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Tuesday, January 03, 2006
Transitioning Your Church Without Compromising Your Message
When Temple Baptist Church of Detroit made the list of America's top ten churches in America in 1969, it had already been in decline for nearly 15 years. The church's highest average attendance was 4,400 people in 1954.
"It was a museum celebrating past victories instead of life change today," says Brad Powell, Senior Pastor at Temple Baptist's survivor congregation, NorthRidge Church. "The most important value for members was how many generations their family had been on the inside rather than on the first generation growth from the outside." Powell, only 32 years old when tapped to lead the historic church in 1990, knew things had to change.
With new leadership and a renewed sense of mission, the congregation did change, but the process took time.
"Our congregation needed to learn that relevance wasn't a sin," Powell says. "The reason so many churches sit still is that they've been taught that the way they've done ministry culturally -- the languages they've spoken and their traditions -- those are akin to Christianity itself. Once they understand that you could maintain biblical integrity and speak to today's culture, we led people through transition. Change is not something you do to your congregation, it's something you lead them through."
The process was a slow one, lasting nearly seven long years. But once the church had walked through the transition, Powell addressed a final question: Why should we care? “Because the Church is Christ’s body on earth!” Powell asserts. “Because Jesus left heaven to seek and save that which was lost, and that’s the call of the Church!”
Finally, in 1997 the congregation exploded in numbers. That growth precipitated a move to the western Detroit suburb of Plymouth, the area from which most of the church’s worshippers were coming, and a name change from Temple Baptist to NorthRidge Church. Today, church attendance averages 9,000 each weekend—up from 1,000 in 1990.
NorthRidge uses a variety of ministry tools to reach out to its community and to educate its membership. Community care programs include a food pantry ministry, financial counseling, hospital visitation and services to the area’s homebound residents. Support programs include ministries dedicated to abortion recovery, eating disorders, sexual addiction and gambling recovery, among others.With newly discovered energy, a culturally relevant message and growing ranks, the congregation at NorthRidge Church believes it’s succeeding in reaching out to the unchurched in their suburban Detroit location.
“Our focus is unchurched Catholics, mainlines, evangelicals, atheists and agnostics,” says Powell. “We are reaching all different kinds of people. We are a multi-generational, multi-economic, multi-educational, multi-ethnic ministry. We are reflecting our community.”
The change hasn’t been easy. In fact,it’s made many congregants uncomfortable at times. But the congregation believes that it is once again fulfillingthe Great Commission, and that is exciting, says Powell. “I have an 80-year-old guy who is still in leadership with me who basically said, ‘I hate everything about our music. But I love everything that we’re accomplishing because people are coming to Christ.’ ”
He adds: “If successful transition happens here, it can happen anywhere.”
Most of us love to hear a story about how a church like NorthRidge has been able to transition into a vibrant community of believers; but it seems that stories about turn-around churches are few and far between. How, exactly, did NorthRidge make the change? What steps did they take? What lines did they draw? How did they deal with criticism? How did they make the change from inward focus to outward focus?
Brad Powell and the NorthRidge team will share many of the answers at an upcoming "Change Without Compromise" conference, coming up February 9-11 at NorthRidge.
Brad says "Through significant dialogue with a wide cross-section of pastors and through our own journey, we have come to understand that the biggest concern for most pastors and churches considering a ministry transition is the idea of compromise." Some transitioning ministries are putting success above truth and allowing the quest for cultural relevance to eclipse their commitment to truth. The result... a great many pastors and churches have refused to even consider change for fear that they too would compromise truth. Brad both understands and respects this fear. After all, when we compromise God’s truth, we have nothing of value to offer people.
The good news is that we don’t have to compromise the truth in order to transition our ministries to greater effectiveness. In fact, the only legitimate motivation for transitioning the style and method of our ministry is to communicate God’s truth to those He loves and died for. As Paul said in 1 Corinthians 9:22b-23:
“I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means
I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the
gospel that I may share in its blessings.”
... 1 Corinthians 9:22b-23
It is because of our commitment to God’s truth that we at NorthRidge have worked so hard to transition our ministry to effectively reach the lost with the hope of Christ. And, because we love the church and believe that it is the only hope of the world, we are passionate about helping other pastors and churches experience the same success in transitioning that God has granted us. For all of these reasons and more we are calling our transition conference “Change Without Compromise.”
I'm excited about this conference, and plan to attend. I hope you'll join me! You can go here for more information or watch an introductory video for the conference here! I hope to see you there!
Todd
(some of this article was published in Outreach Magazine, and supplied by NorthRidge Church.)
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Comments
I laughed a bit at this sentence:
"The change hasn’t been easy. In fact,it’s made many congregants uncomfortable at times."
Yeah, that sounds like the understatement of the year. For a church that has been stagnant for an entire generation, I imagine there were many congregants who were uncomfortable enough to leave the church after a lot of fighting, kicking and screaming, posturing, hijacking small-group discussions, flame emails, multi-page letters, campaigning, and witholding their tithes.
Clergy and lay people alike tend to blur the lines between method and message. If this conference can provide tools for distinguishing between the two, then that's great.
I'm sure a few attendees will return home and blow up their churches by ramrodding change, but overall it sounds very interesting.
Posted by: Billy Cox | Jan 3, 2006 10:06:55 AM
Man, what a refreshing article--like a nice, tall glass of cool water!
My wife's grandfather is a retired pastor in Indiana, and he was the founding pastor of a church that, although not a "mega-church" was certainly a vibrant and God-honoring church.
He's been retired for about 15 years now and we go visit the church when we can. Now that church is dying and the building will probably be put up for sale in about ten or fifteen years, with no congregation to support it. Numbers are dwindling and the word "relevance" doesn't even come in to play. We go out of respect, but ... well, everyone here knows what's happening.
I've prayed with them, I've met with the Elders, I've put together a program for them to reach out to the youth... I just don't know what to do with this church. Were we local, I could do more but I think that the church just doesn't want to change at all.
Here's a question: How does one know when to move on or when to stay?
Posted by: Paul McDonald | Jan 3, 2006 10:07:47 AM
Paul there are many great resources to determine when a church should relocate. The following is an excerpt from Josh Hunt. The entire article can be found at http://www.joshhunt.com/mail29.htm
How NOT to buy a new church building
...there is the law of the mop bucket. Try this experiment. Put a dirty mop bucket in plain sight in your church. Just leave it sitting on the side of your auditorium for 6 weeks. The first week, everyone will notice and you will get lots of complaints. By the third week, not so much. By the sixth week you can bring up a motion in business meeting to have the mop bucket removed and someone will say, “What mop bucket?” The law of the mop bucket teaches us that after six weeks we don't notice the dirty carpet, the broken fixtures, or the little stack of old literature in the corner of nearly every class room. We don't smell that smell in the preschool, but our visitors do.
Think about this: nearly every church I go to has an older building than my bank, the school my kids attend, the grocery store where I shop and the restaurants where I eat. What about you, is it true of you?
A basic missionary principle says that the buildings we use for church need to be about as nice as the grocery stores, schools, homes and banks of the people we are trying to reach. In most cases they are not.
Posted by: Homer Hanshaw | Jan 3, 2006 11:15:23 AM
Thanks for sharing this Todd. I started today at a transitioning church! The timing was perfect!
Posted by: Kevin | Jan 3, 2006 12:07:34 PM
Todd,
WOW. I live in Florida now. Temple Baptist has been through A LOT over the years. I've seen firsthand the transition from Temple to Northridge, from great success to fledgling membership and a shoestring budget. (Yes, down to 1000 from 4400, I would consider fledgling, relatively speaking.) From separatist ideology to being humbled when a beloved pastor fell. Brad Powell has shown himself to be a humble vessel that has helped to take this church from glory to glory. Some disagree with the direction that Temple, now Northridge has taken. Some speak out against it. I can only say one thing, if souls are being saved, and Christ is exalted, ignore the critics, shake the dust off your feet and keep working for the kingdom. God is in Control.
In His Grip, Peter
Posted by: Peter D | Jan 3, 2006 4:30:34 PM
I can't speak to Northridge, but I can speak to our church.
This church is 120 years old, and working hard at transitioning to being a vibrant witness for Christ.
We're having to re-examine a lot of stuff - how we do things, why we do things, and if we should do things or cut out some of what we do. It hasn't been easy, but it's been great.
The leadership is awesome, and while we haven't always seen eye-to-eye about absolutely everything, we have great unity about the direction we need to go.
We've made some major decisions lately that will go a long way to helping our identity in the community, and we're excited!
The great thing about all this is that the MESSAGE has not changed one bit. Only how we deliver it.
And God is moving...
Brian
Posted by: Brian La Croix | Jan 3, 2006 5:15:53 PM
Thank-You for the useful information. I also believe there is a total hesitation to try anything for fear of straying from our moorings and non-biblical traditions. I
believe we can and must hold to the absolute distinctives and doctrinal position while energetically moving the church into Ministry Programs of outreach
to win the Lost.
Posted by: Rev.Paul E. Williams | Jan 3, 2006 5:52:17 PM
In fact . . . if we fail to try new and innovative and creative ways to do ministry in order insure we have the same priorties as Jesus who came to "seek and save the lost" . . . then haven't we actually strayed from our moorings.
I think it was Leonard Sweet who said methods are like wineskins, message is the wine - change the wineskin as often as we need to in order to preserve the wine.
Wendi
Posted by: Wendi | Jan 3, 2006 6:13:57 PM
>A basic missionary principle says that the buildings we use for church need to be about as nice as the grocery stores, schools, homes and banks of the people we are trying to reach. In most cases they are not.
Homer,
While I'd agree with your point about smells, the mop bucket, etc., I believe this statement is taking it too far. Buildings should be clean and well maintained, but having one of the most tony buildings in town isn't a "basic missionary principle".
In fact, I'd contend that the opposite is just as true: having too nice of a building can be a turn-off to new folks. I can hear the rebuttals now: blah, blah, blah, excellence. Blah, blah, blah, marketing. Blah, blah, blah, target audience. Fine. But if I were walking into a church for the first time and saw what amounted to "a temple to our children", I'd think the church sold out to the man and I'd get out of there. (Full disclosure, I'm a cynical grad student in my late 20's. Hmm...maybe cynical grad student is a little redundant!)
Of course, contrary to popular wisdom on this website, I'd also assume that any preacher who showed videos of himself at church (and at other churches) was a bit of an ego-maniac. But that's just me.
Posted by: G. Jefferson | Jan 3, 2006 7:57:29 PM
A note to G Jefferson - I agree that "too nice of a building can be a turn-off to new folks," but I think you overlooked a key word in Homer's post ("about") and the practical implication of that word. Note what he wrote: "...the buildings we use for church need to be about as nice as the grocery stores, schools, homes and banks...."
I read that as meaning the church should fit in with the local community, not be "one of the most tony buildings in town." (I certainly wouldn't consider the grocery stores, schools, or banks in my upper-middle class neighborhood as being tony, and only a few of the homes are.)
Posted by: Randy Ehle | Jan 4, 2006 1:53:16 PM
I have been saved now for 4 years and has been attending the same ministry. Would it be a sin if i checked out other ministries. My Pastor says that God would not bless us if we went somewhere else. Is that true.
Posted by: craigh whittaker | Jan 4, 2006 11:54:56 PM
No. It would not be a sin or blessings would not be with held. We are all a part of the body of Christ unless it is a different Jesus they are preaching. There are many wolves amoungst the body today and some are very authoritarian and do not want you to be set free but remain under their rule. Recommended reading would be spiritual abuse resources either on-line or through your local bookstore.
Posted by: ld | Jan 5, 2006 1:50:22 AM
Craigh,
Of course it would not be sin to visit another church or even become part of a different church family if the Lord leads.
However, some people "attend" several churches in their community, seeking different places to have various needs met. Scripture doesn't describe church as a place, nor a ministry or meeting to attend. A church is a group of people deeply committed to one another and to the mission God has given them. I believe that it is imperative for Christians to choose one church family with whom they can build relationships and contribute their gifts through service. It's very hard to engage in this way while trying to be part of several congregations.
Wendi
Posted by: Wendi | Jan 5, 2006 2:09:07 AM
Interesting thing about the mop bucket that I noticed. It sat there for six weeks... No one in the congregation took the initiative to physically do anything about it. They complained about it - they took the matter to the board, but no one simply took the initiative to stand up, pick up the bucket, take it to where it belonged, pour the water out, etc...
That is one of the prevailing attitudes in a dying church - or at least of a church that I describe as being in "a coma." And it's the biggest problem in the church that I serve in. No one wants to make a move to do anything. They want growth, they see the need for new families, but no one takes the initiative to go out and "engage" people - no one invites their neighbor, or a co-worker to church. We have an event where we want to get into the community, and no one is willing to help. The dirty mop bucket just sits there and everyone says, "someone should do something about that bucket..." not realizing that that "someone" should be THEM.
My question on this is - how do you combat this? How does one get an older congregation, who is convinced that they don't "have what it takes" to "do" ministry - how do you get them to share their faith, to invite others to church...
I've tried preaching on Moses and how He said He couldn't do it, but God provided... Nothing. What does one do to help people break out of that "coma?"
Posted by: David S. | Jan 5, 2006 9:43:21 AM
