Is Your Church a Superstore or Speciality Store?

Is your church like a superstore, trying to offer everything that the other churches around you offer? Or, are you like the specialty store that offers some of the same items, some different items, and better customer service?

Craig Groeschel from LifeChurch.tv has a post about how the church selected four key outreach programs and focuses all of their resources on them. Church Marketing Sucks says it best: “What?! No VBS? No choir? No women’s ministry? (gasp)”.

Chuck Smith from Calvary Chapel has this to say in his Calvary Distinctives book:

A long time ago, I was in a denomination and was under pressure to build the church. I was using every kind of device suggested and offered. There were church growth programs and various kinds of contests. I tried them all in an effort to build the church. I discovered firsthand that when you strive to gain, then you must strive to maintain. When you don’t strive to gain, you don’t have to strive to maintain. If it’s the Lord’s work, if He’s done it, and He’s added, then you don’t have to strive to keep the thing going. It’s that striving to maintain that creates ministerial burnout. It’s the thing that’ll kill you. It’s the thing that’ll run you into the ground. It’s the thing that will lead you into all kinds of aberrant practices. Because you’ve striven to gain this crowd, you’ve now got a crowd that you must strive to hold, and that can be really tough.

I couldn’t agree more with Craig and Chuck! Every church makes a decision everyday to either “one-up” the church next door or do what is unique to their local church body. It is the difference between a nationwide superstore and a speciality store. Christianity is about relationships, not about mass audience, yet we strive to create the same programs as church xyz down the street. Why? Because we’ve always done it that way!

Whether you are a staff member or a ministry leader, you have a question to answer: Are the things that I’m doing today what I should be doing tomorrow? If not, it is time to let go.

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