What’s wrong with our church?
Thursday, 01 July, 2004
We've been having some discussions recently about why our 7 pm service has been dropping in numbers over the past five years and what we can do about it. Not that we want to play the numbers game but it is interesting that, though we tend to get a lot of visitors (there's at least one new person every week), not many of them stay.
Shaun and the rest of the Night Church Ministry team identified three things which they think are the problem:
- Our relationships with each other: Though some of us at church have known each other for years and get along very well, there seems to be a perception that there is an inner circle and an outer circle of people. Certainly people in the outer circle seem to feel it. Though it seems that we are good at being friends with our friends, we need to expand our circle to include others in the church and be open to getting to know them and have them know us.
- Our relationships with our non-Christian friends: Not many of us have non-Christian friends because we have so many Christian friends. Yet, in the past history of the church, the ones who have become Christians and joined the church have done so usually because they know someone within the church (friend or relative). We need to open our circle of friends to those outside the church as well as inside and be willing to form relationships with them to the point where we would call them “friends”.
- There are things that we could do better at Night Church: People have given lots of suggestions about this one. I suggested to Shaun that a little bit of training be done from the pulpit to instruct the congregation in basic things like Ministry of the Pew, how to pray, etc. I'm sure there are lots of things that could be improved about Night Church but I think that first and foremost we need to work on the first two things.
- We need to be more mission-minded: This one probably underscores 1-3.
Is this the same for your church or is this just typical of St. Michael's?
Current:
Bible: Isaiah (ESV) 28/09/2010
seen: Tropic Thunder 26/09/2010
seen: The Life of Mammals 24/09/2010
seen: What a Girl Wants 19/09/2010
seen: Jerry Maguire 19/09/2010
seen: The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 06/09/2010
seen: Tomorrow Never Dies 05/09/2010
seen: Nanny McPhee 28/08/2010
read: Mercury (Hope Larson) 27/08/2010
read: Spellcheckers Vol 1 (Jamie S Rich, Nicolas Hitori de, Joelle Jones) 16/08/2010
read: Solipsistic Pop Vol 2 (Solipsistic Pop) 16/08/2010
read: Chiggers (Hope Larson) 15/08/2010
seen: Josie and the Pussycats 14/08/2010
seen: Mr & Mrs Smith 14/08/2010
seen: Step Up 2 13/08/2010
Blinks:
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
Online magazine that publishes fairy tales that are not reworkings of old tales.
Journal that publishes fairy tale writing.
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Other comments
St Mark’s is having the same problems at the moment. The Baptist church is not having this problem; I think we should look at what they’re doing to see what differences there are and if we should take a couple of leaves from their book.
I would say there’s probably less of an inner clique at St Mark’s… though I felt it a lot more in the past than I do now…
It’s good that you’re thinking about how things can change - there are always people who just don’t want to change, and that is problematic. Additionally, Dad’s been talking to me a bit about church growth and planting and stuff, and these thoughts gel with that (not that my father is an authority on the situation or anything).
Ahem. Um, what I was going to say was that the clique thing is what put me off CU at uni.
It seems to me that points 1 and 3 are the most relevant from your list. From what you said, you had plenty of visitors but not many of them stay.
My own experience at churches is that visitors leave after a week or two if -
1. They don’t start to make friends, or
2. They dont like the service
Both of these are pretty tough problems to fix. #1 is tough because a church either has a culture of friendliness or it doesn’t. If it doesn’t, you can’t change it with a 3-week sermon program or a small group study.
My own experience is that the friendliness of a church is often a reflection of the hospitality of the leadership. If the key 5 or 6 people in your service make a committment to developing good, healthy, enjoyable relationships with the people in the service, this will ultimately bear fruit in the lives of those attending. But the change could take a year or 2.
Point #2 is also a tough one - usually because the people running the show and attending the service are happy with the way things are done. If they weren’t, they wouldn’t be there. But it’s possible that your way of doing things (whatever it is) just doesn’t appeal to the mass of people.
For example, a friend of mine runs an anglican service attended by 15 people average age 70. They have robes, the full prayer book service and hymns (on a beautiful old organ).
Not many people are going to visit and stay in that environment, its just a fact. His plan is to literally bury the congregation over the next 10 years and then start again.
Now, I don’t know a lot about your church in particular, but I’ve attended a few Anglican churches over the years. They tend to be liturgical, which puts about 80% of the population off for a start because they don’t understand the concept of liturgy, and the words are often unfamiliar.
The preaching is also a problem, tending toward the intellectual. That’s fine of course, but it means your target audience is going to be about 20% of the population. It also tends to be heavy on exposition and lighter on application, whereas I think the contrary should be true if you are to communicate effectively. Even John Chapman in a recent briefing article stated that he thought modern anglican preachers were not spending enough time on application.
Music is also often a problem. I’m not saying good music is essential for church growth. But bad music, poorly played and sung, definitely drives people away. Better to have none at all, or use a CD.
To be honest Karen, I don’t have a lot of hope that you guys will turn things around. If a church service has been slowly declining over a number of years, you usually need a revolution to turn it around. Tinkering around at the edges wont do it. In my experience, the revolution can usually only happen with a leadership change…
I think it’s interesting that both:
- it’s only when the number’s at service start to drop off that we realise that something is wrong.
- we always think that a decrease in numbers is an indication that something is wrong.
The problems mentioned in this post (a socially excluding fellowship etc.)‘should’ be self-evident and not require a decrease in attendance for 5 years to point out. However, I know that my church is also guilty of the same sort of thinking (that we only see a problem when numbers go down), as are probably most churches.
It’s encouraging that we consider that the decrease in numbers as a call to action. Does that stem from our optimistic view of God’s sovereignty? Is it because we think that God is calling people to Himself and thus we expect that our church should be growing? A much better situation than to be hiding in our caves, waiting for the rapture to come!
Also, to poster #1: Is looking to the Baptist church the best place to look? Just because something works it doesn’t mean that it’s right or good. Maybe churches should just play movies or serve Vodka, because lots of people go to cinema’s and clubs. I know that’s an exaggeration, but we need to remember who we are and not only focus on other places that attract a lot of people! Should we not focus on being faithful servants of Christ, which will have us looking to serve others and improve all sorts of other things that occur in our services?
dan
I found your comment very interesting Craig, about more application being needed. I am from a stalwart intellectual-wrestle-with-the-Bible church, growing out of a university graduate community, and I have found that there is often lack of application given by the preachers. As an intensely practical and not particularly intellectual person, I reckon this is a BIG problem.
But I’m pretty sure there’s an argument for the way we do it now.
Hmmm, good food for thought.
Craig: Thanks for your comments. I think our church does a good job of welcoming people initially; it’s rare that new people don’t get spoken to after the service. From what I’ve seen, most of the members of our 7 pm congregation make the effort. The problem is taking the next step—initiating the invitation to be friends and spend time with them. The interesting thing about St. Michael’s is that many of the people who attend our service are, in their own way, quite “nerdy”—they’re usually fairly intelligent, have a University education in the works or under their belts, into odd things like role-playing, board games (like Risk) or heavy metal bands, etc. Shaun made the interesting observation that the people at our church have interests that are non-mainstream. Very few of us are interested in sport (though some get together and play it on Saturday afternoons) or other things like that which I can’t think of at the moment since I’m not into them.
The 7 pm service is not heaps liturgical. We say the creed and confession every week (which Ben and I don’t agree with) and we say bits of the liturgy for communion but the rest of it is pretty casual. I noticed this especially when Reg led the service because he is quite formal and gets into the Prayer Book with gusto.
Our music is fairly good, though unconventional in the sense that a quarter of the congregation are musical so the band normally consists of a pianist, a drummer, bass guitar, acoustic guitar (sometimes), violin(s), flute, clarinet and two singers. The songs we sing are the usual Philip Percival/Nicky Chiswell/Mark Peterson/Annie Willis/Scripture in Song fare—very little Hillsong. The only Hillsong I’ve ever heard us do is Shout to the Lord and we’ve only sung that once in the past six months. (Oh yeah, and we sing “Now Unto Him” by Dave Stonestreet; I should get them onto your stuff, Craig! ;P)
Preaching-wise, at the moment we only have Steve and Shaun. Steve, though very good and wise with the doctrine, can be difficult to listen to. He often doesn’t have a sermon outline and I have to take notes otherwise my attention wanders. Shaun, on the other hand, is great and never light on application, though he is always Biblical when he has one. (Remember that not every passage is going to have an application, whatever the John Chapman School of Preaching may say! Hebrews goes for about four or five chapters with no commands.) I do think that both men could “dumb it down” a little for the sake of the newcomers but you don’t want to do it too much at the expense of your regulars. They need to find a happy medium.
One of the reasons why the attendance at night church has been declining is that the members come and go. The 7 pm congregation is mostly Uni students who, once they finish their degrees, tend to move out of the area. Or there are people who move onto Bible college. In a way, it’s very encouraging that, every single year for the past five years, St. Michael’s has sent people off to Bible college (and this year will be no exception, God-willing!) 7 pm does not have a static congregation and I think that, perhaps, the changes in relationships make it very hard for the people left behind to keep going, keep opening up to new people, keep forging new friendships, knowing that, in a couple of years, they’ll probably lose them.
My 2 cents anyway.
How did they identify the three things
“identified three things which they think are the problem”...
Did they guess? Or did conduct a survey of people who left the Church?
The Night Church Ministry team sat down and talked about it and each gave their 2 cents. And we talked about it on the Night Church Camp last month. I think Shaun’s been thinking about it for a while.
Sounds like they are wrong to me.
If you just focused on those three things, how would you encourage people who just walked into the Church?
Even if your relationships were good with Christian and non-Christian people, they may not like the other people in the Church.
Like I said before, people who just walked into the church usually get welcomed and welcomed well. They are not ignored and people do actually go up and talk to them after the service and invite them to hang around. We don’t have problems with encouraging one-off visitors.