Fresh Expressions
How One Question Changed Our Church
Nothing seemed to work anymore.
For years our church had grown by doing what we did well. Whether it was offering youth programming, life group development, high-quality worship, or meaningful Bible studies with well-qualified staff, we lived by doing those things “excellently.” And it worked well—until it no longer did.
First Church is a normal church in a normal town in Pennsylvania. I had come to the church in 2011 fresh off a successful ministry stint elsewhere with my seminary degree firmly in hand. First Church had grown significantly before my arrival and I was excited to see that growth continue. The church had primarily grown by offering effective ministry programs with excellence. The church even boasted a meaningful traditional service and a relevant contemporary service! First Church had everything going for it that would allow it to continue to thrive! And it did—until it no longer did.
Suddenly, over the next few years, something began to shift. Everything that had once worked so well no longer seemed to have quite the same effect. No matter what we did—or how well we did it--fewer people came on Sunday morning. Energy began to dip. Vitality waned. Questions began to arise. The odd thing was that there was not any crisis or obvious reason for lower engagement. We were doing everything well that we had been doing from a ministry perspective, and doing it better than ever. Not knowing what else to do, I resorted to my ministry training and doubled down on what had always worked before. This included working even harder for even better sermons, even better worship experiences, and even better ministry opportunities.
However, we began to notice that the harder we worked, the less return on investment we were experiencing. No matter how hard we tried, we just were not seeing the increase in people coming to our gathered, inherited church experiences on Sunday mornings. In fact, we began to see less. Something was changing in the culture. But we could not fully put our finger on the reality of that change, and we certainly did not know how to respond to the change.
What would a church made up of 100 gatherings of 10 throughout the week look like as compared to a gathering on Sunday morning of 1000?
As this reality began to unfold, my anxiety began rising—significantly! Why was everything I had been taught about effective ministry no longer working? Why were people no longer coming to join us on Sunday morning as they once had? What were we going to do? It would be one thing if there had been a crisis of sorts, or we did not have effective programming, or there was significant division of some type in the church. But none of these things were happening. The simple, but significant reality was that no matter how good the worship was that we offered on Sunday morning, people just no longer came to church on Sunday mornings as a default. I found myself almost hyperventilating!
It was around this time that God, in God’s grace, allowed something almost miraculous to occur. Our church had a connection at the time with a seminary student who was in his last year of seminary. At the time he was completing one of his final courses on church planting. He asked if he could study our church so that his project could be based on a real-life example and not just theory. We figured we had nothing to lose, so we said, “Sure.” During his study of our church, this student ended up proposing a key, catalytic question that would end up changing the trajectory and DNA of our church. The question he raised was: What would a church made up of 100 gatherings of 10 throughout the week look like as compared to a gathering on Sunday morning of 1000?
This one question changed how we viewed being church. The power of this question was not in its scale but rather its orientation. We could just as easily ask, “What would a church made up of 10 gatherings of 10 look like instead of a gathering of 100 on a Sunday morning?” We began to ask several related questions: What if instead of simply relying on “church at an established worship gathering” we began to experiment with fresh expressions of church throughout the area? What if we began to gather for church on other people’s turf and not just our own? What would it look like to gather in groups as church in homes, at work, at gyms, outdoors, in the community, around tables, in parks, etc.?
The pursuit of this question became the genesis of what we came to call the Acts Network in our setting. The Acts Network is a series of fresh expressions of worship connected to First Church through tethers of vision, relationships, service, giving, and commitment. We are still one church. These Fresh Expressions of worship are oriented to meeting people where they are, on their turf, in the natural rhythms of life, in order to do and be church. We have grown to call this part of who we are our “sent” side. At the same time, we still gather for worship on Sunday mornings in more traditional ways. We call this part of who we are our “gathered side.” This reality has created a “both/and” approach to living out the Kingdom, with each part offering unique gifts in a blended ecology of being God’s church.
Some of the strengths of the sent side of who we are include nimbleness, decentralized organization, an evangelistic impulse, getting into the niches of community, and operating with more of an artisan feel. Some of the strengths of the gathered side of who we are include offering resources, a focus on formal discipleship, centralized organization, community recognition, and stability. These strengths are all held together then in the love of Christ. Although it is messy at times, and although we are still figuring out how this model of church works, we are once again seeing an increase in vitality as the strengths of both “sides” contribute to the blended ecology of God’s church. Part of the beauty here is that we have discovered a complimentary culture emerging, rather than a competitive one. It is not a matter of one side of the church being “better” than the other. It is a matter of the Body of Christ living into its giftedness.
In many ways, this approach to church felt like a new form of church. The irony was that it was really more of a rediscovering of church as God intended. We hear directly in scripture, “Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved” (Acts 2:46-47). As in Acts, we find ourselves once again in a time and culture in which the Gospel of Jesus is increasingly not known by the masses. Maybe it makes sense, then, to once again embrace a form of church for just such a reality.
Matt Lake, D.Min, is a lead pastor, coach, and consultant with A.E. Sloan and Fresh Expressions U.S. who has decades of ministry experience. Matt has also written a book entitled Crossing the Discipleship Chasm, which focuses on turning crowds into Jesus followers in the midst of today's many ministry challenges. He is currently serving at First Church in Williamsport, PA. First Church is an urban congregation that consists of a mix of traditional, contemporary, and Fresh Expression worship experiences.