Simple Church

I've been reading a book called 'Simple Church' and I gotta say... this stuff really makes sense. It echoes other books that I've been reading, like Andy Stanley and Reggie Joiner's book called 'Seven Effective Practices of Ministry.' The book suggests that the discipleship process shouldn't be complex... and that the ministries of the church really shouldn't be complex.

One passage of the Stanley/Joiner book really stands out to me: “Many of our staff had previously been involved with churches that were program-heavy, and we know how quickly things could grow out of control. So we became tenacious about staying simple. In fact, you might be surprised at some of the things we do not do. For example, we don’t have a Christian school, midweek services, men and women’s ministries, a children’s choir, adult Sunday school, Easter or Christmas Pageants, or a recreation ministry.”

The book suggests that churches that do too much are perhaps making a lot of noise, but aren't making any kind of an impact. It's very intriguing stuff. They took surveys and did studies of declining churches and pitted them against growing churches… and the results they found were staggering. The growing churches were the ones that had a simple process of discipleship… who clearly communicated that process to the people… and who leveraged all their energy, time and resources towards accomplishing that process. If a ministry did not fit the criteria of their process… they don’t consider doing it. They only do things that will compliment and add to their chosen process of discipleship.

It’s a fascinating way of doing church… mostly because I’m so used to the opposite. I’m used to being involved in program after program. Admittedly, I’ve started program after program… without asking the question: Does this compliment the mission of the church? Does this compliment the process? And unfortunately, there have been times where I couldn’t ask that question because there was no given process or mission to shoot for. In fact, I’ve worked in churches that Reggie Joiner could call: ADD churches. They have an inability to focus on ANYTHING for any length of time!

Our church here in Wheaton has just taken a Natural Church Development Survey... and we found that our limiting factor is Effective Structures. Some places of the church are over-structured… some places are under-structured. The church has had a vision or mission statement… but it’s pretty cumbersome and nobody really knows what it is. I am excited because I think ‘Simple Church’ will come in really handy in helping us move forward in identifying our process for discipleship.

We will begin really diagnosing things in the coming months… but this book fell in my lap at exactly the right time. It has made me ask some difficult questions of my own ministry paradigm. Why do we do what we do? What is the purpose of the church? How do we move people into spiritual maturity? It’s challenging, exciting, scary and intimidating all wrapped up into one. But I’m finding that that’s where God wants me to be… more times than not… in over my head.

Here’s to a simple church that can make a deeper and greater impact for the kingdom of God!