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Church Leader, shift your focus from mere institutional insights to individual transformation. Be intentional. Join hosts Doug Parks (CEO and Co-Founder of Intentional Churches) and Erin Johnston (Co-Executive Pastor of Canyon Ridge Christian Church) as they share weekly thought-provoking discussions and actionable takeaways that will resource you to help your people encounter Jesus. Take the step toward authentic discipleship of your congregation so you can mobilize the ninety-nine to reach the one.
We cannot go back to thinking the strategies that we implemented pre COVID just because we're growing are the things we need to be pursuing. Now let's get back to the basic blocking and tackling of relational, ministry. So.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Well, welcome everyone to the Intentional Church's podcast. My name is Erin Johnston, and I'm here with my co host, Doug Parks. What's up, Doug?
DOUG PARKS:Hey, Erin. Doing great here. Can't wait for today's conversation.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Good to be with you. This season, season 3 of the podcast, we are tackling questions that church leaders are facing and asking. What kinds of questions are church leaders asking? And I've said this a couple times, but it just feels important. If you've been a church leader for longer than 5 seconds, you probably have a 1,000 questions and a 1,000 things you're wondering about and wondering if other people are asking.
ERIN JOHNSTON:And so this season, we're trying to just get around some of those, and today's conversation is all around church growth. And so we're gonna spend a few minutes talking about kind of some of the growth, Doug, that you're witnessing and experiencing across the country. You've got some theories that I would love to hear from you, and then we're gonna kind of settle into a conversation around. Okay. So if growth is happening for many churches right now, how is that not gonna derail us from who God's inviting us to become and who we've set out to be?
ERIN JOHNSTON:How does growth not derail us from our vision and our mission? So, let's start with talking about growth. Doug, why don't you give us, like, a 30,000 foot view? What are you seeing as you travel the country, as you work with, how many churches does IC work with right now? Just to give our listeners a view.
DOUG PARKS:Well, we're across over our history, about 700 churches that have touched, touched or interacted with us, but more and more churches are running church OS for the long haul. So it's accumulating much faster these days because the vision isn't as transactional. It's more like, hey, I'm gonna run church OS in my church for the next 20 years. So it's a fun season right now, and we're getting a great sample across 27, 28, 30, DNOMS, networks of churches, church plants, revitalization efforts. So we've got a pretty good barometer of what's going on out there.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Wow. So tell us what's happening. What are you seeing when it comes to church growth and and just yeah. What do you what are you seeing out there?
DOUG PARKS:Yeah. We we started seeing it in in 2021. If you've been reading any of the blogs or the the content we've been producing, we've been talking about this trend we saw. And in 2021, most of us, when it came to, weekend church attendance, were still sub what we were in 2019. But we noticed a trend early on, and that was the amount of new families who were checking into kids ministry was climbing.
DOUG PARKS:Didn't matter if the church was small, rural, urban, new families were showing up. They had a lot of questions. And so that trend continued through, 22, and then the look. Quarter 4, q 4 of 22, we saw a kinda hockey stick uptick, where now attendance was actually catching up to 2019 and in a lot of cases passing it. And then in 2023, I think everyone now is talking about, hey.
DOUG PARKS:Our churches, at least our weekend services are full of new people. Most of them seem to be under the age of 45, and it's, after COVID, it's like this sweet, sweet time to be a church leader or pastor where you all of a sudden feel, very encouraged. I will say one thing, Aaron, and I'd love your thought around this too. The word church growth is a very polarizing world word out there. Like, I've seen some marketers use the term.
DOUG PARKS:We have real church growth or real spiritual growth in our solution that we're trying to provide you. And so I don't want us to be afraid of this idea of growth as if growth itself is bad. It it is not. And a lot of pastors out there still want that, believe that, and covet it for their their communities and their congregations of people that they, know and lead. And I kinda went in this episode, if we could just set aside the negative connotations that get set around the the words church growth and and growth.
DOUG PARKS:I don't know, Erin. What do you think on what's your opinion on the word growth in church?
ERIN JOHNSTON:Yeah. I think I think there are times that it has been misused. If we're just talking about trying to pump as many people through our doors as possible, yeah, that's that's not really what we're after. Right? That's not really life change or the business of helping people, like, transform who they are because of Jesus and his influence in their lives.
ERIN JOHNSTON:But I think what we're talking about today, and I think your distinction is important, Doug, is our churches are growing whether we're trying to help them grow or not. They just Exactly. Right. So this is not some strategy to just get more butts in the seats. I mean, what we're experiencing is people are just showing up here, and so, it's less about a proactive strategy to try to grow our church as big as we can and more, I feel like, we are reacting to the growth that we are experiencing, and I'm sure many of our listeners can relate to that.
ERIN JOHNSTON:And so, yeah, I I echo you. We gotta just as church leaders, we just gotta be poised for whatever, comes our way. And in this season right now, post COVID, there are people, and they are coming our way. And so what what are we gonna do about that? Doug, you've talked before about this, but I just think it's important as we have this conversation about church growth because it's not just about numbers.
ERIN JOHNSTON:It's not just about butts in seats, but what are you sensing kind of in the spiritual realm as you kinda travel the country?
DOUG PARKS:Yeah. I think the other piece in addition to this, growth in attendance that we're seeing weekend attendance, There's also been this curiosity to me, probably the most in my lifetime where people are curious about Jesus. And there's a lot of factors at play. I do believe the polarizing nature, the binary nature of the American culture, the either or you're either for or against is weighed on people. I think that's a lot of the anxiety issues we have that that life is not black and white.
DOUG PARKS:There are just so many gray areas in life. And so I do think what we went through in 2020, I know a lot of pastors right now are asking the questions about what are we gonna do to prep our people for the election cycle at 24. That's an anxiety causer right now. Mhmm. Maybe we can cover that in a future episode.
ERIN JOHNSTON:We should.
DOUG PARKS:We should. Yeah.
ERIN JOHNSTON:That's a question. This church leader is asking. Yes.
DOUG PARKS:Yes. But, I think that in itself, COVID, racial tensions, war, the nonstop violence we see in all of our communities that never tends to go away and always seems to shock us. I think all that has stirred in people. Then you have these ancillary factors, like, I always highlight the Demar Hamlin incident where I saw something I never thought I'd see in my lifetime where the warriors of American society were weeping and praying together on the field. Dan Orlovsky very famously taught people how to pray, on an ESPN live broadcast.
DOUG PARKS:You see this thing that people only know kind of the blip in time, but it really is a revival, I believe, as I'm understanding it. It's happening at Auburn University driven primarily through the football team and, Auburn Community Church where people that are in their twenties and under are coming to Christ in droves. You know, we all know, I think, about the massive end of the 200 spontaneous Well, that wasn't quite spontaneous. They they did all get baptized in a moment, but a lot of relational work had been done. And then you get into the he gets us campaign, Hollywood, Scorsese's doing this blockbuster Jesus movie.
DOUG PARKS:Jay's got permission from the pope on next supper. I just think there's a lot of cultural. So I think these things combined with people are looking for real answers, and there's a stirring that are happening in these events have led to what I've coined the phrase, a spiritual awakening, at least in America. And I'm almost the edge of the word revival. And a good friend of mine recently told me the definition of revival.
DOUG PARKS:Don't know how accurate this is, but I liked it. He said revival is when there is an incredible curiosity in the culture about Jesus. And and and I think this is key to our conversation. The church repents and changes directions. And so around this topic of church growth, I don't want us.
DOUG PARKS:This is my word of caution and warning. We cannot go back to thinking the strategies that we implemented pre COVID just because we're growing are the things we need to be pursuing now. I think we need to be innovating. I think we need to be pushing people back to basics anyway. We could get to a lot of that conversation.
DOUG PARKS:But to answer your question, I think we're at a tipping point and a great harvest is before us. And I think we as church leaders have to think about doing ministry in a different way that isn't addicted to silver bullets and we got to innovate and all this. It's but it's just like this. Let's get back to the basic blocking and tackling of relational, ministry. So
ERIN JOHNSTON:That'll preach, Doug. I have a I have a spicy question for you based off of what you just said, that I think will help us segue into the next conversation, which is how do we not lose ourselves when, more and more people are showing up at our churches? Based on your definition of revival, I think you just already hinted at it, but what are the things that you sense the church needs to repent of and find a different way forward?
DOUG PARKS:Well, I think we're we're all the growth is awesome, and it feels so good. And if you're a church leader, your ego a little bit, if really honest, in its deepest recesses is probably like both your sense of relief and you're like, oh, finally, you know? However, I do believe with growth comes all the problems because yesterday's bar apart. My co founder of a digital churches says this phrase often today's solutions are tomorrow's problems. And now that the local church is growing, we're running into it across the nation.
DOUG PARKS:Yep. Services are out of space. All of our attention is being given to. So my words of caution would be, or what are the things we need to focus on? I use the phrase I'm calling church leaders.
DOUG PARKS:We have to get back to back to basics.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Mhmm.
DOUG PARKS:And I really have this mantra I'm beating this year of how do you make the great commission a personal mission statement for every person in your church, on your staff, and in your leadership, including you before it's an organizational one because with the growth is coming all kinds of organizational problems all kinds.
ERIN JOHNSTON:I think that helps us segue into kind of this this second part of this conversation, which is how how are we not gonna lose ourselves in the face of this growth, and, how are we gonna stay on mission? And what I hear you saying is the great commission has to be a personal mission statement for every single person. That's how we're gonna stay on mission. If that were to actually happen and everybody was living that personally, not just as an expression of, oh, I come here to this place on Sundays, and that's my expression of the great commission, but I live it all week long. I think we will not lose sight of of who we're becoming.
ERIN JOHNSTON:I also think it's important just as we we approach this conversation around, okay, crazy growth. I mean, we're experiencing it in my context. Crazy growth. Our kids' ministry is bursting at the seams. You know?
ERIN JOHNSTON:We're we're feeling like we're out of space. And so, yeah, yesterday's hopes and dreams are today's problems, and, we have to just be very cautious about how we answer those challenges. And I think you alluded to it earlier, Doug, but I think we have to avoid, either or thinking as we think about, solutions. The the way I think about it is we're all living intentions. Right?
ERIN JOHNSTON:Another fancy word for it would be like polarities. There are polarities to be managed. There are tensions to be managed. And I think our our temptation is when we are experiencing too much of one side of attention, we just swing all the way to the other side, and that is not the solution. We need the best of both.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Like, a very simple example of that would be inhaling and exhaling. Well, if I'm only inhaling, my my solution is not to just only exhale. I need the best of both in in in attention of inhale and exhale. Right? And I think it when you when you get more complicated in in church church leadership, like, do we want agency?
ERIN JOHNSTON:By that, do I mean I mean, like, do do we want people to have the freedom to act? Do we want people to have the freedom to to show up and give their contribution, or do we want alignment as our churches grow? Which do we want? Agency or alignment? Well, that's eitheror thinking.
ERIN JOHNSTON:We want agency and
DOUG PARKS:alignment. Yes.
ERIN JOHNSTON:And so how are we gonna think about solutions that help us strike the balance of the kinds of tensions, that we're facing, I think is an important thing to think about.
DOUG PARKS:Yeah. I think, Erin, the the what you're making me think about with the the current state is that the gravitational pull of a church and that even a church, a Christian is we use the phrase is inward. It's always pulling inward me. And I think what's happening in the church growth right now that if I could challenge you as a church leader, the gravitational pull is inward to the organization. And we need to fight this with everything in us.
DOUG PARKS:And the only way I know to crack that code is by mobilizing and activating every person to go invest in relationships in the name of Jesus with people who don't know him, I would argue the greatest tool in the cool toolkit we have to fight Christian consumerism is relational evangelism.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Mhmm.
DOUG PARKS:And that we must all be doing that as staff and then calling our church to do that. Otherwise, this movement of growth is gonna be a great one shot in the dark, and we're gonna wake up in 20 more years and go, why did all my people revolt on me? And why did they become so selfish? You know?
ERIN JOHNSTON:Yeah. I think another thing that's important is, you already said it, Doug, but getting back to basics. And I think having a regular, time of evaluation, of reflection, whatever word you wanna put on. And I know evaluation can have a negative tone, but I don't mean that in a negative way. I just mean looking honestly at what's going on and saying is everything we're doing and expecting of our people, staff, volunteers, whoever, is it is it necessary?
ERIN JOHNSTON:Is it necessary to help us become who we want to become? Which at the end of the day, your church has to decide who you want to become, but I think what we're trying to say is who you want to become is that every single person in your church is living the Great Commission personally in their everyday lives. And so if that's who you're trying to become is everything you're doing I'm even talking programs. I'm talking events. I'm talking all of those things.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Are all of those things supporting that? And here's what I will say that I'm experiencing in my own context. People have gotten really good at making things fit into our vision. Our vision is we wanna spark a movement of disciple makers with too many generations to count. And suddenly, as we have grown with no ill intent, it's not malicious, somehow so many things fit into that mission, into that mission.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Right. I
DOUG PARKS:don't. Right.
ERIN JOHNSTON:And at the end of the day, I'll just be honest and spicy, they just don't fit. They just don't fit. We have we have shoehorned things to fit that don't fit. Mhmm. And so, a really, like, practical tip I would offer our listeners is what kind of, like, ruthless evaluation needs to happen across your church, across your organization.
ERIN JOHNSTON:No matter the size of your church, you can do this to say, do all the things we're doing, all the activity that our people are doing. Does it fit in who we're trying to become? And maybe a season of pruning is what your church needs. And, also, pruning doesn't mean that you just cut everything back so that there's nothing left. Pruning means that you, like, shape the tree in a certain way that helps it grow even more in the direction you want it to grow.
ERIN JOHNSTON:I don't know. Doug, do you have anything to say about any of that?
DOUG PARKS:I just amen. And and by the way, if you're a younger church leader, awesome. I mean, we got to hand the church off, I believe, right now to the millennials and Gen Z. Nothing against boomers and Gen Xers. I'm one of them.
DOUG PARKS:So, then I would just warn the younger generation the that our generation experienced some substantial growth in local churches, the advent of the the megachurch and the church growth movement. And no one start out started out with the agenda to create Christian consumers. No one. I mean, we all were doing the best we could with the tools we had. And but I I would I would say learn the lesson from us right now as this growth is coming.
DOUG PARKS:More and more of you younger leaders, the growth is coming, but you've gotta fight the urge to follow silver bullet thinking where I'm just chasing either another church's way of doing it, and I'm trying to import their thing as if a program or an approach will fix the issue, or prevent the issue from becoming what it was before, or you're chasing consultants. You're whatever. You're chase hey. I have found if I if I my legacy I want to be millennials and gen Z call the church back to the basics of the Bible and the principles of scripture, not our modernized Americanized programmatic, productized approach to, ministry and how we connect and grow all these people. At the end of the day, Aaron, it is always gonna be about relationship and intentionality within relationship, not the programmatic solution that we delivered.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Oh, man. You just gave so much good practical stuff. Sorry. Keep going.
DOUG PARKS:I was just gonna ask you. So have you all figured out, what are you doing to do take your own medicine there a little bit, like, to prune or to prevent the the ministry blow, programmatic blow that is typical of church growth?
ERIN JOHNSTON:Yeah. Well, I think a a couple things. One of them is asking the new people that show up at your church what are they experiencing of your church, and what do they think your church's mission is? That's a very revealing question to the person who's not, you know, in your staff meetings, to the person who's not in a volunteer huddle, to the person who's been 2, 3, 4 times. What do they think is the mission of your church?
ERIN JOHNSTON:That's a do some wide listening to see what are what are the people we're we are trying to do that, and, we've gotten some very interesting responses.
DOUG PARKS:What's your favorite? What's your favorite?
ERIN JOHNSTON:Oh my goodness. I mean, I'm trying to think of my favorite. I I can't think of any off the top of my head. We've we've done it, like, survey style, but we it's been very revealing, and what people's it also shows us what people's expectations are when they arrived. And I would just urge church leaders as well.
ERIN JOHNSTON:We have to be okay with disappointing people, Not harming people. That's not what I'm saying. Not causing hurt to people. That's not what I'm saying. But disappointing people.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Our lead pastor says, like, how can we disappoint people at a rate that they can tolerate? That's part of what we have to learn to do if we're gonna keep the main thing the main thing. So I would say listen widely. What are people that showing up actually experiencing? Because if their answer is, this church exists to offer an amazing program for so and so, that's not that's that's probably not the answer we want.
ERIN JOHNSTON:You know? We did have a a lady tell us this church exists. I'm learning that if you're gonna come to this church, you can't sit on your butt. And we were like, that is we received that as the highest compliment because that's what we hope you would experience here. So so that's that's one important thing.
ERIN JOHNSTON:The other thing I would say is this. It's really hard to evaluate ourselves and the things that we own honestly and ruthlessly. And so we need some 360 evaluation. So, for example, if you have a team that owns a particular ministry, maybe it's family ministry, a student ministry, kids ministry, whatever it might be, and they they have a certain amount of events that they do. It's gonna be really hard for them to ruthlessly evaluate that and say, is this necessary?
ERIN JOHNSTON:Because it's their baby. Right? We all do this. We all love the thing that we love. And so how do you invite some other people into the conversation to help them see honestly?
ERIN JOHNSTON:Not these this is a hard role to fill because it's not somebody just coming in to lay the lay the heavy or to pull the rug out from people, but to help people reflect honestly with some really powerful questions to say, how is this in line with our our vision and mission? And I'm picking on family ministry. That that's not it's every ministry. I'm just using that as an example. And so I would say some 360 degree evaluation, inviting others in to help you evaluate on the thing that you're kind of running, you know, and then some wide listening.
DOUG PARKS:I just think, you know, we're we're kind of hit on this topic in a few of the episodes over, over the podcast history. But this idea of cross functionality is super important, like, what you're talking about, where we get outside of our own silos and and evaluate. But one of the things you said that struck me is what I found with most teams, we use this phrase, a true north, an aligned true north for a team. Most teams don't have that. Even small church, big church doesn't matter.
DOUG PARKS:There's not truly an aligned true north of and I would use this phrase first here is the person I'm becoming in Jesus. 2nd, this is the people we are becoming in Jesus. And then lastly at a minimal much more minimized side, here's the kind of organized church will become if I'm becoming this person in Jesus and we're becoming this group of people in Jesus, then this is the kind of church. Usually, that sequence starts with this is the kind of church we're becoming as an organization, and, that scares me. And I'm worried in this growth.
DOUG PARKS:That is what's happening. It's converting our mentality back to this institutional mindset where we we have this false sense that it's our our ideas and programs and like that win and grow people in Jesus as opposed to, it's it's people that do the transformational work of of God is dynamic. It is not static one to 1. Yes. So I often talk about, like, we have to see it as a church body and a community even of lost people that that church body interacts with people far from God.
DOUG PARKS:There's dynamic work in God going on through that entire network where if I'm investing in a neighbor in a conversation around their marriage, I don't know that another Christ follower is having coffee with them at work talking about the same issue. You know, there's this dynamic sense of of God. I think in this in this church growth run we're in right now, if I could embrace those kind of concepts, if I could get my thinking back to an individual level and if I could get my my people, including myself, understanding the dynamic nature of God that he's always 1st Corinthians 36, there's always planting and watering going on, and God is the one who gives the outcome. If I could get those 2 conceptually in me and my team, I think it would go a long way to bring the kind of harvest that potentially is out there in this growth cycle. Because if you believe what I'm saying, the spiritual awakening curiosity is out there about Jesus.
DOUG PARKS:Can you imagine if the army of God were mobilized out there owning the great commission, what that would be doing in terms of reaching our community and then growing deeply committed disciples in our Christ followers in our churches.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Yeah. Oh, so good, Doug. Hey. Well, I think we're running out of time. Listeners, we really, like, are praying with and for you as our churches experience a really exciting season.
ERIN JOHNSTON:We're talking a lot about how to avoid mission drift and things like that, but it is okay to pause and to celebrate, not in boasting in anything we've done, but just whatever this curiosity, whatever this kind of new wave of of people, interested in Jesus, it's good to celebrate that. Mhmm. And then it's good to roll up our sleeves and to say, okay, God, what do you have for us, to do some some deep listening, to invite everyone to bring their contribution, to remember the basics, to call people back to the fundamentals in the New Testament of what Jesus said, his church would be like. And so, Yeah. This has been a great conversation.
ERIN JOHNSTON:Doug, thank you so much, and thanks for listening to the Intentional Churches podcast.