The Church Answers Podcast
#149 What Churches in the 1990s Got Right
Welcome to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. Now get ready for fast-paced insights on key issues affecting the local church today. We release three episodes each week, so make sure you've seen or heard them all. And now, here is the CEO of Church Answers, Tom Rayner. So there's this paradigmatic moment in contemporary church history, where things begin to change pretty rapidly. Worship styles begin to change, the way programs were done began to change. And though you can go back sooner than the 90s, like the 80s and even the 70s, it really began to have a momentum in the 90s and change was pervasive. I was a pastor in the 90s. In fact, I was a pastor of four different churches in the 90s. Some of it, I guess, went into the 80s, but I did go into the 80s, 80s and 90s. So I was a pastor of them and I witnessed this firsthand these changes. And so we've made a lot of shifts in the way we do church, if you'll allow me to share that phrase. Since the 1990s, what I want to do this time is not go through a list of the changes, but to suggest there were some things that were taking place in the 90s, where I think the church got it right and maybe should reconsider bringing it back, at least bringing it back in a 21st century way. My name is Tom Rainer, this is the church answers podcast. Our sponsor is always is Chaney and Associates, the accounting firm for the church. Thank you, Steve. Thank you team members for having this ministry and for being my friend and for podcast sponsorship, we appreciate you so much. Okay, what the churches in the 1990s got right that probably should not have been done away with. One is outreach. Now, what do I mean by outreach? Outreach is when you're attempting to reach people who are not in the church. You're reaching out beyond the church. There are two kinds of outreach. One is evangelistic outreach, reaching out to people who are not followers of Christ. And then another one is just reaching people who are looking for a church home who may already be a Christian. That's the broad category of the two types of outreach. In the 90s, many churches, not even all churches in the 90s, had some type of pattern of outreach, usually on a weekly basis. And the church where I served as pastor, we typically had it on Sunday afternoon, Monday night or Tuesday night. I tried to get it as close to the time that the visitor visited. And most of the time we were visiting those who visited. We weren't going out and reaching people who had not shown up by our church. But they filled out our guest card or visitor card and we were going to go to them. But in many cases, we did do highly intentional evangelistic visits. Now, this weekly occurrence that in many churches was called outreach began to disappear. There was good reason for the disappearance. One, more and more people did not want someone showing up unexpected at their door. Some churches of course tried to make an appointment, but many of them would just show up. Another reason is you just couldn't get into some of the communities gated or otherwise. Another reason is churches weren't seeing much fruit from that in two ways. They weren't seeing a lot of people added as a result of this outreach. And there were fewer and fewer people in the church participating in this outreach. And so what happened? Well, we did away with it. Now, that's not the problem. It's not a problem that we did away with the methodology of outreach we were doing. The problem is we did not replace it. And whereas in the '90s, many churches had this step that said we are outward focused, outwardly focused, we have outreach. When they did away with that, it changed the culture. And so what I would have suggested is, okay, if this is not working, in other words, people aren't participating and if we aren't seeing fruit as a result of it, what can we do to reach out beyond ourselves? The Great Commission did not disappear in the 1990s. Outreach did in many churches. And as a result, we've gone through a woeful state of churches not reaching people. Was it just because we did away with programmatic outreach? No, that's not the only reason. There are many more. But it's one of the reasons. We got it right in the '90s to have outreach. We may not have had the right methodology, a form of outreach, but we got it right. A second thing that churches had in the '90s that many churches have done away with is rhythms of life. What do I mean by rhythms of life? What I mean is the church had certain things take place certain days at certain times that you could depend on. Sunday morning was worship. Sunday morning was usually some type of group, sometimes off in Sunday school. Some churches had Sunday night, but we're not going to even get into that because even then there weren't a majority of churches that were having Sunday night services. But then they would have something maybe called a midweek service or something else. So they may have a rhythm, Sunday morning, Sunday night. They may have a rhythm, Sunday morning, Wednesday night. They might have some other kind of rhythm, but here's the thing about it. The church members understood that their first priority as a church member, if at all possible, was to be a part of those rhythms. I'm going to brag on my oldest son, Sam, at West Bradenton. Bradenton, Florida is not a highly-churched area. It has more of the feel of some of the less church midwestern places, more and more people are actually coming here from the far west, California, and here in Bradenton right now, and from the northeast, particularly New York state. And so it's not a highly-churched area, but his church has rhythms. They have Sunday morning, and they have some groups on Sunday morning. Some of them call it Sunday school, some of them call it sometimes, and they also have life groups on Wednesday night. You don't usually go to both, but you at least go to one. And there are different types of groups, and then there's music and other things that take place on Wednesday night. So you have a lot of people, typically about two-thirds of his attendance shows up again on Wednesday night, two-thirds of his worship attendance, and so you basically have three types of rhythm. You have groups, either Wednesday or Sunday. You have worship, and then Wednesday again, for some other ministries in the church. The church has gotten used to those rhythms. In many ways, Sam has led his church to be a nanny's church in the best sense of the word. He did away with some of the things. For example, Sunday night, many churches stopped having a second worship service on Sunday night and get that. But again, you got people out of a rhythm, and they did not know what was expected of them. So what did churches get right in the nannies that got outreach right? They got rhythms right. And closely related to rhythms is the church's head discipleship studies. There's a lot of different meanings of the word discipleship, and we could spend hours talking about that. Some people think discipleship is reading the Bible, some think it's listened to a sermon, some think it's praying, some think it's one-on-one, some think it's in a group, some think it's listened to a sermon, the list could go on and on. But a discipleship is basically people becoming more like Jesus. Well, what many churches had in the nannies were studies and times for people to grow more in Christ. They had their regular Bible studies, but then they had what was called discipleship studies, sometimes it's called discipleship training, discipleship ministry. And they had these times that were other than the regular group study. And now what have we found? Many churches don't have any type of opportunity in their schedule for people to go deeper in some type of type of discipleship study. The nannies, many churches had that opportunity. They did away with it largely because Sunday night became a non-attended event. That's where many of these things were, but as Wednesday night as well. There are three things that I would return back from the nannies. If I had the authority to do so, one is outreach, make it contextual for today, second, a rhythm so people know the really minimum of what we're supposed to do in church. And the third is some type of discipleship, emphasis or study. Those are the three things that I would bring back from the nannies. I wouldn't bring them back like they were in the nannies, but I would bring back that emphasis. All right. Thank you, Chaney and Associates, for being our sponsor. Thank you for being the accounting firm for the church. Thank you, Steve, for your friendship. And thank you, listeners and viewers on podcast, for being a part of the church answers podcast. We've got more this week that you can listen to or watch, and I hope I'll see you in those episodes. See you later. You have been listening to the church answers podcast presented by Chaney and Associates. Chaney and Associates are the accounting firm for the church. You need to focus on ministry. Chaney will focus on finances. Also, please subscribe and give a review to the church answers podcast on YouTube and on your favorite podcasting app. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)