Help - Why are church plants the most successful at reaching people and does my established church stand any chance of being renewed?

Today's post title gets the award for longest title on a post I have ever written and I bet it is one of the longest you've seen.  But it gets to a good point that I'd like some input on.

I mentioned it on a prior post where I had asked Ed Stetzer about this.  Peter Wagner says that church planting is the most effective method of evangelism on the planet and lots of people say things to the effect that established churches just don't evangelize well.  Ed thinks this is basically because of established churches' unwillingness to change.

In his terrific slideshow on church planting in post-Christian U.S. Drew Goodmanson reports the following statistics:

Churches under 3 years reaching 10 people for every hundred church members

Churches 3-15 years old win an average of 5 people for every hundred church members.

Churches over 15 years old reach an average of 3 for every hundred church members.

The average new church gains the majority of it's members from people who had not previously attended a church, The average established church gains 80-90 % of it's members from transfer growth from other churches.

With all of that I thought I would just open it up to the readers for input.   Why do you think established churches don't reach the lost?  Have you seen an established church that is over 15 years be effective in reaching the lost?  And by the way, note the question - I'm not asking about the growth of established churches - many grow, but the growth is 80-90% transfer growth. 

Have you seen any established churches that have turned around and become more effective in reaching the lost? If so how?

Comments

[Mark Olson]

Wayne,
I've also heard that when churches reach a size of 70-80% full during services they stop growing (visitors figure they're "full" or something like that). I wonder how big an effect that has on the statistics you quote.

Do those numbers change after an expansion or rebuild I wonder?

[Dan Dermyer]

Thom Rainer wrote Breakout Churches, a study of churches that 'turned the corner' while keeping the same pastor. His criteria included at lesst 10% growth. During his research his group poured over mountains of statistics--and found 13 churches to write about.

You'll have to check his book for the other criteria, but it does concur that renewing a church to include evangelistic growth is pretty rare.

Can it be done?
Absolutely, but Stetzer seems on the money when he says existing churches don't really want to change.

Can't wait to see how God works in Maryland!
grace,

[Ken L. Hagler]

I serve as Associate at a large church which has been successful in reaching the lost. I've been here for one year and will be here one more as I prepare to launch a a new UMC. Our church began in 1973 so it meets your criteria for age. In the last 10 years, our church has taken in over 40% of its membership on profession of faith or first time church membership.

My take is that it has a whole lot to do with leadership. It has a whole lot to do with being focused on a vision/mission/mantra that is about reaching unchurched/dechurched/lost people. Is that rather simplistic? Yes. Is it simple? By no means.

What gets left out of most reports on church planting is the total number of failed church plants compared to successes and what those causes were. I've heard anecdotal evidence but what are the hard facts? Until we have those numbers, I'm not sure how far (or fair) it is to take the comparison.

What I think is evidenced in all churches successful in reaching the lost, be they plants or "turn-arounds," is the leader(s) committed to that as their mission.

[Ken L. Hagler]

I serve as Associate at a large church which has been successful in reaching the lost. I've been here for one year and will be here one more as I prepare to launch a a new UMC. Our church began in 1973 so it meets your criteria for age. In the last 10 years, our church has taken in over 40% of its membership on profession of faith or first time church membership.

My take is that it has a whole lot to do with leadership. It has a whole lot to do with being focused on a vision/mission/mantra that is about reaching unchurched/dechurched/lost people. Is that rather simplistic? Yes. Is it simple? By no means.

What gets left out of most reports on church planting is the total number of failed church plants compared to successes and what those causes were. I've heard anecdotal evidence but what are the hard facts? Until we have those numbers, I'm not sure how far (or fair) it is to take the comparison.

What I think is evidenced in all churches successful in reaching the lost, be they plants or "turn-arounds," is the leader(s) committed to that as their mission.

[brad brisco]

David, you ask a great question.

I see it all the time in the churches within the network/association of churches that I work. As a church grows in age, facilities, resources (both $ and people) and "programs" it focuses more and more attention on itself and less time and energy on connecting with those outside the church.

[pbandj]

i think there is hope for the est. churches. but it takes a little longer and it often comes thru different means.

for instance, i think that older churches are more effective (if they choose to emphasize it) at planting churches, so indirectly they help too.

also, having new churches around them, over time, they will change too. they will see what works and what doesnt. and if they are able to transition (much slower of course) often they have the ability to transition without making the mistakes newer churches often make.

so i think we need both est and new churches.

peter

[Tony Stiff]

David I really appreciated this post. I've linked people to it brother. Do you think being nomadic versus having a permanent space has anything to do with it? I can't help but think that sometimes its the very idea of seeing permanent facilities as a goal of church growth that causes us to lose ou missional identity.

One thing I would consider doing if I was in an established older church would be renting our space out to community groups in the area or even buisnessess, as well as putting up some para-church type multi-site campuses of sorts. Shake up our ideas of 'our space' and 'our home' and reclaim some of that nomadic adventure spirit we had in the early days...

Just a thought.

[Ali]

I don't know a lot of examples, but while reading the comments I thought of the Village with Matt Chandler and also John Piper's church. Both were established, but Chandler and Piper brought changes when they arrived i.e., they weren't the existing pastors before the Church changed.

[Sam DeSocio]

The thing that Keller has said is that new churches leave room for new leadership, and do not have established ways of doing things, and are there for more flexible in how they can include new people. Redeemer is now I think almost 20 years old so we will have to see what they do. I think Keller has suggested a constant renewing of leadership and purpose. Bill Krispin(a lesser know missiologist) consulted at a church I was attending, and said that they could replant themselves, make a fresh start.
I think it has to do with baggage, retaining young leaders, and accepting risk. Most churches have lots of baggage if they have been around 15-30 years, multiple pastors, people being hurt etc. Most churches are not really good at retaining young leaders and using them, many churches have them but don't use them, they seen as Junior Varsity. Most older churches have more to risk and are therefore willing to risk less. They have buildings, and staff, and many churches are really just trying to replace the members that are dying, or moving away. So they are not willing to risk change if it means they could loose people.

Im not saying your church is like that, Im just saying that seems to be why older churches don't grow.

[Ali]

I wonder if this is true in other cultures. In the West there is a definite "cult of the young" where younger is better than older, new is better than established. Could this also have something to do with it?

[Ron Korzeniowski]

Perhaps established churches aren't as successful at evangelism b/c attenders like that sense of "family," everyone getting to know everyone else. That is something that's difficult once you're over 150 or so.

Established churches aren't as successful at evangelism b/c they don't have to be. There is always enough money to get by, enough leaders to get by, enough thrill to make us think we're fulfilling the Great Commission. New churches have to evangelize.

[Jeremy Pierce]

My parents' church had a huge turnover, but it was because they went from being a mainline UCC church with mostly unbelieving attenders concerned with funding abortion and promoting gay in their Sunday School to being a solidly evangelical church with no denominational affiliation and a budget devoted more to missions than to any other expense.

[cavman]

That seems to be the general trend, but I do believe that the Gospel can change the mindset of established churches so they once again take risks including allowing new people to help lead. Some/many churches are too afraid to change, and they will die.

[garver]

I was part of an older (150yrs old!) established congregation for the past 18 years or so and am now part of a church plant. The dynamic is certainly different.

Still, the older church did have a number of conversions/baptisms with each group of new members, though often 2-3 out of 15-20. The pattern that I noticed was that many of the conversions came through the church's ministry with international students. They had a separate church service, designed for people who are not native English-speakers, and were aimed at a more transient and younger population.

There's probably a lesson to be gleaned in there somewhere.

[Rob Mitchell]

I was an elder in a church that had been on a twenty year steady decline, and did three years of research on how to reverse the trend. When I finally presented a 30-page report to my fellow elders on the Session, I said to my friends and fellow elders, "Look, I'm only one elder here. I have no right to try to impose a vision on this congregation. But I have a responsibility to present information and some alternative futures."
I offered four alternative courses of action as a motion to the Session. One was "stay the course and remain faithful," or change nothing. There others involved getting a ministerial intern to do a new plant within the congregation, to begin a second service with different leadership, and finally to sell the facility, move into a rented hall (not too hard since we were running about 50 on Sunday), and use the proceeds from the sale to finance a church plant.
My suggestions were met with blank, uncomprehending stares. The report was not formally received by the Session, nor even entered into the minutes. A month later, the pastor said, "Here's what we're going to do: we are going to anticipate growth." That was it - no action, no change.
Three months later I asked my fellow elders to release me from office to participate in a church that was involved in doing church plants.
In the Stephen King novel "Cell," one character is unable to cope with the changes that have made the world different. He first says that he will stick to his job (he's a hotel manager) but the other characters leave, and come back later to find he's hanged himself. The narrator remarks, "Some people would rather die than change." This seems to be the case with churches - most would rather die than change.
But change is possible. Perhaps the best single volume on redeveloping a congregation is "Leading Congregational Change" by Jim Herrington, Mike Bonem et al, from the Union Baptist Association outside Houston. There is good wisdom here.
If I might, here's a recent post on my blog where I discussed one local church here in the Memphis area that couldn't change - now their auditorium and the lot it stood on have been sold to make way for a Walgreens. My thoughts are in this article with the title:
Embracing congregational death to birth new churches

[Mark Daniels]

Two churches that were long established and then, under strong spirtual entrepreneurial leadership, took off are:

Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church, Ginghamsburg, Ohio

Lutheran Community Church of Joy, Glendale, Arizona

GUMC still sets in a mostly rural area north of Dayton, right off of I-75. It had been a sleepy church. A pastor committed to and able to convince the congregation to try new things was important.

Ditto, CCOJ, in the Phoenix burbs.

Both the senior pastors are also committed to prayer and to service and evangelism.

Mark Daniels

[GL]

I'm familiar with a church that had 800 on the roll, 200 in worship attendance when a new pastor was called. Many thousands later they still reach many lost people a year. A few hundred adult baptisms each year. It is a "Church Growth" church, as you would surmise. They show that growth can be sustained over many years (the pastor has been there almost 30 years now). The pastor once told me that they could do a better job on discipleship, which suggests the focus is evangelism. Not a perfect solution but it does reflect the reality that evangelism can be part of the regular life of a church over many years.

[Deb]

I currently attend a church that is more than 20 years old and we've been grappling with these ideas quite a bit - becoming more missional, doing church planting, etc.. And this is my general observation:

Church planters are focused on different types evangelism and mission that emphasize getting out and reaching non-believers. Great! Discipling gets kind of put on a back burner, until a solid body of believers is built up.

Established churches have a solid body of committed members, so they tend to focus on programs that are designed to "FEED" them. Now, sometimes those "programs" include discipling, but usually they are more about meeting physical needs, providing nursery, sharing practical theological methods, counseling, and holding house churches that allow the members to connect with each other, to eat meals together, and have discussions about Churchianity. Good stuff too.

In my opinion, both of these approaches are kind of lacking in real discipleship which is actually the heart of kingdom building.

What are the key elements of discipleship? In my opinion, bible study in fellowship (yes, preaching is Required and so is the lecture style Sunday School but..) Opening up the scriptures together, reading God's Word personally with one another, confessing sin to each other, praying for one another in ways that matter, applying it with each other to daily circumstances, and providing real accountability. Not a program, but community and fellowship with the goal of knowing Christ more intimately and equipping each other to incarnate the Gospel in all aspects of our lives - at work, at school, at home, at church, everywhere.
This would be just as important on the very day that a person is converted as it is 20 years later. But is this really happening? Not much.

that's my 2 cents:)

[Bonnie]

The church plant I attended when I lived in a different city just closed this year, after 20+ years in existence. The problem, I think, was that the "established" members wanted to reach out to the community but hadn't the slightest idea how.

I currently attend a 128-year-old church in the same denom. There is fresh wind blowing with a new pastor but the church is still very entrenched in traditional habits and patterns that imo aren't very effective. I see a lot of what commenters Sam D. and Ron K. say. However, we recently took on a sort of host/partnership arrangement with a growing Hispanic church, which shows promise.

But I think that, in addition to leadership with a vision, there needs to be education and discipling/equipping of church members as well as real intergenerational communication and effort. Leaders must not fear offending the "old guard" yet also be open to all of the gifts and input in a church. Members need to be willingly "on board" together. A large percentage of our church membership is over 50 (heck -- over 70!)...they may be "old-fashioned" in some ways but also possess a lot of maturity and wisdom. Both young and old (and men and women, and other "opposites") can learn a lot from each other.

[pastor osei]

i want to be part of your mission to plant a church.

[Doug]

I've been in established churches all my life. Here is a note for you to ponder: The oldest church I attended is where I was fed the most. My grandfather nurtured my thoughts about God and taught me to pay more attention to the Holy Spirit than to the order of the way things were done. I grew to like a traditional church service because it is where I felt the Holy Spirit the most. I tried new church plants and blended church services and even those where people danced in the aisles.

I found myself still in touch with the Holy Spirit in the traditional setting. Go figure, not what you all have discussed, but it has been my experience. I still feel the Holy Spirit and minister on a daily basis outside of church. In church, I get my Spiritual batteries charged from the traditional church where I learned about the Holy Spirit from a man who spent time explaining it to me.