Our church has recently faced two challenges, challenges that are a sign of God’s blessing, but challenges none the less. The first challenge our sanctuary was reaching the 80% capacity and in church growth that is a dangerous number. The 80% rule of church growth is that, if your church reaches 80% capacity rather than growing all the way to 100% a church will in fact begin to decline. Our second challenge was that we were having a number of families that were attending our church and looking for a place to put their kids while they attended the main worship service. These families were typically unchurched and or from Sunday churches that provide child care during the worship service, either way we saw the need to minister to these families and to remove all barriers that would keep us from doing so.
So what did we do to meet each of these challenges? At first we were only focused on the challenge of space. We went back and forth debating the need for a second service. We prayed about this, planned for it, then backed off. We prayed, planned, backed off. We just didn’t see that we were quite ready to make this leap! It was during one of these planning sessions that we looked at model where one service was “family style worship” (meaning the entire family attends the worship together) and the second service provided a children’s church so that there would be options for families. As we were looking at this model we began to also think about our second challenge, ministering to families who were not comfortable or acquainted with “family style worship.” We realized at that point that on any given Sabbath (Saturday) we have roughly 50-80 kids attending our church, if we began a children’s church to meet our second challenge this would also meet the needs of our first challenge.
Well at the beginning of February we began our new Children’s Church. What has happened? Both of our challenges have for the time been met and removed. About 30 kids have been in our children’s church (ages 2-8) along with our nursery this has met the needs of about 40 kids each week, and the families that desire to take advantage of these ministries. One of our members contacted me this week and shared with me that a colleague of his was wanting to visit our church, but was wondering what they could do with their kids. This member was wondering what week we were going to have children’s church? I was happy to tell him that his co-worker could come on any week and find a place to send their kids.
Our second challenge is being met because we have now gone from bumping up against the 80% capacity mark to being closer to 56% of capacity, which means we can continue to grow without worry of beginning to decline.
We have killed two birds with one stone. What challenges does your church face and are you proactively looking for ways to overcome those challenges so that the Kingdom of God will grow and be glorified?
Proselytizing is the act of attempting to convert people to another opinion and, particularly, another religion. For most of my Christian journey I have shied away from trying to convert folk to “Adventism” that were already Christians of other denominations. In fact when I accepted Jesus there are a couple things I said I would “NEVER” do, “I will never try to convince anyone to become an Adventist.” Well I became a Seventh-day Adventist Minister so that went out the window, but I did stick to it, in that I didn’t spend much time worrying about or even caring if other Christians became Adventist. I figured, “they are already Christian, so that is good enough.” I believe I had this view because I didn’t want our church to come across as arrogant or elitist. Over the last couple of years my journey has been away from this position, ’till now, I believe I have the exact opposite frame of mind and position than I started with. I will say it: I BELIEVE PEOPLE SHOULD BE ADVENTIST! Before you leave this blog or send off a scathing remark let me clarify a couple things. First of all this position does not mean that I believe only Adventists will be saved. This position does not mean that I believe everyone should be an Adventist RIGHT NOW. I believe there are folk that if they were currently in our churches their Christian experience would be hurt because many of our churches are not ready to receive them and love them the way Christ loves them. This position does not mean that I believe we should raid non-Adventist churches or speak ill against non-Adventist churches.
Here is what this position does mean. That when I speak of 125,000 persons in the city of Visalia and there are only 2,000 Adventists as I mentioned in a previous post, I am concerned about reaching all 123,000 non-Adventists with the parts of scripture Adventists teach that I believe are neglected in the rest of Christendom. I believe if I did not care about this, and if I am not willing to do this, then I am not fulfilling the Great Commission which tells us, “
Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19, 20).
We love the disciple making part that is following Jesus. We love the baptizing part that is publicly declaring allegiance to Jesus. But the Commission also tells us to “teach people to obey everything I have commanded.” When I read that I believe Jesus is telling us to teach people to obey the totality of scripture! Part of obedience in learning the right things, learning truth.
What if Jesus had said “I don’t want to offend the Sadducees who don’t believe in the resurrection so when they want to talk to me about this subject I’m going to tell them not to worry about it. We’re all Jews. And that is really what matters!” No Jesus talked about the resurrection (Luke 20:27-39).
Or what about Paul when he visited the folk at Ephesus. Here he met fellow Christians, followers of Christ, but they had never heard about the baptism of the Holy Spirit. What if Paul had said, “well don’t worry about it. You believe in Jesus and that is all that matters.” No Paul talked about the Holy Spirit Baptism (Acts 19:1-7).
I believe the Bible teaches the 7th day Sabbath. I believe the Bible teaches a visible single second coming of Christ, no rapture. I believe the Bible teaches soul sleep. I believe the Bible teaches a pre-Advent judgment. If I believe the Bible teaches these things I would be going against my convictions and against the Great Commission if I didn’t feel it important to share every single one of these truths with others, even other followers of Jesus.
I am thankful that Martin Luther proselytized, and John Wesley, William Miller, and Rachel Oakes Preston all proselytized, because out of these different faith traditions and understandings of scripture my belief system and even my denomination has been developed and grown. I believe they in doing so were fulfilling the Great Commission and I shall do likewise!
“There is an urgent need to plant churches if the North American Division (Seventh-day Adventist denomination) churches are to maintain their current presence in North American communities,” says Dr. Joseph Kidder in a recent article entitled “Reflections on the future of the Seventh-day Adventist Church in North America: Trends and challenges (part 1 of 2).”
It is alarming that there is an “urgent” need to plant churches just to “maintain” our presence in our cities. But does God call us simply to maintain our presence? As I read scripture and particularly the great commission the goal from our Lord is always to “GO and make disciples”, to increase presence. Dr. Kidder states, “Increasing the Adventist presence and visibility in local communities would require even more aggressive church planting efforts.” To me what this is saying is that we must become multiplying churches! Viral churches! Churches that not only plant once, but that plant over and over again, or churches that plant churches, that plant other churches, that plant other churches…
Why does Dr. Kidder make these assertions and why do I agree with them? In 1913 when our church was growing at one of its greatest rates we had one church for every 52,000 persons, but in 2005 (and I am sure the gap has grown even more in the 6 years since) there was one church for every 65,000 persons in North America. This is one of the factors for the church going from a 3.61% growth rate from 1913-1975 to a 0.06% growth rate from 1976-2005. If we were to have the same ratio of churches to population as we did in 1913 we would need more than 1,000 new churches.
What does this mean for my community?
The current population of Visalia, California is just a little north of 125,000 persons with 2000 professed Adventists, 1.6% of population, but in actuality only 800 active (attending church at least once a month) members, 0.6% of population. If we are going to reach all these people we are going to need more churches! I used to think we would just need bigger churches, but after reading Dr. Kidder’s article and doing a fair amount of other research, “New Churches” are better able to reach folk than necessarily “bigger churches.” Which is why I think it is time to begin looking at a model of church multiplication rather than just church growth.
Three zip codes make up Visalia and in those three zip codes which include some outlying rural areas as well. The zip’s are 46,000, 38,000, & 56,000 (136,000 total) in population. Why couldn’t there be an English church of at least 500 active members in each one of those zip codes? Along with a Spanish church of at least 500 active members in each one of those zip codes? Do you know that would still only be 3000 active Adventists only 2.2% of those zip codes combined? That means there would still be 133,000 persons still to reach in just this one part of the valley. So why not then dream bigger? Why not six churches of 1000 or maybe 12 churches of 500?
Here is the great thing though, none of these churches would be competing for members! The goal would be multiplying churches not just growing “my” church! The goal would be increasing the presence of Jesus and sharing the Three Angels’ Message not increasing our membership rosters. Right now what to often happens is a competition over the Adventists that already exist, even church plants are more often church splits that just siphon off members from other already existing Adventist communities. And in reality even our growing churches mine included, is more transfer growth than conversion or Kingdom growth. We need to stop competing and we need to start planting churches TOGETHER to grow the Kingdom of God and increase His presence and His message in the hearts of all people.