One of the Biggest Reasons Why Churches Decline

My wife and I are in San Diego this week at the National Outreach Convention. It’s been a great convention thus far. I had the opportunity to lead a discussion group this morning …at 7:15AM! I think most of the attendees were on central or eastern time . A person in our group asked a great question: How do you define and assess church health? We spent the next hour discussing this issue, but let me share with you one point of our discussion that is perhaps one of the most neglected church health metrics: attendance frequency.

Most churches track how many people attend, but few churches know how often people are coming. People do not simply quit church one week; they phase out. They begin by attending less frequently. This issue is one of the biggest reasons why churches decline. Understandably, a plethora of spiritual reasons exist why people attend less frequently, but many churches do not even realize that people are gradually leaving the church by attending less often.

Let me share with you a basic exercise:

Church A has 400 people that come 4 out of 4 weeks (yes, I know that’s a pipe dream, but hang with me for the sake of argument). This attendance frequency means that the church averages 400 in attendance.

Church B has 400 people that come 3 out of 4 weeks (not too bad). But this attendance frequency means that the church averages 300 in attendance.

Church C has 400 people that come on average 2 out of 4 weeks (probably more realistic). They average 200 in attendance.

I’m sure that you get the point by now. Each church has 400 people that are part of the flock, but the average attendance at Church C is much less than Church A. As attendance frequency drops, the churches have drastically smaller averages, without “losing” anyone.

I am not advocating legalism – a haughty attitude that every time the church doors are open everyone must be there. But the family that once attended almost every week and now attends ten times a year is gradually leaving the church.

Attendance frequency. It’s not the most important church health metric, but it’s one that is neglected. And it’s one of the biggest reasons that churches are declining.

I also noticed that my Dad posted on this exact same topic over at his blog. I guess I am my father’s son. It won’t be long before I’ll be singing cheesy 60s songs and telling corny jokes…

The Amiable Autocrat

I found myself last week in a friendly exchange with a ministry team leader about one line item in their budget. Then I realized I was micro-managing. Even though my intentions were good, and my tone pleasant, I was still acting like an autocrat.

Nice dictators exist, at least in the leadership sense. I refer to these types of leaders in the church as amiable autocrats. Friendly church dictators rule from their positional authority. They order everyone around because their title enables them to do so, and they do it with a smile.

Amiable autocrats are typically well-liked by the general congregation, but their teams are miserable. These church leaders genuinely like other people, but they do not want to help transform them. They enjoy bossing others, and they assume that their direct reports like it that way as well.

What does an amiable autocrat look like? Here are a few characteristics:

• They have a total lack of self-awareness. They lead from their friendliness, and they think that their relationships are enough to warrant their commands.
• They avoid conflict at all costs or anything else that may affect their friendly image.
• They project their weaknesses on others. Have you ever been reviewed by a superior only to think that he reviewed himself and gave you his score? Amiable autocrats frustrate direct reports by seeing their own faults in others.
• They are liked by outsiders, but they irritate insiders. People who report to friendly dictators typically do not despise their bosses. But these followers do feel trapped and irritated. For example, a congregation may have no clue about the leadership style of their pastor, and the direct reports cannot address the issue with the leader because he’s not self-aware enough to realize his problems.
• They’ve stolen credit from others for so long that it’s a natural process for them. They don’t even know they’re doing it anymore.
• They insist on relaying all the good news to the congregation; they also figure out ways to have others communicate bad news.
• They are optimistic about the wrong things. Friendly dictators are rarely negative, but they praise the wrong metrics. They pick the wrong team leaders. They promote the wrong people. They get the congregation fired up about the wrong vision.
• They micro-manage irrelevant details. Amiable autocrats waste hours of staff meetings discussing irrelevant topics and details. They’re more concerned with things like service order than with things like the discipleship process. They will dictate instructions on the minutia and neglect the bigger picture.

Reporting to an amiable autocrat is better than serving under a tyrant. But it is one of the most frustrating ministry positions. What other characteristics help describe an amiable autocrat? If you’ve served under someone like this, how did you handle it?

How Different Generations View the Bible

The Barna Group recently released research that reveals how attitudes about Bible usage are changing across generations. They interviewed over 1,000 people in five separate studies. They defined each generation in the study: the Mosaic generation (ages 18 to 25), the Busters (ages 26 to 44), Boomers (ages 45 to 63), and Elders (ages 64-plus).

You can read the full report here, but below are some of the differences they found between generations:

Less Sacred – While most Americans of all ages identify the Bible as sacred, the drop-off among the youngest adults is striking: 9 out of 10 Boomers and Elders described the Bible as sacred, which compares to 8 out of 10 Busters (81%) and just 2 out of 3 Mosaics (67%).

Less Accurate – Young adults are significantly less likely than older adults to strongly agree that the Bible is totally accurate in all of the principles it teaches. Just 30% of Mosaics and 39% of Busters firmly embraced this view, compared with 46% of Boomers and 58% of Elders.

More Universalism – Among Mosaics, a majority (56%) believes the Bible teaches the same spiritual truths as other sacred texts, which compares with 4 out of 10 Busters and Boomers, and one-third of Elders.

Skepticism of Origins – Another generational difference is that young adults are more likely to express skepticism about the original manuscripts of the Bible than is true of older adults.

Less Engagement – While many young adults are active users of the Bible, the pattern shows a clear generational drop-off – the younger the person, the less likely they are to read the Bible. In particular, Busters and Mosaics are less likely than average to have spent time alone in the last week praying and reading the Bible for at least 15 minutes. Interestingly, none of the four generations were particularly likely to say they aspired to read the Bible more as a means of improving their spiritual lives.

Bible Appetite – Despite the generational decline in many Bible metrics, one departure from the typical pattern is the fact that younger adults, especially Mosaics (19%), express a slightly above-average interest in gaining additional Bible knowledge. This compares with 12% of Boomers and 9% of Elders.

So, younger generations have a greater hunger for Bible knowledge than older generations, yet they are more skeptical, read it less, and consider it less accurate. While this research is certainly discouraging on the surface, it reveals a deeper opportunity as well. If you feed the hunger for Bible knowledge through biblical depth in all areas of ministry, then perhaps you’ll see the fruit of less skepticism and a higher view of Scripture.

Avoiding the Awkward Wedding Question

Perhaps nothing is both joyous and awkward like being asked to perform the wedding ceremony of a couple you do not know well. If you’re a pastor and like me, you want to rejoice with the couple, but you can’t commit on the spot without asking personal questions. In order to prevent the inevitable uncomfortable questions, I’ve written a form letter to give to every couple that asks me to perform the ceremony. The purpose of the letter is to provide a filter for me and also to keep me consistent with which ceremonies I will perform. I’ve provided a modified version of the letter below – I also require the couple to sign a statement of agreement with it. Feel free to modify and use it if you like.

First let me congratulate you on your upcoming marriage. The family unit is the foundational institution of human society. The ties between a husband and wife are strong as they mirror the union between Christ and the church. As a pastor who takes seriously the covenant commitment between a man and a woman, I am honored that you have asked me to perform the ceremony.

Before I commit to performing the ceremony, I ask that you affirm the following details about yourselves:

• In this marriage, you are both affirming that you have accepted Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, you have made a confession of this faith to a local church body, and you have been baptized as a public announcement of your faith. If you have any doubts or questions about a relationship with Christ, I will be happy to discuss this with you.
• In this marriage, you are affirming the covenant commitment to each other for a lifetime. Breaking this promise to each other means you are also breaking your promise to God.
• In this marriage, you affirm that you will model the way in which God relates to His people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church, sacrificing everything for her. A wife is to submit herself graciously to her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ.
• If blessed with children, you will both teach your children spiritual and moral values founded upon biblical Truth.
• In order to help the marriage start well, you both commit to marriage counseling with me or someone approved by me.
• In order to keep the sanctity of marriage complete, you affirm that you are not currently nor will participate in sexual immorality with each other or someone else. If you have been sexually active with each other, you commit from this point forward to repent of this sin, and to refrain from sexual activity and living together until you are married.
• In order to keep the marriage biblical, you are both affirming that neither of you have been previously divorced, with the exception of a few limited cases. If needed, I will be happy to discuss with you the biblical details of these exceptions.

I will be praying for you. The gift of marriage is an amazing blessing from our Lord. It is an incredible joy for which we should be eternally grateful to God. Once you sign and return the attached sheet, we can discuss the details of your wedding ceremony.

Church Inertia

In a recent WSJ blog, Gary Hamel posted about the killer of organizational inertia. His thoughts on the forms of change are well-stated:

In most organizations, change comes in only two flavors: trivial and traumatic. Review the history of the average organization and you’ll discover long periods of incremental fiddling punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change. The dynamic is not unlike that of arteriosclerosis: after years of relative inactivity, the slow accretion of arterial plaque is suddenly revealed by the business equivalent of a myocardial infarction. The only option at that juncture is a quadruple bypass: excise the leadership team, slash head count, dump “non-core” assets and overhaul the balance sheet.

Why does change have to happen this way? Why does a company have to frustrate its shareholders, infuriate its customers and squander much of its legacy before it can reinvent itself? It’s easy to blame leaders who’ve fallen prey to denial and nostalgia, but the problem goes deeper than that. Organizations by their very nature are inertial. Like a fast-spinning gyroscope that can’t be easily unbalanced, successful organizations spin around the axis of unshakeable beliefs and well-rehearsed routines—and it typically takes a dramatic outside force to destabilize the self-reinforcing system of policies and practices.

In his post, he applies these views to organized religion, and he lists several inertial forces in the church, including top-down policies that limit experimentation, leadership systems that reward conformance to traditional and accepted practices, and lecture-style formats as opposed to open discussions. While I take issue with some of the specifics of his analysis (he downplays preaching and seminaries), I certainly agree with the spirit of what he writes.

And his remarks about confusing the “what” and the “how” are spot on:

The most extreme version of organizational inertia comes when those within a company are no longer able to distinguish between form and function—when their instinctual loyalty is to the “how” rather than the “what.”

I can connect with the statements about change – chipping away on the trivial while the traumatic looms. I’ve also, at times, lost sight of the relationship between the “what” and “how.” Churches help grow disciples – it’s what the body does. How churches help this process is not first through loyalty to the organization, but rather first through loyalty to Christ.