What the Church Needs More Of

(Ending a sentence in a preposition, “…is the kind of tedious nonsense up with which I will not put.” –attributed to Winston Churchill).

I recently had a conversation with a couple friends about the struggles in the churches they were attending. They were smaller churches that had been around for a very long time. Now, keep in mind that these are independent non-denominational churches that have their own governance and autonomy from other affiliated churches. These conversations caused me to think about our struggles as churches. Why are we struggling with attendance, money, participation, Bible study, etc.? What do we need more of?

I was a part of this type of church all my life. In fact, nine years ago I began to pastor in these churches. I started as the lead pastor of a smaller rural (town of 58 pop.) church of about 25-30 regular weekly attenders. In that ministry I was the sole person on staff.

After that I took a role as youth pastor in a church of about 100 in weekly attendance. That town was much bigger—237 population. Here I was working under a lead pastor and we had a part-time secretary on staff.

I then moved to a church right outside of a larger city to a church of 300 in weekly attendance. There I served as a youth pastor as well. At this church there was a Sr. Pastor, Children’s Pastor, Youth Pastor (me), s full-time secretary, a part-time secretary and two full-time cleaning and maintenance staff.

And most recently I served as a Family Pastor in a church of about 60 in weekly attendance. That church was in a town with about 1500 in population. There was a Worship Minister already on staff when I got there and we shared the preaching and pastoral duties.

I give all of this demographic information for the purpose of explaining my experience. I have worked with multi-staff as well as on my own. In each of these roles, and in retrospect, I can see three things that we needed to do more in these churches. Here is a quick list of the things we did not need: More programing, more external events, more money, more people inviting more people to fill the pews (or chairs), and certainly we did not need more opinions about what we needed!

1. The Church Needs More Prayer

First, we needed more prayer. Sure we had opening prayers, pastoral prayers, closing prayers and even prayer requests printed in our weekly bulletins. But what I am talking about is prayer outside of the corporate setting. In one of the four churches I was involved with we would have a weekly staff meeting where we would regularly pray over the affairs of the church. But in that same church we were thinking of adding another staff person during one of the leadership meetings and the thing we overlooked was prayer. I thought of it after the fact and mentioned to one of the other leaders that we ought to pray together at the next meeting and ask God to guide us in the right direction for finding a new staff-person. I suggested that we pray about it for an hour together and ask God for a name. Then when we are done each one write down the name that comes to us. If any of them match—call the guy! I was faced with all kinds of objections to this suggestion. “We have to give the search due diligence.”

I was told that we couldn’t just go hire the first name that came to mind. “Even if we knew the name came from God?” I had to ask. I was shocked to realize that we as leaders in the church relied much more heavily on our own ability to judge character and diligently decide on a new staff-person than to rely on the guidance of God through prayer.

This did cause me to realize how much I did the very same thing in many other areas of my ministry. I could come up with sermons, plan class schedules, choose curriculum, and organize my ministry calendar all from the equipping and experience I had and without a prayer.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I would pray for sure. And even regularly! As regularly as a prayer before a meal, before bedtime, or at the close of a service. It was then that I realized that prayer had become a transitional element in our corporate worship as well as in my ministry. Prayer was a great opportunity for the worship team to make their way to the stage unnoticed by the masses for the close of the service. It was a great way to officially begin our leaders meeting (it was even on the agenda who was scheduled to open and close in prayer at one church). And, in my ministry, prayer was almost an obligation. I knew what I needed to get done, and I knew what I was capable of doing—why would I need to bother God with the details I already had control over?

I have seen the same negligence in regard to prayer in many churches. It is easy to loose focus on God and His will when we think we can do it on our own. This is also a sign of our lack of faith. We don’t want to ask for guidance in something and then nothing happens, so we think it’s better to just move forward without asking for guidance.

Prayer is our communication with God. It is through the power of the Spirit who interceded on our behalf. It is through the name of Jesus that we can come boldly before the throne of Grace. When we are told to pray without ceasing it is not that we must assume the position of reverence with bowed heads and closed eyes every part of every day, but we do need to be open in our communication with our Father who is in heaven.

Prayer is the connecting factor that couples the power of the spirit that is at work in us with the will of God. There is power in prayer! There is healing in prayer! There is direction in prayer! And unfortunately, in churches across this country, there is a lack of prayer! Not the transitional type of prayer—there is plenty of that—but the deep heartfelt communion with our Father in heaven.

The church needs more prayer!

2. The church needs more purpose!

The second thing the church needs is purpose. It is easy to fill a calendar with events for teens, outreach, feeding starving children, or holiday events. But what is the purpose of these things? Why do we do them? If there is a unified vision and purpose for the church then every event that is planned can be evaluated under the parameters of that purpose.

It is easy to put out a mission statement (typically along the lines of “love God, love others”) and call that the purpose. With a broad purpose we can plan any event, use any curriculum, hold any type of conference, or plan any direction for the church and it could fall under that purpose.

The definition of the word helps us realize what a purpose ought to give us: the reason why something is done or used; the aim or intention of something. With an over arching purpose we can evaluate programing, classes, content, or anything else we might plan for the church. If it is not accomplishing the purpose that is agreed upon by the leadership of the church then why is being done?

Now, this can be abused in two extremes. It can be overly permissive or overly objecting. The purpose can be liberally written so that evaluation is not necessary to allow something to fit under it or it can be so stringent and restrictive that nothing gets done.

The purpose of any organization ought to be represented clearly for anyone to desire to be a part of it. Think of any non-profit group you can right now. You not only can think of a name, but probably a logo and most importantly the reason they exist as an organization. Do people know why we exist when they see our church sign or read our church's name somewhere?

Each congregation has obvious purpose given to us from scripture: serve God, love Him, make disciples, teach others, help those who cannot help themselves. This list could be much longer, but that is for you to do. However, each congregation also has a unique set of gifts that would put them in a better situation to accomplish a very specific purpose in their community.

If your church suddenly ceased to exist for some reason or another, what effect would it have on the community? Would you be missed? Would anyone even notice? What purpose are you serving?

The Church needs more purpose!

3. The Church Needs More Christians

We are not Christians just because is says it on our car!

The final thing I want to suggest that the church needs is Christians. This may take a little explanation, and I will tell you now that your first response might be fairly defensive, but hear me out. It was suggested in a class this past Sunday that our concept of “taking the Lord’s name in vain” may not cover all that we ought to be cautioned against. We think about the use of the words “God” and “Jesus Christ” as swearing and that is the extent of taking these names in vain. But, what about people who take the name “Christ” vainly in their lifestyle? We call ourselves Christians—literally “of Christ”—but then live our lives as we see fit rather than as a representative of Christ.

Can we call ourselves Christians but not be really following Christ? Can we say we are Children of God but not be representing that familial relationship with Him in our lives? Jesus talked about people who will call out to “Lord, Lord! Didn’t we do all kinds of great things in your name?” and the response will be that the Lord never knew them!

You see, we can act as if we are doing things in the name of Christ but, in reality, they are done separate from Christ. The church is called the body of Christ in scripture. Are we the hands and feet of Christ? Are we acting as a united body that is doing the work of Christ?

Here is a test. Think of the things Jesus did while he was on this earth. Are you doing those things? Is your church doing those things? We are to be Christ to the world. If we say we are Christians but we are not actually doing the things Christ did in His ministry then we are frauds. We are using His name in vain!

We ought to be following Christ with our lives. This is where we will typically say, “well, we are following Christ!” It is easy for us to get defensive here and think that we are doing enough, saying enough, reading enough and attending enough church services to consider ourselves “followers of Christ.”

I have not used any scripture to this point. I have alluded to several, but I didn’t give any references. That is about to change. In Matthew 10:38 Jesus tells us that if we do not take up our cross and follow Him we are not worthy of Him. That cross is not our “lots” in life that we consider our “cross to bear” like a job we don’t like or an unruly child. It is literally death to ourselves!

Matthew 4:19 tells us that if we are following Christ He will make us fishers of men! In conjunction with the Great commission (Mat. 28:18-20) are we making disciples? Are we fishing for men? If your answer is, “Sure, every week I ask John in the next cubical if he’ll go to church with me the next week” then your barely fishing recreationally. I like to fish a little here and there, but the disciples of Christ were fishermen—that’s how they made their living! They loved fishing as often as they could. When Jesus told them about the transition into fishing for men I’m sure they had to have been picturing the long nights spent on the water hour after hour, repairing nets on the shore in preparation, nets full of fish, and all the other intricacies of professional fishers. I don’t think they pictured the weekend anglers casting out a few times till he gets bored not catching anything.

Read Luke 14:25-35. Go ahead and do it now (Luke 14, Biblehub.com). This is a great picture of what it means to be a Christian. Verse 33 sums it up well, “So you cannot become my disciple without giving up everything you own.” What have you given up for the sake of following Christ? are we growing as Christians? Are we reaching maturity in Christ?

Its easy to base our spiritual maturity on the number of years since we first "came to Christ" but Ephesians 4 gets more specific. In verse 12 the author gives us the responsibility of the church. He says, “Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ. This will continue until we all come to such unity in our faith and knowledge of God’s Son that we will be mature in the Lord, measuring up to the full and complete standard of Christ.”

Our maturity comes from continuing to fulfill our responsibility, just like maturity in life. Just because someone knows a lot about a particular topic does not mean they are mature in that area, but if they have the information and knowledge coupled with experience in that area you can see maturity. 

We will reach maturity through building up the church and doing the work of God. This will also bring unity along with maturity. That is how we will reach the full standard of Christ. That is how we live out being Christians.

The Church needs more Christians!