What Actually Shifts the Needle in Church Leadership?

Part 4 of the "Why Isn’t Church Working Anymore?" series.

I was asked to comment on how I would do church differently after writing about the church and being involved in churches for 10 years.

Given the last post was about systemic challenges in the church, I’m going to reply with some strategic things to address some of those issues, as opposed to touching on perhaps more populist hot button topics.

Photo by Trevor Kay on Unsplash

Sort Out Financial Pressure Points

One of the biggest inhibitors to the church globally is how to make church plants become financially viable. There are many different ways in which churches get planted, but the average church size in America is 75, and that’s probably not dissimilar to the rest of the world.

While some networks and churches provide financial support, it ultimately comes down to whether that local church can grow enough to support the leader financially or whether they have to supplement their income or even generate all of their income.

The more time pastors spend making money, the less time they have to focus on people.

How finances get used in church organizations to support church plants is therefore critical.

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Series: Why Isn’t Church Working Anymore?

Part 1: Why Isn’t Church Working Anymore?
Part 2: Church Wheel Spinning
Part 3: Systemic Church Challenges
Part 4: What Actually Shifts the Needle in Church Leadership? (This post)

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How to Scale (in Agreement)

When church plants reach financial viability and even start having an impact in the community, the question often arises about having connections to other churches in a denomination or movement.

Being connected to other churches means that the load and skills can be shared around things that churches would not necessarily be able to do on their own. For example, in leadership training, upskilling musicians, and so forth.

Churches that figure out how to scale with other churches can pool resources.

Length: 26 minutes

There is a challenge, though: the power of disagreement. While many Roman Catholics would point out the ability of their denomination to stay together, the Reformation and the birth of Protestantism (formed from the word protest) led to splintering in the church, which continues to this day.

In 2022, the number of non-denominational churches in the US exceeded the number of denominational churches.

This is not without its complications. For example, I spent 8 years in churches relating to NCMI, a church planting movement which started in South Africa and spread all over the world. I then spent 10 years in church plants with leaders who planted out of NCMI relating churches but decided not to relate to NCMI (I’m using NCMI language here as NCMI in itself is hard to understand as an organization). NCMI has since seen several offshoot movements including: Advance Movement, Activate Network, Catalyst Connect, Capstone Trans-local Partnerships, Genesis Collective, Four12Global etc.

Length: 3 minutes

While their reasons for starting are varied, all the people who started these new movements spent time on the NCMI Trans-local Team and, for whatever reason, have chosen to do a similar process of trying to plant and/or gather churches under a different banner other than NCMI. In my opinion, they could not scale and agree at the same time.

Theology

Arguably one of the biggest issue affecting church plants is their theology. In an independent church context, things can get onto shaky ground theologically very quickly, particularly in the realm of the infilling of the Holy Spirit.

While churches like the Anglican Church, which I grew up in, did a fantastic job of building some serious theological resources like the Book of Common Prayer, their application of that theology arguably became culturally irrelevant.

Their numbers are steadily on the decline, and I heard Nicky Gumbel say recently that the Church of England has about 500k attendees, most of whom are in the 58-72 age bracket. That’s a fraction of the people who identify as Christians in the UK and now less than 1% of the English population.

It's one of the reasons I have enjoyed podcasts like Theology in the Raw and Slow Theology from Dr. Nijay Gupta so much because it brings PhD theologians right onto our phones.

For the church to have an impact in the future, it will have to figure out how to bring the relevancy of the Gospel to various 21st-century cultures in a meaningful way.

Tim Keller said before he died that things shifted in the last few years before his death and if he had to start now, he’d talk about identity. It’s a wonderful perspective on how the church can reach people in the 21st century. You can see that clip below:

Clip length: 6 minutes, interview time: 2 hours 31 minutes

How to Replicate Discipleship

Jesus didn’t commission his disciples to go and plant churches; he commissioned them to go and disciple people across the world.

Practically, that looks like figuring out the journey from new believer to mature Christian. There are stages involved in the process and also the challenge that people who are at different levels have different needs. This looks like:

1. New believers: getting your head around what it means to be a disciple of Jesus

2. Laying foundations: getting some solid theological foundations in place

3. Building community: being part of a group of other Christians

4. Focused groups: single-gender groups, accountability groups, theological study groups, etc.

What is key is the journey for people to go from 1-4 and what they need at different stages in their journey. Vintage Church in LA is doing this pretty well. They start with Alpha and then they move people into a foundations course. After that, they get people involved in community groups, and then they even have some heavy-lifting seminary-type courses.

You can see Ger Jones explain this plan below:

Length: 20 minutes

In short, if we can have churches that are sufficiently funded, involved in having an impact outside of themselves with other churches (and accountability in those relationships), find ways to ensure solid theology that is accessible to people in the culture, and have a good discipleship program, then we’re likely to see a church that is growing and seeing more people coming into a relationship with Jesus and becoming like Him.