Small Church Checkup: Assessing Your Church's Health and Creating a Treatment Plan

ISBNs

978-0-88177-891-5 (print)

978-0-88177-892-2 (mobi)

978-0-88177-893-9 (ePub)

Scripture passages marked MSG are taken from The Message. Copyright © 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 2000, 2001, 2002. Used by permission of NavPress Publishing Group.

Scripture passages marked CEB are from The Common English Bible (CEB). Copyright © 2011 by Common English Bible

SMALL-CHURCH CHECKUP: ASSESSING YOUR CHURCH’S HEALTH AND CREATING A TREATMENT PLAN © 2017 by Discipleship Resources. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address Discipleship Resources Editorial Offices, P.O. Box 340003, Nashville, TN 37203-0003.

Printed in the United States of America.

DR891

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface by Doug Ruffle

Foreword by Dr. Lovett Weems

Acknowledgment and Dedications

Introduction

A Word of Warning!

Chapter One–The Physical

Chapter Two–The Consultation

Chapter Three–Lab and Test Results

Chapter Four–Crucial Conversations and Field Trips

Chapter Five–The Diagnosis

Chapter Six–Treatment Plans for Not-Yet-Big-Churches

Chapter Seven–Treatment Plans for Stable, Small Churches

Chapter Eight–Treatment Plans for Smaller Churches

Chapter Nine—Closing Best Practices

Epilogue: Whole-Body Health

Appendix

Your Church Health History

Tests to Measure Church Health

Marcia McFee’s Annual Conference Church Closing Liturgy

Resources

PREFACE

Path 1’s Wesleyan Church Planting Resources

In the summer of 2013, staff of Path 1 (New Church Starts at Discipleship Ministries of The United Methodist Church), along with a selected group of associates from around the United States, embarked on an extensive road trip. We visited more than 320 of the new churches that had been planted in the previous five years. Through hundreds of conversations with church planters and judicatory leaders of congregational development, we learned about the hopes and heartaches of starting new places for new people and revitalizing existing churches among the people called Methodist in the United States. We learned of innovative out-of-the-box church plants as well as traditional strategies that are reaching new people and making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. We celebrate the many ways annual conferences and districts of the church are finding to form new communities of faith. We also learned that there was a lack of written resources available that guided new church planting in a Wesleyan theological perspective. Thus, we set out to create Wesleyan Church Planting Resources. Our hope is that these resources will not only help those who plant new churches but will also help those who work to revitalize existing churches.

Small-Church Checkup is the sixth book to be published as part of this initiative. Kay Kotan, Director of Congregational Development for the Susquehanna Annual Conference of The United Methodist Church, and Phil Schroeder, Director of Congregational Development for the North Georgia Annual Conference, have put together a practical guide for small churches that brings hope and direction for the future of these communities of faith. We encourage a team from your church to work through this checkup together. Talk about the state of health of the church. Complete the assessment included in the appendix. Work on a plan of action for your future. This resource provides the tools that will help you put together a plan. I am convinced that you will be filled with a sense of hope and purpose by working through the steps outlined in this book.

We are grateful to Kay and Phil for sharing from their experience and expertise as they provide all the elements for a proper diagnosis of your church and a sensible plan to attain a greater measure of health going forward. I am grateful to them for their contribution to our series of books. You will be, too.

Douglas Ruffle

General Editor of Wesleyan Church Planting Resources

Other Titles in Path 1’s

Wesleyan Church Planting Resources Series

A Missionary Mindset: What Church Leaders Need to Know to Reach Their Community—Lessons from E. Stanley Jones by Douglas Ruffle (Discipleship Resources, 2016).

Failing Boldly: How Falling Down in Ministry Can Be the Start of Rising Up by Christian Coon (Discipleship Resources, 2017).

Flipping Church: How Successful Church Planters Are Turning Conventional Wisdom Upside-Down, edited by Michael Baughman (Discipleship Resources, 2016).

Viral Multiplication in Hispanic Churches: How to Plant and Multiply Disciple-Making Hispanic Churches in Twenty-first Century America by Iosmar Álvarez (Discipleship Resources, 2016).

Vital Merger: A New Church Start Approach that Joins Church Families Together by Dirk Elliott (Foreword by Douglas T. Anderson), Fun & Done Press, 2013.

FOREWORD

Small churches are not new. They have abounded from the beginning of Christianity. Small churches constituted the overwhelming majority of congregations in U.S. Protestant denominations that spread across the country as the nation moved westward. Churches were established close together in a country that was seventy-five percent rural with limited travel ranges in the early twentieth century. Most of these churches continue to serve their communities, even as the population is almost eighty percent non-rural today. It hardly needs to be said that smaller churches face many challenges.

Small churches are living organisms that experience life cycles, including birth and death, growth and decline, vitality and stagnation. Therefore, churches need the same kind of nurture and care that other living things require. You will find that the categories of diagnosis and treatment options used in this book fit remarkably well for churches. All of us have known people who ignored a proper diagnosis and treatment of their physical health until it was too late. There is no reason for this to happen to churches, especially after engaging with this book.

A new factor among today’s smaller churches is the rise of the very small churches, those with fifty or fewer in worship attendance. This size church is becoming more numerous each year. Despite the fact that it is from this group that almost all church closures come, there has still been an increase of almost 2,400 such United Methodist churches in the past ten years. And these constitute a majority of the denomination’s congregations in the United States. Fewer of the very small churches are showing attendance increases each year. For a long time, about one-third of these churches would show attendance gains in any given year. That percentage now has fallen well below thirty percent. Every year now, there is a decline in the likelihood that a church that begins the year with fifty or fewer worshipers the past year will end the year averaging fifty-one or more in worship.

A major challenge for most small churches is to recapture the once-common multigenerational character of small churches. Churches can survive with vitality generation after generation if they can maintain a multigenerational constituency. The dilemma is seen in the high death rates within smaller churches, often twice that of the general population. The aging of membership and changes in the makeup of communities often mean that the primary source of younger members in the past—their own families—is not a source today. In all likelihood, new children and youth will not come primarily from those related to, or perhaps even known by, current members. It is from a renewed engagement with the community, especially any new neighbors, that some small churches are finding new life and hope.

I grew up in a rural Mississippi church that was part of a three-point circuit. I spent the early years of my ministry in similar circuits or in open country and small-town churches. As a seminary president and professor, I have worked with student pastors and denominational leaders who serve a preponderance of small-membership churches. Over the years, I have learned lessons about leadership and small-membership churches that I see taken very seriously in this fine book.

History is important for the small-membership church, where yesterday is usually better than they think tomorrow will be. The future needs somehow to be connected to the past. Likewise, each of these churches operates within a distinctive culture. It is not enough for solutions to be right, but they must feel right for us. And change is hard for small churches because change has not always been good for them and their communities. New visions and new frontiers face skepticism, often for good reason. They identify more easily with endurance and maintenance.

Innovative church leaders can take the lessons of this new volume to use in creative ways for helping congregations consider their futures. Grounded in Scripture and set in spiritual discernment, the insights and options offered here can help churches of any size see that God still has a next faithful step for them. Their task is not to become like any other church, but they must be faithful to seek and follow the next chapter that God has for their particular congregation. The current state of things—whether in the largest or smallest churches—is never synonymous with God’s ultimate will. We cannot become what God wants us to be by remaining what we are.

Lovett H. Weems, Jr.

Wesley Seminary