The Future of Church Services – Part 4

It is much harder to get people to serve at weekend services because they are so focused on their energies going into their Missional Communities.  How do we keep enough people serving at our services?

As we move more into a missional church culture, the focus and energy and passion of Jesus followers is increasingly turned towards contexts outside of our church gatherings and programs.  This creates quite an internal tension for church leaders.

At one level, we are delighted that people are walking more into the fulness of their God-given destiny, and that the Kingdom is being incarnated more effectively into neighborhoods and networks.  We can see glimpses of how in, say, a decade’s time our city will be greatly transformed.  But then we are dragged back into the present moment by the pressure of staffing the nursery on Sunday morning, as two team members have quit in order to be out in their Missional Community!

There is no magic ‘answer’, but here are a few encouragements for you to chew on…

• Is God asking you to stop some things?  As we put more energy into 24/7 ministry and life, something has to give.  Are there things that your church has historically offered or done at weekend services that need to stop?  By the way, this does not mean that thing was wrong or sinful, it is simply a reflection of the greater reality that, apart from Jesus, nothing lasts forever in the Kingdom.
• Can some things be done more simply?  At RiverTree we have shifted the value from ‘excellence’ to ‘good enough’, in order to free up energy and resources.  Rethink how to live simply at your services.
• Don’t bow to the pressure to limitlessly feed the demands of Christian consumers.  Consumerism is not a trait of the Kingdom, it is something to be (lovingly) challenged and overturned.  Ultimately this means that if someone threatens to leave the church unless you meet all of their perceived needs then, with the greatest of compassion, we have to let them go.  Bowing to their unreasonable demands is not helping them grow as disciples, and certainly is not good for the health of the wider body.
• Are you casting vision (for volunteering at weekend services) within the overall framework of your missional life?  Don’t create competing priorities or value systems – such as attractional weekend vs missional midweek – but instead show how your weekend gatherings are part of the bigger picture of resourcing your missional movement.
• With everyone contributing in MCs, it may be actually easier to start to recruit to serve at weekend services, since more people are becoming used to pitching in and serving the body.  This works best when you have done the point before this one!
• Alan Hirsch coined the term “communitas” to describe a community on a mission, as a context for discipleship.  Talk through with your MC leaders about how they can have greater ownership of weekend services (see previous posts).  As that begins to take hold, see if some of your MCs are up for serving as a group in particular ways, in order to be a blessing to the wider church family.  The added benefit is that if you can give them room to do the task creatively and with fun, they will draw in new people and generally model how life-giving communitas is!
• A few weeks ago we focused one of our weekends on what we called ‘Plunge’, where we invited people to take the plunge and serve in the life of RiverTree.  We did fun stuff, communications about various opportunities, a great film of loads of people talking about how they serve and the difference it makes to others and them, etc.  Does that sound contrary to a church that is meant to be leading out in developing Missional Communities, Huddles and a disciple-making culture?!  Well, we are committed to doing the both/and.  As we recognize the value of all sizes of community (public space weekend services, social space missional communities, personal space small groups) it is healthy to invest in our public space gatherings – as long as it is not at an all consuming level!

The key is to show how everything fits within the bigger picture of obeying Jesus – as we go and make disciples who can make disciples.