Bill Easums Observations

For years now church gurus have talked about the seating capacity of a building.  You know- if your main worship service is 80% full you need another worship service. Well, even though that’s still true, how many you have in worship and the size of your building is not enough.  The real standard for evaluating success for a church is how many people does it send out into the community and world to share their faith.

Over the last ten years I’ve noticed more and more leaders catching on to this “sending” factor.  Some churches even send people out every week to bless the community in some way and spread the Good News. It’s a real blend of social action and evangelism. It’s not just doing good, although that happens.  It’s transforming the community in multiple ways- better schools, neighborhoods, jobs, salvation- well you get the picture.

So here is my question- how many people do you intentionally send out to bless the surrounding community? Is that even on your radar? If not, there’s something missing to your ministry.

If you want to see the “sending” in action, visit one or more of the following churches who have and are leading the way

The Healing Place in Baton Rouge
Cincinnati Vineyard
Dream Center in Los Angeles
Summit Church in Raleigh-Durham

Bill Easum
www.effectivechurch.com
easum@aol.com

Everyone of who follows my stuff knows I am a great fan of the local church. It is fundamental to the growth of the Kingdom, along with other forms of being the Church. I have no trek with those who say the day of the local church is over.

I can’t stand what the vast majority of mainline churches and many sideline churches have become.  They set back a wait for people to show up like a spider that spins its web waits for an unsuspecting victim. I call this the Jerusalem effect and the build it and they will come effect.  Oddly enough, this approach to evangelism worked when I started ministry over 50 years ago.  Today, however very few unchurched people come to worship on their own.

Interestingly enough a friend gave me a url to Mike Breens blog . It was right up my ally. I thought I would share a couple of his quotes with you.

“So let us be clear: missionaries are always better than mission projects. Leaders are more necessary then volunteers. And disciples are surely what we’re going for rather than mere converts.”

I couldn’t agree more.  I’ve always told churches that volunteers, missions committees, and programs are not the way to go.  In our new book , Effective Staffing for the Vital Church, I talk about “backyard missionaries.”  Everyone needs to be trained to be a missionary in their everyday life.  Also disciples are needed not volunteers.

Here is another goodie.

“There is a paradigm shift that needs to happen. We need to move from being a worshipping body that sometimes does mission to a missional body that gathers to celebrate and worship.”

I have started telling leaders that it is not enough to have small groups that make disciples; now small groups need to the missionary arm of the church.  Each small group needs a mission in the community.

That leads to Breen’s last comment I want to highlight.

“Missional communities are the training wheels that teach us how to ride the bike of oikos.”

Now this is brilliant.  He’s talking about 20-30 people acting as an extended family taking the message to their communities.  We need to focus on training Mom and Dad, Aunts and Uncles, etc. to help their extended families be those backyard missionaries we talk about.

What is your church doing to make backyard missionaries?

I was speaking Thursday in Baltimore when i mentioned that there are only four things that grow a church and that I had never seen a church doing these four things that wasn’t growing.  In fact, I challenged them to put those four things in place and if they didnt grow I would give them $10,000.

About that time someone raised their hand and asked, What are the four things.” So I proceeded to share the four things that grow a church.

• You must constantly invite people to Christ and/or your church.
• You must have a system in place to connect with them and cause them to return again and again.
• You must disciple them into followers of Jesus.
• You must send them back out into the community to back yard missionaries.

Sounds simple doesn’t?  But each of these four core processes takes time, energy, and money.  Someone has to make sure they happen every day. Depending on the size of the church it is either the pastor and volunteers or a paid staff person for each process.

But nothing else a church does matters as much as they four things.

Then someone asked “How can we learn more about what these four staff positions look like.”

“Well,” I said.  Our new book on staffing just hit the shelves.  It’s called Effective Staffing for Vital Churches: The Essential Guide to finding and keeping the right people.

You can find the book at Amazon.com or through Baker Books. I think it is one of the best books our group has ever published.

But don’t word for it – read what others are saying about it.

Rick Warren:”This book is a winner.”

Dave Ferguson: “A tremendous help for church leaders”

Darrin Patrick: “I wish I had had this book when I started”

You can also go our website www.effectivestaffing.us to read three chapters from the book and a video on Time Management when you and sign up ‘

We’re here to help you grow your church.

I believe the primary mission of the local church is to make disciples of Jesus Christ.  If I believe that then everything a church does should be pointed toward that goal.  If I believe that, then I must also believe that making disciples doesn’t begin inside the church, it begins out in the community with non-Christians. And this is why I do what I do. How about you? Why do you do what you do?

This is also why I prefer the Antioch church over the church at Jerusalem. When referring to the New Testament Church most people talk about Acts 2o and specifically the coming of the Holy Spirit and acts 2:42. But think about it a moment.  If it had been left to the Jerusalem church, would any of us Christian’s today? I doubt it.  The Jerusalem church tried hard to keep the movement within the Jewish race. And when the Jerusalem church finally reluctantly allowed the Gospel to go to the Gentiles it hunkered down and was comfortable merely taking care of itself to the point that Paul had to raise money to keep the church afloat. Not a very good example for us today.

In contrast the Antioch church is the Mother of most, if not all, the Gentile churches in the world today. It was the Antioch church that caught the spirit of Matthew 28:18-19 where Jesus instructed us to “make disciples of all people groups.”  It was the Antioch church that sent church planter missionaries out to the far corners of the known world.  The Antioch Church is the example for us today.

But what is the real reason to use Acts 11 rather than Acts 2 as the example for our time?

When historians write about the first quarter of the 21st century they will document that the single most defining act of the Christian Church was the multiple church planting movements spawn during the generation.  We are living in the midst of the third largest church planting movement in history.  Only in recent years has the annual number of new churches in the United States outpaced the annual number of churches closing their doors.

The problem is too few churches are actively sponsoring a new church plant.  Lifeway’s survey of a 1,000 Protestant churches revealed that only 3% of the church give primary support for planting a church and only 14% gave financial support in partnership with other churches to help start new congregations.

If we use the Antioch Church as our model New Testament Church then its not enough for us to just pray for missionaries or to send them money. We need to become missionaries in our own backyard.

If you’re really interested in growing the Kingdom through your local church check out this website www.churchgrowthtools.net.

This came to me today from one of the churches I’m coaching.  I thought you might enjoy it.  This is what I mean by “Backyard Missionaries.”

“The Church Has Left The Building….We’ve Gone Outreaching!

FUMC Servant Evangelism teams have done just that!  Since April, we have made about 1,400 contacts through 11 scheduled events! We’ve had as many as 26 servants and as few as 3 at a given event!  We’ve gone out to serve on almost every day of the week, morning noon and night, in the sun, rain, and humidity!  We’ve given away popsicles, flower seed packets, fruit, light bulbs, carnations on Mother’s Day, bottled water at Relay for Life, hot dogs and drinks, paper fans, cards on Father’s Day, and school supplies.  We’ve loaded groceries into cars, painted faces and a Habitat home, washed cars for free and even cleaned toilets for businesses on Broadway.  There are stories to share from each event. People are shocked that we would actually wash their car without taking a donation, clean their toilet, or simply give them something for free! A lady posted a thank you message on facebook for the paper fan that cooled her during a baseball game, a man sang hymns to us while he waited for his truck to be washed, and the brother of one of our church members was elated when someone purchased his lunch and passed a connect card to him via the drive-thru worker! Curiosity is stirred in people as we offer gifts and services with no strings attached.  They want to know who we are and why we do this.  The answer is easy…”We are God’s children and God Loves You!”  This ministry continues to do small things with great love.  It’s a blessing to be a part of it and to watch God work through us and in us here at FUMC.

We are…Free to Serve! Galatians 5:13″

It’s been almost two weeks since the Exponential Conference, arguably one of the most important gatherings of the year. The more I reflect on it the more excited I get.

I just began reading Alan and Dave’s book “The Verge” in which they say we are on the verge of something big- a movement of gigantic potential for the Church in the West.  What I like about this book is the blending of a systematic dreamer (Alan Hirsch)  and an effective practioner (Dave Ferguson). I’ve known both of these guys for more than a decade and I have to say I’ve never been disappointed by either. In fact it is their coming together that excites me.

I first met Dave in 2000 when one of the stops on our tour was held at his church.  I was impressed with  his passion for transformation and the development of the Big Idea which has become the backbone of their multisite and church planting efforts.

I first met Alan in 2002 when he attended an event I pulled together on our island with twenty or so people who were probing the edges of what has become a push for an apostolic movement.  Among the group were such notables as Len Sweet, Ed Stetzer, Mark DeYmaz, Carl George, George Hunter, Bob Roberts, Dave Travis, and a host of other folks you would recognize.  I remember talking with Alan during the event and it was clear he had little use for all forms of institutional Christianity.

Now, Alan has moved to accepting the both/And of the 21st Century and Dave has become one of the leading voices in the apostolic movement taking shape under our noses. You never know where God is going to lead us.

What disturbs me the most is that the vast majority of my mainline friends don’t seem to have a clue of this movement.  They still cling to the belief that dead churches can be revitalized when anyone honest knows they must be resurrected. I wonder what it will take for mainliners (no pun intended….much) to realize that they are not the center of God’s universe and that we are on the verge of a whole new way of doing church that doens’t include throwing out institutional church.  But it does require a recognition that God can do his thing through many expressions of the church.  In fact, we have entered a day in which no one form of the church will reign supreme.  It will take a both/and approach to the future.

My biggest regret at Exponential was that my wife became so ill I almost had to return home before finishing my workshops. And I also had to miss the Future Travelers meeting which I really wanted to attend. Maybe next year.

Bill Easum
www.effectiveChurch.com
easum@aol.com

I am coaching a guy who is doing his best to turn around an established church. We all know that is one of the most difficult tasks on the planet and requires more skill than just about anything I know. While we were talking he shared with me six questions he’s asking his leadership to answer.  I thought they were so good I would share them with you.  Here they are.  They are primo…..

(1) Who are we called to reach?
(2) Are we reaching them currently and consistently?
(3) If not, what specific changes do we need to make in order to reach them?
(4) What do we need to stop doing?
(5) What’s holding us back from making those changes now?
(6) How will those changes impact us – personally and organizationally?

Each one of these questions is worth keeping before us all the time.  Put them on your frig.  Write them on your bedpost. Tack them on your office wall.  Ask them periodically at staff meetings.  Ask them when you meet with your lay leadership team.

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com
easum@aol.com

 One of the questions I’m asked most often by the folks I’m coaching is “Where and how do I connect with unchurched people?” This question is in response to my trying to get pastors to spend more time with unchurched people, especially pastors in churches under 500 in worship.  So I want to address that question in this article.

In order to connect with unchurched you must have four things; a heart for those far from God; a knowledge of the community in which you serve; a personal story to tell; and a willingness to set aside regular time to connect and establish relationships with the unchurched.

So here are some of my thoughts about how to connect with the unchurched.

• Mine the unchurched relationships you new members have with the unchurched.   New members are more likely to have relationships with unchurched people than anyone else in their church. So instead of getting them so involve them in the church that three years later they no longer have any relationships with unchurched people. Instead of getting them so involved with the church they don’t have any free time encourage them to invite their networks to Christ and your church.
• Plan weekly practical deeds in the community on a weekly basis. It doesn’t matter what these events are as long as they do four things: bless the people you’re helping; bless the city; bless those who are doing the practical deed; and cause visibility for your church.  This is one of most important ministry a church can undertake.  The more you bless your city and others the more God will bless your ministry. And it is also one of the few ministries I’ve seen that usually becomes intergenerational.
• Set aside regular time every week to figure out how to reach unchurched people in your area. If you look for them, you will look for them.
• Actually follow through and spend time with the unchurched people you discover in your search.

You can find a long list of possibilities on our site (www.churchconsultations.com) by going to the free resource section and clicking on FAQS and then going to Unchurched, Ways to Connect. 

Have fun rubbing shoulders with people who need Jesus.

Bill Easum
www.churchconsultations.com
easum@aol.com

We’re constantly looking for ways to increase first timers to church as well as encouraging the congregation to invite their friends.  Here are four goodies.

• At the end of worship take a moment to ask the congregation “Let’s take a moment to center our thoughts on who we can invite to church next Sunday.
• When a new family moves into town send them a Fex Ex package including a CD with the pastor welcoming them to the community and offering to help them become acclimated as well as the pastor casting the vision of the church and asking them to come join him on the journey. This video should be less than four minutes long.  Put a post it note on the CD that says, “This video is less than 4 minutes long. I hope you view it” signed first name of pastor.  You can get the names of families moving into your area by using the New Mover Outreach Program  available at  http://www.outreach.com/new-movers.aspx
• When a first time family visits your church send them a Fed Ex package including a coffee cup with the name of the church on it and a CD of the pastor sharing his/her join of worshipping with them Sunday and inviting them back to join the congregation in the exciting journey of……..  Include in the cup a note that says, “This video is only 3 minutes long. I hope you view it.” signed first name.
• Many people are timid when it comes to inviting their friends so why not encourage them to use email to invite their friends and to talk to others about their faith? Most folks have a network of friends, some Christians, some not Christians – yet.

Remember, we are blessed to be a blessing. So go bless your community.

Bill Easum
www.ChurchConsultations.com
easum@aol.com