Vicky Reier, assistant city manager in Arvada, Colorado, has taught our network of churches a lot when it comes to neighboring. At one of our pastors’ gatherings, Vicky challenged us to encourage and equip the people in our churches to throw block parties. She said that it may not sound like a big deal, but a block party movement could have an incredible, long-term impact in our community. We have taken Vicky’s words to heart and have been amazed to see how effective parties can be in fostering neighbor relations. Now, we are not talking about an annual HOA (homeowners association) block party that only 10 percent of the subdivision attends. When we use the term block party, we are talking about a party that is thrown by and attended by people who live on a specific block or group of blocks.

Block parties are natural environments in which neighbors will often take steps from being acquaintances to actually being friends. Parties create space for us to talk to others we already know and to meet people we don’t. Maybe this is the reason Jesus spent so much time at parties—he knew the power of a party. He understood they were an important means for people to share their lives with one another in very real and practical ways.

In the book of Luke we read the account of Jesus calling Levi to be one of his disciples and then Levi responding by throwing a party. The story is in 5:27–32.

After this, Jesus went out and saw a tax collector by the name of Levi sitting at his tax booth. “Follow me,” Jesus said to him, and Levi got up, left everything and followed him.

Then Levi held a great banquet for Jesus at his house, and a large crowd of tax collectors and others were eating with them. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law who belonged to their sect complained to his disciples, “Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?”

Jesus answered them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

There’s a lot that happens in this short account. When Levi throws this party, Jesus is more than happy to attend. After all, Levi is creating an environment where the people he knows well can interact with Jesus and his new friends. From all indications, Jesus doesn’t even think twice about showing up to this event, although he knows it’s likely he is going to be criticized by some of the religious leaders for attending.

Let’s be honest. The fact that the Pharisees question Jesus’s attendance indicates that this party was likely not a “Mountain Dew and pizza” kind of party. This, for sure, wasn’t a Sunday afternoon church potluck. This was a party where people were having a lot of fun.

So when the Pharisees question him, Jesus has every opportunity to apologize for spending time with “sinners.” Yet Jesus actually does the opposite. He defends his right to be there and doesn’t back down because he is using the opportunity to hang out and party with a group of people who don’t have any religious framework and whom he might not see otherwise.

When is the last time you were accused of doing something like this? Has your character ever been questioned because you ate or drank with sketchy people? Not everyone in the neighborhood is cleaned up and easy to be around. We need to be willing to follow Jesus and choose to be with others in uncomfortable situations, because we can’t always expect people to come onto our turf; we must also be willing to enter their world.

Let’s make this personal. When we participate in block parties, we are being like Jesus. We are making it a priority to understand the people God has placed around us, regardless of what they believe or how they act.

You may wonder, Wouldn’t it have made more sense for Jesus to throw the party to celebrate Levi’s decision to follow him? But that’s not how the story goes. Levi is so excited about what is happening in his life that he gathers his circle of friends and invites Jesus and the disciples to join them in celebrating.

With this in mind, when we consider gathering our neighbors together, there may be others who are better suited to host the party. If so, look to partner with them rather than trying to plan and host a party on your own. If not, then maybe God wants you to be the one who initiates the gathering. Either way, as Christians, we should be playing a part in throwing the best parties in our neighborhoods—not sitting on the sidelines being irritated because the music is too loud!

There’s Gold Next Door

Diane attends a church that a couple of years ago presented a sermon series on the art of neighboring. As she listened one Sunday morning, she found herself thinking about how different the neighborhood of her childhood was compared to the one she had been living in for more than a decade. She had always wished that she knew her neighbors better, and now she sensed that God was calling her to do something about it.

After hearing about the value of learning her neighbors’ names, Diane went home and did something radical. She acted on what was discussed in church earlier that day. She decided to start taking walks and looking for opportunities to learn some of the names of the people she encountered.

While she was on one of her walks, she ran into an older lady that she had waved to numerous times in the past. This time Diane stopped and began talking to the woman. They both mentioned the fact that everyone in the neighborhood seems very busy these days. Then Diane’s neighbor, a widow, mentioned that she had been having some health issues. When Diane showed concern, her neighbor shared with her that she had just finished treatments for cancer and that it looked like it was in remission. Diane is a cancer survivor as well, and immediately the two had a bond that most of us cannot understand.

Soon after that conversation, Diane ran into her new friend again. This time her neighbor began to share some of her story with Diane. She said she was born in Germany and had spent her childhood there. And then she shared that she was actually a Holocaust survivor. They talked for a while that day, and Diane walked back to her house with her mind spinning. It dawned on her that they had been living near each other for ten-plus years, and she was just now learning that her neighbor had an amazing life story.

When Diane shared this story with us, she made a statement that we have not forgotten. She said, “I am learning that there are people right around me that have incredible things to share with me and others. It’s like I have been living next to a gold mine, but I was too busy to know there was gold right next door.”

Diane’s story didn’t end there. As she began to fill in her block map, she felt an urge to gather her neighbors together. She printed up a simple flyer that outlined a plan for a block party the following month. Distributing the flyers personally gave Diane a chance to learn a bunch of new names, and she carried a small notepad to write them in as she went door-to-door. Diane’s block map was quickly becoming a block directory.

Once they realized that her block party invite wasn’t a flyer for a roofing company, most of the neighbors she met were very friendly. Many of them even expressed interest in contributing and helping out with the party.

A month later, Diane stood in front of her driveway and watched more than forty of her neighbors hang out together for the first time. For Diane the most rewarding part of the party occurred when a guy who had been known only as “the grumpy neighbor” came to the party. Not only was he not grumpy but he also brought over two canopies and set them up to provide shade for those who wanted it.

One of the longtime residents thanked Diane and mentioned that the neighborhood used to do this kind of stuff all the time. She said that, for some reason, the parties and gatherings stopped happening and this was the first block party anyone had organized in more than fifteen years.

Diane’s story reminds us that there are amazing people and stories all around us. Often all we have to do is take a walk and be willing to engage the people we see along the way. By doing so, Diane moved from stranger to acquaintance with a number of her neighbors. And by initiating a block party, Diane helped to create an environment where many were able to get to know each other better. Diane and many others have embodied the neighboring framework that we believe works.

Jay Pathak and Dave Runyon, The Art of Neighboring: Building Genuine Relationships Right Outside Your Door The Art of Neighboring: Building Genuine Relationships Right Outside Your Door (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2012), 78–83.

Every fall semester at The Journey, we do a church-wide campaign, or integrated movement, where small-group discussions mirror and support sermon topics, and vice versa. Recently, we did a church-wide campaign called “The New Testament Challenge.” The start date for the Sunday teaching series was the same week as the start date for the groups semester. We challenged our people to read through the New Testament in 63 days to coincide with the Sunday teachings, which were oriented around the key themes of the New Testament, and to discuss the readings in their groups throughout the week. The challenge was very effective for group sign-ups, and really had an impact on our church by deepening each group member’s walk with God. Tremendous synergy occurs in a church when there is a single focus between the Sunday service and small groups.

Sometimes people see groups as an add-on. They think groups are just part of the buffet the church offers—another option for spiritual growth besides the weekend service. A united campaign helps people see that groups do not stand alone. Rather, they are an integral part of the whole life of the church. When they understand this unity, people who have never experienced the power of groups are more likely to sign up. That means that first-time group members are more likely to sign up during the church-wide campaign semester than during any other semester.

We recommend using a church-wide campaign one semester a year. Fall and spring are the two best options, with fall winning by a nose. In our experience, with hundreds of churches, fall semester church-wide campaigns seem to generate the most sign-ups. Why? Because of the back-to-school urge that lies dormant (or not so dormant) in each of us. The fall feels like the beginning of a new semester, even to people who have never been in a small group before. That’s what you want. Work with the inherent tendencies of the fall season. Fall also lends itself to a church-wide campaign because the Thanksgiving holiday makes the semester a little shorter. This means that you will have an easier time coordinating small groups with the Sunday service.

Nelson Searcy and Kerrick Thomas, Activate: An Entirely New Approach to Small Groups (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2010).

By the mid-nineteenth century the effects of the Second Great Awakening subsided, due in part to growing prosperity, political turmoil over slavery, and religious extremism (such as the Millerites, who wrongly predicted the return of Jesus in 1843–44).

Several simultaneous events occurred at the beginning of this movement, known as the Layman’s Prayer Revival. Union prayer meetings, led by Jeremiah Lanphier, began in 1857; they spread quickly to involve over 50,000 within six months across the eastern part of the United States.

Unusual church revivals were reported in Canada, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and other places in 1856–57.

Evangelism conferences held by the Presbyterian Church erupted in revival in 1857.

Sunday school outreach efforts in the East were also a factor.

In New York and Philadelphia, many businesses closed daily to pray.

Multitudes were converted. Seventy-five people were converted in a Brooklyn church revival meeting. A Catskill church saw 115 professions of faith in a few days. In Newark 3,000 people were converted in two months. In Philadelphia a man began a prayer meeting like those in New York. Soon 6,000 people met daily, and a tent revival was held. It continued for more than four months, with 150,000 attending. Over 10,000 were converted in one year.

God was exalted in this revival. This was the only awakening without a single well-known leader. Also, it came unexpectedly. Further, there was great cooperation among believers. It was part of a worldwide movement, including the revival in Wales in 1859 and the revival in the ministry of Andrew Murray in South Africa. It strongly influenced D. L. Moody during his youth. The Layman’s Prayer Revival of 1857–59 was characterized by its wide appeal. Several colleges experienced revival during this time. J. Edwin Orr documented revival movements at Oberlin, Yale, Dartmouth, Middlebury, Williams, Amherst, Princeton, and Baylor.28

Alvin L. Reid, Introduction to Evangelism (Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 1998), 75–76.

What E.M. Bounds said about the preacher is also true of the teacher:

WE are constantly on a stretch, if not on a strain, to devise new methods, new plans, new organizations to advance the Church and secure enlargement and efficiency for the gospel. This trend of the day has a tendency to lose sight of the man or sink the man in the plan or organization. God’s plan is to make much of the man, far more of him than of anything else. Men are God’s method. The Church is looking for better methods; God is looking for better men. “There was a man sent from God whose name was John.” The dispensation that heralded and prepared the way for Christ was bound up in that man John. “Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given.” The world’s salvation comes out of that cradled Son. When Paul appeals to the personal character of the men who rooted the gospel in the world, he solves the mystery of their success. The glory and efficiency of the gospel is staked on the men who proclaim it. When God declares that “the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth, to show himself strong in the behalf of them whose heart is perfect toward him,” he declares the necessity of men and his dependence on them as a channel through which to exert his power upon the world. This vital, urgent truth is one that this age of machinery is apt to forget. The forgetting of it is as baneful on the work of God as would be the striking of the sun from his sphere. Darkness, confusion, and death would ensue.

What the Church needs to-day is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men whom the Holy Ghost can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Ghost does not flow through methods, but through men. He does not come on machinery, but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men—men of prayer.

An eminent historian has said that the accidents of personal character have more to do with the revolutions of nations than either philosophic historians or democratic politicians will allow. This truth has its application in full to the gospel of Christ, the character and conduct of the followers of Christ—Christianize the world, transfigure nations and individuals. Of the preachers of the gospel it is eminently true.

The character as well as the fortunes of the gospel is committed to the preacher. He makes or mars the message from God to man. The preacher is the golden pipe through which the divine oil flows. The pipe must not only be golden, but open and flawless, that the oil may have a full, unhindered, unwasted flow.

The man makes the preacher. God must make the man. The messenger is, if possible, more than the message. The preacher is more than the sermon. The preacher makes the sermon. As the life-giving milk from the mother’s bosom is but the mother’s life, so all the preacher says is tinctured, impregnated by what the preacher is. The treasure is in earthen vessels, and the taste of the vessel impregnates and may discolor. The man, the whole man, lies behind the sermon. Preaching is not the performance of an hour. It is the outflow of a life. It takes twenty years to make a sermon, because it takes twenty years to make the man. The true sermon is a thing of life. The sermon grows because the man grows. The sermon is forceful because the man is forceful. The sermon is holy because the man is holy. The sermon is full of the divine unction because the man is full of the divine unction.

Paul termed it “My gospel;” not that he had degraded it by his personal eccentricities or diverted it by selfish appropriation, but the gospel was put into the heart and lifeblood of the man Paul, as a personal trust to be executed by his Pauline traits, to be set aflame and empowered by the fiery energy of his fiery soul. Paul’s sermons—what were they? Where are they? Skeletons, scattered fragments, afloat on the sea of inspiration! But the man Paul, greater than his sermons, lives forever, in full form, feature and stature, with his molding hand on the Church. The preaching is but a voice. The voice in silence dies, the text is forgotten, the sermon fades from memory; the preacher lives.

The sermon cannot rise in its life-giving forces above the man. Dead men give out dead sermons, and dead sermons kill. Everything depends on the spiritual character of the preacher.

Edward M. Bounds, Power through Prayer (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1999).

A recent study by the Barna Group found that the number one challenge to helping people grow spiritually is that most people equate spiritual maturity with trying hard to follow the rules in the Bible. No wonder people also said they find themselves unmotivated to pursue spiritual growth. If I think God’s aim is to produce rule-followers, spiritual growth will always be an obligation rather than a desire of my heart.

“Rule-keeping does not naturally evolve into living by faith,” Paul wrote, “but only perpetuates itself in more and more rule-keeping.” In other words, it only results in a rule-keeping, desire-smothering, Bible-reading, emotion-controlling, self-righteous person who is not like me. In the end, I cannot follow God if I don’t trust that he really has my best interests at heart.

The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. There is an enormous difference between following rules and following Jesus, because I can follow rules without cultivating the right heart.

A friend of mine recently graduated from one of the service academies where they are very serious about the “clean your room” rule. Sometimes my friend got ink marks on the wall that would not come out, so he would chip the plaster off. The inspectors would give demerits for ink marks, but they figured missing chunks of plaster was a construction problem. The “rules” ended up encouraging the slow demolition of the room.

Jesus did not say, “I have come that you might follow the rules.” He said, “I have come that you might have life, and have it with abundance.” When we cease to understand spiritual growth as moving toward God’s best version of ourselves, the question, how is your spiritual life going? frightens us. A nagging sense of guilt and a deficit of grace prompt us to say, “Not too well. Not as good as I should be doing.” People often use external behaviors and devotional practices to measure their spiritual health. They measure their spiritual life by how early they are getting up to read the Bible, or how long their quiet times are, or how often they attend church services. But that is not what spiritual formation is about.

John Ortberg, The Me I Want to Be: Becoming God’s Best Version of You (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009).

Saddleback Church was the first church to successfully use the campaign strategy, and beginning in 2002 we have developed campaigns such as 40 Days of Purpose, 40 Days of Community, and 40 Days of Love. A campaign is an intensive, churchwide focus on a particular aspect of spiritual growth that involves every age group. Weekend sermons, small group curriculum, children’s Sunday school activities, student ministry programming, memory verses, newsletters, bulletin inserts, and websites are all used to get everyone on the same page for the duration of the campaign, which is usually about six weeks. Over 30,000 churches have successfully used Saddleback campaigns, and the strategy has proven to be an amazing vehicle for spiritual growth and connecting people into groups.

Before developing the campaign strategy, we used connection events to draw people into groups for churchwide events. One day we were in a management team meeting and Rick asked us, “How many groups do we usually start through connection events?” We answered, “About 300.” He said, “That’s great. Add a zero to that. Let’s start 3,000 groups.” We all knew that using connection events would never get us those kinds of numbers, and we told him as much. His answer? “Come up with a different strategy.” And so we did.

This is when we came up with the H.O.S.T. strategy, and it became a huge piece of the puzzle. Rick stood in front of the congregation and said, “If our church has ministered to you, would you in turn minister to your community and be willing to H.O.S.T. a small group? You don’t have to be married to them; just try it out for six weeks and see.” We had so many people respond during the first service, we thought they had misunderstood. Rick repeated the invitation during the second service, clarifying that he was asking people to H.O.S.T., meaning: Have a heart for people, Open their home to a group, Serve a snack, and Turn on a video. We received an even larger response! During that first weekend, a total of more than 2,000 people volunteered to be a H.O.S.T. Now our only problem was to figure out how to prepare 2,000 people to fill and lead a group.

Resources and Support

We started by thinking in simple terms. If someone had never led a group before, what questions might he or she have? Once we had a list of questions, we came up with an FAQ list to provide answers for our new leaders. You can see it at www.smallgroups.net/hosttraining. You can do the same for your new leaders. Make your FAQ list available online through your website, as a handout given to your new leaders on day one, as part of your ongoing training, or ideally all three.

Give them answers to something as simple as, “How do I invite somebody to my group?” During our first 40 Days of Purpose Campaign, we gave our H.O.S.T.s a script they could memorize for inviting their friends and neighbors into their small group. That might seem like overkill, but you would be surprised how fearful some of your people will be about just talking to a neighbor. So we gave them a short, one-paragraph script.

We also included suggestions about how to plan for the first meeting, how to set up the room, when to offer the snacks, and what to do about name tags. Finally, we included information on how to use the curriculum and how to share ownership of the group. We tried to think ahead of time of any questions the H.O.S.T.s might have and then gave the answers to them in writing so they could read them in the comfort of their home.

Saddleback Campaigns

We have experienced amazing spiritual and numerical growth during campaigns. For example, through a 40 Days of Purpose Campaign (in just 40 days):

671 new believers came to Christ and were baptized

1,200 new members took C.L.A.S.S. 101 and joined the church worship attendance increased by 2,000

2,200 more people started serving in ministry

3,700 people committed to a world mission project

There are particular distinctions of a Saddleback campaign, including:

• Small groups provide tremendous potential for exponential growth.
• We use the term H.O.S.T. instead of leader to lower the bar and increase participation.
• The H.O.S.T.s are responsible to fill their groups with people they already have a relationship with, increasing the likelihood that the group will continue after the initial study.
• Senior pastor buy-in is obvious through his involvement from the pulpit, thus increasing the perceived value of small groups and community.

• Short-term commitments (usually six weeks) are easier to obtain.
• DVD-based curriculum is easy to use and takes the pressure off the H.O.S.T.
• Campaign topics have a wide appeal, so more people are likely to want to participate.
• Small groups are the distribution point for materials of the campaign, so the people of the church feel as though they are missing out on something if they do not join a small group. If people want the book, the key tags, or whatever promotional material you are using, they have to join a small group to receive it.
• H.O.S.T.s have the support of a community leader who encourages, answers questions, gives guidance, and prays for them.

Think Long Term

As your church does campaigns, you will start and lose a lot of groups, but if you retain a portion of the groups started, you will be ahead of where you started. See figure 17.1 to see how this has played out at Saddleback.

Our first 40 Days of Purpose Campaign (2002) launched with 2,154 groups. By February of the following year, we still had 1,456 of those 2,154 groups. We could view that two ways: (1) we lost about 700 groups (from campaign peak), or (2) we gained almost 700 groups (from before it).

When we looked at the reasons why people did not continue with their group, we found it was not because they did not have a good experience. It was more likely that life got in the way or that we didn’t have the infrastructure in place to support them. Two years later, with our infrastructure in place, we did our 40 Days of Community Campaign and our retention rate went from 68 percent to 86 percent. We learned by stepping out in faith and attempting the seemingly impossible, by moving ahead before we had all of the details worked out, and by making mistakes and learning from them.

Anyone can now benefit from our experience by purchasing one of our Saddleback Church Campaign Kits (www.saddlebackresources.com), which come with full instructions on how to run the campaign from start to finish. The instructions explain what type of teams you need to develop, and the kit provides a calendar timeline and training DVDs for you and your team to watch. Having lived through nine campaigns in my twelve years as small group pastor at Saddleback Church, I have discovered a strategy is only as good as the foundation and follow through. As they say, the devil is in the details.

A churchwide campaign is an exponentially positive or negative experience for a church depending on how you approach it. Based on my experience and a few battle scars, I have developed the following twelve tips to ensure a positive outcome.

1. Know the compelling question. When you do a campaign, you need to know the question the campaign will answer. For example, in our 40 Days of Purpose Campaign, the question was, “What on earth am I here for?” The compelling question gives your people a reason to join a small group and attend the corresponding weekend services. It provides your small group leaders with motivation to invite others into their small group. Without a compelling question, the congregation won’t understand the central theme or the reason for the campaign.

2. Align children, student, and adult ministries. A lot of churches that do a campaign miss the alignment by only doing it for the adults. When your children and teens memorize the same Scriptures, read similar themes, do projects together, and listen to the same weekend message, everyone is on the same page. Discussions naturally flow into the home from parent to child and child to parent. Without churchwide alignment, you are unintentionally sending the message that only the adults of the church are important. Don’t make that mistake.

3. Stick to the principles and apply your own methodologies. When aligning your campaign for children and students, adapt the material to their learning level. So if the adults are memorizing a Scripture, the children may learn part of the same Scripture instead of the whole Scripture, because that is appropriate for their level. The same principle should be applied to your entire church. Weekend messages need to be adapted to your church context and culture. Small group questions can be adapted to the needs of the group. If there is a churchwide or small group project, it should stay true to your church culture. For example, if your church has a strong presence in the homeless community, serve those same people with your campaign projects.

4. Language matters. One of the most significant things we learned through recruiting for our campaign was that language matters! Campaign material is delivered through small groups, so it is vital that you have plenty of people ready to lead a small group. It didn’t work well when we asked for lay pastors because the people didn’t feel they were pastors. We then changed the term to shepherd leaders, which failed because they didn’t connect with the term shepherd. Next we tried small group leader, but nobody wanted to be the leader due to perceived inadequacies or lack of time. Then we asked for H.O.S.T.s, and all of a sudden we had plenty of volunteers! Interestingly enough, we never changed the duties of a small group leader, just the language. That was enough. All of the preconceived notions of what it takes to be a leader just fell away. If a H.O.S.T. continues with the group after the campaign, we enter them into our Small Group Leadership Development Pathway (see chapter 13), which provides them with the relationships and resources to nurture and build their leadership skills.

5. Employ various avenues of learning. The campaign strategy uses a common theme that is taught in various ways to help people learn through their particular learning style. People can learn through listening to the weekend services. People can learn through discussing topics in their small groups. People can learn through doing hands-on projects with their small groups. People can learn through memorizing Scripture. And people can learn through reading as they work through the campaign materials in their small groups.

6. Once a year is enough. When you do too many campaigns in a year, two things happen: your volunteers who pulled it off won’t be able to manage doing another campaign so soon, and your congregation won’t experience the anticipation of an upcoming event. At Saddleback we do one campaign a year, and trust me, it comes around again quickly!

7. Provide a clear start and end date. Our campaigns last forty days, which includes six preaching weekends focused on the campaign topic and a forty-day devotional reading, with a couple days of grace! This is a short enough commitment that most people are willing to try it but long enough to instill good habits. When you have a clear start and end date, people are more willing to come along for the ride.

8. Expect high intensity for staff, volunteers, and members. One of the secrets of a successful campaign is sustaining high intensity for forty days and then backing off to allow staff and volunteers time to recover and give members time to process the experience. Let your church calendar return to normal and give your small groups time to stabilize. For a campaign to happen successfully, you must clear the calendar for the duration of that campaign. Stop programs and events that could be distracting—sometimes good programs can stop great things from happening in a campaign. So once the campaign concludes, allow the calendar to get back to normal. Also, a campaign creates many new groups, and when the campaign ends, you need time to assess where those groups are. Some will continue and some will stop, but without the margin and infrastructure to check in on these groups, you will start a lot of groups and lose the same amount.

9. Remember and celebrate! Too often the church does a great job of recruiting and getting the job done but then fails to appropriately celebrate a job well done. After the campaign, be sure to hold a celebration and express your gratitude for all of the hard work done by staff and volunteers. Take time to remember and celebrate God’s work. Share stories of success and gratitude. When you don’t take the time to celebrate, you are increasing the possibility of burnout in your staff and volunteers. In the Bible we read of many instances when God had people stop and remember the miracles he did. Why? Because he knew people forget. When you celebrate, you etch God’s work on your people’s hearts. Often we give little reminders such as key chains so that when people see them, they will be reminded of how God worked through so many people’s lives and then celebrate the campaign into which they put so much time and energy.

10. Plan for after the campaign. It is important to have an infrastructure in place to support your new groups. You don’t have to be an expert; you just have to be one step ahead of that new small group leader. At Saddleback our infrastructure includes community leaders who oversee new small groups and the Small Group Leadership Development Pathway to train small group H.O.S.T.s who choose to continue to lead.

Give your groups a next step. Around the fourth week of the six-week campaign, we encourage groups to determine what their next step will be. Will they continue or part ways? We provide curriculum suggestions and encourage them to get the new material as soon as possible. Very often, just avoiding downtime can make the difference in whether or not a group continues.

11. Give people an out after the campaign is finished. In a campaign it is important to give people permission to leave their group or disband the group altogether. I know this feels counterintuitive, but it will serve you well. Now, let me be clear, I want them to continue, and I want to give them every possible reason to stay together; but on the other hand, I don’t want them to feel guilty if their group doesn’t continue. Why? Because when they do what you have asked, they need to be rewarded and thanked, not be criticized for not continuing. I have learned that when you give people permission to stop meeting at the end of the campaign, they will be there for the next campaign. And during the next campaign, they just might stay with their group.

12. Budget to remove financial obstacles. When we do a campaign, we pay for everything. In order to make a spiritual impact on anyone who joins a small group, we provide the devotional reading books, memory key tags, prayer guides, small group DVDs, and small group study guides. It’s a lot of money up front, but it brings huge dividends on the back side. By investing in your church in this way, it shows your people not only that you care about them but also that you are willing to put your money where your heart is.

As you dive into a campaign, take the time to learn from other churches in your area that have done a campaign. Their experience will save you a tremendous amount of time and energy. You can find other churches through the Small Group Network (www.smallgroupnetwork.com).

Steve Gladen, Small Groups with Purpose: How to Create Healthy Communities (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books, 2013), 213–221.

Of course, this conclusion flies directly in the face of the common story line that so many of us have been told time and again from those inside and outside of the church. These scholars do note the rapid rise of those who report they are unaffiliated with any institutional faith today—the infamous and little understood “nones,” which we will examine fully and clarify carefully later—a number that has more than doubled since the late 1980s. However, they also find what they describe as “a patently persistent level of strong affiliation” over the past few decades, demonstrating what they call “a very stable trend line.”

What this means, of course, is that while the number of people who have a lukewarm faith and who are dabblers is declining significantly—and we will see plenty of evidence for this as we go on—robust, diligent discipleship congregations are holding like an anchor with remarkable consistency. In fact, the data show that believers who pray many times a day have increased by more than 8 percent since 1991 and those who attend church services more than once a week rose slightly. Pew Research Center findings show the same thing over the last decade, as we will see shortly. The number of evangelical young adults is also rising, as we shall learn in chapter 7. For those keeping score at home, holding steady and even rising slightly is not declining. That sounds like very good news, but we have not even scratched the surface in our investigation yet.

The Indiana University/Harvard research, in agreement with Pew’s Greg Smith, says that “evangelicals are not on the decline” but actually “grew from 1972 when they were 18 percent of the population, to a steady level of about 28 percent from 1989 to 2016.” This particular “percentage of the population” measure is very significant, and it’s important to clarify its significance. It shows not only growth in terms of real numbers, but enough growth to keep up with or even exceed the rate of population growth. That’s not nothing.

Suppose you were working hard to attract and hold a crowd as a business owner, university president, indie music artist, community volunteer coordinator, or banana stand operator. Whatever line of work you were in, you would be absolutely giddy at experiencing this kind of growth, and you’d be right to be. You could call yourself very successful, and it would be difficult to reasonably challenge you on your sense of accomplishment. This the present state of evangelicalism, and it’s the opposite of what would animate Chicken Little.

In contrast, the Indiana/Harvard research showed that mainline Protestants5 have declined precipitously from 35 percent of the American population in 1972 to 12 percent of the population in 2016. This is Chicken Little territory. The decline of the mainline churches began in 1960s and early 1970s as they started to question and even officially change their positions on historic Christian basics like the existence of miracles, the reality of sin, and the actual atoning death of Christ and His resurrection, as well jettisoning biblical convictions about sex, gender issues, and abortion. People ran for the doors of these churches in mass with every new compromise, and this exodus continues today. Compromising biblical truths was and is a devastating church-growth strategy. It could hardly be worse if these pastors asked their parishioners to leave and never come back.

Because of these changes, the Indiana/Harvard researchers explained that, of people who were affiliated with a church, the only group that increased was those who were more robust and traditional in their beliefs and practices, from 39 percent of all church attenders in 1989 to 47 percent in 2017. Therefore, Christianity in America—and in most other places in the world, as we will see in chapter 6—is growing more vibrant and traditional.

So is Christianity shrinking?

Not if you’re talking about the biblically faithful congregations that call their people to genuine Christian discipleship. Only from the mainline churches do you hear that big sucking sound emanating. Most of these congregations are free falling as if they have a millstone tied to their necks. And the more liberal they are, the faster they plummet.

Glenn T. Stanton, The Myth of the Dying Church: How Christianity Is Actually Thriving in America and the World (New York, NY: Worthy Books, 2019).

The answer to the question of whether Christianity is shrinking or not is both yes and no. This seemingly contradictory answer is the key to understanding the truth of the current and future state of the church. But for a people of faith committed to truth and used to dealing in the absolute categories of black and white, right and wrong, true and false, how can we accept the right answer being two clear opposites?

Let’s get to examining what the best data actually shows, and we’ll see how the numbers reveal the real guts and truth of the story. In a few words, the story is this:

Some parts of the church are indeed shrinking and some are not at all. Some are doing quite well, even growing. But which parts of the church are shrinking and to what degree? And which churches are doing well?

These are the two fundamental questions. Let me explain our path of exploration in the coming chapters as we examine the research. We will move across the lake from the shore of confusion to the opposite shore of clarity, stepping on the orderly stones that are the findings of the most notable professional research, journal articles, and reports from leading mainstream organizations that track church growth and decline numbers. We won’t rely on news stories or organizations that are identified with a particular faith tradition. We will not be relying on one or two sources, the common problem in most reporting on and retelling of this story. We will be taking a much wider, deeper approach and get up to our elbows in the mixing bowl of this research, but in a very readable, direct, and easy-to-understand way.

To employ another metaphor here, like students on a guided tour, we will stop by, be introduced to, and check in with the essential original voices and leading experts on our topic to see what they have to teach us. This is really the only way we can get the actual, reliable picture of things.

Let’s start by considering the investigative work of two widely respected leaders in this field of study: Greg Smith and Rodney Stark.

Greg Smith has long worked as the associate director of research for the Pew Research Center, one of the most trusted and respected institutions on this topic. In an interview with Christianity Today a few years ago, Smith was asked by Dr. Ed Stetzer of Wheaton College if evangelicalism was dying. He said simply, “Absolutely not,” and went on to explain, “There’s nothing in these data to suggest that Christianity is dying. That Evangelicalism is dying. That Catholicism is dying. That is not the case whatsoever.”

Dr. Stetzer asked Smith specifically about what he calls “a cottage industry in Evangelicalism saying the sky is falling.” Smith responded,

With respect to Evangelicalism in particular I would say, that particularly compared with other Christian traditions in the United States, Evangelicalism is quite strong. It’s holding its own both in terms of its share of the total population. It’s holding its own in terms of the number of Americans who identify with Evangelical Christianity. If you look at Christianity as a whole… the share of Protestants in the United States who are Evangelicals is, if anything, growing.1

If anything, growing. There are few people who know as much about these things as Greg Smith.

Dr. Stetzer also interviewed Professor Rodney Stark, codirector of Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion and the school’s distinguished professor of the social sciences. Professor Stark has been at this work much longer than most, and he has grown very impatient with the “sky is falling” falsehood. He is not shy about voicing that impatience, as you will see. Dr. Stetzer asked him about his perspective on the state of evangelicalism in terms of decline. Stark had this to say: “Well, I think this notion that they’re shrinking is stupid. And it’s fiddling with the data in quite malicious ways. I see no such evidence.”2

What I have called the Chicken Littles, he playfully called the Bad News Bearers, adding, “[They] make a living coming and saying, ‘Church is going to hell… everything’s going.’… And they’re always wrong.” He also complained that “one of the standard ones just drives me nuts is, ‘Young people are leaving the church in droves, what are we going to do?’” He finds no evidence for this, and much to the contrary. We will observe the larger body of research in support of Stark’s conclusions on young adults later. It does not tell a Chicken Little story by any stretch.

Smith and Stark are not the only deeply respected scholars and specialists on this topic. As we will see, there are many more, and they hail from leading research organizations. Two sociologists working jointly—Sean Bock from Harvard and Landon Schnabel from Indiana University—were recently interested in exploring the apparent reality that faith is declining precipitously in the United States. They wanted to test the assumption that our nation is on a trajectory toward staggering secularization like many parts of Western Europe are experiencing. They call this the “secularization thesis,” the idea that modern life, cultural advancement, the abundance of material possessions, and the dominance of a scientific worldview inevitably translate into a culture where religion becomes increasingly irrelevant and relegated to the blue-hair pensioners and a few superstitious, anti-science hangers-on. These two scholars asked whether this was indeed true, and tested this thesis using some sophisticated measures. Their findings? It’s certainly not what most would have guessed. Not at all.

What made their study unique was that they measured not only faith practices and beliefs, things like prayer habits, church attendance, and one’s view of the authority and trustworthiness of the Bible, but also the intensity of faith, the seriousness with which people practiced and believed these things. For instance, they wanted to find out not just whether but how often people pray as a general habit. Only when in crisis or only when it comes to mind? Or do they do so daily as a regular part of their lives? How often do they attend church? Are they only Christmas and Easter types, once or twice a month, or the weekly/more than once a week stalwarts? What is their view of Scripture? Do they read and study the Bible as the actual, trustworthy, authoritative Word of God, or do they see it as merely a good book of inspiration?

The gold of their investigation was being able to distinguish what we can call the dabblers from the diligent disciples. This is important because a major assumption of many is that the more so-called “progressive and enlightened” churches that have changed their beliefs to match the times would be growing. Wanting to keeping current with the modern age, people would certainly migrate toward those congregations that no longer harped on sin and hold that “old idea” of a need for repentance and forgiveness. Surely congregations teaching that miracles are for ages past would hold more attraction to the modern mind, and loosening up on obedience to traditional sexual ethics would be seen as more welcoming and noncondemning. And certainly stringent churches that stress these things would be shrinking, because who wants to hear about all that?

These two scholars’ findings were clear and remarkably counterintuitive. In the introduction of their study, they let their readers know point blank:

We show that rather than religion fading into irrelevance as the secularization thesis would suggest, intense religion—strong affiliation, very frequent practice, literalism and evangelicalism—is persistent, and in fact, only moderate religion is on the decline in the United States.3

Get that. Only moderate religion is on the decline in the US. Their findings show, as they explain, “the United States has demonstrated sustained levels of intense religiosity [of which they mean Christianity primarily] across key measures over the past decades that are unique when compared to other advanced, industrial societies.”4 They go so far as to say that the US is a marked exception and distinguished counterexample to the secularization thesis. In the United States, Christian faith that takes Scripture and the spiritual disciplines seriously has remained vibrant over the past few decades, right up to the present day. Lukewarm faith and practice, however, have been on a marked downward trajectory across every measure they examined.

Glenn T. Stanton, The Myth of the Dying Church: How Christianity Is Actually Thriving in America and the World (New York, NY: Worthy Books, 2019).

A religious denomination begins as a sect, a small group of passionate believers who set themselves apart from society, like the Puritans who fled England because they refused to conform to the establishment Anglican Church. Once the Puritans settled in Massachusetts, they were no longer outsiders. They were the establishment. The sect grew into the Congregational Church, which dominated New England in the same way that other colonies were dominated by the Episcopal Church (the American branch of Anglicanism). Those mainline churches received government subsidies and could survive without attracting passionate new members.

Their clergymen were well-educated gentlemen, not charismatic rabble-rousers. They preached elegant, cerebral sermons based on the theology they had studied at Harvard and Yale, where rationalism was prized and emotionalism disdained. They had been taught to see God as distant and abstract, a vaguely benevolent deity nothing like the wrathful figure in the Old Testament who condemned sinners to perdition. The sophisticated modern clergyman did not use the pulpit to thunder about eternal damnation. He didn’t necessarily even believe in hell.

The revivalists did—most emphatically. George Whitefield told his American audiences not to be lulled by modern theologians who denied “The Eternity of Hell-Torments,” as he titled a sermon in Georgia. “Woe unto such blind leaders of the blind,” he said, warning that their denial of hell was the surest way to “promote infidelity and profaneness.” He urged sinners to imagine themselves forever tormented by “insulting devils” and “everlasting burnings” and the “never-dying worm of a self-condemning conscience.” That scene was elaborated by Jonathan Edwards in his famous sermon of 1741, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.” Forsaking the theology he’d been taught at Yale, he compared his listeners in Connecticut to a “loathsome insect” dangling over the pit of hell.

O sinner! Consider the fearful danger you are in. ’Tis a great furnace of wrath, a wide and bottomless pit,” Edwards warned. “You hang by a slender thread, with the flames of divine wrath flashing about it, and ready every moment to singe it, and burn it asunder.”

Those sermons appalled the theological establishment. An association of Congregationalist ministers denounced Whitefield for using “his utmost Craft and Cunning, to strike the Passions and engage the Affections of the People.” Harvard’s faculty charged him with the crime of “Enthusiasm.” Ezra Stiles, a Congregationalist minister who went on to become Yale’s president, complained that the revivalists’ strategy was to drive people “seriously, soberly, and solemnly out of their wits.” The mainline churches used their political power in some places to prevent the revivalists from preaching, but it was a losing struggle, especially after the American Revolution produced a nation that did not recognize any official religion. Once the mainline churches lost their privileged status (and subsidies), their preachers had to compete, and the competition was hell—literally.

As a motivational strategy, fire and brimstone prevailed during the First Great Awakening and long afterward. Since the eighteenth century, the rate of church membership has tripled in the United States, which is remarkable by contrast with the centuries-long secular trends in Europe. Why do two-thirds of Americans today belong to a church while so many pews in Europe are empty? In their incisive sociological analysis, The Churching of America, Finke and Stark conclude that it’s not because Americans are an inherently spiritual people or suffer from peculiar cultural anxieties. The difference is that while European governments have continued to officially recognize and subsidize the establishment churches, the United States hasn’t given any church a monopoly.

Once competition began in the eighteenth century, the greatest surge in devotion occurred not in mainline churches but in new Methodist churches continuing the hellfire tradition of Whitefield and Edwards. The Methodist preachers, far from being products of divinity school, were often local residents, unpaid amateurs supervised by visiting circuit riders who themselves lacked seminary training. From a tiny sect in the 1700s, the Methodists grew by 1850 into America’s largest religious denomination—and then they ran into the familiar problem of mainline churches. As the Methodist Church prospered, it established seminaries whose graduates came to preach a gentler message known as the “New School.” Traditionalists complained that the “characteristic idea of this system is benevolence.”

Once again, the benevolent message could not compete with hell. By the end of the nineteenth century Methodists were no longer the largest religious denomination in America. The newly triumphant upstarts were hell-fearing Catholics and Baptists, whose churches grew quickly into the twentieth century. Eventually many of their clergy modernized their message, and they, too, lost ground to revivalist preachers, this time to the evangelical and Pentecostal sects that grew so rapidly in the 1980s and beyond. beyond. As always, the establishment complained about the upstarts’ crude theology, but in the 1980s one mainline clergyman, Bishop Richard Wilke, urged his fellow Methodists to learn from the competition.

“The churches that are drawing people to them believe in sin, hell, and death,” Bishop Wilke explained. “Jesus, who knew what he was talking about, explained them, experienced them, and conquered them. If there is no sin, we do not need a Savior. If we do not need a Savior, we do not need preachers.” Without evil and the threat of hell, preachers would be out of luck, out of relevance, and out of a job. The history of Christianity in America isn’t a controlled experiment, but the data set is impressive: hundreds of millions of people exposed to competing incentives. They…

The Power of Bad: How the Negativity Effect Rules Us and How We Can Rule It / John Tierney and Roy F. Baumeister

The very beginning point of teaching must grab the attention of people. It draws them into what they are about to experience in the Word. The introductory teaching persuades people to pay attention. It convinces them they need to become engaged in the discussion rather than check the weather on their cell phones. One way to do this is in the form of a promise:

• If you will give me attention today, I will show you how to forgive when forgiving is hard.
• Thirty minutes from now, you will be able to enjoy an absolute assurance of your salvation.
• I want to teach you today how you can worry substantially less than you do.
• I want to talk to you today about how you can break destructive habits in your life.

Notice a couple of things about these statements:

• They are application oriented. We are not out to make smarter sinners. We are out to change behavior.
• They have a “what’s in it for me” orientation. This is based on a premise that is at the core of my theology: it is always in our best interest to live the Christian life. It is always good for us to follow God. God is a rewarder. We don’t choose between God and the good life. Following God is the good life. (For more on this, see my book, Obedience.)

The worst kind of introduction

The worst kind of introduction is perhaps the most common: “Open your Bibles today to …” Most teachers who use that kind of introduction have an attendance problem.

This kind of introduction assumes people are interested. Happily, some of them are. I would be. If you used that introduction with me, I’d be fine with it. I’d gladly give you my attention to discover what the Word says in that particular passage.

But, the truth is, most people wouldn’t be that interested. Most people are not staying up nights thinking, “I wonder what John 11 is about.”

Consequently, people don’t give you their full attention. They might look like they are paying attention. They are polite. But their mind is only half there. They are giving you what Linda Stone calls Continuous Partial Attention.6

Effective Bible Teachers want more than continuous partial attention. They want full-bodied, all-out attention. They want people on the edge of their seats. They want people to be fascinated by the gospel. Fascinated. Literally, their attention fastened. A good introduction is where that starts.

The Pre-introduction

Often, although not always, I use an introduction before the introduction. This is about rapport building. This is about connecting. This is about being human.

It is talking about the local high school football game. It is giving an update on the surgery. It might be talking about the weather or the latest news. It is about letting them know you are human and live in the same world as they do.

I am a big fan of video teaching. But, there are some things video can never do. Video cannot connect like a human can. Before you break open the Word, say hello.

Making the gospel attractive

Titus 2:10 says we are to make the gospel attractive. Attractive. The Greek word is kosmeo. It means to adorn. We get words like cosmetics and cosmopolitan from this word. Cosmopolitan Magazine is about being attractive. Let’s tease out this meaning further.

I would like to introduce you to two kinds of word studies. These have only been readily available to the average person in recent years. They taught us to do these studies in Greek class. I remember thinking, “Well, that is really cool, but who has time for that?” Today, there is an app for that. You can do in seconds what it used to take hours to do.

In addition to looking a word up in a dictionary, I’d invite you to look at vertical and horizontal word studies.

• A vertical word study looks at how this underlying Greek or Hebrew word is used in this translation in other places. (Stay with me; this is possible with no knowledge of Greek or Hebrew.)
• A horizontal word study is when we look at how the various translations translate this word in this verse. Often, there is not a one-to-one relationship between a word in one translation and a word in another translation. Translators speak of a pool of meaning. By looking at a number of translations, we dip into the whole pool.

So, let’s look at this word, kosmeo, as it is translated by the NIV in other places:7

We see that this word has the sense of adorning or decorating the gospel. It is like tasteful makeup on a woman’s face. It accents the beauty that is already there. This is what a good introduction does. Indeed, this is what good teaching does—it accents the full beauty of the gospel.

Let’s look at a horizontal word study of kosmeo. Here is the rendering from a few translations:

• So that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive. Titus 2:10b (NIV)
• Adding luster to the teaching of our Savior God. Titus 2:10b (MSG)
• In this way, they will make people want to believe in our Savior and God. Titus 2:10b (TLB)
• So that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior. Titus 2:10b (ESV)
• So that in everything they may be an ornament and do credit to the teaching [which is] from and about God our Savior. Titus 2:10b (AMP)
• Then everyone will show great respect for what is taught about God our Savior. Titus 2:10b (CEV)
• Then they will show the beauty of the teachings about God our Savior in everything they do. Titus 2:10b (GW)

A good introduction—indeed all teaching—shows the beauty of the teachings about God our Savior.

Application-oriented introduction

The introduction may include a number of things:

• Stories
• Quotes
• Statistics
• Questions

But the key part of an introduction can be reduced to a promise. It answers the questions, “What will I get if I give you my attention today?” Or, stated differently, “What do you want me to do about what you are talking about?”

Doing is the key thing. James spoke of being doers of the Word and not hearers only. Teachers need to help with that, and it needs to start in the introduction. The Great Commission is about teaching them to obey. It is not about making smarter sinners.

What’s in it for me?

Everyone is tuned in to radio station WIIFM: What’s in it for me?

If you can show people how the teaching today will benefit their life, you will have their undivided attention.

But, isn’t that appealing to selfishness?

The question reveals an underlying assumption. Allow me to reveal it in the form of several questions:

• Is it good for us to follow God?
• Is it always in our best interest to live the Christian life?
• Is God good?
• Is following God good for me?

If God is good …

If following God is good …

If obedience to God is always in my best interest …

If it is always good for me to follow God …

Then, there is no conflict. What is most glorifying to God is what is best for me. John Piper has a helpful quote from John Murray on this point:

There is no conflict between gratification of desire and the enhancement of man’s pleasure, on the one hand, and fulfillment of God’s command on the other.… The tension that often exists within us between a sense of duty and wholehearted spontaneity is a tension that arises from sin and a disobedient will. No such tension would have invaded the heart of unfallen man. And the operations of saving grace redirected to the end of removing the tension so that there may be, as there was with man at the beginning, the perfect complementation of duty and pleasure, of commandment and love.8

The introduction needs to spell this out. Reduce it to a sentence. Reduce it to a promise: if you really pay attention today, you will be one step closer to the abundant, John 10:10 life that Jesus promised.

Josh Hunt, The Effective Bible Teacher (Josh Hunt, 2013).