by William Cowles
What’s your church’s attitude about its members? After new recruits have signed the pledge and joined the club, does your church continue to embrace, engage, and energize your disciples the same way it did when they were wooing them? Or, does it take them for granted?
We talk a lot about visitor first impressions that either pull people in or push them away from a church, but there also can be slow-developing feelings of discontent that regular pew-fillers get over time. Too many church leaders often fail to recognize that, for newcomers, the courtship and honeymoon end pretty quickly. No matter how attractive and energizing the church’s vision, mission, and purpose were to them at first, people get restless when they’re put on the shelf and taken for granted. And when people become discontented, the church rarely realizes it until it’s too late and good people are gone.
Healthy churches understand people’s needs for fuel. They continue to nurture relationships among even their most faithful, sacrificial, serving, and humble leaders and members. Unhealthy churches typically fall into attitudes of ignorance, indifference, or arrogance about people whom they see as comfortably in the fold. Healthy churches look at each and every person as a fresh opportunity for spiritual support and equipping. Unhealthy churches take their people for granted and leave them to find their way on their own.
In this blog, we’ll take a look at the three attitudes that signal that a relationship may be crumbling – that all isn’t smooth sailing on the surface of the church-member alliance. Then, in Part 2, we’ll offer some ways that healthy churches can help themselves avoid these traps.
Unhealthy churches don’t recognize these attitudes in themselves:
1. Ignorance– They’re clueless. When member attendance starts slipping, when giving starts to trickle down, when participation becomes less and less frequent – church leaders, staff, and pastors don’t notice. This may be the most dangerous of signs because it develops slowly and subtly over a long time, and people who have created that unawareness, just can’t see it.
2. Indifference– They’re care-less. When attrition starts accelerating, they chalk it up to external factors they don’t think they can control. They rationalize – some people always move away for better jobs; some people die; some people just can’t be happy anywhere. This sign shows a lack of accountability by people who are good at pointing the other way.
3. Arrogance– They’re thoughtless. When all the planning and participation is done by just a few well-placed people – leaders, staff, or pastors – that defines a church that has fallen in love with its own power and purpose, and outsiders just don’t matter to them. New people are not allowed into the inner circle, so they never get challenged and never grow. This is the most obvious of the three signs, because its perpetrators love to show off their wisdom and skill at running the church.
Do you see signs of those attitudes in your church? If so, it’s time to step back and check your attitude. Take a 30,000-foot look at how others perceive their relationship to your faith community – before you have to close the doors for good.