I have been thinking about this for some time. The idea of a backdoor for the church. You know, people come in, possible become members, get involved, and for some reason or another leave the church. That is the backdoor. For many pastors it is a constant struggle to try to keep that backdoor shut. Some ministries get consumed with trying to keep the people they have and to keep them happy. I have even done this on several occasions. But one thing I learned, every person that I bent over backwards to try to keep them in the church left anyway. Seriously. Not one person stayed because of my efforts to please them.
So as I have been thinking about this, I was reminded of the nature of the church. It is a body of believers. God Himself views the church as the Bride of Christ. There is one thing for sure when dealing with a body, it has to take in and it has to expel in order for it to be healthy. I came to the realization that there will be people who come and go for a season. Good or bad. But I have decided that I do not want to waste anymore time trying to win them back. Obviously I try to find out why they are leaving and ask if I can help but it will not become a long drawn out process.
I believe the backdoor needs to stay open. We need to allow people to leave and not get bent when they do. We need to teach people how to leave correctly without all the venom and unforgiveness that sometiems follows. It is healthy for unhealthy people to leave the church. Unhealth spreads. Sure you can try to make them healthy, if that is your ministry. I found when I spend my time trying to reach the reached that the unchurched are neglected by my efforts. Our vision is to reach the unconvinced. Those who have not crossed the line of faith yet. It goes against our vision for me to constantly pursue those who already believe but don't believe in the vision of our church. This is important. God has called me to be the protector and the pronouncer of the vision. That is no one elses job in our church. Just mine.
We will get many people who come to church and they will bring with them spoken and unspoken expectations as to how the pastor is supposed to be and how the church can meet their needs. This gets crazy when you have a bunch of people doing this at the same time. Jesus got the same thing from his disciples and the crowds who followed him. They all wanted miracles and their needs met but Jesus was there to redeem mankind. His mission was much higher than feeding hungry people although he still did that. He knew people would leave him too when he started asking for commitment. One way we try to get people onboard with our church is in our class 101. This is our membership class anyone can take. We lay out who we are, what we are doing and who we are trying to reach. At the end of the class we call for commitment by having people sign a membership commitment. People become what they are committed to. Now we have had many, many people take the class and some stopped coming to church after they took it. I was fine with that because that is the class we use to weed out people who are not on board with the vision unless they are deceptive in their commitment. Which, btw has happened. But it helps us as a church to get people in the frontdoor onboard with our vision and lead people out the back who don't want to be part of it. It's hard to attend our church and not be a member. We ask for commitment and service all the time. But you can't have one without the other. That's how we operate.
So as I have been thinking about this, I was reminded of the nature of the church. It is a body of believers. God Himself views the church as the Bride of Christ. There is one thing for sure when dealing with a body, it has to take in and it has to expel in order for it to be healthy. I came to the realization that there will be people who come and go for a season. Good or bad. But I have decided that I do not want to waste anymore time trying to win them back. Obviously I try to find out why they are leaving and ask if I can help but it will not become a long drawn out process.
I believe the backdoor needs to stay open. We need to allow people to leave and not get bent when they do. We need to teach people how to leave correctly without all the venom and unforgiveness that sometiems follows. It is healthy for unhealthy people to leave the church. Unhealth spreads. Sure you can try to make them healthy, if that is your ministry. I found when I spend my time trying to reach the reached that the unchurched are neglected by my efforts. Our vision is to reach the unconvinced. Those who have not crossed the line of faith yet. It goes against our vision for me to constantly pursue those who already believe but don't believe in the vision of our church. This is important. God has called me to be the protector and the pronouncer of the vision. That is no one elses job in our church. Just mine.
We will get many people who come to church and they will bring with them spoken and unspoken expectations as to how the pastor is supposed to be and how the church can meet their needs. This gets crazy when you have a bunch of people doing this at the same time. Jesus got the same thing from his disciples and the crowds who followed him. They all wanted miracles and their needs met but Jesus was there to redeem mankind. His mission was much higher than feeding hungry people although he still did that. He knew people would leave him too when he started asking for commitment. One way we try to get people onboard with our church is in our class 101. This is our membership class anyone can take. We lay out who we are, what we are doing and who we are trying to reach. At the end of the class we call for commitment by having people sign a membership commitment. People become what they are committed to. Now we have had many, many people take the class and some stopped coming to church after they took it. I was fine with that because that is the class we use to weed out people who are not on board with the vision unless they are deceptive in their commitment. Which, btw has happened. But it helps us as a church to get people in the frontdoor onboard with our vision and lead people out the back who don't want to be part of it. It's hard to attend our church and not be a member. We ask for commitment and service all the time. But you can't have one without the other. That's how we operate.
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