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...
