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When The Church Is Working Right
A letter from Gary Schwammlein, WCA Executive Vice President, International Ministries
Dear Friends,
As I continue my journey through India, let me share with you what I have experienced since I left Mumbai. Out next stop was Kolkata, or as it used to be called, Calcutta. Coming in from the airport I thought I was in China or Dubai because of the endless construction going on and buildings going up everywhere. India is one of the BRIC countries where economic growth is strong and it is certainly apparent on the road from the airport to the city.
However, it does not take long to be made aware of the huge needs this country is facing. We met with Compassion International (CI) staff and witnessed once again the tremendous work they are doing. I heard many heartbreaking stories about families and children that face incredible odds to ever escape the cycle of poverty, and how through child sponsorship their lives are dramatically changed for the better. I, for one, am so deeply grateful that God led our family many years ago to support several children who are helped by CI.
Our next stop was a church in the heart of Kolkata that is such a perfect example of a church working right. Not only do they have a hospital with several hundred beds and a school for 3,000 pupils, they also feed 10,000 children one nutritious meal a day, every day.
Think about it – 10,000 meals a day provided by one church that is not well off by any standard.
They are truly living out the gospel, and do many other things to help spread the gospel and make a difference in a city where less than 1% of the population are Christians. The pastor of this church also pledged his unequivocal support for the GLS and will do everything he can to make it happen, and in a way that will impact this city. He assured us he will make all the resources of the church available because he considers the GLS so important for the churches in this city.
We then stopped in the city of Chennai and met with a group representing most of the key pastors in this city. One of the highlights for me was to have Pranitha Timothy, a speaker at last year’s GLS, attend our GLS planning meeting. What a joy to meet this brave woman and to hear more about the ministry of IJM.
Sunday morning reminded me once again of the incredible beauty of a church when it’s working right. The church I attended, among other things, looks after 80 widows who have been abandoned by their families after their husbands died. I can’t tell you the anger that welled up in me when I heard a story of a son who kicked out his mother from the home that she and her deceased husband had built, and that he, through deception, had taken ownership of. Many of the women there asked me to pray for them, and I was glad to oblige and commit them into the loving care of Jesus.
In Chennai as well, the committee voted to host the GLS later this year. In closing, one more brief report from the neighboring country of Pakistan. 310 people attended the GLS in Lahore in late April, a city where only a few months earlier an angry mob burned down over 130 homes of Christians in a Christian enclave in that city. The GLS was an amazing experience in many ways, as this short report shows: The GLS provided an opportunity to the Leaders of Punjab Province to experience the Holy Spirit move in their unity…they say it was never experienced before, some testified that they have never ever sat with other denomination leaders, GLS-Lahore created an atmosphere for National Heads of different Missions and Organizations and Christian Secular Professionals to sit together for 2 days and experience God’s Special blessings.
Thank you Lord for allowing your Church to prevail, even in the midst of great persecution, opposition and poverty. And thank you for allowing us to be a part of it through the teachings offered through the GLS.
My next stops are Hyderabad, Goa and Bangalore, before heading to Myanmar.
Blessings,
Gary
Gary Schwammlein will be traveling for the next 4-5 weeks working with leaders around the world. Please be praying with our team for safe travels, intentional conversation, divine appointment, and for world leaders will capture the vision for the GLS in their country.
God’s Epic Favor
Post by Cally Parkinson
Meet Epic. Six years old and church home to 2,000 of Decatur, Alabama’s 55,000 residents.
But this thriving church was almost DOA in 2007. Three months after IV (pronounced “ivy”) Marsh moved to Decatur to help plant Epic Church, the senior pastor bailed, making IV the leader by default. The then-170 attendance dropped to 100, then 67, and by week three—Epic was back to its original launch team of 35.
In response, IV shared his vision for the church with eight staff members. Four walked out.
It was a humble beginning.
Today Epic’s spiritual energy is palpable, thanks to God’s blessing on IV’s relentless commitment to a vision of unconventional servant leadership. “This is the driving force that sets us apart,” says IV. “It’s what we do, not what we say.” For example:
- Worshippers gather in a metal barn beside a gravel parking lot, located just off a dead-end street a block from Decatur’s ghetto. “We want to put money into people, not buildings,” IV explains.
- Congregants show up at street corners to hand out cold water when it’s hot—or hot coffee when it’s cold.
- Instead of collecting a Christmas offering, Epic distributes thousands of dollars to congregants, asking them to make someone’s Christmas brighter—unless they need it themselves.
- A “game changer,” according to IV, was a tornado that ripped through Lawrence County in 2010. With power completely out, Epic distributed work gloves, saws, and Gatorade. They provided childcare. And they raised enough money to put 36 mobile homes on the ground—a week before FEMA arrived. “FEMA exists because the church doesn’t do its job,” says IV.
Attendance soared, prompting IV to turn to REVEAL’s Spiritual Life survey. Another “game changer,” IV explains. “REVEAL showed us our blind spots. We acted on them and grew by a thousand.”
Epic’s spiritual vitality also increased dramatically—from an index of 62 in 2010 to 82 in their second survey—placing them in the top 10% of all REVEAL churches. Key initiatives included a focus on life groups designed to move people through Epic’s Discover, Develop, and Deepen stages of spiritual growth. Today, nearly 90% of congregants participate, and spiritual practices—including Bible engagement and solitude—have increased significantly.
So an epic outcome from a humble start—thanks to God’s grace and a bold leader.
What are the takeaways from Epic’s story?
- Aim high. Ask and expect your people to demonstrate the capacity and willingness to love God and to love others in powerful—even unconventional—ways.
- Identify your blind spots. Whether you use REVEAL or another tool, find an objective point of view on your people’s greatest spiritual opportunities.
- Lean into the wisdom of the apostle Paul:
- “Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think.” (Ephesians 3:20 NLT)
Cally Parkinson is the director for REVEAL, an initiative in partnership with the Willow Creek Association that utilizes research tools and discoveries to help churches better understand spiritual growth in their congregations. To date REVEAL has served 1500 churches and surveyed 400,000 congregants. Cally has co-authored four books with Willow Creek’s Executive Pastor, Greg Hawkins, describing the insights from REVEAL.
Mark Your Calendar
WCA works year-round alongside 7,000 member churches and is privileged to serve pioneering pastors and leaders around the world by curating inspirational leadership, intentional skill development and experiences. 2013 has been off to a great start, and as we continue to serve you, your team and your church, be sure to mark your calendar with these important dates:
Tuesday, May 21st: Super Early Bird Deadline for The Global Leadership Summit: Register for the Best Rates of the year!
May 23rd - June 1st: Pray for John Burke and his team as they put on events in 4 South African cities: East London, Cape Town, Durban, and Johannesburg, (If you are in the area, you can register HERE)
May 31st – June 2nd: Pray as 2,500+ Student Ministry Leaders gather in Germany (If you are in the area, you can register HERE)
Tuesday, June 25th: Early Bird Deadline for The Global Leadership Summit
Thursday – Friday, August 8-9th: Reaching 70,000+ leaders in the U.S., The Global Leadership Summit launches live near Chicago
Friday, August 9th: Registration for Summit 2014 opens
September 2013-January 2014: The Global Leadership Summit is taken to 300+ cities in 90 countries and translated into 42 languages. Want to help make the Summit happen globally? Find out how you can help HERE
Looking forward to what God will do in the year ahead!
12 Reasons Why Your Church Doesn’t Produce Spiritual Growth
Re-post by Tony Morgan
Several weeks ago I read Move: What 1,000 Churches Reveal about Spiritual Growth by Greg Hawkins and Cally Parkinson. Greg is the executive pastor at Willow Creek Community Church. Cally is Willow’s director of communication services. The book is based on their research of over 1,000 churches. It takes a hard look at spiritual formation in our churches with a focus on best-practice ministries.
This book is by far the book that has most challenged my thinking regarding spiritual formation in the church. My Kindle version has highlights throughout. This morning I went through all those highlights and tried to narrow them down to the twelve that I found most challenging to current church practices. Unfortunately, these statements only provide a snippet of the findings and best practices outlined in the book.
12 REASONS WHY YOUR CHURCH DOESN’T PRODUCE SPIRITUAL GROWTH
- You focus more on Bible teaching than Bible engagement. – “We learned that the most effective strategy for moving people forward in their journey of faith is biblical engagement. Not just getting people into the Bible when they’re in church—which we do quite well—but helping them engage the Bible on their own outside of church.”
- You haven’t developed a pathway of focused first steps. – “Instead of offering up a wide-ranging menu of ministry opportunities to newcomers, best-practice churches promote and provide a high-impact, nonnegotiable pathway of focused first steps—a pathway designed specifically to jumpstart a spiritual experience that gets people moving toward a Christ-centered life.”
- You’re more concerned about activity than growth. – “Increased church activity does not lead to spiritual growth.”
- You haven’t clarified the church’s role. – “Because—whether inadvertently or intentionally—these churches have communicated to their people that, no matter where they are on their spiritual journey, the role of the church is to be their central source of spiritual expertise and experience. As a result, even as people mature in their beliefs and embrace personal spiritual practices as part of their daily routines, their expectation is that it will be the church, not their own initiative, that will feed their spiritual hunger.”
- You’re focused more on small groups than serving. – “Serving experiences appear to be even more significant to spiritual development than organized small groups.”
- You’re not challenging people to reflect on Scripture – “If they could do only one thing to help people at all levels of spiritual maturity grow in their relationship with Christ, their choice would be equally clear. They would inspire, encourage, and equip their people to read the Bible—specifically, to reflect on Scripture for meaning in their lives.”
- You’re unwilling to admit that more is not better. – “Based on findings from the most effective churches, however, this ‘more is better’ way of thinking is not the best route for people who are new to a church, and it is particularly unsuitable for people who are taking their first steps to explore the Christian faith… Instead of offering a ministry buffet with multiple tempting choices of activities and studies, these churches make one singular pathway a virtual prerequisite for membership and full engagement with the church.”
- You haven’t raised the bar. – “Too many churches are satisfied to have congregations filled with people who say they ‘belong’ to their church—who attend faithfully and are willing to serve or make a donation now and then. But that belonging bar is not high enough; simply belonging doesn’t get the job done for Jesus.”
- You’ve created a church staff dependency. – “Taking too much responsibility for others’ spiritual growth fostered an unhealthy dependence of congregants on the church staff.”
- You believe that small groups are the solution to spiritual formation. - “Based on the churches we have studied, including our own, there is no evidence that getting 100 percent of a congregation into small groups is an effective spiritual formation strategy.”
- You focus on what people should do rather than who people should become. – “Unfortunately, churches often make things harder still by obscuring the goal—to become more like Christ—with a complicated assortment of activities. For instance, encouraging people to: Attend teaching and worship services every week. Meet frequently with small community and Bible study groups (often requiring follow-up communications and homework). Serve the church a couple times a month. Serve those who are underresourced on a regular basis. Invite friends, coworkers, and family to church, special events, support groups, etc. When the church incessantly promotes all the things people should do, it’s very easy for them to lose sight of the real goal—which is who they should become.”
- You aren’t helping people surrender their lives to Jesus. – “Spiritual growth is not driven or determined by activities; it is defined by a growing relationship with Christ. So the goal is not to launch people into an assortment of ministry activities; it is to launch them on a quest to embrace and surrender their lives to Jesus.”
Here’s my Amazon link if you’d like to read the book. I strongly encourage you to do that and wrestle through what you read with your ministry leadership team. If you are honest with yourselves, this book will shift the way you do ministry in your church.
Tony is the Chief Strategic Officer and founder of TonyMorganLive.com. He’s a consultant, leadership coach and writer who helps churches get unstuck and have a bigger impact.
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