The New Traditional Church by Christina Herndon

TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction

Part 1: Discipleship

Part 2: Web Strategy

Part 3: Music

Part 4: Community

Part 5: Put It into Action

Conclusion

Discussion Questions

About the Author

Church Consulting & Coaching

INTRODUCTION If I were to take a guess, would I be right to presume your church has been described as contemporary, progressive, relevant to the culture, or simply different from the norm? Maybe you decided years ago to change the way church is done, be it through a transformation or church launch. Your goal was to break free from the mold of the traditional church to reach more people for Christ. And it worked! Individuals and families in your community—people who had never gone to church or had vowed never to return—started coming, found Jesus, and experienced life change. But where is your church today? Has the fresh approach that once replaced tradition now become out of date? As you read this eBook and evaluate your approach to discipleship, Web strategy, music, and community, you’ll discover whether or not you have somehow become “the new traditional church.” The goal of this eBook is to help you evaluate your practices and processes to make sure they’re helping you fulfill God’s vision for your church. Though you may look “contemporary” compared to the traditional church of decades past, you still can’t hold on to the same practices and expect different results.

[ PART ONE ]

DISCIPLESHIP Let me preface this section by saying I’m not sure what I think about what I’m going to share. I’m still processing things, still waiting to hear more from God on this. I haven’t landed, but as best as I can tell from studying churches across the country, here’s how the typical contemporary church encourages people to invest their time today: • Participate in Sunday worship services. • Read your Bible. • Become a member of the church. • Attend classes to learn more about the Bible and your spiritual walk. • Participate in a small group with other believers. • Serve in a ministry. • Participate in events and programs that connect believers with others in a similar life stage (i.e., men, women, married couples, moms, singles, college students, etc.). • Participate in missions, either locally or globally. • Invest in people’s lives and invite them to church. I think that’s a fairly comprehensive list, but you could probably modify that for your specific church and add or delete from the list. Now, as a result of all this, we see that about 20 to 25 percent of people end up doing most of the serving at a church. Contemporary churches struggle to get more than 30 percent of their people engaged in small groups. A tiny percentage of people are in the Bible daily. People end up spending a lot more time at church rather than connecting with people outside the church. We reinforce a consumption mentality that says if you’re going to grow in your faith, you need the church to spoon-feed you. People become reliant on the church rather than Jesus for spiritual maturity.

This is going to sound a little sacrilegious, but I’m wondering what would happen if we eliminated some ministries of the contemporary church. What would happen, as an example, if we only asked people to invest their time in the following way? • • • •

Participate in corporate worship and Bible teaching. Read your Bible. Serve others. Make disciples.

Kind of scary isn’t it? There’s a lot of stuff we do as churches that’s not on that list. Most of what’s not on that list are the gatherings and activities that bring believers together to learn more. No “traditional” small groups. No classes. No singles, women’s, men’s, or sports ministry events. No structured missions programs. I’m wondering what would happen if, rather than focusing so much on transferring knowledge, we focused on helping people love God, love others, and make new disciples. What would happen if we asked people to spend less time at the church and more time being the church to those who need Jesus? What would happen if we offered more tools to help people study the Bible on their own? What would happen if there was less emphasis on church activities and more emphasis on reaching the world for Jesus? Maybe groups and classes and ministry programs aren’t the discipleship strategy. Maybe encouraging personal disciplines and serving and making disciples is the discipleship strategy. Like I said, I’m not sure where I’m going to land on this. I just think some aspects of the contemporary church that we’ve accepted as requirements for “good ministry” are creating barriers to spiritual growth and to the fulfillment of the Great Commission.

[ PART TWO ]

WEB STRATEGY I’m amazed at the number of churches that still view the Web primarily as an advertising mechanism to let people know who they are and what they’re doing. Go ahead. Visit several church Web sites. It really doesn’t even matter what size the church is. With few exceptions, you’ll find their Web strategy is essentially a bullhorn approach. The church is standing on a street corner of Dot and Com yelling at the people passing by: • • • • • •

“Come to our services on Sunday!” “Let me tell you about our men’s ministry!” “Join us for the golf tournament or fishing derby!” “Serve on one of our ministry teams!” “Give money to our church!” “Here’s what we believe!”

It’s a one-sided relationship. The church views the Web as a place to promote their agenda. No interaction with the audience. No stories of life change. No solutions to help people experience community or discipleship online. At best, you may be able to watch a video of a service, but you certainly won’t have the opportunity to engage in a conversation with others about what you’re watching. Essentially, we’ve taken the Sunday service bulletin or paper church newsletter and put it on our Web site. That’s the Internet strategy for the church today. “Here’s who we are and what we’re doing. Join us!” The rest of the world views the Web very differently, though. For example, outside of the church, people go online to: • • • • • •

meet other people and build relationships, share what’s happening in their life and tell their story, get a taste of the experience, primarily through video, with the opportunity to interact, share slivers of content with others (3-minute clips, not 45-minute messages), view content on demand, on their time, and add their contribution to the bigger story.

Rather than looking at the Web through the eyes of Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter users, though, we’re still looking at the Web through the eyes of a Sunday bulletin reader. This approach may completely ignore the people we say we are trying to reach, but it works for the people already attending, so why change it? And that’s the problem for so many churches. We view the Web as an add-on. After we’ve figured out how we’re going to do ministry, then we want to know how to use the Web to promote our ministry. Instead, the churches that have influence within our online culture look at ministry differently. They assume the people they’re trying to reach are online. They assume the people who are connected to their ministry are online. Rather than looking at the Web as an afterthought, they consider Web strategy as a fully integrated part of how they help people take steps toward Christ. They are a church online as much as they are a church sitting on Main Street. The Web site isn’t something the “Web monkey” maintains. It’s a place where the youth pastor, worship leader, children’s director, small group leader, senior pastor, and every other person of influence help people to connect and grow. It’s an environment where the entire church engages the community and encourages each other to take their next steps. It’s as much their story as it is ours. Of course, this approach to the Web would require far too much time, resources, and leadership. It would be much less expensive than building a new building, but it would require a shift in resources and focus. Because it’s new, it would be hard. And because the staff and volunteer leadership team would have to embrace this new approach, it would be challenging. We’d rather stick with what we know. It’s a lot easier to maintain our online “bulletins and church newsletters.”

[ PART THREE ]

MUSIC Remember the days when the only worship music was hymns? We were stuck there because that was clearly the “sacred” style of worship music. Then the ’80s hit and churches such as Willow Creek made it possible for us to use current music styles in worship services to connect with the unchurched. That was great, but now it’s as if we got stuck in the ’80s. While the church still leans on a mix of rock and pop music as the preferred worship genre, our culture has shifted once again. Now, according to iTunes, 1 in 3 of the top 100 songs downloaded in the U.S. is either hip-hop/rap or R&B/soul. My guess, though, is that you can’t name a church in the country that’s using these genres of music for worship. Why is that? Now, before you let your “it’s-not-our-culture” bias set in, consider this. Most of the hip-hop and R&B music has been recorded by black artists. But while only 14 percent of the U.S. population is black, remember that nearly one-third of the music purchased on iTunes is one of these two genres. You do the math. White people like hip-hop. I once polled readers with this question: “Consider the worship music at your church. What genre of music would best describe the style?” Amazingly, with more than three hundred people responding, exactly 0 percent of the churches indicated that they’re using hip-hop music in their worship services. I’m guessing there are several reasons for this: • The people making decisions about worship music don’t prefer this style of music. And, don’t we all know, preferences drive decisions in churches. • Churches are not hiring worship leaders (or raising up volunteers) who can authentically lead worship with these genres of music. • Christian artists aren’t recording music that reflects what our culture is listening to. • Churches don’t know the culture they’re trying to reach. If a third of the country is buying hip-hop or R&B music, you’d think at least one church would be trying to use that style of music to reach those people for Jesus.

Aside from all of that, I think the number one reason why rock and pop is the predominant genre of music in churches is this: our worship music has become the “hymns” of the new traditional church. In other words, we grew up listening to that kind of worship music. Frankly, we’d rather play our new “hymns” in our services than consider what style of music might more effectively connect with people who need Jesus. So, the bottom line is this: Playing hip-hop or R&B music (or any other style of music that might reach our culture) would make us uncomfortable. Because of that, we keep playing and singing what we know, but we keep praying we’ll reach different people.

[ PART FOUR ]

COMMUNITY One thing that has always intrigued me about the church is the apparent need to organize friendships. In every other area of our lives, people find their own friends. But, for whatever reason, when it comes to church we think the church needs to find us a friend. For good or bad, churches have taken it upon themselves to do just that. We have created all kinds of ministry programs to bring people together who I guess are unable to meet friends on their own once they step through the doors of the church. We organize Sunday school classes and small groups and men’s and women’s ministry programs. We create events and weekly gatherings to help Christians meet fellow Christians. By the time it’s all said and done, people eat, work, play, and parent with other Christians multiple times during the week. And that ends up being the model for how we’re supposed to live out our faith. It makes me wonder, though, if we’ve unintentionally done a few things: • Have we made people too reliant on the church for putting them in relationship with other people? • Have we made people too reliant on the church for “growing them” in their faith? • Have we pulled people into relationship with other Christians at the expense of their relationships with people who need Jesus? It just strikes me as odd that people seem to be very capable of finding friends outside the church. In fact, the social networking craze has made it even easier to connect with people both face-to-face and virtually. I wonder if social networking has any clues for the church when it comes to biblical community. If we create the right framework for relationships to happen, will people find their own friends? If we create the right environments, will people take that step on their own? What would happen if we put less attention on organizing relationships and more attention on giving people something around which to organize? For example, what if we focused on service opportunities?

Would people naturally gather around those initiatives to help others? What if we focused on the content we were generating to help people better understand the Bible and its application to our daily lives? Would people naturally organize around that content for conversations together? And what if we embraced social networking to encourage people to find their own friends . . . as they’re already doing? Would people initiate their own relational connections? It seems that there must be a way to decentralize the way people connect relationally while keeping the gospel and a biblical leadership structure central to how we organize as churches. When people have the freedom to gather in community without relying on the church to place them with other people, that’s when the gospel will spread like a virus. When people start focusing less on how the church needs to serve them and more on how they need to be the church, that’s when dramatic transformation will take place in people’s lives and in our communities. Until that happens, we will continue to rely on the church to find friends for us—and we will maintain our status as “the new traditional church.”

[ PART FIVE ]

PUT IT INTO ACTION Many times our “new traditions” develop because we find ourselves trying to keep people happy who already attend our churches. By catering to their preferences, we unintentionally encourage people to consume ministry rather than be the church. Here are some steps to help you identify where you may need to establish new systems and strategies:

1 . Talk with your staff and lay leaders. Use the discussion guide that follows. Listen for clues to identify what’s driving everyone’s thinking and actions. Do you hear people talking about personal preferences? Or, do you hear people talking about reaching people outside the church and helping people take their next steps toward Christ?

2 . Review the core elements of your ministry strategy. I’ve highlighted discipleship, Web communications, music, and community. These are just a handful of ministry strategies where new traditions can become barriers over time. You may also want to talk about areas like teaching, serving, outreach, children’s ministry, student ministry, giving, leadership development, etc.

3 . Survey your church. Take five minutes out of a Sunday service and have everyone complete a brief survey to find out who is showing up (demographics) and how people are taking next steps. Go to my Web site to download a sample of an all-church survey.

4 . Get a fresh perspective. Invite someone from a church a few steps ahead of you to visit your church and assess your ministry. Pay someone you are trying to reach who doesn’t attend your church (or maybe any church) to come and give you an objective assessment of your ministry.

5 . Ask the tough questions. It’s easy to keep people busy doing what we’ve always done. It’s much tougher to consider whether or not people are actually becoming more like Jesus and making disciples. Someone needs to ask the tough questions. If you’re the leader, that someone is you.

Remember, teaching and vision-casting may shift thinking, but systems and strategies will shift behaviors. There are many churches that continue to use their same traditions but hope and pray for different results. The only way to get different results is to engage different systems. That means you may have to break traditions—including “new traditions.”

CONCLUSION Now that you’ve read through some examples of what “the new traditional church” looks like, I’m sure you have a lot to consider. Are you doing what contemporary churches are “supposed to do” but finding you aren’t really reaching people or helping them take their next steps toward Christ? If you haven’t already done so, take some time to dig a little deeper with the discussion questions that follow. Better yet, get together with your leadership team to discuss where you are now and what steps you need to take for becoming the church God has called you to be.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS 1 . Why would your church be, or not be, considered “the new traditional church”? 2 . What major changes in focus or method did you once make, but which are no longer considered fresh or relevant?

3 . Imagine you are someone who doesn’t attend your church but comes to your Web site. What is the first impression you are likely to have after this virtual visit?

4 . In what ways does your Web site push information and/or promote next steps? 5 . What ministries in your church actually keep people from growing spiritually? Which ministries need to be eliminated, and which ones need to be given greater attention?

6 . Consider your worship “playlist” over the past few months. How diverse has it been? Or have you repeated styles or even songs over and over?

7 . What are your feelings about incorporating different styles of music into your worship service to reach your community? If you are open to it, do you have the musicians who can expertly lead it?

8 . By concentrating so much on building community within your church, how has outreach in the community suffered?

9 . How is your church creating the right framework for relationships to be deep, spiritual partnerships rather than superficial acquaintances?

10 . Now, revisiting question #1 above . . . are you or are you not “the new traditional church”?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Tony Morgan is the Pastor of Ministries at West Ridge Church near Atlanta. He’s also a strategist, coach, writer, speaker, and consultant who equips leaders and churches to impact their communities for Christ. More important, he has a passion for people. He’s all about helping people meet Jesus and take steps in their faith. For more than ten years, Tony served on the senior leadership teams at NewSpring Church (Anderson, South Carolina) and Granger Community Church (Granger, Indiana). With Tim Stevens, Tony has coauthored Simply Strategic Stuff, Simply Strategic Volunteers, and Simply Strategic Growth—each of which offers valuable, practical solutions for different aspects of church ministry. In his book Killing Cockroaches, Tony shows leaders how they can stop getting bogged down in the mundane and small details of church life to instead focus on making a bigger impact through leadership and life. Tony has also written several articles on staffing, technology, strategic planning, and leadership published by organizations such as Outreach magazine, Catalyst, and Pastors.com. Tony and his wife, Emily, reside near Atlanta, Georgia, with their four children—Kayla, Jacob, Abby, and Brooke.

For more information: www.TonyMorganLive.com

Follow Tony on Twitter: www.Twitter.com/TonyMorganLive

CHURCH CONSULTING & COACHING Tony Morgan loves consulting with, speaking to, and coaching leaders. Based on his fifteen years of strategic leadership experience working for three growing churches and numerous church clients, he can assist you with: • • • • •

Consulting & Ministry Health Assessment Staffing & Structure Review Volunteer Strategy Development Weekend Service Review Speaking & Training

Additionally, Tony partners with some great organizations to assist churches with creative design, technology, multi-site, executive recruiting, stewardship, facility design and construction, and brand strategy.

Discover how Tony can partner with you: www.TonyMorganLive.com/consulting

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