The Church Answers Podcast
#157 The Epidemic of Denial in Many Churches
Welcome to the Church Answers podcast presented by Chaney & Associates. Chaney & 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. Once again, you heard that nice lady talk about Chaney & Associates. I want to talk about them. I know I'm not going to take too long because we want to get to the content. We're so grateful for Chaney & Associates. They're the accounting firm for the church. They've helped over 1,100 churches. Of course, they're cloud-based. You'll always have your numbers and your bookkeeping, your accounting ready. From church plants to small churches to mega churches to everything in between, they've got you covered. They do a lot of other things. I encourage you to talk to our friends at Chaney & Associates. You can visit them at chaneyassosius.com today and you can hear, see and know what they offer. But I can tell you one thing, they are the accounting firm for the church. So I want to talk to you about an epidemic of denial in the church, an epidemic of denial. You say, Tom, is that an overstatement? It is not. In fact, one of the greatest dangers in many churches today is denial. It is not that the church is sick. It is not that the church is not even evangelistic or prayerful. It is a denial that it is sick because guess what? If you don't admit that you have a problem, you will never make the correction. So let me take you on a little trip for just a moment. Let me take you to a church consultation. I'm going to do it very quickly. We only do these short bursts in about 10 or 12 minutes. So I'm not going to belabor the point. I'm just going to get right to it. So here's how a church consultation begins. We had some come in, just had three or four this week already. They come in and constantly request, I should say. And so here's what happens. Somebody contacts us, usually through our info or, in other words, they go to churchanser.com and it's a contact area. And they go there and they spell out who they are and what they need. And usually they say something like, we know we need help. We really need some type of help, is church answers available for us. Well, the first thing that we do is we go and have a meeting with them. Now go, usually it's a Zoom meeting. We like to have what we call the discovery call, where we talk to a leader or leaders and we find out a little bit more about the church more than they can write onto a form. And they started asking us what a consultation looks like. We talk to them about the different types of consultations. They'll want to know the cost, so we say, this one is this, this one is this. And we begin to then talk about what they might need. Okay, many times, many times they'll say we're ready to go. I've been amazed at the percentage of consultations that actually come to fruition from the point of discovery to the point of initiating the work with the client. And so they'll say, we're ready to go. And I say, okay, you ready for us to find out what's right and what's wrong? Absolutely, absolutely, they will say. So we go through the consultation. We're not just there to nitpick what is wrong. We affirm a lot of things that are right in many churches, but then we say, here is probably why you called us. Here's the problem. It is at this point, and about half of the churches where they deny our analysis of the problem. They have hired us, they have retained us, they have paid us. We've done enough of these to know what we're doing, and we said, this is the problem. And they have turned around and said, no, it's not. Maybe they are not quite as direct as that, but they will say, thank you, and they will put our suggestions on of the proverbial chef never to be looked at again. And that's just another way of saying you don't know what you're talking about. It's wrong. And all of these cases, not that we have all the answers, just simply, we've done hundreds upon hundreds of consultations. We know local churches. We know the context of today. We're recording this in 2024. So if you're listening to this five years later, just to give you the context, we're recording this in 2024. We know churches in 2024, like we knew them back in the late 1980s, if you can believe it, that we've been doing it for that long. And so we are able to analyze these churches and say, this is most likely what is going on, what is going wrong with your church. The greatest danger that we have when churches want to see something become healthier, they need to understand that change will have to take place. You don't call us if you want things to remain the same. You call us because you know change has to take place, but the problem is many churches around half will either say that our analysis is wrong, or they will say we are not going to do it, or they will say, we're just going to put this on the shelf and ignore it and nobody mentions it again. Denial, you know, how can you overcome denial? Well, it begins with prayer. Don't go into a church consultation as a church without praying that you'll have open heart, open eyes, open ears before you have open mouth. Just be ready to listen. That consultant, whether it's church answers or some other firm, you ask them to offer the diagnosis, so be prayerfully ready to go. Another thing that you can do is you can find out what the church, how the church feels about itself. We have an incredible tool called Know Your Church. We have a suite of tools called Know Your. We've got Know Your Church, Know Yourself, Know Your Community. By the time this is up, we should have one on Doctrine Call, Know Your Beliefs, it's almost done, but we have Know Your Budget. We have all these tools. One of them is Know Your Church, and Know Your Church lets you know what your members think about it. Many times it's kind of surprising to find out in the aggregate, no one members pointed out it's done in anonymity, what they feel about it. So I would encourage you to take the Know Your Church report and just see what the general feeling is among your church members. That may give you a greater receptivity to be able to listen to the possible things that the church needs to do to change. You can also do the Know Your Community report where you can find out where the community is. We were talking to a client today, and I was talking to a client today, and that client, we were going over the community, 15-minute drive from the church, and I started pointing out some things in the community. And I loved his response. I said, "Look at this. You've got this many single adult families. Two-thirds of them are single moms, I've said single adult, I mean, single parent. You have this many single parent families, you get this many that are single moms, about two-thirds of them, one-third of them are single dads who each of them have kids at home." And I just asked them, I said, "What are y'all doing to reach these people?" And they said, "Nothing." So just by looking at the Know Your Community report, they were able to say, "Wow, there's so much that we should be doing." Now this was a case where the church was not in denial, but it's a case where the church was affirming that they needed to make the changes. So get some tools like Know Your Church and Know Your Community or something similar to that. Or maybe go back to some previous episodes that we had last week when you go back and you can talk about what I'm talking about, what is taking place in revitalization, what many churches are missing. And we talk about sometimes the culture needs to change before you can be receptive to change. And we love it when we use the Hope Initiative to create that outward focus, that outward look. So maybe there's some things that you need to do to just change the culture within the church. So here's what I'm saying. It is not that many churches are unable to change. It is that many churches are unwilling to admit they need to change. So why do we have more churches calling us for help, calling us for consultation if we still have this 50% rate of denial? Why would they even bother with the call, with the cost and with the time? Well, it's very simple. They are looking for what we call the Silver Bullet. They're hoping that we can give them some quick fix to make their church okay. That Silver Bullet, if they don't have a pastor, maybe let's go find a pastor that's 47 and a half years old, that has two and a half kids and fits our community grade. Of course, I'm being facetious. But the average of what churches want when they are without a pastor, the Silver Bullet may be a program that if you just give us the right program, everything will be okay. And so when we don't give them the Silver Bullet, when we tell them that, hey, there's going to have to be some major change in your attitude and your actions. They often say, no, we're not going to do it. So 50% of churches, again, that's rough, but roughly half of all churches that come to us for help refuse our help because they're in denial. So ask yourself, are you willing to look at some of these tools to help your church? Are you willing to look in the mirror? Are you willing to maybe engage someone from the outside who will give you an honest assessment where you are? You know you're ready if you're willing to accept what they say without denial. Denial is an epidemic when it's in at least 50% of our churches today and probably more. The good news is all you have to do is go from denial to a willingness to listen and learn. It doesn't mean it's easy, but it's simple. Thank you as always for being a part of the church answers podcast. See you next episode as we continue to talk about issues that are critical to the life of church and church leadership. We'll 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) [MUSIC PLAYING]