11 Characteristics of Successful Churches - 3. Sunday School is Passe

Sunday School is Passe

Growing up Sunday school meant two things: felt boards and donuts. In high school, Sunday school dropped the felt boards, but retained the donuts, so I was still okay.

Then upon graduation, I was thrust into the world of Adult Sunday School, a place completely void of felt boards, and the donuts were mysteriously replaced with bran muffins and bagels, which are like donuts minus all the "good."

From what I've seen through my whirlwind of churches is that many churches have done away with the idea of formalized adult sunday school programming in favor of some type of small-group model. Children and youth up through high school typically have some contextualized programming while the adults attend the main worship service.

This has the potential to be a good move as small groups tend to encourage more interaction between the people involved. This is especially important as churches grow and it becomes harder for visitors to connect with the members of the church. While small groups can have their share of pitfalls too, I think this will ultimately be where most churches end up in the years ahead.

But small groups would be better if they came with donuts, of course!

11 Characteristics of Successful Churches - 2. That-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named

That-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named

This article from Hartford Seminary claims that 1,200 protestant churches are considered megachurches and while only representing less than 1% of all protestant churches, could represent as much as 50% of the total weekly church attendance.

Dallas and Houston have a total of 56 megachurches, which constitutes 4.5% of the total number of megachurches.

When I read these figures to my wife, Amy, she said, "Wow. That many church in Dallas are megachurches? Which ones do you think are megachurches?" When I told her that a megachurch is a church with 2,000 or more in attendance weekly she kind of rolled her eyes and said, "Well, yeah, there are that many here!"

And she's right! There are probably 5 such churches within a 5 minute drive from our apartment!

You'll find that many of the whirlwind of churches I have visited over the past few months fall into the megachurch category and of the few that don't, I feel that many of them will be there within the next 5 years or so.

I'm about to write something that is not popular among a number of my friends and colleagues. If you find yourself in either category, please skip the next sentence. For the rest of you, I will whisper.

I believe one indication of success is: Numerical Growth


I want to make it very clear that this is only one indicator of success, not the indicator of success. It's very possible for a church to be successfully changing lives through the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ and not see much growth at all. But I believe this is the exception, not the rule.

Rick Warren said, "We count people because people count." I think that's a good way to think about it. Growth is not about the number of people, but about the number of people who are affected by the gospel. This is easy to forget when we're looking at a chart or spreadsheet, but each of those dots and numbers represents a person that Jesus cares about.

Also, Luke uses the numerical growth as an indicator of success in the early days of the church in his book of Acts.

Acts 2:41 - So those who accepted his message were baptized, and that day about three thousand people were added.
Acts 2:47 - And the Lord was adding to their number every day those who were being saved.
Acts 5:14 - More and more believers in the Lord were added to their number, crowds of both men and women.
Acts 6:1 - Now in those days, when the disciples were growing in number, a complaint arose on the part of the Greek-speaking Jews against the native Hebraic Jews, because their widows were being overlooked in the daily distribution of food.
Acts 6:7 - The word of God continued to spread, the number of disciples in Jerusalem increased greatly, and a large group of priests became obedient to the faith.
Acts 11:21 - The hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord.
Acts 11:26b - So for a whole year Barnabas and Saul met with the church and taught a significant number of people.
Acts 17:12 - Therefore many of them believed, along with quite a few prominent Greek women and men.


The point is that I believe a church involved in evangelism and outreach is very likely to grow over time. It is not a measuring stick, however, to say that one church is better than another because of size. It's just one indicator of success.

11 Characteristics of Successful Churches - 1. Changed Lives

The 1st Characteristic of a Successful Church is undoubtably the most important:

Changed Lives
Are lives being positively transformed through the ministry? Are people being transformed to reflect the image of Jesus Christ with their lives? Note that this is not necessarily connected with how much theology they know or how many Bible verses they can quote from memory. Are the people learning to live Christ-honoring lives and to do so in order to bring Him glory?

Be careful if you're examining your own church or ministry. External changes are easily mistaken for genuine life-change.

3 Things People Mistake for Changed Lives:
1. Theological Knowledge
If you spend enough time in a church that's teaching anything you're bound to learn something. If a guy goes to an evangelical church enough times he's going to learn John 3:16 and John 14:6. We evangelicals like the book of John. He also might learn a few new words and phrases such as "Son of God" and "Trinity," but nevermind that he probably doesn't have a clue as to what the theological implications of those terms are.

2. Church Happy-Face
There is a difference, however, between churches where lives are truly being transformed and churches that encourage people (hopefully unintentionally) to put on a happy-face for church. It makes you wonder how people sing the old lyrics "And now I am happy all the day!" in good conscience when you see how they treat one-another in church and how they respond to the pastor when he says something that steps on their toes. As a person who has been the toe-stepper-onner, I can assure you that good, solid Christians are most certainly not "happy all the day."

3. Borg-like Assimilation to Christian Culture
As a person attends an evangelical church, the songs on his iPod slowly begin to change. Is language changes into something he can use in church without getting weird looks. Soon he looks just like the other church-goers around him and late at night when nobody is around he watches The Office, but is afraid to tell any of his new friends even though they watching The Office too.

Note: This is part 2 of the 12-part series "11 Characterics of Successful Churches."

11 Characteristics of Successful Churches - Part 1

As a north-Texas native, I have been blessed to live in an area that is known for three things:
1. The world's best bar-b-que
2. Solid sports teams (Stars, Mav's, Cowboys)
3. A near saturation of churches

I know many of you are thinking, "I thought Dallas was known for racially tense politics, a nearly-broke school district, and abject materialism." But let's think positive!

With so many churches it's pretty easy to look around and wonder what makes one church so effective while another church nearby is struggling to survive one week to the next.

That's why I've put together my list of 11 Characteristics of Successful Churches based on my experience at 15 Dallas-area churches.

In order to keep this from being a wall of text, I've broken it into eleven separate posts. They are listed and will be linked below as they are posted over the next few days.

1. Changed Lives
2. That-Which-Shall-Not-Be-Named: Numerical Growth
3. Sunday School is Passé
4. Missions: Not Your Granddad's Slide Show
5. Technology is not Optional
6. Proper Branding Cannot be Underestimated
7. A Church of Pastors
8. Focus on your Mission
9. Find Your Niche
10. Be Fearless
11. Be Dangerous

What Are You Known For?

I was scanning the stats on DigitalWorship traffic, and I came across something very interesting.

Irving Bible Church and Jackie Roese are by far the most googled terms that have brought people to the site. Mostly thanks to Justin Hentschel's contribution and the discussion that was going on among Christian bloggers about Jackie preaching at Irving Bible Church.

But the next favorite terms that have brought traffic was not something cool like "virtual church" or "ministry to millennials." At least I could be proud of those!

The most third and fourth most popular search terms that bring people to Digital Worship are:

"Deep Fried S'mores" and "Chocolate-covered strawberry waffle balls"

If you searched those terms and found us here, please know that if my browser didn't have a history feature, I would be googling those terms all day every day!

But also know that it is my hope to share the amazing things churches are beginning to do to engage with and serve people through digital means. If you're someone who has never felt comfortable in a church or you've just never found a church where you feel like you fit in, please know that there are lots of different churches out there that are not like you visited with grandma (and a lot that are if that's what your looking for!).

If you need help finding one, leave a comment I will help you find a place just for you whether its the old-school church with a steeple or a place in the virtual world like Second Life or one of the online church campuses.

So poke around this blog a bit, even if it's not exactly what you were searching for because you may find exactly what you need.

"Virtual" Ministry

If you get a chance, head over to Mark Brown's blog and check out a blog post I wrote for him called "The New West."

Mark is currently leading an Anglican church in Second Life and asked me to write a little something for him. I encourage you to explore his blog a bit and see what kind of unique opportunities and stuggles have arisen with this "virtual" ministry.

Also note above that it's the word "virtual" that is in quotes not the word ministry.

The New West

Tim Berners-Lee and Robert Cailliau were a pair of pioneers. You may not know their names, but they changed the world every bit as much as two of their more famous brethren; Lewis and Clark. They may never have ridden in a covered wagon, or crossed the rockies while carrying their boats, but their contribution to the world has fundamentally impacted almost everything that most of us do on a day to day basis. These men set out to find a way for nuclear researchers to share information more easily. In the process, they invented something known as the World Wide Web.

Ever visited a website or a webpage? Yeah they came up with that.

Ever used a web-browser? They invented that too.

The didn't strike a vein of gold like the prospectors of old. They tapped a vein of information that has been yielding it's riches for the last 25 years. And in the process they opened the door for commerce and knowledge to sweep around the world in seconds.

During the dot-com boom of the last decade, the potential of the internet was often compared to the California gold-rush where many came seeking their fortunes in the untamed new environment. Many succeeded and many failed.

The Old West
The westward expansion of the United States during the 1800's brought with it all types of people beyond those who were looking to dig in the ground for precious metals. Many doctors, lawyers, and teachers, as well as the lonely and those seeking a new start made the movement west. And where they went, they brought their beliefs with them.

Praise by Proxy
The churches in this period were very simple when compared to cities of the east coast or of the cathedrals of Europe. Many, if not most, church meetings took place without the presence of musical instruments. However, as time progressed, one frontier church saved up the $250 necessary to purchase an organ, which was close to the $300 annual salary of their pastor. The church and others like it were criticized by Methodist preacher, Alfred Brunson, as being "in the habit of praising God by proxy [with] a thundering organ and a select choir to do their singing. As might be expected in such cases the services were cold and formal, nothing of the life and spirituality of religion being visible."

The first adopters, in this case, were those who, at great sacrifice, began to employ what would later become staples of church services. Brunson's words recorded above could easily be said today, only they would not come from the more conservatively-minded church-goers, but from those who are more liberally-minded.

This is not an attempt to stoke the fires of the so-called worship wars, but to illustrate the following point.

Beyond Independence
The internet is no longer the place for the early adopters. Sure, there are those who will remain on the fringes participating in the read-only web: searching Google, checking email, and reading Wikipedia. And there are those who dive deeply into the read-write web (Web 2.0): Uploading videos to YouTube, editing Wikipedia, participate in the so-called blogosphere. These are merely the Independence, Missouri of the internet, if you remember from the classic game, Oregon Trail.



Virtual Worlds - The New West
So where to the early-adopters move now? Some have suggested that microblogging, such as Twitter, are where things are moving. But this still feels too close to civilization for me. I believe Web 3.0 may bring us into virtual worlds, the likes of which we have yet to truly see so far.

Take a look at these numbers if you are not sure.

• 11 million people pay US$10-$15 per month to play World of Warcraft
• 15.4 million registered avatars exist in the Second Life universe
• US$100,000 is the most expensive virtual item ever purchased (an asteroid in Entropia Universe)
• Sweden and the Maldives both operate embassies in Second Life

To put these in perspective for you, World of Warcraft serves as the virtual home for a group of people larger than the nation of Cuba! Don't forget that they each pay monthly fees to make it their virtual home.

Second Life hosts more avatars than the nation of Cambodia!

These virtual worlds may be a representation of what the next generation of the internet has to offer. They are the New West. There will be those within the Christian community who will not accept the type of ministry that is beginning to take place in virtual worlds. Just as Brunson illustrated for us, the early-adopters are rarely accepted, but what was cutting-edge yesterday, is the norm today and the passe of tomorrow.

Most importantly, we must remember that behind each avatar or screen name is a person. Many of whom are seeking escape from painful lives by living their virtual lives. These new worlds offer us a chance to connect with them and to share the good news of Jesus Christ with people our "normal" churches may never have the opportunity to reach.