14 Things That Kill Once Great Churches

Take a few moments, read the list, and ask if these characteristics are true of your church and leadership team.

1. All the smartest people are on our team. We don’t need to look outside for solutions, ideas, or help.
2. Marketing is the only group allowed to communicate with the customer. (But they can run a focus group for you in six months.)
3. Every new ministry concept needs to have an iron-clad case showing how it can get more people through our doors.
4. We need to cut costs now, without rethinking our ministry model/building format/worship experience. That can come later.
5. Digital channels to reach, connect, keep, and grow people are a low priority and underfunded. Most resources still go to things related to the weekend experience.
6. We need to wait until the annual staff retreat or budget review rolls around to discuss the need for a strategic shift or any new investment.
7. We need to wait for the new building program to be completed. Then we can focus on innovation.
8. We need to wait for the consultant we’ve hired to finish up an 18-month review that will tell us how to innovate.
9. It’s far more important to connect with people inside the building on the weekends than to try and be where the people are throughout the week.
10. We already have laid out the tech road map for the next five years, and [this new thing that is obviously gaining momentum] is not on it.
11. We can’t learn anything from unknown churches or younger pastors, so let’s wait and watch our list of well-known churches to see what they will do.
12. The leadership team spent three days at a conference and brought back a notebook full of new ideas, so we are all set on the innovation front.
13. Innovating is what our student pastor is doing.
14. We know we aren’t able to hire top talent like we used to, but let’s just keep hiring the same way we’ve always hired.

Hopefully none of these sound familiar. But if they do, or if you’re struggling to figure out how to quickly move the needle on a key area of focus for your church, it’s time to see, think, and do in new ways.


First appeared HERE