Jesus loves His church. Ephesians 5:25-27 makes His adoration for His bride crystal clear, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word, That he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing; but that it should be holy and without blemish.” Whatever descriptors you might use concerning your church, Jesus would use beloved, cherished, glorious, holy and even peculiar. He might also refer to a church as lukewarm and call on her to immediately repent and return.
There are many statistics provided by Barna, Pew and Lifeway Research that reveal a pretty bleak state of affairs of churches and Christianity in North America. You should never forget that Jesus is still on His throne and He is ready and willing to step into your situation for revival and revitalization to occur. II Peter 3:17 (HCSB) reminds us that the challenges are real and instructs us, “Since you know this in advance, be on your guard, so that you are not led away by the error of lawless people and fall from your own stability.” Verse 14 reminds us, “Make every effort to be found at peace with Him without spot or blemish.”
Our friend Steve Ogne, who is now with the Lord, developed an excellent tool for our churches called the Activate Lifecycle that can chart where you are from birth all the way to even a church dying — and yes, churches die. All churches have lifecycles, and this can help you to determine if your church is Inclining (experiencing growth), Reclining (Plateaued) or Declining. There are 10 areas to evaluate that cover everything from vision to outreach to leadership. Then you can ask these questions —
• What have you learned about your church?
• How does that make you feel?
• What were your unique discoveries from this activity?
Recently, Lifeway studied the state of the church and has given us great data on five levels, stages or types of churches. There are some bright spots in the research, but there is still much work to be done because “the harvest is plenteous but the laborers are few” (Matt. 9:37).
The first category is referred to as the subtracting churches (declining) who are characterized by subtraction, scarcity and survival. That does not mean that God is not doing something noteworthy in these churches, but that the progress being made is not sufficient to replace those they are losing through moving away, moving membership or even death.
The level 2 church is the plateauing church and there is no measurable growth in the area of attendance, finances or conversions. While they may have programs and projects that keep them busy, they are at a tipping point. They could easily become either a subtracting church or, with prayer and focus, become an adding church. They desperately need a catalyst to cast new vision and new enthusiasm to live on mission for Christ. They may appear healthy in the midst of the occasional bright spots, but the valleys are getting longer and harder to navigate. Their overall trend is flat and they represent 85% of all churches.
The next level is the churches who are adding. The study states, “Level 3 churches are characterized by addition, growth and expansion of impact. … Leadership development and conquering the next growth barriers are often priorities in these churches.” The facts and data are in, and this group represents 38% of churches. The good news is that 74% of these churches are reporting that their in-person worship attendance has grown by 4% or more compared to two years ago. Here is some more good news — 36% of these adding churches participated at some level in helping to start new churches in the last 12 months.
Levels 1 and 2, in past studies, reported that 85% of all churches were either declining or plateaued, but this new study reports that is now only 62%, praise the Lord. That means God is still on the move and seeking to revive His churches. Thirty-eight percent of the churches who are adding (Level 3) and experiencing growth had at least 10 or more new commitments per 100 attendees. Once again, praise the Lord, because all of Heaven is rejoicing over one precious soul coming to Christ (Luke 15:7, 10). Acts 5:42 states, “And daily in the temple, and in every house, they ceased not to teach and preach Jesus Christ.”
The next two levels are defined as reproducing and multiplying churches. That should be the goal for every church because that is what Jesus did and what the disciples were doing in the book of Acts. There was a focus on individuals (the Ethiopian eunuch) people groups (Jews and Gentiles) but also communities and cities. Acts 8:40 shows us their pattern, “But Philip was found at Azotus: and passing through he preached in all the cities, till he came to Caesarea.” The word preached here is where the word evangelize comes from. Level 3 churches have a greater awareness of evangelism and their mission to spread the gospel through preaching but more importantly, by every child of God being a witness in every situation.
That is why the vision statement for BMA Global is, “Sharing God’s glory and love to the nations by multiplying disciples, leaders and churches.” Level 3 churches will have to make sure they never settle for addition but desire to see God do even greater things though multiplication. That requires changing our metrics (scorecard) from making disciples to making disciplemakers. The goal is not only to make a disciple or follower of Jesus but someone who can show someone else how to be a disciple, a follower of Jesus, even if you are not there, just like Jesus demonstrated with His disciples. The goal is that they can go and do what they have seen you do.
We will unpack practical steps in the next several articles on how to be churches that reproduce and multiply.
