Sticky Church & Simple Church

HI All,

If you've read this blog for a while, you know that I am a fan of the Simple Church concept. The book Simple Church has really changed the way we do things around at my church. Although we read the book three years ago, we are still applying its principles today. They seem to get truer the older we get as a church.

Well, I have recently finished another great book, called Sticky Church by Larry Osborne. The focus of this book is on the power of sermon-based small groups to make your church "sticky"; that is, the sort of church that people don't easily leave. Larry Osborne has been the pastor of North Coast Church for years, and his wisdom and experience as a pastor comes through many pages of this great book. It is filled with good insights about how church works and doesn't work. It is not faddish. It is based on years of personal experience. He shares in this book how his church implements sermon-based small groups and how such a focus has helped to provide both spiritual growth and assimilation 'stickiness'.

He makes an interesting observation in chapter 12, "Overcoming the Time Crunch". Here's what he says:

"As I travel across the nation, speaking to leaders from various denominational, theological, and socioeconomic backgrounds, I've found they all say the same thing. As a rule of thumb, most people will participate in only two time slots a week. No matter what the third meeting is for or when it takes place; it's hard to get anyone to show up."

(p. 92, Sticky Church)

This, of course, ties in perfectly with the insights of Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger in Simple Church.

I am learning again and again the importance of stream-lining the church calendar so that we as a church can focus on that which is most important. And for us that means weekend worship and one spiritual growth opportunity mid-week. For us that may be a small group or a short-term discipleship course. But if we add too many other events, we distract our people from what they most need for spiritual growth and events.

The question I would ask you, as I ask myself now, is 'Does this plan (for some ministry event) fit with our 'two-slot paradigm'?

If there are only two slots in most - not all - people's lives, what do you want those two slots to be? You need to make a determination of this as the pastor of the church. What is important for the spiritual health of your people? As I ask myself that question, there is not a lot that I feel is worthy of pushing out their need to fellowship and pray each week with some close Christian friends as they support one another in a small group, in the hopes of living a successful Christian life. What is more important than that?

For most churches, if they are forced to choose -- and the pace of life in most communities IS forcing you to choose -- they would pick as number one, the weekend worship, and as number two, some form of small group community for spiritual life and growth.

We all need to keep this reality in mind as we make the programming choices for our busy, busy, busy church calendars.

Yours for the Kingdom of Heaven,

Dr. Bill

Simple Church Synchronicity & Coaching

HI All,

Last week I discussed the problem of how you line up the Simple Church concept of "Focus" (eliminating ministries which are not aimed at your goal), especially in the matter of how you handle announcements. Now I would like to offer a long-term solution to the problem. I say 'long-term' because it takes a long time to turn the ship around if your church has been around for more than seven years. You need to go slow and easy. While it may be difficult to make changes to existing ministries, you have a lot of control over the start of new ministries. And the way you do this is through new ministry coaching.

What is your plan for the start of new ministries? Do you have a guide or a help, or some form of instruction for people who want to start something new? If not, then your church will continue as a free-for-all, with anybody starting anything they want. This will violate all four principles of Simple Church: Clarity, Movement, Alignment & Focus.

Here's two steps you can take to make sure that new ministries, at least, will be in harmony with your Simple Church strategy:

First, create a written guide for new ministries. Whenever anybody wants to start a new ministry, require that they read through and answer the questions in the new ministry guide first. Your new ministry guide needs to teach the principles of Simple Church, and ask the right questions so that your people learn the implications of their ministry before they begin it. Too many people give no consideration or thought to how a new ministry will impact the already existing ministries in the church. For example, they will use space in the building, they will cost money from the budget, they will take time up in the church calendar. And they will ask for notice either through bulletin announcements or up-front announcements. All of these actions impact the other ministries in the church. People need to understand this. So make sure that they learn about all of these implications by completing the "New Ministry Guide" which will teach them Simple Church concepts. Take a look at this New Ministry Guide from HighPowerResources.com.

Second, establish 'new ministry coaches', who walk people through the process of starting a ministry in harmony with your church's philosophy of ministry. These coaches can not only help them start the ministry, but they can be there to help them through the problem solving and other issues which arise. Then at your monthly leadership community meetings of all your ministry team leaders, the coaches can meet with their teams and check in on progress and needs. That way you have a ministry lifestyle system which will help your ministry start well, and also excel.

God's best to you for growth and health in your ministry,

Dr. Bill

Simple Church Synchronicity

Adopting a simple church philosophy is the easy part. Making it work with your already existing ministry systems is the challenging part. Unless you are a church planter with no currently existing ministries to deal with, you must consider this factor if you hope to adopt a simple church model at your church.

(“Simple Church” is a reference to the book by Thom Rainier & Eric Geiger, Simple Church.)

Here is a recent discussion about applying Simple Church concepts to your announcements:

Simple Church Advocate: we don’t do any announcements unless they relate to our two core distinctives

Listener: “What about your men’s and women’s ministries? What do you do when they want to announce a new Bible study or a men’s retreat?”

Simple Church Advocate: “I ask them what the purpose is. If they say, ‘The purpose is because we’ve done it every year for the last 10 years,’ then it’s denied.

Listener: “Why would you do that?”

Simple Church Advocate: “We don’t think it is fair to our newcomers and seekers to distract and confuse them with too many messages and options. If we provide 10 different options during announcements, what are we saying about the discipleship ministries we believe will give them the most help spiritually?”

Listener: “Sounds like you are going to organize yourself simply out of existence!”


So, who is right in this exchange? It presents the challenges of synchronizing the Simple Church principle of Focus (Clarity, Movement, Alignment, Focus) with any church which already has programs in existence.

What is the best way to handle this dilemma? Is it a free-for-all for anybody who wants to promote their ministry event? How do you decide which ministries to promote or not promote, or (the unheard of), cancel a ministry that has been in existence for years?

Just a thought….

Dr. Bill

Simple Church - Year Two

Hi All,

We have been working on a re-tool of our church philosophy of ministry for the last two years. It's amazing how long this has taken, but it has incorporated quite a lot of changes crammed into just 20 months.

Here's what's been happening:
--November 2006 - We read "Simple Church" by Thom Rainer, and are absolutely captivated by the idea of a clear, simple ministry plan for making effective disciples of Jesus Christ.
--Dec '06 - Jan '07 -- We ask all the Ministry Staff to read the book as well.
--Feb '07 - May '07 -- We spend time during our Strategic Staff meetings discussing the implications of the book for our philosophy of ministry.
--June 2007 -- First sermon is delivered to the congregation to introduce the simple church idea.
--Summer 2007 -- We plan out a Fall series which will detail the Simple Church concept. We also begin designing and writing our first set of discipleship courses which will match the Simple Church vision.
--Fall 2007 -- Six-week series presented to the congregation explaining Simple Church concepts as related to our church. Link up our membership class and the first of our discipleship courses together.
--Fall 2007, Winter & Spring 2008 - We teach courses one through four of our discipleship curriculum.
--Summer 2008 -- We start work on stage three of our three-part discipleship plan
--Fall 2008 -- we have all three discipleship stages in place: Main Street, Community Circle, Ministry Way.
--Fall 2008 -- we host our first 'ministry community' meeting, for everyone serving in ministry, called "REFUEL"

What's next? We pretty much have all the "big rocks" in place now. Now we are clarifying our "hedge hog" concept (ala Jim Collins, 'Good to Great'). When we have that totally nailed down, we will incorporate that into the next round of our improvements phase this year. This is what Jim Collins calls "spinning the fly-wheel". We will just get really good at what we are doing in terms of our three-stage discipleship plan, and keep adding and adjusting as God leads.

That's enough for now.
Stay with us as I update you on our church's progress in developing a simple, clear, intentional discipleship process.

God bless,
Dr. Bill

APPLYING SIMPLE CHURCH

Simple Church is a great book with a powerful premise. It is basically that simple, and therefore effective, church's have a clearly defined process for making disciples. And this means a complete process from the moment before a person accepts Christ, to the growth into Christian maturity. According to the book you are not a Simple Church, if you just have a bunch of hodge-podge Bible studies, small groups, and Sunday School classes randomly selected according to the whims and interests of your people. You are an effective Simple Church if you know where you are taking your people spiritually, and have a specific path to take people there. And even then you are not quite a Simple Church, until you have removed everything that is extraneous to Simple Church discipleship.

The four parts of Simple Church life is: Clarity, Movement, Alignment, and Focus.

Here is how this works out in our experience:
CLARITY -- how you define your end-product goal. We spent a year as a staff in defining our discipleship product. We did this by developing 27 character and behavior traits that we seek to achieve as a church. We've put these into three categories of Head (beliefs), Heart (attitudes), Hands (behaviors). Each of the 27 traits reference a particular Biblical trait which defines a mature disciple. We worked these through our entire leadership team, Board, Staff, and ministry leaders.

MOVEMENT -- defines your plan for moving people from non-Christian to mature Christian. And what is required here is that you actually have a plan; just hoping you have enough Bible studies and small groups to help people grow, is not a plan. You need to know what you will teach them at each level, and why, and what will be next. Here is how we are doing it at Crossroads: We have developed a three-stage process that includes Main Street (worship + evangelism), Community Circle (growth and loving care), and Ministry Way (service). These are tied in to our logo, and our purpose statement. Our purpose statement covers the five basics of Worship, Evangelism, Growth (discipleship), Loving Care, and Ministry service. And the Movement is tied in to our logo as a church. Our logo represents Main Street (going up the vertical beam of the cross), and around the heart for Community Circle, and then back along the horizontal cross beam for Ministry Way.

ALIGNMENT -- defines the process of making sure that every ministry in the church contributes somehow to the spiritual growth development process that you have defined in your Clarity and Movement stage. Here is how we are addressing the issue of Alignment. We used to have (and still do) a collection of small groups started by various people focusing upon various topics of interest. It is your usual hodge-podge of Christian discipleship selection. We still have that, as we left the old system in place; but now we are developing a new system that begins with just four key small group discipleship experiences. Those four discipleship groups are: Alpha - the well known seeker sensitive introduction to Christianity; Connections - a group focused on developing relational skills, and then using those skills to love seekers into the Kingdom. The third discipleship group is Foundations - which covers the basic Christian discipleship habits (Scripture, prayer, meditation, fasting, silence, etc.), and finally, the fourth is Shape, which introduces people to their spiritual gifts and where to serve in the local church.

The way we make this happen is that after our membership class ("On ramp"), we encourage everyone of the people in the class to take either Alpha or Connections. That is our alignment portion.

The final stage is FOCUS. This is where it gets interesting. Focus means that you as a church only promote those ministries which specifically help this process. This means that you must either ignore or eliminate any ministries which conflict with your stated purpose as a church. Most churches have a wide array of ministries which do not contribute toward their stated maturity goal (if they even have one). What we have chosen to do is simply focus on the ministries that contribute toward our stated goal, and allow the rest to continue on as long as they do not interfere with the stated goal.

We are about 15 months into our Simple Church plan. We took a full year planning it, and communicating it to the leaders. Then we did a sermon series in the spring to introduce it, and then another one in the fall to launch it. We also tried one sample Alpha class last year to test it out. Now we have launched this Fall with both an Alpha Class and a Connections Class, and are on track to ramp up all four by the time we finish out this ministry year in the Spring. So far, so good.

Learning and applying Simple Church is not so simple. It has been complicated and confusing, and challenging, but very, very good, as we wrestle with what it means as a church to have a clean and simple process for making disciples.

Blessings in Christ,
Dr. Bill

Simple Church & REVEAL

Willowcreek has just released an awesome new book which "reveals" some important discoveries they have made about how people grow spiritually, and what is the role of the church in helping them to grow. It is going to be blockbuster dynamite which will alter the way churches do ministry for years to come. They just released it, and talked about it at the Leadership Summit this year. You need to read it. It is available directly from Willowcreek.

But one of the interesting aspects of this book is how closely it is tied in to "Simple Church" by Eric Geiger and Thom Rainer. In the most recent edition of the "Willow" magazine, from Summer of 2007 there is a quotation by Greg Hawkins, the Executive Pastor of Willowcreek. Here is what he says,
"We had a long-standing belief that the more involved with church activities people were, the more they'd be growing spiritually. We found that wasn't the case."

Where have you heard that before? That was totally the thesis of "Simple Church", (which you can buy from the books section of HighPowerResources.com). So the "Simple Church" message is being spread and gaining major credibility with the likes of Willowcreek coming on board.

So take a look at their new book "Reveal"; it will rock your world!

For Christ and His Church,
Dr. Bill

Small Groups vs. Sunday School

Hi All,

I just had a conversation with a church chairman about the impact of Sunday School on small group involvement. Sunday School, or Adult Bible Fellowships (ABF's) are a good tool and so are small groups, but you need to know what you are trying to accomplish with each. In many churches the two are used interchangeably, but are they?

This discussion is impacted by my thoughts about "Simple Church" the book by Eric Geiger and Thom Rainer. We are taking a good look at everything that we are doing as a church and trying to decide how it SPECIFICALLY fits in with our discipleship process. We are no longer going to do 'discipleship by accident'; that is, just hoping that because we have a small group, or a SS or ABF that people will automatically develop into disciples of Jesus Christ.

We have developed our Product description (something I teach about when I do the 'Growing a Healthy Church' seminars - see the "Seminars" page on HighPowerResources.com), and we have developed a 27 point Christian growth list, based on intellectual, emotional, and behavioral goals (head, heart, hands). About one-third of those goals are Christian character traits, fruit of the Spirit, mercy, compassion, humility, etc. What we discovered as we talked about in our strategic staff meetings (4 hours a month), is that it is very hard to develop these qualities in people intentionally. (By the way, let it just be said here that we believe totally in the sovereignty of the Holy Spirit and the power of God to change lives, not us. But we want to COOPERATE WITH GOD, in the best way possible, that is why we are developing these Christian growth goals.). So we realized that if we are serious about developing Christian's who display the very character of Christ, through these personal attributes, related to what we call 'heart' traits, then the very best place to make that happen is in our SMALL GROUPS, NOT SUNDAY SCHOOL.

We no longer have Sunday School, or ABF's; it's all small groups all the time. We are even trying to avoid using the word 'class' about anything we do (except for maybe membership class, which we now call 'On Ramp'). And this brings me to my main point of this blog, the issue of small groups vs. Sunday School (ABF's): Sunday school in its classic incarnation was not going to do what we wanted it to do, so we are now totally focused on small groups.

You have to realize that in most churches, Sunday School, by its definition ("school") is aimed at intellectual education of the Christian mind with more Biblical teaching. The focus is primarily intellectual teaching of the Bible. Now anybody you talk to will say that they are also focused on fellowship, prayer, sharing, etc. just as any good church would want to be. But the problem is that this is done in a 'classroom' in the church building. Big difference when you go into a small group in somebody's home. It has a totally different feel, not only in size, but in atmosphere. This provides the opportunity for deep sharing and care and prayer of real life issues. This is where you really have a hope of helping people to address the deeper character issues of the Christian life. And that is where our church wants to be - focused on character growth.

So we have made the switch; out with Sunday School and Adult Bible Fellowships, and totally in with Small Groups.
And we are trusting that God the Holy Spirit will use these more intimate settings to conform us all more to the image of Christ.

At work in His Kingdom,

Dr. Bill

SIMPLE CHURCH, p. 5: FOCUS

Simple Church, Part Five: Focus

I want to keep sharing with you what I have been learning from the book Simple Church, by Eric Geiger and Thom Rainer (which you can now buy from the HPR site under "Books"). This is a great book, because it really makes you think about church systems.

In our final look at the book Simple Church, we look at what is probably the most controversial part of the book; I know it is in our church.

The chapter is entitled, “Focus: Saying No to Almost Everything”. And THAT is a hard proposition in most churches.

The book flows like this: Clarity ⇒Movement ⇒ Alignment ⇒ Focus.

Focus means eliminating everything that doesn’t fit in with your discipleship plan. Geiger states, “People assume the more that can be squeezed into the menu, the better.” But as they make abundantly clear in the book, that is not always true.

They spend some time talking about the “one thing” principle, quoting various Scripture (Psalm 27:4; Phil. 3:13-14 “But one thing I do…”; Heb. 12:2 to “fix our eyes only on Christ”)

Focus is defined as “the commitment to abandon everything that falls outside of the simple ministry process.” And that ministry process has already been clearly defined as the church has worked on Clarity – defining what they are trying to achieve; and Movement – making a simple process to move people through the discipleship process; and Alignment – brining everything to work together toward that goal. That just leaves this final step, which is eliminating those which do not apply to the discipleship process.

This is backed up by research: “According to our research there is a highly significant relationship between church vitality and the church’s focus on the process” (Simple Church, p. 203). They also quote a doctoral study (Travis Bradshaw, University of Florida) which assumed that the more programs a church had, the healthier it would be. But what the researcher actually found out was that healthier churches had LESS program than non-healthy churches.

So how do you achieve focus?
1. Eliminate – “While eliminating programs is difficult, the data indicates that vibrant church leaders have the discipline to do so” (Simple Church, p. 205). You can eliminate programs by emphasizing stewardship. To be a wise steward of your people’s time, money and energy requires that you eliminate programs which consume too much of any or all three of these commodities. Simple Church is your church’s means of safe-guarding your resources for that which is truly important.

2. Limit Adding – as hard as it is to eliminate existing programs, then make sure you do not easily add new programs.

3. Reduce Special Events – These are the events that do not fit in the normal church calendar, nor in the streamlined discipleship plan, but someone is just so excited about them that the church decides to squeeze it into the calendar. But don’t do it! Rather decide how to use the event strategically by maybe combining it with another event or tying it together with the discipleship plan. With a little work this can be done.

I’ll close by quoting the German poet Goethe who said, “The key to life is concentration and elimination.” -- German poet Goethe

Eliminate the non-essentials, and concentrate on the most important aspects of making disciples, and your church will do OK.

Later,
Dr. Bill

SIMPLE CHURCH, p. 4: ALIGNMENT

"Simple Church" by Eric Geiger and T. Rainer has captured the imaginations of many people in America. They are already holding "Simple Church" conferences around the country with hundreds of people in attendance. While that is interesting, my concern is how we can take the Biblical principles from this book and apply them to any local church in order to experience growth. The growth we are looking for is both quantitative and qualitative growth. I believe the two are related.

In our continuing series as we study this book, we are on Part Four: Alignment. Alignment is defined as "the arrangement of all ministries and staff around the same simple process." According to their research, "there is a highly significant relationship between church vitality and alignment".

Alignment includes the following parts:
1) Recruit on Process - Staff & volunteers must be deeply committed to the specific discipleship process your church has selected. This is no place for lone rangers who decide they will use their own curriculum, methods, and means to do their own ministry style in their part of the church. Everybody must be using the same terms, systems and means to make disciples.

2) Offer Accountability - regular review of the process is necessary. For staff people, this may mean a weekly staff meeting. For church volunteers it needs to include a monthly leadership community meeting where the process is reviewed, and each ministry is tied in to that process. Accountability includes making sure that ministries are tied in to the overall purpose of the church.

3) Implement the Same Process Everywhere - same terminology; same spiritual growth milestones; same end-game.
You may adapt it to different groups, or ages, but the goal is essentially the same. This way unity is increased, and families experience the same process.

4) Unite around the Process - Remember the definition of a simple church: "A simple church is a congregation designed around a straightforward and strategic process that moves people through the stages of spiritual growth." Everybody is walking the same path toward spiritual growth.

5) New Ministry Alignment - This simply means don't start anything new unless it fits your process. The hardest part for you will be retooling existing ministries to align them with the discipleship process you have selected as a church. So make sure that if you start something new, that it already is in alignment, so you don't have to go back later and retool again.

After the final section of our "Simple Church" study, "Focus", I will be sharing with you the steps we have taken in our church to implement the Simple Church process. We have been studying it, and working on it for 6-months now, and we are just beginning to launch the new process with the congregation. Stay tuned for that.

Until later,
Dr. Bill

SIMPLE CHURCH: Movement, Part 3

Most churches don’t stall out because of one or two problems that they can easily fix. Most stall out because of church systems! That is, the entire way you have put your church [Christ’s church, but since you have messed it up, its ‘yours’] together is wrong. Simple Church makes you look back at the systems approach to church growth and discipleship. In our continuing series analyzing the impact of the book "Simple Church" by Eric Geiger and Thom Rainer, we are looking at the second church health principle of "Movement".

Simple Church helps you ask the question, “What is our system for making disciples here?” You do have a system don’t you? You see, even if you don’t, you still do. As Edward Deming has astutely put it, “You have the perfect system for getting exactly the results you are getting!”


Do you have weak and anemic disciples at your church? Your church system is producing weak and anemic disciples! Or are they strong and vigorous? Again, it is your system.

What is the system in your church? Can you identify it? For example, let’s say that this Sunday someone turns their life over to Christ at your church. Then they stay with you for 3 years, and then are transferred away. What do you want that disciple to look like at the end of 3 years of participating in your church discipleship system?

The focus of what we are talking about here is MOVEMENT! And Movement, is the 2nd key principle of the Simple Church Book. For an intro to Simple Church see my Jan. 16th, 2007 blog, and for the first principle of Clarity see my March 3rd, 2007 blog.

Movement is defined by Geiger & Rainer as "... the sequential steps in the process that causes people to move to greater areas of commitment."

Where do disciples start in your church and where do they go and grow? In most churches I’ve served in, there is no clear system. We just hope that they meet the Lord, start attending services and Bible studies and start growing. Isn’t that good enough? Try asking some of the big guns like Rick Warren at Saddlebback with his 4 bases. Or try asking Bill Hybels at Willowcreek with the 7 steps to maturity system and the 5 G’s. They’ve got systems in place to develop disciples.

Question: Is it enough just to copy the 4 bases of Saddleback and say that you’ve got it done? Not if you don’t understand the concept of church systems yet. Then you are just mimicking what you’ve seen, and as soon as someone tinkers with it, you will have problems.

Here’s what we are doing at our church to really put these principles into practice:

First , we answered the PRODUCT question. That is, if the example cited above of someone coming to church for 3 years and then leaving really occurred, what kind of a disciple would we want to produce? So over the course of several months, with staff, and leadership, we defined 27 character qualities of a mature disciple. These 27 character traits cover 3 broad categories related to Head, Heart, and Hands. Or put another way, we have defined Intellectual goals, and Emotional/
Attitudinal goals, and we have defined Behavioral goals.

Then, having just defined that, we are now working through all of our church programs, and determining exactly what kind of life-change we are trying to accomplish in each ministry. The question is "how does each ministry program in the church contribute to one or more of the 27 traits of spiritual maturity?

Also, we are clearly marking out our discipleship movement path for our church. We have identified a one-year path which we will encourage all new converts, new members, and seekers to pursue. (It is optional, and is also available for current regulars if they wish to join.).

Here is our path in synopsis:
First, Newcomers Dessert social
Second, On-Ramp (new members class), targeting the newcomers at the social
Third, Passport Dinner – to introduce them to the recommended “journey towards growth”
Fourth – one-full year of growth training, broke down into 4 separate discipleship groups:

This includes 4 discipleship groups which are coached, and that is a key part. Our awesome Small Groups director, Jim Troe, (he's reading this, so I had to say that;) put together this one-year plan…
-- Alpha – 10 weeks on the basics of Christianity for Seekers.
-– Connections – 8 weeks on how to develop healthy relationships with seekers.
-– Foundations – 8 weeks on basic discipleship issues like a daily quiet time, and Bible study.
-– SHAPE training – 8 weeks on discovering and using your spiritual gifts.

Fifth, Once they have completed the one-year discipleship training, we place them into long-term growth groups, which are normally “sermon-based” groups, that is, discussion and curriculum is based on the current teaching series.

Please note, these are all optional at every step of the way, although we do recommend a particular course of action.

So that is our current plan for movement. Yes, it may change, but we finally have a "clear path for discipleship", which happens to be what we call it. We know where we are going, and by God's grace and guidance we hope to get there.

NOW, how do we make sure to encourage people to follow this course of action?

That relates to the 3rd Simple Church principle, which is Alignment. I’ll update you on that next month.

Until then,
In Christ,
Dr. Bill

Simple Church: Clarity

CLARITY - STARTING WITH A MINISTRY BLUEPRINT

Hi all,
please note that the phrase “Starting with a Ministry Blueprint” and other key quotations related to Simple Church are being quoted from the book, Simple Church by Thom Rainer and Eric Geiger.

This has been a book that has tremendously impacted our thinking at our church. Ever since we read it last November, it has gripped us and revolutionized the way we view our current church. Here’s why:

We are in a church of about 700 people on a Sunday morning. We are right at the edge of the great American large church bureaucracy. That is, we are right at the crossroads between the two churches described in the book, “Cross Church” and “First Church”. As soon as we, the ministry staff, read it, we realized this truth. And that knowledge is what has propelled us on the Simple Church journey.

What is the Simple Church Journey?
It is the process of addressing all 4 elements of a Simple Church: Clarity, Movement, Alignment & Focus. It is the process of making sure that you are controlling the destiny of your church, rather than having the normal untamed growth process of American Christianity reshape your beautiful little church into a gigantic monstrosity of complexity as it matures.

So, the focus for today is CLARITY.

Clarity means having a blueprint for your ministry. Most churches have no clear plans for growth. Clarity is defined as “the ability of the process to be communicated and understood by the people”. This is a reference to your discipleship process. If it is not so simple and clear that the people of your church can easily communicate it to one another, then it is too complicated to work!

It must be simple enough to communicate, but the plan must have enough depth to actually create a system for discipleship. It is like the difference between brochures and blueprints, say Geiger and Rainer. Brochures are simple and cute; but blueprints are detailed. Brochures describe who you want to be as a church, but blueprints show you how to get there.

Do you have a discipleship blueprint for your ministry?

There are four parts to defining a clear discipleship plan:
1) PURPOSE
2) PRODUCT
3) PROCESS
4) PROGRAMS

1) PURPOSE
Many churches have done a good job here. They have taken the time to clearly define exactly what their purpose is as a church. Thanks to the work by Rick Warren, everybody understands the need for a ‘purpose driven church’.

But the problem comes immediately after the purpose is written. Because what happens is that the rest of the church is put together w/o any direct reference to the clarity granted through a good purpose statement. That is, the Product, Process, and Programs never refer organically back to the Purpose statement.

2) PRODUCT
The product is the type of disciple you are trying to produce. Have you ever written out with clarity exactly what a disciple from your church should look like? Let me put it this way: if someone were to come to your church this next weekend, and accept the Lord, join your church and start growing, and then they attended your church and your church’s key ministries faithfully for the next 3 years. Then they are transferred away, and you never see them again. The question I have for you is this: What will they Know, Feel, and Do as a new disciple of Jesus Christ, because of the discipleship ministry of your church?

At our church we have defined what the disciple will look like. In fact, we have specifically set up 27 traits divided into the categories of Know, Feel, Do (Knowledge, Character, Behaviors. We know what is most important to aim for as a church.

This impacts step three of gaining Clarity as a Simple Church...

3) PROCESS

At the Process Stage, you actually ask the question of HOW you will make disciples at your church. What are the stages and the process of making it happen? Rick Warren famously has his 101 to 401 classes. That is his process. Many have simply duplicated this, but there are other ways of doing it.

Here are some other Process Stages:
a) Win, Build, Send
b) Love God & Love People
c) Evangelize, Edify, Equip, Exalt
d) Attract, Attach, Activate
e) Relate, Reach, Redeem, Redeploy

But you are not done just by naming your key stages. Then you have to develop a plan to get to each stage. And that can be really complicated and tricky. It gets complicated because you have to try to separate the programs which really help your purpose from those that do not.

And that is the fourth stage of getting clarity as a simple church...

4) PROGRAMS

I would venture to say that almost every church in America is over-programmed. Yes, over, not under-programmed. There is too much stuff happening; too many activities; too many events on the church calendar.

The problem with all of these events is that if you want to be a Simple Church, you only want to keep those programs which lend themselves to achieving your Purpose, developing your Product, and following your Process.

That is why the Programs should never be addressed until you have achieved clarity on the rest of your church discipleship plan.

SUMMARY
So what we have done so far is only venture part-way into the Simple Church plan, as related to CLARITY. Clarity is the blue-print (not brochure) that defines your entire discipleship plan as a church. It includes PURPOSE, PRODUCT, PROCESS, and PROGRAMS.

Next time we will look at the second part of becoming a Simple Church, which is Movement.

Until then God’s best to your and yours,

Dr. Bill