churchrelevance.com

We all possess the ability to be creative. Often a little creativity is all that is needed to make a sermon stick or an advertisement memorable. To get your creative juices flowing, consider these 4 tips published by USA Today two months ago:

1. Explore an unfamiliar area of knowledge. For example, people who use a lot of math on the job should sign up for a painting class.
2. Spend time each day thinking. Don’t censor your thoughts, but allow your mind to go freely to a problem and see what kinds of solutions or ideas surface.
3. Practice the art of paying attention. Look for and really observe a person, an object or something in your daily commute that you hadn’t really noticed before. Try describing or drawing that object in a journal or sketchbook.
4. Use your imagination. Spend time each day imagining a different world. What would it look like? What would you do there?

Creativity is about exposing yourself to new ideas and ways of thinking and learning how to harness the key principles your diverse knowledge to improve something. It is important that ministers never stop learning and never stop improving.

Earlier this fall, Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church (Lynchburg, VA) hosted Super Conference 2006. In case you missed it, you can watch sessions online and download MP3s, PDFs, and Word documents from the sessions.

Brad Powell of NorthRidge Church (Plymouth, MI) did an amazing job discussing the importance of changing to be more relevant (Windows Media :: Download MP3). He has an incredible church and an incredible passion to reach the world with Christ. Watch it and enjoy!

Update:
You can learn more about the conference, Change Without Compromise 2007, that  Brad Powell mentions at ChurchDare.com.

Neighboroo is a new online tool that allows your church to examine your community’s geodemographics (demographic characteristics of geographic regions).

What is the benefit? It allows your church to better understand and identify the myriad of cultures in your community. College students are best reached using different methods than are used for retirees. Tailor your direct mail campaigns to the geodemographics of each region rather than trying to appeal to a nonexistent mass audience.

Geodemographic maps include: Lifestyle, Politics, Crime, Cost of Living, Commute Time, Household Income, Unemployment, Population Density, Race, and many more.

Special thanks to information aesthetics for sharing the resource.

Dave Ferguson pastors Community Christian Church (Naperville, IL), an eight location multi-site church that is reaching about 5,000 people weekly. His leadership experiences have given him a great understanding of the full-scope of the multi-site church strategy. And he recently shared five things that pastors should know about the multi-site church. A summary is:

1. Multi-site is about quality, not quantity.
   It’s about taking who you are, reproducing the ethos or quality experience of your church, and bringing it to more people.
2. Any size church can consider going multi-site.
   Fundamentally, any church that has one leader who is ready to go out and start a new thing can reproduce itself.
3. The multi-site approach demonstrates good stewardship of our resources.
   Within a certain geographical proximity, multi-site allows you to reach more people for the same amount of money, or reach more people for less money. And while raising the funds to build new campuses is good, you can also grow into alternative venues such as digital church, extension sites, video-café congregations and satellite ministries. Multi-site also demonstrates good stewardship of time and creativity.
4. Multi-site is today’s most powerful method of church expansion.
   Until now, we’ve had two options to accomplish the Jesus mission. Option #1 was to grow a church at a single site larger. Option #2 was the church planting another church in another location. And multi-site gives everybody a third option now—you can both grow larger and also start other locations.
5. In the next 10 years, the multi-site church will gain more influence than the large church.
   The influence of the multi-site church also has to do with branding power. Multi-site churches are creating a brand of church that is so compelling that when unchurched people move into the neighborhood, they say, “OK, you know what? I want to go check that church out.”

To read Dave Ferguson’s extended thoughts on the five truths, check out his original post.

Yesterday we highlighted some research by LifeWay Research that investigated the reasons behind why people leave the church. But there is a second part to the research that explores how to bring back the formerly churched. The Christian Post published the findings, and highlights from their article include:

The Probability

• 62% of the formerly churched adults said they are open to the idea of attending church regularly again, but not actively looking.
• 28% said they are unlikely to consider regularly attending church in the foreseeable future.
• 6% said they would prefer to resume attending regularly in the same church they had attended.
• 4% said they are actively looking for a different church to attend regularly.
• The average formerly churched adult has not attended regularly for 14 years.

The Catalyst

• 58% said they simply felt that it was time to return to the church.
• 41% said a friend or acquaintance invited them.
• 35% said they would return if they knew there were people there like them.
• 31% felt that God was calling them to visit the church.
• 25% said they would resume if their children asked them to go with them to church.
• 25% said they would go if an adult family member invited them.

 The Motivation
(For the large majority who were self-motivated to return to church)

• 46% said it was to bring them closer to God.
• 32% want to be around those with similar values.
• 31% want to make friends.
• 30% want to make a difference of help others in their community.

A few thoughts from the staff of LifeWay Research on attracting the formerly churched include:

• Many members are vulnerable to attrition because of either a nonexistent or immature faith. When individuals begin to seek out membership, they should be guided through a process whereby they are clearly taught the gospel and then, following salvation, grounded in strong biblical truth. Far fewer people would drop out of church if their spiritual foundation was deep and strong. The church also must be sensitive to this combination of a less developed but genuine desire for faith as they approach the formerly churched about returning.
• Affinity will never happen at a significant level without the church fostering a culture of concern, fellowship and involvement.
• The openness of the majority of the formerly churched to rejoin the flock is reason enough for the church to seek them out. That means having an effective outreach strategy for identifying, praying for and contacting formerly churched adults to shepherd them back to the fold.

What are your thoughts? How would your church reach out to the formerly churched?

Special thanks to Monday Morning Insight for highlighting the article.

The Christian Post has published the results of a recent study by LifeWay Research that investigated the reasons why some people stopped attending church. The discoveries include:

• 59% of those who left the church did so because of “changes in life situation.”
  — 19% “simply got too busy to attend church.”
  — 17% said “family/home responsibilities prevented church attendance.”
  — Other reasons explained were moving too far from the church, work situation and divorce or separation.
• 37% leave because of “disenchantment with pastor/church.”
  — 17% said church members “seemed hypocritical” and “were judgmental of others.”
  — 12% said “the church was run by a clique that discouraged involvement.”
• 80% of the formerly churched do not have a strong belief in God, which the study indicated may account for their higher priorities of work and family over church.
• 42% said they are “Christian, but not particularly devout.” 
• 24% consider themselves “spiritual, but not religious.”
• 19% said they are “a devout Christian with a strong belief in God.” 
• 16% of those who left the church said nobody contacted them after they left.
• 16% said nobody seemed to care that they left. 
• 14% said the church was not helping them develop spiritually.
• 14% said they stopped believing in organized religion.
• 10% confessed to wavering on Christianity.
• 6% said they were wavering on belief in God.

Every church has people who come and go. You can’t keep every person, and you can’t possibly appeal to every person in your community.

However, you can be sure to offer a relevant and spiritually challenging message that will help keep members solid spiritually and help keep church a priority in their lives. You can keep your church from forming cliques that dissuade or prevent members from getting involved. And you can show that you do care when someone leaves your church.

Following-up with people who leave your church can be difficult especially if you are a megachurch. But it is not impossible. Church on the Move (Tulsa, OK) has over 10,000 members but uses children’s ministry attendance records to follow-up with families whose children haven’t been to church in a month. It is just a little way to show people that your church does care. No matter how big your church gets, never lose the ability to make your members feel loved and cared for.

Physical space matters. It’s easier to be productive, creative and happy at work in a colourful, organic, playful environment than in a grey, linear, boring one.

And I’m not talking about the outside of the building. Many companies have buildings that are sleek, modern, architectural glass-steel-and-cement sculptures on the outside - and cubicle wastelands on the inside. These companies need to remember that most employees tend to work inside the building.

Those are the opening thoughts of a recent post by The Chief Happiness Officer that takes a look at 10 very cool work environments. Check out his list and see if it broadens your perspective of what a workplace can be.

Nothing says - by any means - that your church offices need a slide like the offices at Red Bull London HQ, but your church should consider providing your staff with a creative environment to help boost their creativity and productivity.

Clutter slows you down. Average environments at best only inspire average performance. Create an environment that people enjoy working in. Happy people work better.

Special thanks to Lifehacker for highlighting the work environments link.

This past year, Rose Heights Church (Tyler, TX) hired Jonathan Martin Creative to design and build a preschool facility that makes the Bible stories come to life.

There are eight themed rooms - Creation, Noah, Abraham, Joseph, Moses, David, Jonah, and the Nativity. And each room has added themed lighting to bring it all to life.

 

You can also take an online video tour of the children’s facility on Rose Heights’ website.

 

To see more ministry environments created by Jonathan Martin Creative, check out our previous post: Grace Church’s Incredible Children’s Ministry.