by Ken Morgan | Aug 4, 2026 | Uncategorized
If you’ve been around the church for a while you’ve probably heard the adage that people belong before they believe. What may surprise you is that belonging and belief may be cultivated in different contexts. In this little series of articles (that are shamelessly promoting a short online workshop) we’ve looked at some of the preconditions that make people more open to adopting a new belief system. We’ve also considered how hearing a warts-and-all story of faith from a friend is more likely to arouse spiritual curiosity than a slick sales-pitch gospel presentation. So lets think about creating contexts where life can be shared and spiritual curiosity might be nurtured. I call these ‘belonging’ environments. Most churches run some kind of activity to serve unchurched people: playgroups, community meals, conversational English classes – the possibilities are almost limitless. The most basic requirement is that they meet a felt need. From there, it’s crucial that people who are yet to make faith decision form warm friendships with those who are already believers. The vast majority of people who make new faith commitments do so because of the influence of family and friends. Making friends with a believer is vastly more predictive of an enduring faith decision than hearing a presentation from a stranger. Within that new friendship, there needs to be open, honest and natural conversations about the believer’s experience of following Jesus – not sales pitches, not contrived happy-ever-after stories, not cleverly-manipulative questions. No scripts, just transparency. That said, belonging environments are generally not the contexts where people hear the gospel as a set of propositions or a cohesive narrative. What’s...
by Ken Morgan | Jul 21, 2026 | Uncategorized
Ever wondered why Jesus said ‘You will be my witnesses’ rather than ‘You will be my influencers?’ Obviously social media was not a thing back in the New Testament times (that was even before MySpace) – but the idea that Christians should be shiny happy people in order to make Christianity attractive has been around longer than selfie sticks. Influencers are evangelists for a particular way of life underpinned by a particular set of values. They create the impression that every nano-second of their lives is utterly, enviably insta-worthy (even though we only get to see a show-reel that’s been filtered and curated to the very limits of believability). The tacit promise is that our lives will be just as enviable, we’ll be just as popular and we’ll be happy if we simply consume the same products and embrace the same habits. Some versions of evangelism seem to be based on similar premise – just swap out the latest offering from Kimmy K or Gwyneth for the latest take on Jesus and your life will become insta-worthy – or at least trouble-free. It doesn’t really gel with Jesus’ warning that believers would face persecution or James’ encouragement to consider it pure joy when we face difficulties. While Jesus at times sent his followers to preach, in his final words to the apostles he did not commission them to be preachers or evangelists (although Acts tells us they did plenty of preaching). Luke records that Jesus promised power when the Holy Spirit came upon them and that they would be his witnesses. Matthew reports him commissioning the apostles to make disciples. Putting Jesus commission into practice is more about being and producing more than it is about tasks and techniques. It reminds me of Jesus...
by Ken Morgan | Jul 7, 2026 | Uncategorized
Why are families with toddlers the most common mission focus in Australian churches, while university students are a far more common mission focus for churches in the UK? The answer is simple, and explanation a bit more complex. In Australia, families with toddlers are one of the easiest people group to reach. The same goes for university students in the UK. Why are these people easier to reach than others? An explanation can be found in the work of Rodney Stark and Roger Finke in their book Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Stark and Finke argue that religious belief is much more about belonging to a social group than intellectually subscribing to a set of propositions. They contend that “…social networks make religious beliefs plausible and new social networks thereby make new religious beliefs plausible.”Religious conversion less about about seeking or embracing an ideology; and more about bringing one’s religious practice into conformity with that of one’s social network. People are loathe to convert to a new religious belief when they’re settled in a stable social network, because it would mean foregoing their existing social capital and investing anew in a different social network. Conversely, people are more likely to consider a new religious position when their interpersonal attachments to members of the new religious group overbalance their attachments to people within their pre-existing belief system – be it religious or not. Moving away from pre-existing relationships either by relocation or change of circumstance can shift the balance toward considering a new spiritual belief – or as Stark and Finke term it, a new ‘plausibility structure’. Lets think about that in terms...
by Ken Morgan | Jun 6, 2026 | Uncategorized
Is a Church an organisation or an organism? What if I was to suggest that an organism is an organisation and that the kind of groups we label organisations resemble organisms in a number of ways? Let’s think about lifecycles. Organisms tend to follow a predictable lifecycle of birth, growth, maturity, decline and death, with particular and predictable phenomena arising at each stage. And, according to a number of organisational theorists, so do organisations. Whether you think about your church as an organism or an organisation, it will follow a predictable lifecycle pattern. It’s not rigid and predetermined, but it’s recognisable – and thankfully, modifiable. If you think about a child, thriving means putting on weight, growing taller, hitting development goals and developing a growing independence. Thriving as an elderly person would mean something entirely different. Like young humans, young churches tend to have a higher tolerance of risk, are constantly changing as they grow and are faster to adapt to new challenges and opportunities. They behave like they don’t have much to loose. Failure to grow is life-threatening. Established churches roll differently. Failure to grow might be a worry, but it’s not an immediate threat. Established churches have assets on their balance sheet and habituated congregations. There’s more to lose and change seems to cost more emotionally. Humans at mid-life often face challenges that might be collectively termed ‘things I can no longer get away with’ In mid life we need to discipline things like eating, exercise and sleep. We can’t get away with the cut-corners and excesses of youth. At mid-life we might begin paying...
by Ken Morgan | May 12, 2026 | Uncategorized
The idea of tinkering with church structure gets a bad rap: and it’s not entirely undeserved. I’ve watched denominations burn eye-watering sums of money paying consultant to advise on rearranging the organizational furniture. The dust settles with a whole load of new roles and organisational charts, and a nagging sense that the organisation is still doing the same stuff, making the same mistakes and facing the same challenges. You can’t fix cultural problems with structural solutions. I’ve heard cynical consultants say, “If you can’t figure out a decent strategy, announce a restructure – it will buy you at least two years of having the appearance of knowing what you’re doing. Yet structure matters – a lot. In my last article I spoke about growth barriers – size-points where churches seem to get stuck. More often than not it’s a case of the church having reached the elastic limit of its leadership structure, which is indissolubly linked to the leadership style of the senior minister. Issues like delegation of authority and responsibility, supervision and accountability all depend on well-functioning structures to work effectively – and those structures need to be tailored to the size and life-stage of the church. Mismatch these and you may get paralysis, chaos, demagoguery or death-by-bureaucracy. When talking over structure with church leaders, I employ a some generalized principles about structure relative to congregational size. The simplest is the ratio of full-time equivalent pastoral staff to average weekend congregational attendance. In general, this is around 1:80 to maintain stability, and a little ‘richer’ to enable growth. Another is the number of staff strata needed to sustain churches in...
by Ken Morgan | Apr 22, 2026 | Uncategorized
If you have school-aged kids, you probably got them kitted out with new shoes to start the school year. New shoes for kids need to allow some room to grow – but not too much – perhaps a half-size or so. Shoes that are way too big will have the kids slipping and tripping everywhere, while shoes too small could inhibit growth and cause lasting damage. A very similar principles applies to leadership style in churches. In his very helpful 1983 booklet ‘Sizing Up Congregations’, Arlin Rothauge introduced us to the idea of church characteristics based on congregation size. You’ve probably heard conversations about family-sized, pastoral sized, program-sized and corporation-sized churches. Rothauge pointed out that each size category required a different leadership structure in order to be effective. By implication, the leadership contribution required of clergy is different at each size category. For example, a minister in a family-sized church (up to 50 congregants) could probably visit each of the families in their congregation every year – and may well be expected to do so. The senior minister of a corporate-sized church could never visit all the families in their congregation and few would expect them to do so. If they tried, they would either burn out or neglect other responsibilities. Problems arise for ministers when the leadership style with which they’re most familiar and conformable is a mismatch for the size of their congregation. It’s not unusual for a newly-minted minister who has grown up in a corporation sized church to be assigned a family-sized church as their first placement as a priest in charge. Big churches work by formalized systems and sophisticated, text-based electronic communications (scan...
by Ken Morgan | Jul 15, 2025 | Uncategorized
Imagine how people would respond if I introduced myself by saying, “My name’s Ken and I’m a sinner.” Acknowledging my status as a sinner is theologically accurate. It’s also prerequisite to the repentance and faith that ushers me into the kingdom of God. Yet it would probably trigger a reaction. In an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, people introduce themselves as alcoholics. This is a statement of fact: a fact that shapes behaviour to protect sobriety that brings life and freedom. If that fact is forgotten or denied, the alcoholic risks descent into self-destruction. It’s not about igniting feelings of guilt and shame, it’s a confession of a simple truth. While not a pleasant truth, it’s the foundational confession that’s prerequisite to life. Confession and accountability have gotten a bad rap in recent decades, because of their capacity to evoke feelings of guilt and shame. These feelings have come to be perceived as harmful, and any action or process that may induce them has come to be seen as manipulative and perhaps abusive. Although writers like Brené Brown have pointed out the value of guilt as a kind of internal system warning of integrity outages, shame is almost universally understood as destructive: a sense that we’re flawed and deserve rejection. While both are intensely uncomfortable, our studious avoidance of anything that make evoke them robs us of the opportunity for confession and repentance that will bring us life and freedom. Being a sinner is not how we like to think about ourselves. When we invite someone to pray a prayer of salvation, it often takes the form of ‘asking Jesus into their heart’, glossing over any call to confession and repentance. This...
by Ken Morgan | Jul 1, 2025 | Uncategorized
In Arizona in the early 1990s, the “Biosphere 2” project created a huge dome designed to replicate Earth’s environment within a closed system. Trees planted inside enjoyed abundant light with controlled temperature, water and nutrients – all the support needed to thrive. While the trees grew rapidly, they were so weak they would collapse under their own weight before reaching maturity. Protected from the challenge of wind stress, the trees failed to develop the structural tissues required for strength. To thrive, organisms require a balance of support and challenge. Reacting to narratives of churches preaching fear of hell and soul-crushing guilt, the prevailing ‘gospel’ of the 21st Century western church emphasises comfort and reassurance. We sing about God who will save us from all our trials and troubles, we preach about a God who longs to soothe our pain and set us on a path to wholeness and fullness of life. It’s a gospel of light, water and nourishment with little consideration for challenge. “When Jesus calls a man, he bids him come and die.” stated Bonhoeffer, reflecting on Luke 9:23. There Jesus declared that “…whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.” While we can quickly write this off as hyperbole, Jesus’ instruction to his followers and would-be followers balanced supportive reassurance of love and forgiveness with challenges to repent, to be single-minded, to forego status and security for the greater ideal of the Kingdom of God. Great discipling movements – like the monastic missionaries of the early medieval period and the Wesleyans of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – transformed the societies of their time. Beyond...
by Ken Morgan | Jun 23, 2025 | Uncategorized
My Family still has my great grandfather’s apprenticeship indenture, dated 1897. He was to live with his master, work six days a week, to abstain from strong drink and was forbidden to marry. A tradesman of old was formed by socialisation, modelling their life on their master’s: embracing their values while developing their skills and absorbing their knowledge. It’s the same process that formed the great artists of the renaissance like Leonardo and Michealangelo. Jesus first requirement of his newly-appointed apostles was to be with him – for his thinking, his values, his life to rub off onto twelve young men. Socialisation is more powerful that education. Socialisation works by immersion in a way of life. It’s how we learn nearly all of the foundational understanding and behaviours that allow us to participate productively in society. The Celts and the Wesleyans instinctively knew this, and built their communities around people observing and participating in prayer, repentance and renewal as a way if life, not just a weekly ritual. Paul was accompanied by a band of apprentices as he travelled, and lived his life ‘out loud’ before his fledgling churches. He implored then to “…imitate me as I imitate Christ.” To socialise others in the ways of a disciple, I must be a growing disciple myself: on a constant journey toward Christlikeness and toward fruitfulness in his kingdom. Beyond providing an example of piety and maturity, I need to share the inner workings of my effort to cultivate a life dedicated to the ways and mission of Jesus. My ‘apprentices’ need to observe my struggles and setbacks as well as my triumphs. Jesus invited his inner circle to watch with him during his travail in Gethsemane....
by Ken Morgan | Jun 10, 2025 | Uncategorized
Remember all that trigonometry stuff you learned at high school? Sine, cosine and tangent: sides and angles of triangles? Unit circle trigonometry – I used to be good at it. I could apply the formulas and get the correct answers and pass the tests. Thirty years after I aced my last trig test, one of my kids asked for help with their maths homework. I recognised the terms and formulas, but I just couldn’t remember how to put them to use. Conversely, I still know how to write, do arithmetic, construct basic woodwork joints, weld, solder and analyse a newspaper article. These too are skills I learned at school decades ago. I have retained them because I use them. I have no occasion to put trig to use in real life, and I’ve forgotten how to do it. So much of the western-world education system socialises us to sit and soak up information, with no consideration of integrating it into daily life. ‘Learning’ is about right answers and good grades. We’re effectively taught to disconnect what we hear from how we behave, even if we give our nodding agreement to what we hear. When we take an information-transfer model to discipleship, we risk creating churchgoers who can recite correct answers to Sunday school questions, but never mature into disciples who exemplify the ways of Jesus. Jesus commissioned his disciples to “…go make disciples…teaching them to obey…” Note he didn’t say “teaching them to believe” or even to “understand.” We think of formation as catechesis, the teaching of doctrine. This may be an important precursor, but disciples obey – they don’t merely subscribe. I like to think of the prophecy about the sheep and the goats in Matt 25 as a kind of ‘entrance...
