In a market economy, the company with the best product, price, and service gets the customer. Such is the nature of competition.<\/p>
Few put it in such crass terms, but increasingly, the American church also operates in a highly competitive environment. Gone are the days of denominational loyalty. Many people today church-hop till they drop. One church member who decided to attend elsewhere brazenly said, “My wife and I want to be in a larger church that doesn’t need us to be involved so much.”<\/p>
Where does all this leave pastors? Just ask the person who may feel the competition most acutely—the pastor of the small church located a few miles from a megachurch.<\/p>
Leadership<\/em> did just that. We invited Craig Brian Larson, a bi-vocational pastor who serves Lakeshore Assembly of God in downtown Chicago, Illinois, a congregation of thirty-five, to talk about ministering in a small church in a highly competitive church market. We also invited to the discussion well-known church-consultant Lyle Schaller, author of The Interventionist <\/em>(Abingdon), and large-church pastor Kent Hughes, who serves College Church in Wheaton, Illinois, and who wrote Liberating Ministry from the Success Syndrome<\/em> (Tyndale).<\/p> Larson, Schaller, and Hughes gave Leadership<\/em> an earful about what this new competition requires of today’s pastor.<\/p> Most pastors say, “We don’t compete with other churches for members;\nwe’re interested only in the non-churched.”<\/p> Lyle Schaller<\/strong>: Forgive me, but that’s not quite the real world. In\n95 percent of churches, the majority of new members received last year into\nfellowship identified themselves as Christians when they walked through the\ndoor the first time.\nKent Hughes<\/strong>: Only a small percentage of our new members are conversions\nin the historic sense of the word. We know we’re reaching only a small section\nof the non-churchgoing community.\n<\/p> So pastors do compete for other Christians.<\/p> Hughes<\/strong>: You can grow a big church by winning at musical chairs.\nDissatisfied church attenders, upset with their pastor, like something you\ndo better, and your church grows. In that sense, we do compete.\n\nBefore coming to College Church, I was a small-church pastor of a congregation\nfive minutes from First Evangelical Free Church in Fullerton, California;\nChuck Swindoll’s ministry was well on the rise. Then there were Eastside\nChristian Church, the Crystal Cathedral, and Calvary Chapel spin-offs. I’d\npour my life into a young couple, only to hear them say a few years later:\n“Pastor, we love you. We love this church. But it doesn’t have a youth program.”\nAnd they would be off.\n\nToday, I’m on the other end of that: College Church has a terrific youth\nprogram that can—I hate to use the word—pirate young people from other\nchurches. In a sense, the rich get richer. I mourn the sociology of the whole\nthing.\n<\/p> Brian, as a pastor of a smaller church, how do you feel this\ncompetition?<\/p> Brian Larson<\/strong>: In the fall a young, single man who had been attending\nthe church for six months, said, “I’m looking for a Christian wife.”\n\nI said, “That’s a legitimate pursuit.”\n\nTo which he replied, “I’m probably not going to find her in this church.\nI’m going to go to another church.”\n\nI gave him my blessing: “I want you to find God’s purpose in that area.”\nI didn’t fight him, but, boy, I sure felt the dynamic of our not being able\nto compete. Many Americans today in urban areas prefer a larger church.\nSchaller<\/strong>: I don’t run into many people who say, “I’m picking a big\nchurch deliberately.” They say, “I’m at this large church in spite of the\nfact it’s big. But I want community, and I found it in a Saturday morning\nBible study.”\n<\/p> Can the smaller church compete in this environment?<\/p> Larson<\/strong>: The vision I’ve been trying to plant in our church is that\nwe follow Christ together in authentic community. Recently the son of a woman\nin our church died. I said to our church, “This is where the rubber meets\nthe road. Are we going to love her? Are we going to help her through this\ntragedy?”\n\nA week later, this woman told me, “Out of the entire church list, only two\npeople did not contact me or come to the wake or funeral, or call me. And\nthe two that didn’t probably didn’t hear about the news.”\n\nThat felt good. I don’t sit around wringing my hands, saying, “How can I\ncompete with Moody Church or the strong Vineyard church in downtown Chicago?”\nEven if our church can’t provide a single program, we can offer authentic\ncommunity.\nSchaller<\/strong>: Brian, you pastor the most popular-sized church in the country.\nA recent study of 116,000 churches showed that thirty-five was the most common\nnumber in attendance.\n\nThirty-five is an ideal number, whether an adult Sunday school class, a Bible\nstudy, a music group, or a small church. When somebody experiences a loss,\nthen thirty-three of thirty-five can rally and support the person. Thirty-five\npeople at worship is as big as a church can become with members still\nspontaneously feeling a sense of belonging.\n<\/p> Doesn’t that create a double-bind? As soon as Brian’s church starts\nto grow, it loses the very thing that attracts people to it.<\/p> Larson<\/strong>: Added to that, there’s a no-man’s land between 35, when you\nbegin to lose community, and around 150, when you can offer a few programs.\nSchaller<\/strong>: Recently I’ve been asking younger adults why they picked\nthe church they did. For many, the church they chose was their second, third,\nor fourth choice. They moved to the community, attended elsewhere for a while,\nthen chose a different church to settle in.\n\nWhy? Some boil it down to community—”I feel a sense of belonging.” Every\nmember of the family needs to feel that or they move on. Others say, “This\nchurch speaks to where I am in my spiritual journey.”\n<\/p> So who are churches competing for?<\/p> Schaller<\/strong>: For the folks who have moved from one stage of their spiritual\njourney to another. If their church no longer speaks to that stage, they\nfeel free to go to another.\n\nI suspect that a lot of people wish that College Church could offer everything\nit does now and be a fourth of the size it is.\nHughes<\/strong>: I hear that all the time: “We’re too big, and, Pastor, we\nneed to do something about it.” People would like to have everything we offer\nand at the same time have the church be around three hundred.\n<\/p> If people don’t see something they want this week, they’re not going to return the next.<\/p>\n\n<\/blockquote> What is at the root of this new competition?<\/p> Schaller<\/strong>: Our society is much more competitive today than it was forty\nyears ago. More farmers have failed in the last twenty years, for example,\nthan failed during Depression years. Failure is a product of increasing\ncompetition.\n\nAnother cause of competition among churches is the success of ecumenism.\nUntil the mid-sixties, the focus in churches was on what was distinctively\ndifferent about them. Then came the ecumenical movement and Vatican II, which\nessentially said, “Instead of focusing on what separates us, let’s focus\non what we have in common.”\n\nI’m convinced people took that literally. People today say, “I’m Catholic,\nbut even though that’s a Protestant church, I could go there.” According\nto Catholic scholars, more than 15 million of the 62 million baptized souls\nhave left the Catholic church; half of them are in Protestant churches.\n<\/p> Are you saying that cooperation isn’t a worthy goal?<\/p> Schaller<\/strong>: I believe cooperation among churches works with issue-centered\nministries—social justice, social welfare, etc.—and a variety of training\nprograms. But when it comes to the worshiping community, cooperation does\nnot work. The spiritual journey of the individual is developed best within\nthe confines of a single worshiping community.\n\nBut today, we have folks who go to church A for this, church B for that,\nand church C for something else. One consequence is a lot of two-church\nhouseholds. They buy their “groceries” over here except when there’s a “sale”\nat another church. They drop their kids off at one church for youth group\nbut attend another for worship.\nHughes<\/strong>: The great tragedy is that they are, in a sense, churchless\nChristians without discipline, without the regular benefit of the Lord’s\ntable and ordinances, with a kind of anonymous commitment. People rationalize\nwhat they’re doing by saying, “We’re members of the universal church.” That\nis a sign of a defective ecclesiology; the New Testament knows nothing of\npolygamous Christians. There needs to be a reassertion of the doctrine of\nthe church, and that may go the other way from growth. People cannot come\nto maturity without the discipline of a commitment to the local church.\n<\/p> How do pastors combat this “defective ecclesiology”?<\/p> Hughes<\/strong>: I’ve said things about it from the pulpit, but doing so sounds\ncranky. We’ve actually considered sending leaders to some people to say,\n“You need to consider what you’re doing.” I don’t know if they’ve ever thought\nabout the consequences of being a churchless Christian.\nSchaller<\/strong>: Another response is to set up membership criteria. “If you\nwant to be a member of our fellowship, with all the rights, obligations,\nprivileges, then this must be your only church.”\n\nToday, the word church means “take your choice of location,” whether it’s\na Catholic parish or an independent church or an Assemblies of God congregation.\nI think the word church<\/em> has been captured by the Enemy. I now try\nto use “worshiping community.” The phrase conveys a gathered group of worshipers\nwith responsibilities that go with it.\n<\/p> Is there any benefit to this new competition?<\/p> Larson<\/strong>: Competition has forced me to say, “Am I really seeking God?\nAm I hearing from God? Am I depending on the Holy Spirit every single moment\nof every day to lead me into fruitful ministry?”\n\nI don’t consider evangelism to be my gift, but I now think more strategically\nabout evangelism: “There may be competition for this pool of transfer\ngrowth—people moving in—but there’s not a lot of competition for the zillions\nof people who don’t have a clue about life and eternal life.”\n\nCompetition has also forced me to be a stronger leader. For example, to a\nfirst-time visitor, I say, “Let’s talk about our values and assumptions as\na church because I want you to find the church God wants you in. It may be\nour church. It may be Moody Church. But here are the things you need to be\nmaking that decision.”\nHughes<\/strong>: I wrestled with the whole matter of success, trying to define\nit from the Bible. I defined it as loving God with all my heart; faithfulness\n(by that I meant hard-working and creative); a foot-washing heart like Jesus’\nin John 13; a holy heart; a prayerful heart; and a heart with a positive\nattitude.\n\nBrian as a small-church pastor, and I as a large-church pastor need to live\nby those principles. For both of us, success gets down to these fundamental\nthings before God, whether we’re on the upside or downside of the numbers\ngame.\n<\/p> But there seems to be a prevailing feeling that it’s not okay to\nbe an average pastor anymore.<\/p> Hughes<\/strong>: I don’t think it’s okay to be an average pastor. Too often\npastors define “faithfulness” as “just hanging in there.” That’s not it.\nFaithfulness is doing the hard thinking about what you’re about and why you’re\ndoing it and how you’re going to go about doing it. This doesn’t guarantee\nnumerical success—numbers may just be the result of where the church is\nlocated.\n\nIn addition to being faithful to biblical principle, pastors must be creative,\nhard working, and know the winds of culture. If the average pastor is not\ndoing these things, then I don’t think there’s room for that type of person\ntoday.\n<\/p> (First of two parts; click here to read Part 2<\/a>)<\/em><\/p> 1997 by the author or Christianity Today\/Leadership<\/em> Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n