Tag: 52 Churches

Update Your Church Practices

With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #35.

We thought we arrived early to this church, but it seemed the service had already started. Everyone was sitting down. People were singing.

There were no greeters or ushers. No one said a single word. It felt as though the service was in progress, and we were late.

It was one of the strangest church practices we encountered.

Apparently, we arrived while the choir was warming up. They finished and nothing happened. Total silence.

Why didn’t someone explain what was happening? Why was everyone else sitting down in stone silence? Why were we ignored?

Squirming in complete quiet for ten minutes was one of our more awkward church experiences. Although things ended well, we certainly had a poor start.

When I walked into this perplexing church situation, my first impulse was flight. This wasn’t the first time I felt like running from an awkward church situation; nor was it the last.

Churches—at least those that want to grow—should examine all of their practices through the eyes of a first-time visitor.

Then ask these questions:

• What do we do that would confuse or frighten a visitor?
• How and when do we welcome visitors?
• Which of our practices would make a visitor uncomfortable?
• Are we truly doing all we can to grow our church?

Then consider how many visitors come back a second time. The answer is telling. If few or no people return, you made a bad first impression.

That’s why it’s critical to examine your church practices through the eyes of a visitor.

Instead of internally examining these questions, an even better idea is to ask a trusted individual who’s never been to your church to visit it and provide honest feedback.

Then make the needed changes.

[See my reflections about Church #34 and Church #36 or start with Church #1.]

My wife and I visited a different Christian Church every Sunday for a year. This is our story. Get your copy of 52 Churches today, available in ebook, paperback, hardcover, and audiobook.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

The Lifecycle of a Church

With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #34.

From a human standpoint, the future of this congregation is bleak. When we visited, eleven people showed up. In addition to my wife and me, there were the leaders’ family of five, who go to another church and live forty-five minutes away.

That makes seven visitors and only four regulars—and one of them walked in halfway through the service.

Four people, all non-leaders, are not much of a foundation for rebuilding a church.

If this church survives, it will certainly be because of God’s Holy Spirit power and not through the efforts of people, regardless of their dedication or how hard they work.

I wonder if it’s time to say enough is enough and shut the church down. Surely there are other needs or opportunities these leaders could focus on that would have a better chance of success and produce more fruit.

Though many people think that a particular local church should exist in perpetuity, we shouldn’t look at a church as an institution but as an organic entity. Like everything organic, it has a life cycle and will one day die. Today may be that day.

Though Jesus’s church is universal and should endure forever, we shouldn’t expect a local church to live forever. And we shouldn’t waste time trying to perpetuate a church on life support or resuscitate a dead one.

[See my reflections about Church #33 and Church #35 or start with Church #1.]

My wife and I visited a different Christian Church every Sunday for a year. This is our story. Get your copy of 52 Churches today, available in ebook, paperback, hardcover, and audiobook.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

Avoid Creative Marketing for Your Church

With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #30.

We also attended Sunday school at this church, the only time we did so on our sojourn. The problem was that we didn’t intend to. Their website said church was at 10 a.m., and their pastor confirmed this fact via email.

The did a bait and switch on us.

When we arrived a man said, “Sit anywhere” as he gestured to an almost empty sanctuary.

For the next hour, we endured a most pathetic ordeal: welcome, announcements, prayer requests, greeting time, offering, hymn sing, sermon, and closing prayer—just like at any church struggling to slog through a sixty-minute church service.

Then the speaker said, “Thank you for attending; church will start in ten minutes.” Only then did I realize we’d just suffered through Sunday school. In sales, they call this “bait and switch.” I was seething.

Exhausted after enduring their Sunday school, I was in no condition to have a good attitude for church.

Though their actual church service had many positive elements, being tricked into attending Sunday school looms as my primary memory. I will never go back.

[See my reflections about Church #29 and Church #31 or start with Church #1.]

My wife and I visited a different Christian Church every Sunday for a year. This is our story. Get your copy of 52 Churches today, available in ebook, paperback, hardcover, and audiobook.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.

A Laity Led Church Service

With our journey of visiting fifty-two churches over, I can reflect more on the complete experience. Today, I’ll add to my thoughts about Church #29.

With their minister gone, church members lead us in the service, the entire service. They don’t need paid staff or a guest speaker to conduct the service. They can do this on their own. And they do it quite naturally, with ease.

I always appreciate seeing laity—that is, nonprofessional, nonpaid people—take part in leading a church service. It’s more personal and real, less of a performance or show.

Some churches aren’t able to conduct a service without their pastor present (or at least have a guest preacher to give a message), while others manage just fine.

Having paid staff and professional clergy is an Old Testament mode of church. It distracts us from the example set forth in the New Testament model, where we are all priests, ministering to one another.

Our churches would all be better off if we learned how to conduct services on our own, without the need of trained ministers to lead us.

Given the chance, I think we’d do just fine.

[See my reflections about Church #28 and Church #30 or start with Church #1.]

My wife and I visited a different Christian Church every Sunday for a year. This is our story. Get your copy of 52 Churches today, available in ebook, paperback, hardcover, and audiobook.

Peter DeHaan writes about biblical Christianity to confront status quo religion and live a life that matters. He seeks a fresh approach to following Jesus through the lens of Scripture, without the baggage of made-up traditions and meaningless practices.

Read more in his books, blog, and weekly email updates.