5 Things We Can Learn From Fast Growing Congregations (even if they DO lean right)

"Why are the churches that say they’re welcoming to everybody always so…small?"

They are not always small, of course, as Diana Butler Bass has done her best to convince us. Being “small” isn’t exactly the problem, anyway. And just being "big" or even "growing" doesn't necessarily measure the things that I (maybe you and probably God) really care about. But those words were spoken out of frustration, concern and love by my 60+ year old mom, a lifelong Roman Catholic who has grown increasingly impatient with the homophobia, sexism, and hypocrisy – among other things – she sees in too many “Christian” churches, including her own. She had seen the creative television ads produced by the United Church of Christ and, for the first time in her life, got up on Sunday morning and didn’t go to Mass.She attended a worship service at her local U.C.C. congregation, on the east coast of Florida, instead. What she found was a very nice group of people in their seventies and eighties who, in the middle of east Florida’s immigration and housing boom, seemed resigned to presiding over the decline and inevitable death of their congregation.

“I just don’t understand it,” my mom said.

Well, I'm not sure I do, either. But I am just as concerned about it.

During 2005, along with a team of researchers from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America's (ELCA) Department for Research & Evaluation, I had the opportunity to look under the hood of four of the ELCA's fastest growing congregations. Although it isn't easy in the ELCA today to find, for lack of better descriptors, congregations to the "left of center" that make the list of fastest growing...we did try to visit congregations that varied at least somewhat in worship style, theological perspective, geography, and moral/ethical positions. We spent a whole weekend in each of these congregations, participating in worship services, educational opportunities, and fellowship activities. And we did dozens of interviews with pastoral & lay staff, lay leadership, longtime members, and new members. We haven't done an in depth analysis of this research yet. But those of us on the research team were able to identify, in a preliminary way, five things these congregations had in common:

• God was REAL in these places. People talked about God in first order language. In other words, they talked about God like they KNEW God personally (instead of just knowing "about" God) and like God was DOING STUFF in their lives, in their congregation, in their communities, and in our world.
• There was a deep and real commitment to the priesthood of all believers. People didn't expect their congregation or their pastor to "take care of them." Rather, they understood that being a Christian means being a disciple of Jesus everywhere they go! They embraced "ministry" as something they are responsible for.
• The Bible mattered. People read it. They talked easily about Biblical stories and SAW themselves in those stories. These stories seemed to provide the framework for everything they did, thought, said, decided, and dreamed.
• People, especially the leaders, were pragmatic. And this pragmatism was rooted in their commitment to reaching people for transformation. They really believe that to be the church is to share the message of Jesus with everyone. And, so, they paid attention to what "worked." And they were willing to change the way they did things if they thought something would "work" better.
• They expected something to HAPPEN! They really believed that God changes lives. People are TRANSFORMED when God gets a hold of them. The Holy Spirit was on the loose in these places! You could FEEL it.

Now, we found this pragmatism leading at least 3 of these congregations down some strange roads...and this was mostly due to the way they leaned towards a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible. Also, disturbingly, the transformations that occured in these places tended almost exclusively towards individualism...rather than the kind of Matthew 25 transformation that leads people to give themselves away for the sake of the poor, the outcast, the hurting, and the hungry.

But, I walked away from this project way more interested in what we can learn from these places than I was in trying to fix what they are doing wrong.

If you're working to reclaim the f word in the place where you serve, this list of 5 (as a measuring tool and as a framework for strategic planning) wouldn't be a bad place to start.