Challenges of a Suburban Church #1

I'm thinking a lot at the moment about the particular challenges that go with growing and leading a radical church in comparatively affluent suburbia. A couple (early 40s, 2 children) in our church asked me a fortnight ago why it is hard to make friends of significant in our church, for people in their age bracket.

As I've thought about this I've concluded that there are a lot of factors that come from our surrounding environment. Our area tends to be devoid of 20-somethings. They leave the area to go to university andcan't afford to move back until they are in their 30s, with children (and children's routines), busy professional lives, long commutes and families who live at a distance. 

My friends have a hankering for the pop-in, being involved with each other's lives, discipling other and enjoying spiritual fellowship and friendship of depth culture they knew in previous years. But our environment works against it. That is the kind of friendship and fellowship that comes very naturally when you are unencumbered and in your 20s, but very hard when you are encumbered and in your 30s - which is a primary demographic in our area and in our church. People come into our church with their lives already full and their routines already established - and however conscientious they are about participating in the life of the church there is an almost inevitable sense of it being an addition on top of existing demands.

I'm not sure what the answer is. I know what the temptation is - to multiply meetings as a substitute for real community, or in the hope that community emerges from them. But for people to then feel the pressure of "just another meeting" when life is already so full. Maybe one answer is to scrap some meetings but for some of us to start to deliberately invite people into our homes (unusual round here, I think) - but not for another meeting!

Thoughts anyone?

Leadership Lessons: Struggling to Develop a Team Mentality 3

A third list of reasons why a church may struggle to develop a team mentality:

3. Individual's Reasons

Not realising they have spiritual gifts

Not realising they are meant to actively contribute

Thinking that only extreme talent is welcome – like in a sports team

Not motivated, not thrilled with God or church

"I go for what I get out of it" mentality

Spiritual immaturity and selfishness

Want things to happen, but want someone else to take responsibility: “you should do this”. (I think of a church that was exploring the possibility of church planting. It surveryed the congregation and discovered one portion of its demographic saying "do whatever you like as long as it doesn't disrupt my Sunday worship experience and I don't personally have to be involved.")

Leadership Lessons: Struggling to Develop a Team Mentality 2

The second in a series of four short lists on why a church may struggle to develop a team mentality.

2. Organisational Reasons

Relational poverty – no sense of fellowship or really knowing each other

All effort put into running high quality main meetings rather than into discipleship or team building 

Structures (or theology) are set up to give most responsibility to few people, encouraging passive receivers

Leaders or congregation not able to cope with participative or consultative leadership, hence no invitation to others to take initiative

Lack of capitalisation of team. Unwillingness to take resources from other places to make team work

Organisational structure set up to disenfranchise the majority

View that the leader retains a degree of detachment from the community as the elite, trained professional 

Leadership Lessons: Struggling to Develop a Team Mentality 1

In this post and the following three are 4 sets of reasons a church may struggle to develop a team mentality. There are probably plenty more.

1. People holding wrong assumptions about what the church is:

• Church is meeting to attend rather than common life together
• Lack of understanding about every member ministry
• Unbiblical view of fellowship = activity or nice time together
• Unbiblical view of leaders = activity coordinators
• Unbiblical view of congregation = consumers or pupils
• Historical assumptions about relationship between clergy and laity
• Denominational assumptions or practices that turn leaders into a priesthood