pm
Tim Farley
I agree with you that traditional church programs are ineffective and out-dated. However, I think that even “Simple Churches” are running programs. It’s just that the focus of those programs has changed – they are not necessarily about getting people to the church building multiple times per week and being inward-focused. Instead, there seems to be an emphasis on relationship development through off-site informal meetings (in people’s homes or Starbucks, etc.) as well as an emphasis on involvement in the local community. These are calculated emphases and are still “programs” even if they look much different than what has been done in the past in churches.
March 17, 2009 at 9:58 am
Tim Thompson
The venerable Willow Creek came to the same conclusion, which was pretty disruptive for them because they have been very program-oriented. In fact, they found that in many cases, the people who were most involved were also the most dissatisfied with their spiritual life. (That’s a pretty rough approximation of what they report more clearly in their book Reveal so I’ll refer you to that if you want to hear this from them directly.)
And I think Tim Farley certainly has a point that “program” isn’t the issue per se, but rather what the programmed activity is focused on. Things that are more effective in fostering relationships are, I think, generally more effective in fostering spiritual growth. (Unless, of course, the relationships are not engaged in with some intentionality around spiritual life. It’s quite possible to deepen your relationships and not grow spiritually.)
But another factor that works against us is that most of our time, energy & money in conventional churches gets invested into activities for large groups of people, Sunday morning worship being the prime example. But large groups are inherently unsuited for developing relationships. Conversely, relatively little is invested in promoting and equipping people for smaller groupings, e.g. spiritual friendships, mentoring, 2-3 accountability groups or even families for that matter. Our “investment strategy” is totally out of whack with our priorities if we really consider relationships fundamental. I wrote a little about this – with a chart on a napkin! – on my blog just just the other day: http://feralpastor.blogspot.com/2009/03/twin-peaks-resource-allocation-and.html.