9 Mind shifts to move from a Suburban to a Regional Church

9 Mind shifts to move from a Suburban to a Regional Church

Regional Churches are different.  Many congregations make it to 150-200 in worship, but can't break the next barrier to become a regional church. The reason is, Regional Churches think and operate differently. You are usually going from One key staff member to a Team approach. You are moving from One main service to many. You may have to develop your property. 

To do this you have to change the way you operate by changing the way you think. In doing this you come across lots of passive and even active resistance. Things have been working, why change?  If you want to keep growing you must change.  It's not about right and wrong [which people can sometimes argue], it's about fit for task!

At Redcliffe Uniting we're in the midst of this change. Here are the things that are becoming obvious to us.

Vision is Everything.

If you are moving from one key leader, to a team approach – many teams; the vision is everything. If all the key leaders and teams are not singing off the same song sheet things will be out of tune.

From One to Team.

Not just the leadership, but everything needs to be become team based. One person running a ministry will soon become a bottleneck that will choke everything around it. It's also a potential liability, as if that person moves on, they leave a hole. Leaders become leaders of people not simply a task.

Everybody doesn't have to know everybody. Get smaller to get bigger.

It becomes debilitating to leaders, especially key leaders, if the members expect the leaders to know everything about them. Leaders can't keep up. Leaders can beat themselves up thinking, 'I must show I care by remembering key things about my people,' but again this limits how big you can grow.

Instead you need to develop structures and cultures where the church is understood as the people, not the pastor. Where people care for each other as we are all ministers of the gospel, and small group leaders take responsibility to look after their group. Indeed, you have to get smaller to get bigger as care and discipleship is done in groups.

Everybody doesn't need to know everything.

In a small church you often have to consult everyone to get anything done. Everyone 'owns' the church and there is a 'democracy' mindset. But as you grow this becomes impossible. People have to let go of knowing everything and being kept in the loop about every little decision. Communication from the leadership becomes as important as ever, but it is about sharing the vision and the key reasons for key decisions, and explaining the culture of trusting others with their task.

Change is the only constant.

Church members being 'against change' is proverbial. Because God never changes [in his character] we can think the church should never change in anything! Scripture is the story of how God constantly changed in his interaction with humans, trying to bring about restoration, until the Son. As a church grows, to continue to grow you must be agile and able to adapt.

Every extra bunch of people means you have to re-invent yourselves. 'Too many for the meeting room; the kitchen is at capacity, the cry-room is too small, the youth group is full.' If you don't reinvent you calcify.

The Gospel our only anchor.

To counteract the fear of change we need to fully anchor ourselves on the gospel, and understand that the gospel, [God], is our firm foundation. 'My hope is built on nothing less, than Jesus' blood and righteousness' we sing from our hymnals, only then to argue that the hymnal is a not negotiable, essential element of our faith.

Stepping out in faith, at the right time, is the only way to beat the 'catch 22s' of growth.

Growth involves overcoming many paradoxes. 'We haven't got enough Sunday School leaders to allow growth in our family ministry, as we need more families to gain the leaders.'  People will argue we're putting the cart before the horse, 'we need to wait for more members before we move to a second service to gain more members.'   At some points we have to step out in faith. Invest time, money, resources into one side of the paradox [pay for a children worker] to beat the 'catch 22'. 

If I knew when that right time was I wouldn't need to rely on God, pray, listen, feel for a move of the Spirit. You have to be OK with failure in this. Sometime we're going to get the timing wrong. Things won't stick. That doesn't mean 'we've tried that before it didn't work we won't try again' it just means we wait until we sense the time is right.

Move from Generalists to Specialists.

Suburban 'family' churches rely on everyone pitching in on many rosters! It's great. People are being wonderfully faithful. But as you grow it means things get complex to timetable! Tom can't sing this week he's on sound, next week he's a welcomer the next on morning tea.

Not only this but we spread ourselves thin and our ministries are good, but not great.  To grow, people [even staff] need to become specialists.  What is my particular call? How can I do that to the best of my ability? This means letting go, which can be hard, to focus.

From central-control to permission-giving-culture based on trust and accountability.

For groups and ministries to flourish they need permission to make decisions in areas under their authority. It becomes too much for one board or body and therefore too slow and cumbersome. You need a culture of permission-giving based on trust. The trust is developed through commitment to the vision and the community and knowing the character of the people. Accountability is put in place to evaluate decisions, not to punish when things don't work [unless they are catastrophic, illegal and deliberate], but to re-focus and re-align.

I'm sure there are many other mind-shifts which you can add in the comments. If you can work on getting your people to make these nine mind shifts, you'll be making room for God to grow through your people and community.

Paul Clark

Chief of Sinners

Redcliffe Uniting