by Ken Morgan | Jan 14, 2025 | Uncategorized
Just the same as individuals make new year’s resolutions, churches will sometimes use the dawning of a new year as an opportunity to kick off some new initiatives. It’s usual that new initiatives are designed to bring some kind of growth – either in the form of new people coming to church or deeper discipleship among those who already do. Later in the year we’ll take a look at discipleship, so for now let’s have a think about new year’s initiatives to produce numerical growth. It’s very, very common for a church leadership team to ask, “What can we do to grow?” and the most common type of answer is to do something additional to what the church is already doing, which usually means spreading the church’s human and financial resources just a little thinner. It’s an uncommon church that has ‘spare’ capacity just waiting to be put to use. New initiatives usually involve the committed people committing a bit more. A common effort at growth involves a focus around a single event, often with a very broad focus in the hope that lots of new people will attend. Church fetes and festivals, concerts and community carols are common in this category. Less common is consideration around ‘What’s next?’ I asked this question of a church that planned to revitalise their fete targeting its appeal to families with primary school aged kids. Their ‘next’ was a school holiday program.. The whole design of the fete was to engage families (not raise money) and to promote the school holiday program. The fete was ‘successful’ because the school holiday program (same mission focus, one step forward in the pathway) was filled to capacity. If you’re contemplating a new one-off event, consider how people will be invited to a ‘next step’....
by Ken Morgan | Dec 10, 2024 | Uncategorized
The lead-up Christmas is called the silly season for good reason. All of those endless breakup parties, various seasonal activities that have become must-dos for churches, plus numerous family events to wrangle. No wonder we take most of January to recover. Then comes February and we restart all of our regular programming, hoping we’ll have enough volunteers to get all of the previous year’s wheels turning again. With people working extra hours to cover cost of living increases, parents enrolling their kids in numerous extra-curricular activities, and congregations aging, it’s getting harder to secure volunteer hours . Meanwhile safeguarding, OHS and other compliance obligations soak up volunteer time. We can fall into the habit of just assuming that everything we did last year will continue into the new year. We try to do the same things with less resources and by Easter we’re all exhausted again. Working with a couple of hundred different churches over the past 25 years, I’ve observed that most churches try to do too many activities and try to reach too many people all at once, the result being reduced effectiveness and increased fatigue. Effectiveness is not just keeping the wheels turning, it’s creating opportunities for people to become followers of Jesus. I’ve developed rough rule of thumb to help churches figure out balancing sustainability with effectiveness: for every 50 people that attend your weekend public worship services, you can pursue on Mission Focus Group (MFG). If you haven’t heard the term before, an MFG is a demographic, or associative slice of your local community that have a common set of needs or interests. Churches do well to identify specific Mission Focus Groups and tailor...
by Ken Morgan | Nov 12, 2024 | Uncategorized
Church leaders are anxious for their churches to grow. Staying the same is effectively going backwards as congregations age, become more insular and less flexible. Anxiety’s effect on our thinking is narrow our focus and shorten our planning horizon. Anxious thinking makes us vulnerable to casting about for simple solutions that promise quick results. Just run this training package from a mega-church, copy this program that’s working across town, get in a bunch of consultants to diagnose the malaise. Any or all of those options may be useful – but unless they address the underlying culture, they run the risk of just consuming time and energy with little sustainable outcome. Programmatic interventions sometimes promise cultural change, but by themselves are relatively impotent. Culture is personal – based on deeply-held presuppositions that are rarely recognised and even more seldom questioned. Culture is reinforced by hundreds of decisions and behaviours that have often become presumed and habitual. People can undergo training, run a new program and read a consultant report, nodding in enthusiastic agreement while simultaneously perpetuating a counter-missional culture simply by their unchanged, everyday actions. We may spend money, time and effort trying to change, and all too often find ourselves stuck in the same groove. Leaders have a disproportionate influence on culture. Those leaders may be paid ministry staff, members of a leadership team, or longstanding gatekeepers. It’s not unusual for gatekeepers to exert seemingly insurmountable influence on church culture. Sometimes a pastor’s efforts at culture change are swiftly and elegantly extinguished by well-entrenched...
by Ken Morgan | Oct 3, 2024 | Uncategorized
‘Just do it’ – so goes the oft-appropriated strapline of Nike Inc, the world’s largest supplier of athletic shoes and apparel. If you’re a church leader, there are lots of ‘its’ to ‘just do.’ Books, blogs, podcasts and workshops on church growth, evangelism and disciple-making will provide you with an overwhelming number of ‘its’ you should ‘just do’ in order for your church to fulfil the great commission. And I know you’re feeling tired just thinking about them all. Although it’s mentioned every week by most Anglicans, the one ‘it’ that doesn’t get a lot of airtime is that dreaded r-word: repentance. Merciful God … we have sinned against you … we have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbours as ourselves; we repent… or do we? We’re wary of talking about repentance, because it’s indissolubly linked with guilt – and the psychological zeitgeist suggests that guilt is intolerable and inducing it is unforgivable. So we quickly breeze over this section of the Sunday service, and so doom ourselves to the hamster-wheel of more and more ‘its’ we should ‘just do’. Competitive athletes engage in repentance all the time. I’m a swimmer, and I make an ongoing effort to swim faster and further. I could just try harder, thrashing the water with poorly-formed strokes, ineffective kicks and mistimed breaths. But I would rather repent: identify flaws in my technique, think differently about my actions and seek to conform my movement to an efficient ideal. Sure, a coach correcting me is uncomfortable, especially when it’s for the umpteenth time. Changes to technique invoke new muscle-movements that initially leave me sore. Churches can get caught in a...
by Ken Morgan | Sep 17, 2024 | Uncategorized
“What’s the difference between an organist and a terrorist?” asked the vicar with an ironic smile. Without waiting for a response they continued ruefully, “Sometimes you can negotiate with a terrorist.” Gatekeepers: those entrenched holders of influence that seem to be a feature of every small church, rural footy club and all kinds of other long-established organisations. Sometimes they’re organists, sometimes they’re the former chair of the board, the leader of the catering committee, a descendent of the founder. Gatekeepers are people who generally have a very high sense of ownership and responsibility for the welfare and longevity of the group they serve. They often have a long history of hard work and generous giving. They’ve usually held a variety of leadership roles over the years and may still serve on a variety of boards and committees. They’re invested. They’re known and often loved by everybody. So what’s the problem? Ownership and investment may translate into being entrenched. A gatekeeper differs from a regular hardworking member in that a good degree their investment is in maintaining their position of influence, prominence and recognition. As a social species, humans automatically form hierarchies and instinctively protect their positions, mostly without conscious awareness of the drive to do so. Gatekeepers need the church or club to continue in order to maintain their identity and sense of purpose. Losing their status feels like losing themselves and they’ll instinctively fight to ensure that doesn’t happen. In churches, a sense of belonging and importance are indissolubly linked to familiarity. Knowing who everyone is, where everything is located and...
by Ken Morgan | Aug 27, 2024 | Uncategorized
“We tried Alpha and it didn’t work.” Countless ministers have reported this to me. Yet Alpha is easily the most effective process-evangelism resource used by churches across the western-world. Alpha serves as the centrepiece of the mission process in some remarkably effective churches – most notably London’s Holy Trinity Brompton. I’ve heard other church leaders similarly lament the failure of playgroups, kids clubs, sporting clubs and meals programs. Yet I have seen dozens of churches build fruitful mission pathways featuring these very same programs. Imagine hiring a tradie to build an extension on your house and they showed up onsite wielding only a hammer. When you question their logic and they respond, “This is an awesome hammer. I’ve watched lots of top-notch tradies and they all used hammers like this one.” Churches often fall into the mistake of thinking a single tool will enable them to become effective disciple-making communities. We hear stories about churches that began running a particular program with great success and surmise that running the same program will deliver similar results. Occasionally it works. But more often success in making new disciples is due to a confluence of factors all working in unison. Let’s think about process. Earlier I described Alpha as a process-evangelism resource. In churches that use Alpha effectively, it’s usually a process within a longer process of disciple-making. That process usually includes with an environment that meets a felt need, like a playgroup or mainly music, where warm and trusting relationships can form. From there it might be an invitation to a reading group or the Alpha marriage course – again,...
by Ken Morgan | Aug 13, 2024 | Uncategorized
As a young fella I had a conversation with a heroin addict. Thinking I could educate him out of his self-destructive lifestyle (I was young, naïve and heroic, okay?), I bluntly stated. “You keep doing what you’re doing and you’ll be dead before you’re thirty.” “I know.” He responded blankly. He didn’t need educating on the dangers of drug abuse. He needed a reason to live. He needed an answer to the question, ‘Why?’ Education and training seem to be the go-to solutions for what ails society. Yet education campaigns alone have been pretty ineffective in dealing with problems like obesity and domestic violence. Responding to a problem with education and training assumes the reason people are doing something harmful or not doing something desirable is their lack of understanding and skills. When something isn’t happening in a church, the reflex action seems to be to run some training. Training is useful for equipping people with skills and processes required to effectively fulfil roles in the life of the church. Churches frequently offer training in disciple-making skills like sharing personal faith, sharing the gospel or helping people to develop devotional habits and spiritual disciplines. Yet even if training is front-ended with a rationale or a biblical imperative, it will at best answer ‘Why?’ at a cerebral or subscription level, while primarily answering questions about ‘What?’ and ‘How?’ It equips those already motivated, but doesn’t motivate those who aren’t. The deeper answer to ‘Why?’ usually comes wrapped in human flesh – Jesus came as incarnation, not information. Jesus appointed the apostles firstly to be with him. They followed him personally. Jesus made disciples by...
by Ken Morgan | Jul 30, 2024 | Uncategorized
“Church is not working.” I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard or read the statement. The statistics would seem to confirm that things aren’t working. In 1959 about 41% of Australia’s population was in church on a Sunday. In 2016 it was 7%. However, not everyone is lamenting the ineffectiveness of the church. Pentecostal movements are continuing to grow and multiply new churches. While these attract some of the people who decry the failures or irrelevance of their prior church, Pentecostal churches are also reaching unchurched people. Likewise mainstream denominations are planting new churches and a good proportion of these grow to viability by a combination of transfers and new believers. Many of these newer churches are more-or-less contemporary versions of the established model – a weekend public worship service with music, prayer, preaching and perhaps eucharist – combined with weekday small groups and other activities designed to engage and serve both believers and those yet to believe. There’s also increasing interest in small forms of church: micro churches, missional communities and house churches. These have shown almost viral growth characteristics in non-western settings. The results in western contexts are more patchy. Many of the proponents of small-form churches are those disillusioned with big-box formats. When it comes to revitalising existing churches, it makes sense to look at what seems to be working and try to emulate it. When we say ‘emulate’, we tend to mean ‘copy’. We’ve all heard the war stories of well-meaning ministers who’ve tried to re-engineer traditional worship services into something more contemporary. There’s also been a...
by Ken Morgan | Jul 16, 2024 | Uncategorized
A couple of years prior to the pandemic, I was an unwilling participant in an ‘evangelism’ experiment. I found myself walking along Elizabeth Street in the Melbourne CBD. Although the footpath was packed with peak-hour pedestrians, up ahead I could see that the six-person wide throng was narrowing to a single file, pressed against a bluestone wall on the right, as if repelled by a force-field emanating from the kerb on the left. The source of the repellent force turned out to be a young man, armed with a portable PA, solemnly reading aloud from the bible open in his hands. I admired his commitment to evangelism. His missiology – not so much. Research by Stark and Finke[1] found that conversion (i.e. adopting a new religious belief) most often takes place in a close social network, be it familial or friendship-based. People generally adopt the prevailing faith of their social group. Belonging to the group precedes religious conversion. Joining a new social network where strong relational ties are formed is frequently the precursor to adopting a new faith. George Hunter III[2] demonstrates how well this dynamic was put to work by the Celtic monks who effectively Christianised the British Isles and Northern Europe. My own straw-poll research has shown that the overwhelming majority of people who profess Christian faith knew three or more believers before they made their first profession. People adopt the faith of their friends and family. Moreover, Stark and Finke observe that they are more open to adopting the faith of newfound friends when their pre-existing relational ties have been disrupted. A change of life circumstance, such as becoming a parent or moving to a new...
by Ken Morgan | Jul 2, 2024 | Uncategorized
“I won’t do evangelism.” Genuine fear played across the face of the church council member. When I asked what he thought evangelism meant, he described someone preaching on a street corner. If that’s evangelism, I’m unlikely to do it either. Evangelism is not a neutral word. Some see it as an imperative, others as the preserve of judgemental fundamentalists. While the church generally has a sense that it should somehow be announcing the good news of Jesus, the exact content of that good news and the means by which it should be communicated are far from settled. For as long as I’ve been hanging around the church (and that’s nearly fifty years), there has been a succession of tools, techniques, programs and products all designed to mobilise the church toward evangelism. All the while, the church as a proportion of the population has halved. If we’re honest with ourselves, most of us are pretty happy to leave evangelism to evangelists. What if we could be effective in helping unchurched people become followers of Jesus without learning scripts, without ‘steering’ conversations, without campaigns, crusades or anything else that seems like relational kryptonite? At the end of Luke’s gospel, Jesus states that repentance and forgiveness will be preached (and there’s another article in that) to all nations. And then he told the gathered disciples, “You are witnesses of these things.” In court, reliable witnesses have a degree neutrality: “This is what I saw, this is what I heard, this is what I experienced.” Unreliable witnesses try to craft their testimony to get an outcome. Hostile witnesses resist giving testimony to the extent they can. When I run a Pathways workshop I often conduct a straw poll as to how many people...
