Live Blog From Orange Conference ’15: 5 Reasons Churches Stop Growing From Carey Nieuwhof

In an effort to add value to pastors and church leaders, I am live blogging significant portions of this week’s Orange Conference and their amazing Senior Leader’ Track.  For pastors and church leaders, this is the most informative and thought-provocing three days you can spend all year.  It is “can’t miss” event for church leaders.

The second session was led by Carey Nieuwhof, the incomparable pastor of Connexus Church, north of Toronto Canada.  Carey also host a leadership podcast and writes a blog no Christian leader should miss.

Before getting to Carey’s thoughts on why churches stop growing, INJOY Stewardship Solutions is offering a FREE download of Church Branding 101.  In this resource Ken Wilson, Director of NewSpring Creative, will be walking us through NewSpring Church’s recent rebranding process.  If you are unfamiliar with NewSpring, they are led by friend-of-Orange Senior Pastor Perry Noble.  You do not want to miss this.  Click here or on the image above to sign up.  Now onto Carey’s insights.

The following are 86 Leadership Quotes and Lessons from Carey’s ministry-changing session:

1. It may not be wise to measure your church’s health by exactly how many people showed up on Sunday or attended your new members class last month. But stalled growth can be a sign of deeper problems.
2. The average attendance of the smallest of the three churches (I first started pastoring while in seminary) was 6 people. It had an annual budget of $4,000.
3. We all fear this or face this – when a church stops growing.
4. Church growth is not as mysterious as we think.
5. God is behind church growth. There is grace behind it but there are principles as well.
6. Healthy things grow.
7. A learning leader is a growing leader. A growing leader is an effective leader.
8. If it (the church) is not growing, you have some ill health somewhere.
9. Sometimes it starts with you. Sometimes it’s an unhealthy system.
10. Within the fabric of the community you live in you should be having an impact.
11. One reason you may not be growing is you are more in love with the method than you are with the mission.
12. There is a point your method will stop working.
13. You should be more in love with the mission than the method because the mission is not going to change.
14. You have to be willing to sacrifice the method.
15. The method I am using may not be as relevant as I think it is.
16. When you love your method more than mission your church’s passion for the past or present is more compelling than you vision for the future.
17. You are fighting ghosts – people who aren’t even alive.
18. When you love your method more than your mission you’re afraid to risk what is for the sake of what could be.
19. If you become even moderately successful to risk what is for what could be. It is human nature.
20. You stop growing because your structure is designed to keep you small.
21. Purchase “How To Break Church Growth Barriers” by Warren Bird and Carl George.
22. The clergy-based model is designed to keep a church under 200 attenders.
23. If you’re in the hospital and I show up, it’s bad. You’re on life support.
24. Structurally, human behavior, one person cannot care for more than 200 people. Once you pass 100, you enter into burn out. People start getting sick everyday.
25. At 200 (in a clergy-based model), you burn out and leave. Or the church asks you to move on because you’re not as good as you used to be.
26. 90% of churches never make it passed 200. And that’s the main reason. I have found many people in small churches pray more than people in large churches. It’s a structural issue.
27. If you want the impact of a supermarket, you can’t run things like a mom and pop store.
28. Mom and pops don’t even have the margin to take on minimum wage employees to stock the shelves.
29. Structural clues are all over the Bible if you look for them (Exodus 18, Acts 6, I Cor 12).
30. You need to train yourself and then you need to train your people.
31. You sometimes shut things down because you personally can’t do it.
32. Church governance is often more of a hindrance than a help to growth.
33. Do you know how many elders I had in a church of 45 people? 18 elders appointed for life. You had to kill them to get them off the board.
34. We have only 6 elders in a church of 2200 people. Normally, we have 3 or 4 elders.
35. You don’t need more than five leaders to get five opinions. If you have the right people, that’s all you need.
36. Decision-making. There’s a way of thinking in most churches that the congregation has a say. If you have to vote on things, you’re not going to get any change at all.
37. Structurally, it is very difficult to scale an organization when everyone has a say. Progress is hard when everyone has a say.
38. We are staff led, elder guided and people gifted.
39. Staff led is the way to scale your church. Now, if you have a bad staff you have a bad problem.
40. Elders are there to help us stay on mission.
41. People are there to implement the mission.
42. If you have a clear sense of mission and vision, people will self-select in or out.
43. Get a clear mission, vision and strategy from God and then go for it.
44. In a frictionless environment, the only enemy left is you.
45. You stop growing when you don’t understand the people you are trying to reach.
46. 48% of millennials are classified as post-Christian.
47. A post-Christian person cannot understand why you wouldn’t accept a gay or lesbian.
48. A post-Christian person sees Christianity and your church as an option on the menu.
49. A post-Christian person is suspicious of authority.
50. This big shift has happened in the last 20 years. They used to see church as boring. They now see it as irrelevant.
51. A Sunday morning, people wake up thinking whose my team playing.
52. That’s the mission field we’ve been sent.
53. Do you wake you on Saturday thinking, “I can’t wait to get to synagogue”? Of course not. You’re not Jewish. That’s how a post-Christian thinks on Sunday.
54. Family has changed significantly.
55. 23% of Americans show up to your church as traditional marriage with kids at home.
56. Who then are the families we trying to reach? What are we doing for single moms and blended families? 26 times a year is perfect attendance because of shared custody.
57. Culture is going through a massive shift.
58. If you’ve been in a leadership for 10 years, you’ve sensed the shift. If 20 years, you’ve experienced the shift. If longer, you don’t recognize the world.
59. We’re building the bridge at the same time we’re walking on it.
60. You’re not growing because you’ve bet too much on being cool.
61. My $3 million building is not going to grow our church.
62. Cool is not going to win the day.
63. People can tell when things are not real, not authentic.
64. What you define as contemporary may not be contemporary. My kids don’t listen to the same music I listen to.
65. The average age of the concert going to the Eagles concert I went to was 65.
66. How do I tell people it is 2016, not 1997.
67. Authentic is more powerful than cool. Millennials are looking for people to be real, honest and people they can talk to.
68. The simplistic reductionist preaching is important. A lot of things have a shelf life.
69. You stop growing because you’re not willing to change.
70. The gap between what you say and what you actually do is too large.
71. Church leaders are great at talking. We then go home and do nothing.
72. Effective leaders have a massive bias for action. They make mistakes but move on.
73. You are unwilling to plot trajectory. Based on where we are and where we are headed, where will this object land?
74. What are you going to do with people under 40? Plot trajectory.
75. You’re afraid and the team hasn’t’ realized you can’t follow fear.
76. You can’t follow fear because fear doesn’t know where it’s going. It only knows where it’s not going.
77. The best place to deal with fear is your prayer life.
78. Create a white hot sense of mission.
79. The leaders I know who are effective are white hot about mission.
80. If you’re bored or phoning it in, you’ll never lead a great church.
81. There are leaders I know who have been phoning it in for years.
82. Your church will never care more about your vision than you do.
83. Structure for growth.
84. Our generation needs churches who will structure for growth.
85. If you don’t know and love your community, you won’t reach your community.
86. Commit to change. Stop talking about it and start doing it.

More this afternoon.

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