We’ve been going through some ides on how to turn a church around so that it can grow both spiritually and numerically and begin to prosper for Christ. Yesterday, we left off at the point where our leadership adopted a vision statement for the church which set out the elements contained in the “Great Commission” given by our Lord in Matthew 28:18-20. Today, let’s pick up where we left off and I’ll tell you how we announced it to our people.
Since the vision our leadership adopted for our church was so very important to our future, we decided to make a really big splash to impress upon our people how important this was going to be in the life of our church. We set a date which was something like September 6, 2009 as the “official” roll out date. In the four or five weeks leading up to that time, we advertised this special date and set about sprucing up the building. This may sound strange to you, but it was a deliberate strategy to grab the attention of our congregation. For one thing, the building needed a whole lot of “sprucing up.” For another, it gave us an opportunity to win some of our very long-time members over to our way of thinking, for we were aware that if we try to do anything differently, there were some really wonderful people who would oppose us. In one particular case, I recruited one of the most influential and intelligent ladies in our church to take charge of the redecoration of the church, a lady who really loved the place and wanted to make improvements that were long overdue.
By bringing her into the project, she became an ally to it rather than a potential critic, and since she was very influential with the ‘long-timers’ (the church had been founded in her living room) our new-fangled notions gained a hearing; very important!
We painted, we cleaned, we got new furniture… we gained immediate results that everybody could see and touch: we gained credibility for a leadership that badly needed it. We also had a six-week sermon series leading up to the big day; two sermons from the Sr. Minister, two from the assistant minister and two from me, each dealing with an aspect of the purpose of the church. You can guess which of us got to deliver the two “tough” ones!
This all came off with incredible success. People joined in the work who seldom did much of anything, and the facilities got a whole new look to them which would help us as time went on; more about the “look” later in this series.
In the next post, I’ll tell you what we did for “phase 2” of our rollout, which was all about spiritual growth…
Life Project Blog 
this sounds more like a company ‘rebranding’ and a store ‘grand reopening’. having worked for a multibillion dollar comany myself as a customer service/sales person, i would feel insulted to be treated as ‘our people’ and my church leaders to feel like they have to manipulate and ‘advertise’ the new direction of the church.
been there done that ALOT in other churches we have attended. marketing and success strategy mentality have no ‘business’… pretty appropriate term for churches nowadays… in the Church. this is such a distraction from the real mission of equipping the saints, being the Body of Christ in relationship wit eachother and reaching out to the world in our everyday, sometimes even boring and Pizzazless lives.
not another ‘seminar’ or ‘motivational’ gather round the ‘New Vision’ plan to revitalize the Church into growing numbers and ‘prosperity’. Maxwell works in the corporate boardroom, but leave him outside the Family Room of the Church of Jesus Christ.
“Roll out”… “Announce it to Our People”… really, who’s People again?
-mike
LOL, of course you’re right, no business indeed! After all, we wouldn’t want to actually reach anybody now would we? After all, that could bring “new” people to Christ, and they are so very messy!
not what i meant and i think you know that. a little background on me… 5yrs in inner city missions and youth gang ministry/evangelism here in the phx area, two short term missions in mexico, former missionary in south korea… spent the last 2 decades discipling men, leading worship, teaching the bible in two different home groups etc. etc…
mike
Yes brother, I know what you mean, just like you know what I mean. You and I have much in common, and reading between the lines, I also think that we have a very common goal and… vision. Both of us have faced challenges in serving our Lord. Both of us have had to reach out in a wicked culture we’d rather not have to deal with, and yet there it is. We have both had the challenge of communicating within a non-Christian culture to win souls and have done so without ever compromising the message of the gospel or the truth of Scripture. Yes, sir we’ve had somewhat different callings perhaps, but they both have as their ultimate result building the Body of Christ, and we’ve both done so using the communication tools at our disposal.