WHY DO CHURCH PLANTS FAIL

A few years ago, my good friends Bill Easum and Jim Griffith wrote a book of the Top Ten Reasons why some church plants go belly up.  This past week, I was asked this question, and I decided to respond with my own list of ten reasons.  It echoes their list, but it differs in a few ways.

DOING GOSPEL IN AN INDIVIDUALIST AGE

Two Supreme Court decisions last of June seemed to be pulling the country in two directions.  But in fact they reflect a unified trend: the nation is lurching toward an even greater sense of individualism.  "Don't mess with me.  I won't bother you. Don't muffle me - even if it is my money that is doing the talking.  Don't tell me what kind of gun I can buy or whom I can marry.  And don't even think about sending me the bill for the improvements that we desperately need at the school down the street or to fix the bridge over the river that is going to fall in one day soon.  You live yours.  I will live mine.   I owe you nothing, not even a watchfulness to protect your right to vote.  If you have problems, it's not my problem.  Get a life.  If you don't like the laws in Alabama, move to New York."

ON THE ROAD TOWARD VITALITY AND A WHOLE NEW KIND OF CHURCH

Over the last couple years, my co-author, colleague and Epicenter associate Kim Shockley led a landmark study of church vitality in The United Methodist Church.  The project was named Toward Vitality.   Her team interviewed hundreds of churches in all parts of the United States.  The study was jointly sponsored by four of our church's general agencies.  The biggest headline was the role of pastoral leadership in church vitality - not a surprise, exactly, but well documented.  However, they learned a lot more than that!

WHAT WILL THE AMERICAN RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE LOOK LIKE IN 2043?

When I was in seminary, I sometimes wondered if Luther, Calvin and Wesley were all such geniuses or if, instead, they were simply capable, talented people whose lives came along at pregnant moments of history when Reformation was bound to happen anyway.  Now that I am living through a real-life Reformation, I am leaning more toward the latter idea.  None of us chose to paddle the rapids of this fast-changing post-Christendom era, but like it or not, God has placed us here: in the middle of white water with a Bible and a paddle and an assortment of characters on the journey with us, ranging from the bold and brilliant to the timid and the panicky.  

THINKING ABOUT SUSTAINABILITY

Sustainability is one of the key words of this still very young century. We will be thinking about it more and more in days to come.

We are learning how to live so that there are adequate resources left for the other seven billion people. We are learning how to reduce our carbon footprint, so as to curb global warming and keep the planet healthy and habitable for centuries to come.   We are learning how to offer excellent and reasonable healthcare to an aging populace in ways that do not bankrupt our society. And we are learning how to live in faith community in a far less cash-intensive manner, making possible a lighter, more agile Christian movement, with a greater ability to invest beyond our own internal buildings and management.

THE SURPRISE FACTOR

Abingdon Press is releasing my newest book this month, one of their first titles of 2013.   The Surprise Factor: Gospel Strategies for Changing the Game at Your Church. Kim Shockley and I co-authored this book as a conversation between a clergyperson and a layperson, exploring ten key strategies that Jesus utilized as a change agent in a long-existing faith community. In each case we asked what Jesus' strategy looks like in a twenty-first century North American congregation. The project has been a lot of fun.

PAUL NIXON’S FAVORITE FORMULAS FOR CHURCH ASSESSMENT

When I work with congregations, I come loaded with all sorts of formulas, which arise from the composite trends in the many other churches where I have worked.   Sound formulas allow me to process a church’s situation and its possibilities faster.   Here are four of my favorites.  (I should warn that there are plenty of contexts that require us to adjust these ratios a little, this way or that.  But these numbers represent a good starting place for some of you who are just wading in to the work of coaching and consulting with local churches.)