How to Increase Lay Participation

Many churches struggle with stagnant or declining participation from lay people. Even growing churches want to get more of the congregation active in ministry.

Often that means staff and clergy pick up the slack. This often leads to church members slacking more.

The reason lay people are notoriously passive is because of the very distinction between laity and staff/clergy. Laity are amateurs, while clergy are professionals. Lay people volunteer to support ministry, but the truth is the ministry belongs to the church, and the church is run by the professionals.

There are various strategies to boost lay ministry, but I believe they are ultimately short-sighted. When a particular mission is accomplished, laity will default back to a passive mentality until prodded into action again. The goal should not be specific participation but a perspective change that empowers laity to pursue mission without waiting for approval.

The first step for pastors and staff is stop doing ministry! As long as you’re willing to pick up the slack, laity will feel they have permission to leave slack.

Ministry is the job of the whole church, not a specially appointed caste of ministers. Pastors often see their calling as “doing ministry” when this actually robs the church of its full functioning.

Instead, pastors must become equippers of the saints. This does not happen through sermons, meetings, counseling, or educational opportunities. It happens through one-on-one or small group mentoring, to help members discern their personal gifts and callings, then coaching them on pursuing that calling with integrity. The goal must explicitly be to train and release a Christian missionary into the field.

The second step then is to train small group leaders. Leading the groups yourself maintains the perception that it’s the territory of professionals. For your first mentoring small group, seek out one or two people gifted and called to equip others for ministry. Focus your attention on them. Go to lunch, do hands-on mission together, talk to them about your work and ask for their thoughts. If you’ve stopped or at least reduced your time “doing ministry,” you’ll have time for this.

The third step will be getting out of the way. Depending on your polity and particular congregation, control is held by different people. If Christians are being released into mission with integrity, and continue to be supported and held accountable through small groups, they will need a streamlined process to gain permission. Ultimately, this should not require asking for it.

Christians will find true motivation only through pursuing Christ. The church’s job is to help them hear Christ’s call, discover Christ’s gifts, equip them for excellence, and keep them on track as they “run the race.”

Do Anything, Go Anywhere

A lot of Christian teachings focus on discerning personal calling or mission. This is usually discerned through and grounded in spiritual disciplines like prayer, reading the bible, and small group participation. These are all good things, and I wholly recommend them despite what I’m about to say:

If you love the Lord intimately – in every breath, at every moment – you can do anything.

The ancient monastics did far more than pray in monasteries. They were equally at peace gardening as leading armies, equally pursuing Christ begging on the street as shaping politics, equally at home in a monastery as a jail cell. The monastic life wasn’t about ritual, sacrifice or isolation – although it often included these. It was about perpetually dwelling in Christ, living through his life at all times.

And so they went everywhere and did everything.

Much as Paul said, this freedom in Christ is not license to sin. On the contrary, if you live in Christ you die to sin, which means you just plain don’t want to sin anymore. When it is by his life, you won’t be led astray.

Rather than focus on personal calling and mission, focus on the living Christ and find true freedom.

The Lost Art of Mentoring

The New Testament is rife with personal mentoring relationships. Jesus lived with the Twelve – eating, sleeping and traveling together. There are several examples where he retreats from the crowds to intentionally spend time with the Twelve building them up and revealing secrets. Later we see Paul make the same habits, especially with disciples like Luke, Silas, Timothy, Lydia and Philemon. He takes them under his wing as apprentices, personally nurturing their leadership by using his life as an example.

The modern church has abandoned mentoring in favor of education. Dedicated Christians are brimming over with knowledge but no significant lifestyle change occurs. Mentoring was the biblical model to forge an entire Christian life, grown from the example of a credible mentor.

In a recent post, Tom Bandy illustrates the mentoring experience. It consists of five major parts:

• Sharing - Mentors and apprentices share mutually their experiences, temptations, struggles, victories and concerns.
• Habits - Mentors pass on their habits which guard their discipline against temptation, and help apprentices shape habits unique to their needs.
• Accountability - Mentors and apprentices hold each other accountable to their habits and disciplines.
• Action - Mentors encourage apprentices to engage mission through their gifts and calling, reaching out to needy people.
• Acceptance - Finally mentors teach apprentices how to persevere despite failure and shortcoming, because ultimately we are all still broken people, but cannot let our weakness discourage or diminish our strength in Christ.

Elders and Board Members Aren’t the Same Thing

My background is Presbyterian, so I’ll use their terminology – most Protestant denominations have some analogue. For Presbyterians, we’ve got elders and a board of elders called a session. When you’re ordained as an elder you simultaneously sign up for three years on the session. The two have become synonymous, so much that former session members say they’re former elders, even though trey’re ordained for life.

A call to elderhood and a call to the session are not the same thing. Why not separate the two? Most mainline declining churches lack spiritual leadership. Ordain elders because they’re spiritual leaders people respect and look up to. Call them to be mentors to the spiritually restless. Maybe you only call elders to the session, but only bring on those elders who are truly called.

If we could do this we’d reclaim the biblical role of elder, gain spiritual leadership and depth through mentors, and have a smaller decision-making board who are truly passionate about their duty privilege to serve.

Why Grow?

A large majority of search traffic that comes here finds my How to Grow Your Church post.  I love that there’s so much interest in looking outside the church instead of in.  If you came here by such a search I’d really like to know: why do you want your church to grow?

The question may sound stupid on the face, so I’ll explain.  I believe there’s two broad “camps” to possible answers – wanting your church to grow for your church’s sake, or wanting it to grow for the strangers’ sakes.  Inside each of those are countless other answers.

For your church’s sake: What will your church gain?  What will it miss out on without growth?  How does this reflect the mission of Jesus Christ in the gospels?  What are the reasons a stranger might share your vision of your church?

For the strangers’ sakes: What will strangers gain?  What will they miss out on without your church?  How does this reflect the mission of Jesus Christ in the gospels?  What are the reasons a stranger might come, and reasons they might stay?

It’s my humble belief that those in the first camp – for the church’s sake – will find all those questions hard to answer.  The reason is, Christ regularly tore down institutionalism in favor of horizontal organization – groups of equals with direct access to God.  His heart constantly went to the stranger, the “lost sheep.”  Parables often highlight the greater compassion for those on the fringe.

It’s easy to get caught up in growing a church for the sake of Christianity instead of the sake of Christ.  Attendance is down, volunteers are slim, committees are populated by the same handful of overworked people and the median age is rising.  That doesn’t mean you shift the burden of your church’s welfare onto newcomers.  Change your outreach mission to sharing your experience of Jesus Christ, help people find their Spirit-given callings, and don’t ask for anything in return.  I’d bet you anything you’ll grow as a side-effect.

Programs Won’t Bring People to Your Church

Spiritual depth (especially among leaders) will.

People are overwhelmed by advertisements promising a better life by subscribing, purchasing, participating in, or some other way buying into a product or service.  Church programs are exactly the same thing, they just happen at church.  People aren’t just not looking for programs, they actively hate them.

What people really want is a capital-T Truth for their lives.  They’ll know it when they see it.  Spiritually mature people are the clearest sign of this.  It not only gives people a lifestyle to emulate, but demonstrates the church has something worthwhile.

Don’t have spiritually mature people, who live instantly recognizable lives of holiness, in your church?  It’s probably because of all the programs! (And committees, meetings, clubs, fund raisers, social events, and other time fillers.)  Don’t keep people busy, keep them growing.  Find out where they are on their spiritual journey, what their gifts and calling from God are, and help them on their way.  When someone is gifted and called to help others find these things, train them and release the ministry to their care.

It doesn’t matter what your chuch is doing, it matters that people are discovering their God-given purpose in life and being nurtured to fulfill it to its utmost potential.

Are We Doing it Wrong?

Whenever people in my church (and denomination) talk about change (transformation, renewal, relevance…), there’s a pattern.  The old guard takes offense at the implication underneath this talk – that they have been doing church wrong.  Those talking about change are quick to disagree.  It’s all a process, and this is the next step.  It’s not about fixing a broken church, it’s about living into an approaching future.  The one I heard today was: it’s not about institutional change so much as personal growth and transformation.

Let’s clear this up: yes, the church is broken.  Yes, it is being done wrong, and has been for decades.  Yes, the change is to correct it.

If we’re not up to speaking the plain truth our message will forever be muddied by misplaced “pastoral” concern.  We do a disservice to Christians by pandering to their prides instead of facing the realities of ministry and mission head-on.

Not everyone can handle the hard facts, but not everyone is called into leadership either.  Work with those who are up for the challenge, and help those with bloated prides or faint hearts move on to their real callings.

Homosexuality and Ministry

(I try to keep posts short. This is a drastic exception. Just a warning.)

I’m currently a member of a PC(USA) congregation, and our denomination (among others) is struggling with whether to allow homosexuals to be ordained or not. Ordination doesn’t just mean ministers, but also elders and deacons (spiritual leaders and managers, respectively).

There’s a deeper struggle over whether homosexuality is sinful or not. Beneath that, there’s a struggle over how to interpret the bible in general. The ordination issue is a symptom of what is possibly the biggest issue for any Christian church.

For many, either homosexuals shouldn’t be allowed ordination because homosexuality is sinful, or they should because it isn’t. I believe homosexuals should be allowed into all areas of ministry, but I also believe homosexuality is a sin. How does that work?

Sin?

Modern science has almost unquestionably proven homosexuality is a genetic disposition from birth. How could it be sin? After creation and the fall (and just after the story of Cain and Abel), Genesis 5 opens with these three verses:

This is the list of descendants of Adam. When God created humankind, he made them in the likeness of God. Male and female he created them, and he blessed them and named them “Humankind” when they were created. When Adam had lived on hundred thirty years, he became the father of a son in his likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth.

I believe the repetition of God creating humankind in his likeness just before Adam becomes “the father of a son in his likeness” is intentional. It establishes that we are not children of God as Adam and Eve originally were, but are instead children of Adam and Eve – children of the fallen creation. From our conception we bear the tarnished image of God as Adam did – imperfect, marred, tainted.

Some argue that the bible does not directly address homosexuality, through convoluted arguments of misplaced contextuality and mistranslations. I believe these arguments are made out of bias, not authentic research. The most telling place for Christians is in Paul’s letter to the Romans, chapter 1 verses 26-27:

For this reason God gave them up to degrading passions. Their women exchanged natural intercourse for unnatural, and in the same way also the men, giving up natural intercourse with women, were consumed with passion for one another. Men committed shameless acts with men and received in their own persons the due penalty for their error.

I’m not fond of the harshness of those words, but they spell things out plainly. Paul interprets the scriptures as condemning all homosexual behavior, and reinforces the provisions as still applicable to Christians.

It is not my place to convict a gay person of sin. That is the work of the Spirit. There are plenty of people, homo- and heterosexual, who do not believe homosexuality is sinful. I have no intent to fight them on the issue. I just want to be clear on my opinions. I’m more than happy to talk about my views, and to learn from others about their views. I’ve been wrong before, and it’s bound to happen again sometime.

(Un)Repentance

Everyone is a sinner. A common line drawn over homosexuality is one of repentance (or lack thereof). A practicing homosexual is willfully sinning instead of repenting. A gay person could be ordained if only they weren’t practicing gay sex. Unrepentant sinners should not be ordained as leaders in any capacity, so the argument goes.

This sounds reasonable on the face of it, and is what I believed for some time. Unfortunately, I was convicted by one of Jesus’ sayings on adultery (Matthew 5:27-28):

“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

It isn’t directly connected, but I believe a fair interpretation is a person is a sinner because of what’s inside, not the actions they take. A gay person refraining from sex does not make a heterosexual, and in my opinion does not erase the sin. If anything, it may compound the issue with feelings of repression and guilt, which are not healthy.

The Shame of it All

The side in favor of gay ordination points out the unhealthy feelings of guilt and shame brought on by accusing homosexuals of sin they feel no control over. They also point out how exclusionary it is barring ordination to people who feel called by the Spirit to ministry, how much doubt and turmoil it casts on a gay person’s faith.

This troubled me for some time, especially the idea that homosexuals felt genuinely called to ministry, and also felt shunned by the church for denying their service. If unrepentant sin should exclude a person from ministry, how could the Spirit call them without convicting them of their sin? Once again, I found answers in scripture, specifically Acts 10:44-48. This is just after God instructs Peter to preach to some Gentiles, despite Peter’s prior understanding that the Good News was only for Jews:

While Peter was still speaking, the Holy Spirit fell upon all who heard the word. The circumcised [Jewish] believers who had come with Peter were astounded that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles, for they heard them speaking in tongues and extolling God. Then Peter said, “Can anyone withhold the water for baptizing these people who have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?” So he ordered them to be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ. Then they invited him to stay for several days.

The issue at stake was somewhat different, in that being a Gentile isn’t a sin. This is why I don’t think arguments originally used for ordaining women apply, since being a woman also isn’t a sin. However, this is not what convicts Peter. Instead, he sees the Holy Spirit poured out on the Gentiles and is compelled to baptize them immediately. Here lies my originaly dilemma, and why I changed my views. The Spirit has been poured out on homosexuals – who can deny them use of the gifts of the Spirit?

Standards

There’s a list in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that outlines a few standards for believers. Specifically, the list is of those who will not inherit the kingdom of God. 1 Corinthians 6:9-10 says:

Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived! Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, sodomites, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers – none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.

Sodomites is also translated as homosexuals, but that’s not what grabs me. It’s just mixed in the middle of this laundry-list of sinners. The greedy, drunkards, revilers… who hasn’t seen these problems in the church? Revilers could well refer to people who cast out homosexuals from ordination! However, Paul goes on in verse 11:

And this is what some of you used to be. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God.

The only ones who sanctify and justify are Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. Maybe God doesn’t need a person’s life or calling to work in a tidy, linear fashion. Maybe he’s happy to call someone to ministry, and through that service convict them of their sin. Who are we to stand in the way of the Spirit?

What we can do is hold our leaders accountable to regular spiritual discipline, constantly seeking God and growing closer to Christ. My small group is studying Jesus’ parables. I’ve already written about the prodigal son, but last night we read the parable of the vinegrower. Here it is, John 15:1-5:

I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes to make it bear more fruit. You have already been cleansed by the word that I have spoken to you. Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing.

Stay close to Christ, and the rest comes through him. That’s what God wants more than anything.