August 23rd, 2010
The Future of Church Strategy
I am meeting with a pilot group of 12 churches and 12 consultant-practitioners known as Future Travelers. The group is led by Alan Hirsch. The 12 churches are large growing mega-churches that represent 90,000 in weekend attendance. Some of the churches involved include:
- Austin Stone
- Christian Community Church
- Rock Harbor
- Granger Community Church
- Seacoast Church
- Kennsington Community Church
- Mountain Lake Church
- West Ridge Church
What’s exciting about this group, is that these churches, most considered to be thought-leaders, are not satisfied with their current strategy. They are pushing the envelope of strategy in the name of things like “missional community” and “apostolic movement.”
KEY QUESTIONS WE’RE ASKING
- How does our declining church influence in our leading cultural cities, help us wake-up to the enormous need for completely new strategies? Right now we are in San Francisco which has a 4-6% churched from an evangelical perspective.
- As we develop new strategies, how do we keep mission as the organizing principle of all we do? (That is, how are we thinking missional not just talking missional.)
- If our best church models will not even come close to touching 40% of our culture, how do we reach the other 60%? Here is a post from Tim Steven on “The Shrinking 40.”
- How do we get our best churches to a place of re-imagining the future and not just improving existing methods?
- How do we leverage the platform of the “attractional,” mega-church to integrate and launch initiatives that multiply the mission with new “incarnational” strategies.
- Is the multi-site “strategy of the day” just a stepping stone to a more viral and exponential strategy to expansion that could be captured by the progression: MEGA > MULTI > MICRO. Read Todd Wilson’s Micro Manifesto.
I will continue to post learning from this group.
RELATED POSTS
My personal thoughts (as if they’re being asked for
) is that “strategy” is not the thing that Christians need to be focused on. Christianity was never a historical success because people wanted what we provided. Christianity was a success, and still is, when unbelievers want what we have. If a church is faltering it’s probably not because they have a poor strategy, but because the people have a weak spirit. Perhaps that statement is overly black and white, but I think that there’s a lot of truth in it.
Sorry, Kevin, but I can’t agree with your first statement. In fact the oldest definition of strategy that I have found in my research is 1 Chron.12:32 — “who understood the times, and knew what to do”. I am currently writing a book entitled “Strategic Discernment: How 21st Century Christian Leaders can best understand the times and know what their enterprise should do”. However, that doesn’t mean that we look for OUR strategy — rather we seek to discern God’s purpose for us and God’s strategy for attaining that purpose.
Shalom
Gordon
Keep posting stuff like this i really like it
I would kill to be in on that group discussion.
Figuratively Speaking,
Jim Botts
Awesome stuff! We are trying to get back to focusing on that number of people who are not interested in a positive church experience. This will require new forms, strategies, and measurements… Hoping to learn from you along the way on this! Thanks for sharing!