Bill Easums Observations

It just may be that my ranting for the past 20 years or more is finally paying off. Parts of the recent Rethink Church campaign of the UMC shows signs of a biblical understanding of the role of the church.

What I like about it are the words they use

• Their focus on the Great Commission
• sending us out to encounter the world
• Their use of taking the message from “Jerusalem, Judea, to Samaria and to the ends of the earth”

I’m constantly asked about the keys to moving through the various barriers churches face. Over the years I compiled my list.  Since this post was lost in the transfer of our site, I’m reposting it.

1. Staff becomes far more essential to the journey.
2. Pastor has to hone his or her hiring skills.
3. All staff has to learn new skills.
4. Parking begins to become a much bigger issue.
5. The back door becomes a growing issue.
6. Systems begin to come into play in order to identify new people and close the back door.
7. Pastor and Staff have to learn how to hand-off ministry.

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com

My reading this summer hasn’t produced a lot of excellent books, but it has produced three excellent books that are worth purchasing.

Perhaps the best book of this summer and perhaps this year is The Age of the Unthinkable, By Joshua Cooper Ramo

If you’re ready to stretch your brain and learn from a wide variety of disciplines then this is the one book you need to read this week. If you want to have insight into why few organizations or governments or churches or denominations don’t work anymore, this is a must read. And it is a fascinating read. So fascinating that you might be tempted to read it just for the pure pleasure of what it contains and miss the implications for your ministry.  For more click here.

The second book is The Great Emergence, by Phyliss Tickle

 If you’re looking for a well written summary of the cultural factors behind the emergence of the Emergents (no pun intended) this book is for you. Tickle couches the entire drama within the context of “who or where is the authority?”

I have two problems with the book. For more click here.

The final book is A Multi-Site Church Road Trip, by Surratt, Ligon, and Bird.  The authors visit some of the best known and some not-so-known multi-site churches and record their findings for us. Like all Leadership Network books the book is excellently researched and written.

The one chart that caught my attention was the one showing the recent exponential growth of the multi-site movement. In 2000 there were only 300 such churches.  In 2009 there are over 3,000 multi-site churches.  Their conclusion – multi-site is becoming the norm.  Look for the book to be released soon.

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com

I began consulting with churches part time in 1987. I’ve been a full time consultant to churches since 1990. My consulting firm, 21^st Century Strategies, Inc. has been around for twenty-two years. So I’ve had time to see a lot of changes in church consulting over the years- some good and some not so good.

The biggest change is the shift from training conferences hosted by parachurch groups to conferences hosted by mega churches.  When I began my consulting ministry, only a handful of mega-churches were doing national training events. Today, the last study I saw a couple of years ago showed there were over 360 national training events during the year- most hosted by mega churches.

The second biggest change is the rise in the number of church consultants. In 1990 there were only a handful of nationally known church consultants, especially within the mainline tradition- namely Herb Miller, Lyle Schaller, and Kennon Callahan. They had risen up through the ranks of growing a church or being on the staff of a growing church.  Today, church consultants within the mainline tradition are a dime a dozen – and most of them have never grown a church, something that should set off some alarm bells.

The third change I’ve is the clear shift from consulting mostly with mainline churches to working with non-mainline churches.  When I began consulting in 1987, 100% of my clients were mainline. Today, that number is less than 50%.  I attribute this to their rapidly declining numbers.

The fourth change is the rise of coaching and church planting. In 1990 coaching wasn’t even on my radar and I suspect it wasn’t on the radar of many people. Today, my list of people I’m coaching is growing faster than my on-site consultations.

In 1990 there were only a handful of church planting groups around the country; today the number seems to be growing annually.  Some of the largest training events during a year will be for church planters.

Finally, I’m seeing a rise in electronic coaching and consulting. This is probably 20% of our clients now. With the downturn in the economy and the way the country is going at the moment I fully expect electronic coaching and consulting to make up 30-40% of our clients.

So, what’s the future of church consulting? It depends on how flexible a group happens to be. For those who can’t adjust on the fly, it will be a nightmare. For those who can fly by the seat of their pants and spin on a dime it will be a bright future. So what’s new?

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com

The world I was born into was a world of probabilities.  You could predict with some certainty the direction the world was heading.  Today you can’t because of probabilities our world is filled with wildcards.

What’s a wildcard? Here’s a quick list:

Terrorism
Global warming
Extreme global climate change
Nuclear war
U.S. decline as a world power
Rising of China and Iran
Pakistan
Volatile world stock market
Oil prices
2008

Two wildcards have been played in my life time – The shift from Modernity to whatever we want to call the emerging world and the world-wide economic crises of 2008 and following.

Navigating such a world isn’t easy. That’s why I wrote the book Doing Ministry in Hard Times. 

Hard times brings either great opportunities or great hardships to churches and their leaders . Only one thing determines the difference –how church leaders react to the hard times. Now is not the time to hunker down; now is the time to be proactive.

In my book I explore what should always be cut in hard times and what should always be increased.  Being strategic is the key.

For some reason recent articles on my blog have disappeared. I know that because several of you have emailed me asking where to find certain posts that are no longer on the blog.

We had a worm in the transferring of our servers from one location to another so we guess that is what happened. 

It’s hard to believe some people have nothing better to do than hack a site like ours.  I can understand why North Korea might try to hack into the CIA or White House, but our little site? Doesn’t make any sense unless someone just has so much free time on their hands they sit around thinking up harmful bugs to let loose on the internet not having a clue where they will wind up.

Anyway, we will try to get all of the blogs back up. Got two of them up today. If anyone still has the post How to Grow a Church from 500-900 please send it to me. I would appreciate it.

Bill

Two Types of Thriving Churches Emerging

Over the past few years I’ve noticed a growing trend amoung thriving churches- they are either simple or Permission-Giving. Let me give two examples of what I am seeing a lot these days.

Bay Area Fellowship in Corpus Christi, Tx is an example of a simple church. It focuses on adult, youth, and children worship, and small groups. Sure it has other ministries like multiple site and missions, but the day to day bread and butter is focused on worship and small groups. Most nights the place is vacant because so many of the people are in small groups.

Two books that extol the virtues of the simple church are Deliberate Simplicity by Dave Browning from Christ the King Church in Washington, and The Simple Church by Thom Rainer

Church of the Resurrection in Leawood, Kansas is a example of a thriving church with many ministries.  Almost every night of the week will find the place filled to capacity with a wide variety of ministries taking place. However, we should note that most of these ministries are driven by their members and not some outside group. The old “our church is the hub of the community” model where the church opens its doors and allows any and everyone to use the facilities is going the way of the wind- at least for now.

I wrote about the Permission-Church in 1995 with the publication of Sacred Cows Make Gourmet Burgers.

However, there is one thing that both types of churches have in common – whatever they do is tied in some way to their primary mission in life. The key- they are focused on their mission to the community rather than to themselves.

1. The pastor never loses focus on evangelism.
2.  The pastor responds personally to every signed in visitor.
3. The pastor hands–off as many ministries as possible and as soon as possible.
4. The pastor learns how to hire, grow, and fire staff the first of which is a worship pastor.

Up till 500 it depends mostly how the pastor handles ministry. After that it is a different game.