5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Church
Updated: Aug 16, 2020
You probably have researched this idea before or just saw the title and wondered what the 5 ways might be, but either way I'm sure you know that improving your church isn't actually "easy"and I just wrote that, because it sounded good. :)
After talking with several pastors and lay leaders in the church these are the 5 points that seem to have a major impact. Whether you're a member that just wants to know how to help their church by being a more involved congregant or if you're a pastor just wondering how to better connect with your church body, I hope this helps.
The Myth
Worship experience, shortening or extending the sermon, manufacturing the Welcome experience, what kind of jeans you wear, how fun the kids ministry is, and having a small group for every kind of person does NOT improve your church; this list will simply alter the flavor of your church. What kind of music you play or having a variety of small groups are superficial and only affects whether your church is Cookie Dough or Mint, but not the quality. So, you might taste fancy like a rich, deep chocolate, but you could be a Great Value brand quality.
Now I'm not saying the flavor doesn't matter, because I strongly believe in weaving into the community through contextualizing to what's needed. However, the American church cares way more about marketing themselves as a good product than actually producing one.
5 Real Ways to actually Improve Your Church
As a side note, I'm assuming the church you go to is biblically sound and that you don't need to improve your church by 1st making sure that you all have a gospel-centered foundation i.e. preach the Bible, not someone's opinions.
1. Believe in your neighborhood
"Obviously." That may or may not be your reaction when thinking about this 1st point, but if there are any examples of disconnection between knowledge and action, this one is it. We know we need to be involved in our community and we need to love our neighbor (literally), but the problem with actually doing it is it takes effort, time, and a lot commitment; we want our moves to be strategic, efficient, and have a high ROI, but loving the neighborhood (not loving on the neighborhood, but actually loving it) doesn't hit any of those 3 business moves.
This is a point that will require a lot of prayer to get our heart right and we'll also need to take steps ASAP to put this belief into practice or else we'll always shelf it and say "I'll get to that." We need to passionately pray that God will give us his eyes so we don't go into the neighborhood with a savior-mentality, because the neighborhood will actually be what reshapes and refines us. We'll grow as a follower of Christ as God uses the neighborhood to sanctify us and our church through patience, humility, steadfastness, seeing our own brokenness, and witnessing the hand of God in action and not our own. But we have to be part of the area, not just get involved.
As congregations, we become obsessed with the whole city and the world, which we absolutely should care about, but if we take a step back with an aerial view and realize how many churches are across the world vs your neighborhood then it'll help us see the work God is wanting to do. You are one of only maybe 3 churches in your neighborhood and by you taking care of that area, you are helping change the city and then the world. Become a town square for your neighborhood and you'll become a world-changing church.
To read more: Church Socialism 1/5
2. Follow a team of servants, not a king
This one is either going to get an Amen or an eye roll. A church that has a group of leaders instead of just one seems to be better off, however, this is personal preference, because I've been around several churches with one main leader and they were healthy (but I will say that this is more than just doctrine, the health of the lone pastor in the long run is also a big concern of mine). Whatever term you want to give the team is all the same, I like "elders," :) either way, this team literally serves the body and are committed to sacrifice for the body if the congregation isn't able to do the task by itself yet. Also the executive voice on the team doesn't have to be the same one every time, the group should pray and seek God's direction together and take the steps together. There is a danger in making one man the head, because we'll turn him into a king and as humans we have a tendency to worship those types instead of God.
Pastors and church leaders often talk about how their church struggles with getting members involved and from what I've seen, having an elder team helps with centralizing the vision and mission, but decentralizing the hands and feet. Having a team with equal stature that share the leadership will preach a sermon in of itself; it reflects to the church that no man or woman can be the hero and we need one another to live out God's vision. It encourages us to know this is a family and not an organization with a CEO. This will help lead the body to want to unify with each other under God's mission and vision, be motivated to work out our own faith, and in turn decentralize the ministries so the pastors don't have to create and lead each one. This sort of elder team is like a puzzle; you need all the pieces, no piece is bigger or more important than the other, and when the puzzle is complete you aren't looking at individual pieces, your eyes only focus on the picture it was made to show you.
Under a single pastor you'll still have those lay leaders who naturally find ways to lead and do the thing you wish everyone did, but centralizing the leadership centralizes the hands and feet. Decentralize the leader and the body will look to the King for the next step instead of a king.
To read more: Church Socialism 2/5
3. Community-supported giving to support the community
Acts 4:32-35
"Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as were owners of lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold and laid it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to each as any had need."
How radical you want to get with this is up to you, the only thing I want to highlight is that they were organized. Everyone who could give, gave their donations to the leaders and then the leaders distributed as needed. Something also to consider about these donations is they weren't afterthoughts, they weren't tithe checks that were given out of a mundane routine, this was a statement about a lifestyle, this was passionate worship; this group of Jesus-following Jewish believers were living out, at this moment, the commandments that were already given to them in the time of Deuteronomy. This sort of lifestyle where you used your surplus to help others is a Spirit of God thing and now that they have received the Holy Spirit they were somewhat able to live out the intended culture from the Old Law.
As church members we should give to the church and prayerfully seek ways our leaders can distribute the money. Whether it's paying for someone to watch over a widow until an individual church member wants to take it on or just help buy shoes for the kids of the family that is in a poor season. We just want to steward our finances so they match our belief of the gospel and this will turn our churches into a city on a hill for everyone to see and want to check out.
To read more: Church Socialism 3/5
4. Invest in businesses that invest back
To some this concept is obvious, but others might hate the idea of the church getting involved with the market. However, a gospel-focused church cannot avoid it if it wanted to. In Acts you see the Ephesus businesses get disrupted, because believers no longer wanted to buy idols. This shows that as believers our shopping habits should change for the better and in turn it should affect someone's pocket. I agree that the passage can be seen to hone in on religious idols and not businesses of today, but the focus of that passage in Acts 19 are the merchants rioting after their income was affected by converted believers changing their spending habits; the essence of the story is Christians no longer bought things they didn't believe in and a detail of the story is the product, the goddess Artemis, but the product could have been anything (a different god, fortune telling, slaves, not letting minorities sit in the front of the bus, etc) and the outcome of the story would have been the same.
There are 3 ways following Jesus can affect people's spending habits: 1) help them believe a particular business/industry is good i.e. foster care or Chik-fil-a (joking. But not); 2) make them indifferent to a particular business or industry i.e. drinking isn't evil, but isn't a necessity; or 3) cause them to hate a business/industry i.e. sex-trafficking or businesses that mistreat their employees. This is a major way God used the Ephesian Christians as a light for their society and each church has the same opportunity today!
A small gospel-centered church has enough members to support a small business that they believed would help the community. That alone is a powerful, redemptive work of Christ!
To read more: Church Socialism 4/5
5. Kill the political divide
"When we preach the gospel, sometimes we will sound like we are on the 'Left' and sometimes we will sound like we are on the 'Right.' The gospel is an indictment to any structure- either the left or the right." -Robert Guerrero.
If you know me you know I enjoy getting involved with politics and the government, but I will also tell you in the same breath that our political structure is very small and the biblical view doesn't fit in it. If you want to grow or improve your church (whatever size it is) you have to stop blindly following one political party and blindly hating the other. This point should be the 1st one, because politics tend to be more important to us than our church family, but since this one is the hardest I figured I'd save it for last :) It's the hardest, because of how much we love our political religion, but it's also the hardest, because we have been bred to see the world through an either/or framework. Or you might have someone with a mature view who will say they're not left or right, they're center, they see both sides, but that still leaves us with having to choose between two wrongs or two half-truths.
If man had to assign a shape to society we would say it's a triangle and then as Christians we come in with this radical thinking and say it's actually an upside-down triangle. However, (and I'm stealing this from my pastors in Phoenix) God's design for human interaction isn't a regular triangle or an upside-down one, it's a circle. So when we comprehend politics we're not looking at it through God's eyes, we're probably not even looking in the right direction. His design isn't to go door to door, electioneering, asking residents to vote for him. His design is going to neighbor to neighbor asking how he can help and talking about a better version of earth.
To read more: Church Socialism 5/5
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