The BasicsPart III – The How

The Simple Church Revolution

Simple Church by Thom Rainer & Eric Geiger

http://www.ericgeiger.com/site.html

The Basics

• Worship• Ministry• Evangelism• Fellowship• Discipleship

• Clarity• Movement• Alignment• Focus

• Doctrine

The Basics

Class Objectives (What do we hope to accomplish)

• (Re-)Discover the Foundational Principles of the church

• Develop a razor sharp focus on church priorities• Develop an approach to do Sunday School for

Young Adults (where do we fit?)• Perform a self-exam of CRBC

The Basics

• Every attempt will be made to teach based on the authority of the scripture, but some materials will reflect the opinions & bias of the sources (albeit learned opinions)

The Basics

The Revolution

• Simple is in.• Complexity is out. Out of style at least.• People are hungry for simple because the world has

become much more complex.• The world is a complicated place, people want to find

simplicity. They long for it, seek it, pay for it, even dream of it.

• Simple is in. Simple works. People respond to simple.• The Simple Revolution has begun.

• Apple iPod• Google• Southwest Airlines

• Papa Johns Pizza• Check out RealSimple.com• And other marketing,

graphic design, and interior design trends.

The Basics

Simple Church Simply Stated

• The healthiest churches in America tends to have a simple process for making disciples.

• They had clarity about the process.• They moved Christians intentionally

through the process.• They were focused on the elements of the

process.• And they aligned their entire congregation

to this process.

The Basics

What Simple Church Does Not Say

1. The simple approach is not a change in doctrine or conviction.

2. Churches should become simple because it in in style or culturally hip.

3. Churches should have a simple process just for pragmatic reasons. There is a theological and philosophical foundation on which the simple process stands.

4. Simple church is easy. There is a big difference between simple and easy.

The Basics

Jesus Knows Simple

• The religious leaders of His day had developed a religious system with 613 laws. 613 was how many separate letters were in the text of the 10 Commandments.

• Then they found 613 commandments in the Pentateuch. They divided the list into affirmative commands (do this) and negative commands (don’t do this)

• There were 248 affirmative commands, 1 for every part of the human body as they knew it.

• There were 365 negative commands, one for every day of the year.

The Basics

Jesus Knows Simple (cont’d)

• They further divided the list into binding commands and non-binding commands.

• Then they spent their days debating whether the divisions were accurate and ranking the commandments within each division.

• Enter Jesus.• A leading religious leader of the day was tagged

to humiliate Jesus in public. Of all 613 commandments which is the greatest? Read Matthew 22:37-39

• He summed up 613 commands in 2. Jesus has the ability to take the complex and make it simple.

The Basics

His Yoke

• Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, because I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden light. Matt. 11:28-30

• He is not offering a complicated and long set of rules, rituals, and regulations. He is offering grace. He is offering a simple relationship with God.

The Basics

Key Concepts

• Simple Church leaders are designers, not programmers. They excel in designing a ministry process that leads to spiritual growth and vitality; not developing church programs

• Spiritual growth is a process. It always has been. Thus, it would make sense for church leaders to design their churches around the process of spiritual growth.

• A simple church is a congregation designed around a straight-forward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth.

The Basics

• Clarity – the ability of the process to be communicated and understood by people.

• Movement – the sequential steps in the process that cause people to move to greater areas of commitment

• Alignment – the arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process

• Focus – the commitment to abandon everything that falls outside of the simple ministry process

The Four Elements of Effective Church Design

The Basics

Over the course of the next 5 Weeks we will:

• Examine in detail each of the four characteristics of a simple church

• Then we’ll take a look at some real churches via case studies.

The Basics

• How do we measure church (simple or otherwise)?

• Transformed Lives

Weekly Metric

The Basics

Stay Tuned Part III – The How

Clarity

The Basics

The Basics

The BasicsPart III – The How

Clarity: Starting with a Ministry Blueprint

The Basics

What are the four elements of effective church design?

• Clarity• Movement• Alignment• Focus

Review

The Basics

• And He personally gave some to be apostles, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the training of the saints in the work of the ministry, to build up the body of Christ. (Eph. 4:11-12)

• The term Paul uses for “build up” is the Greek word oikodome. It is a construction term. It paints the picture of building a house.

• Constructing lives is the calling.

“Building up” the Body

The Basics

What is the first thing that you need before you start a construction project?

• Blueprints• Building without blueprints would be ridiculous• Brochures are different from blueprints• The brochure is pretty, but it is not clear• There is a highly significant relationship between

church vitality and the CLARITY of the process.

Getting Started

The Basics

• Define• Illustrate• Measure• Discuss• Increase Understanding

Five Keys to Clarity

The Basics

• Our time today is organized around the principles that support the five keys to clarity and a couple of real-world examples

Five Keys to Clarity

The Basics

• Without definition, people are uncertain about how the church is making disciples.

• Without definition, people are clueless about how the church is designed to bring people toward spiritual maturity.

• Without definition, there is room for ambiguity

Define

The Basics

• The illustration should be reflective of your process

• The illustration should show progression• The illustration should help simplify

Illustrate

The Basics

Illustrate Example

The Basics

• For people to take your ministry process seriously, it has to be measured. For people to internalize the simple how in your church, you have to evaluate it.

• Learn to view your numbers horizontally and not vertically

• Measure attendance at each level/stage in your process

Measure

The Basics

Measure Example

Love God (worship service)

Love Others (small groups)

Serve World (ministry teams)

Children 120 80 40

Students 140 75 65

Adults 650 400 300

Total 910 555 405

The Basics

• The discussion must begin with the leadership of the church.

• Consistently discussing your ministry process makes a big difference.

• View everything through the lens of your simple process.

• Surface the process in meetings.• Test the leaders on it.

Discuss

The Basics

• Articulate the process corporately. When you are tired of talking about it, people will just be in the first stages of understanding.

• Share the process interpersonally.• Live the process personally.

Increase Understanding

The Basics

How do we measure church (simple or otherwise)?

• Transformed Lives

Weekly Metric

The Basics

Stay Tuned Part III – The How

Movement

The Basics

The Basics

The BasicsPart III – The How

Movement: Removing Congestion

The Basics

What is the first thing that you need before you start a construction project?

• Blueprints - Not Brochures• There is a highly significant relationship between

church vitality and the CLARITY of the process.

What is the “calling” of the church?• Building lives!• And He personally gave some to be apostles,

some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, for the training of the saints in the work of the ministry, to build up the body of Christ. (Eph. 4:11-12)

Review

The Basics

What comes to mind when you hear the word congestion?

• Congestion prevents movement• Many churches are congested – spiritual

movement is stifled• We are not necessarily referring to the

absence of new people – we are referring to people staying the same.

• The building of lives is stalled.• Read II Cor. 3:18

Congestion

The Basics

• God does the transforming, but we play a vital role in the process.

• Using Moses as an example:– Moses walked up the mountain.– Moses placed himself in the right place to be

transformed by God.– He discovered the place where God would

move in his life, and he put himself there.

Our Part

The Basics

• Leadership’s part is to place people in the pathway of God’s transforming power.

• Simple church leaders have designed their simple process with movement in mind.

• Research found – There is a significant relationship between the vitality of a local church and the MOVEMENT of the church’s ministry process.

• Movement is the sequential steps in the process that causes people to move to greater areas of commitment.

Leadership’s Part

The Basics

• Strategic Programming• Sequential Programming• Intentional Movement• Clear Next Step• New Members Class

“Congestion Medication” – Five Prescriptions for Congestion

The Basics

• Order the sequence of your programs to reflect your process

• Designate a clear entry-point to your process

• Identify the next levels of programming

Strategic Programming

The Basics

• Create short-term steps• Capitalize on relationships• Consider the “now what?”

– (Create anticipation that there is a next step)• Connect People to Groups

Intentional Movement

The Basics

• Begin with your clearly defined process• Choose one program for each phase of

your process• Design each program for a specific aspect

of the process

Sequential Programming

The Basics

Clear Next Steps• Curriculum• Mentoring (i.e. Guide)

New Members Class• Teach the simple process• Ask for a commitment to the process

Finally

The Basics

“Get in the Game”

http://www.gochristfellowship.com

The Basics

How do we measure church (simple or otherwise)?

• Transformed Lives

Weekly Metric

The Basics

HALF OF ALL teenagers attend a church-related service or activity in a typical week and some of those are quite avid in their faith, but a new poll by The Barna Group found that most of those teens will disengage from active spiritual activity during their 20s.

Barna found that, compared to older adults, twentysomehtings have significantly lower levels of church attendance, time spent alone studying and reading the Bible, volunteering to help churches, donating to churches, attending Sunday School and small groups, and using Christian media such as radio and magazines.

Our Challenge

The Basics

In fact, Barna said 61 percent of today’s young adults were churched at one point during their teen years but now are spiritually disengaged. Only 20 percent have maintained a level of spiritual activity consistent with their high school experiences.

“The current state of ministry to twentysomethings is woefully inadequate to address the spiritual needs of millions of young adults, “David Kinnaman, director of the research, said “When and if young adults do return to churches, it is difficult to convince them that a passionate pursuit of Christ is anything more than a nice add-on to their cluttered lifestyle.

Our Challenge (cont’d)

The Basics

It’s not as if twentysomethings are totally abandoning their faith, Barna noted, since 78 percent of twentysomethings say they are Christians compared with 83 percent of teenagers. They just need something to help them stay plugged into church life as they navigate the transition period from adolescence to adulthood.

“Much of the ministry to teenagers in America needs an overhaul – not because churches fail to attract significant numbers of young people, but because so much of those efforts are not creating a sustainable faith beyond high school,” Kinnaman said.

Our Challenge (cont’d)

The Basics

Stay Tuned Part III – The How

Alignment: Maximizing the Energy of Everyone

The Basics

The Basics

The BasicsPart III – The How

Alignment: Maximizing the Energy of Everyone

The Basics

If spiritual movement in a church is stifled it may be that the church is?

• Congested• Congestion prevents movement• This does not necessary refer to the

absence of new people – it refers to people staying the same.

• The building of lives is stalled.

Review

The Basics

• A key principle in the Bible is Stewardship• Stewardship – to maximize resources; to

manage• Does not refer exclusively to money• We are held accountable for all resources

that God has entrusted us with• We must maximize our impact with what

resources God entrust to us

Stewardship / Unity

The Basics

• In the finality of Jesus’ life, He was burdened for unity. In the garden He prayed that believers would be one.

• He said to the Father, “May they all be one, as You, Father, are in Me and I am in You. May they also be one in Us, so the world may believe You sent Me” (John 17:21)

Stewardship / Unity

The Basics

• People are attracted to unity. Jesus said that “all people would know we are His disciples by the love that we have for one another.” (John 13:35)

• Unity is powerful. It is magnetic. And the impact is great.

• Alignment is the arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process

Stewardship / Unity

The Basics

• Alignment is about stewardship and unity• According to research, there is a highly

significant relationship between church vitality and alignment.

• There are five essentials to alignment

Alignment

The Basics

• Recruit on the Process• Offer Accountability• Implement the Same Process Everywhere• Unite around the Process• New Ministry Alignment

Five Essentials of Alignment

The Basics

• It is vital that you recruit and hire people based in part to their commitment to your ministry process.

• It is critical that you hire and place leaders in key positions who are deeply committed to your simple ministry process.

• They must be committed not only to ministry but also to how your church does ministry.

Recruit on the Process

The Basics

• Once you have recruited staff or volunteers, you must lead them.

• Once important aspect of leadership is accountability.

• It is especially critical to alignment. • Without accountability, people naturally drift

away from the declared ministry process.

Offer Accountability

The Basics

• The children’s ministry, youth ministry, and young adult ministry have the same process as the entire church

• Each department implements an age-appropriate version of the process for that particular age group

• While the process is the same, each ministry area executes it with creativity and age-specific focus

Implement the Same Process Everywhere

The Basics

• Unity is much deeper than uniformity• Unity is best expressed in the midst of

diversity• The differences that harm most churches

are in the realm of ministry approach and philosophy

Unite around the Process

The Basics

• The most challenging part of alignment is pulling existing ministries and existing staff in the same direction

• Ministries are different from programs. Ministries are either entire departments or specific groups that help move people through one aspect of the process

New Ministry Alignment

The Basics

• Christ Fellowship, Miami (www.cfmiami.org)

• Northpoint Ministries, Atlanta (www.northpoint.org)

Real World Examples

The Basics

The Basics

Stay Tuned Part III – The How

Focus: Saying No to Almost Everything

The Basics

The Basics

The BasicsPart III – The How

Focus: Saying No to Almost Everything

The Basics

Review – The How: Methods

• Clarity: Starting with a Ministry Blueprint• Movement: Removing Congestion• Alignment: Maximizing the Energy of

Everyone• Focus: Saying No to Almost Everything

The Basics

• There is a highly significant relationship between church vitality and the church’s focus on the process.

• Churches that are single-minded when it comes to their ministry process are far more likely to be a vibrant and growing church.

Focus

The Basics

• If we “could” state our purpose in a single word, what would it be?

• While clarity, movement, and alignment are essential, they are meaningless without focus.

• Focus is the commitment to abandon everything that falls outside of the simple ministry process.

• Focus on the process leads to transformed lives.

Focus

The Basics

• Eliminate – “Going Google”• Limit Adding – funnel needs and

emphases through existing programs• Reduce Special Events – special events

can get in the way – funnel the event into an existing program

• Easily Communicated – agreement comes from understanding

• Simple to Understand – simple language and brevity

The Five Essentials to Focus

The Basics

The Basics

The Revolution

• Simple is in.• Complexity is out. Out of style at least.• People are hungry for simple because the

world has become much more complex.• The world is a complicated place, people

want to find simplicity. They long for it, seek it, pay for it, even dream of it.

• Simple is in. Simple works. People respond to simple.

• The Simple Revolution has begun.

The Basics

Simple Church Simply Stated

• The healthiest churches in America tends to have a simple process for making disciples.

• They had clarity about the process.• They moved Christians intentionally

through the process.• They were focused on the elements of the

process.• And they aligned their entire congregation

to this process.

The Basics

How do we measure church (simple or otherwise)?

• Transformed Lives

The Most Important Metric

The Basics

• Worship• Ministry• Evangelism• Fellowship• Discipleship

• Clarity• Movement• Alignment• Focus

Nine Words to Change Your Thinking

The What

(Purpose)

The How

(Methods)

Doctrine

The Basics

Class Objectives (What we hoped to accomplish)

• (Re-)Discover the Foundational Principles of the church

• Develop a razor sharp focus on church priorities• Develop an approach to do Sunday School for

Young Adults (where do we fit?)• Perform a self-exam of CRBC

The Basics

Coming Soon

Connecting Young Adults to God