4
The Six Phases of a Church . . . What Phase Are You In?
Jeremy and I continued to dialogue about his frustration and discouragement. As he slowly rocked back and forth in his chair, he shared from his heart like a man who has been holding on to something for way too long. He then suddenly and confidently leaned forward and, with a little smile on his face and relief in his eyes, said, “I have been more honest today than I have been in a long time. I have never been truly vulnerable with someone about my fears and insecurities. It feels really good, and although I know we haven’t even begun to talk about strategies to turn my church around, I still feel some hope for the first time.”
I said to him, “Jeremy, I am so glad to hear this. There is something liberating when we can just be honest about how we feel and about our frustrations. I think there is no way to find solutions until we can humbly and transparently admit the problems. You’ve done that today, Jeremy. You’ve done what many pastors and leaders desperately need to do but unfortunately don’t: you’ve kept it real. Just by sitting here with me, you have shown you are ready to do what it takes to move this church and your ministry upward and forward. You are like the parable of the talents, wanting to do all you can with all you’ve been given. Way to go!”
Then I leaned forward in my chair and told him, “Jeremy, there is still one more exercise we need to go through today before we wrap up our time together.”
He replied, with a slight undertone of laughter, “After this last hour together, I’m ready for anything.”
I laughed a little too, and said, “Okay then, here’s what we need to do. We need to figure out where your church is and why. Then we can plan our future meetings on where it needs to go.”
For the next several minutes I explained to Jeremy about the different stages of a church. I told him that the church is referred to as a body. There are several reasons for this biblical reference, but one of them is because there are stages to a church body just as there are stages to a human body. Think briefly about the human body . . .
A baby is conceived and grows inside the mother’s womb. Nine months later that baby is born and is reliant on the mother for everything. The toddler stage hits and the baby begins to experience his or her first level of independence. That baby becomes a child, then a teenager, and then an adult. At each stage he or she is becoming less and less reliant on the parent.
I told my friend Jeremy about these stages of the human body and how they are very similar to the growing pains in the stages of a church. Some churches experience great growth and continue doing amazing, God-honoring things year after year. Some experience growth only for a brief moment, and others experience it but then quickly find themselves like some adults—in a big rut.
Back when our church first opened up, we experienced tremendous growth (sort of like a child). We didn’t have a lot of financial support, coaching, or mentoring, or even all the knowledge necessary. But what we lacked in skill and resources we made up for in passion and hard work. In spite of all our shortcomings, we saw God do incredible things. We began to grow a little faster than we actually could keep up with. Our systems fell behind and we had to quickly scramble for what to do to sustain the growth. We went through multiple phases in those first several years, from unexplainable growth to struggling for more resources. We struggled with getting the right staff and leadership in place, as well as with the development of healthy processes that could sustain our growth—by far our biggest challenge in those early days.
I grabbed a piece of paper and began writing. I told Jeremy, “As I share with you these different stages of a church, I want you to try to discover what stage your church is in and why.” Pastors and leaders, as you are reading through this, I want you to do the same. Hopefully, you are taking your teams through this book, and you can spend a good amount of time dialoguing about the next portion of this chapter and discover together what stage you are in. This is a crucial step to growing your church. You cannot take your church where it needs to be if you can’t identify where it is right now. Again, that is what this book is all about—helping your church get to the stage of continual and sustainable growth.
The stages of church life are broken into six different categories. Below is a diagram that shows how the stages are laid out.
Before I explain in detail what each stage represents, I think it is important for me to clarify and give an overall healthy perspective of these stages.
Facts about the Stages
Clarifying Stage One
The Launch stage refers to the launching or starting of a new church. You might be in a situation where you have replaced the former pastor and you did not personally launch the church. As a result, you might not personally identify with Stage One. But it’s still good to recognize that it happened. If you’re a church planter, you will undoubtedly recognize and feel the pain of Stage One as we discuss it below.
You Can’t Skip a Stage
The first three stages that ultimately lead your church to the Increase stage cannot be skipped. You may spend less time in one and more time in another, but you must travel through each one before arriving at the Increase stage.
Forward and Backward
It’s worth noting that a church can move both forward and backward in the stages. If you move past the Increase stage, you can always navigate your way back. But if you are not careful, you can also bounce back and forth between Stages Two and Three. While not ideal, it does happen.
Churches Can Stay in the Increase Stage
The goal is to never enter into Stage Five (Merry-Go-Round). The goal is to move through the first three stages and then arrive and stay in Stage Four: Increase. It is possible to remain in that stage and experience continual and sustainable growth. You don’t have to enter the rest of the stages, where unfortunately many churches are living.
With God, All Things Are Possible
As I’ve stated, a high percentage of churches have moved past Stage Four and are now in Stage Five or Six. Although these are not the stages you want to be in, you can fight your way back. If you as the pastor or leader are willing to be hungry and humble, seek out help, apply what you learn, be open to change, and refuse to quit, you can lead your church and ministry back to the Increase stage. It can be done, but it will take work—both physical and emotional work! As my friend, author and coach Dr. Sam Chand, says, “You will only grow to the threshold of your pain.”
Let me now explain the stages and give you some signs that might indicate what stage you’re in. As you read through this, think about your own church—your history, your team, your culture, your realities, what’s happening in the church, what’s not happening in the church—and do an honest assessment of your church’s stage. This will help you as you read through the rest of this book and move your church to the Increase stage and experience continual and sustainable growth.
Stage One: LAUNCH
This is the birthing stage of a brand-new church plant. Churches are typically birthed in one of three ways: (1) A healthy church plants another church in a neighboring city; (2) a denomination provides resources and training for a person feeling led by God to a certain area; or (3) a person goes at it without either one of these options. It’s also important to note that there are “turnaround” churches. These churches are very similar to a church plant and are, most often, more difficult. They are typically very small in numbers and most likely have a building (usually a worn-out one). Maybe this church was once thriving, but for whatever reason that is no longer the case, and it will either shut its doors or—because there are enough people willing to change and wanting to do something new in their church—it will be championed by a leader who wants to start dreaming the dreams that someone stopped dreaming. One of these options I listed is most likely what happened at your church, even if you were not the one leading the church when it happened.
The Launch stage is home to two major struggles: money and people. You are trying to fund the church as it is getting off the ground. Some of those funds may come from outside sources and some from your current team. Either way, in most cases, funds are a challenge. The other challenge is people. When you are launching a church, you are trying to build up a team and create a critical mass. When you launch Sunday services, you are praying that the church grows even more and enough people who will give, serve, and lead start calling your church home. There are, of course, other challenges and obstacles, but it’s been my experience that money and people are most often at the top of the list.
Checklist to evaluate if you’re in Stage One
Money is a challenge and you may be finding it difficult to pay the bills each month.
Adding people is a challenge. You can’t seem to get past the point of critical mass for either your launch team or your church, which has already begun holding services.
You are short on resources, which may include equipment, furniture, lights, sound, or even leadership.
Utopia simply means “everything is going right.” You have fought past Stage One. The finances are getting stronger. You are operating in cash positive. You have enough funds to hire some staff, even if only part time. You are growing numerically. Each month your attendance seems to be trending upward. Because of this, you are drawing in higher caliber people, giving you stronger leaders and volunteers.
I remember our first couple of years at South Hills felt like this. We had fought through the Launch stage and quickly found ourselves in the Utopia stage. Everything was going right. We went from one service to two and then eventually three. We changed locations from the Masonic lodge, the place I spoke about in chapter 3, to a middle-school gymnasium. We began attracting some high-level leaders and givers. God was truly doing incredible things.
In the Utopia stage, it also seems like you can’t do anything wrong. Whatever you try seems to work. Any program you start, any event you host, or any outreach you put on just seems to go well. Looking back, we had that experience also. However, there was one big challenge: we didn’t know why it was working.
And if you don’t know why something is working, you won’t know how to fix it when it’s broken.
That became a big challenge as we entered Stage Three. Honestly, I remember speaking in Australia at a pastors’ conference and, during the Q&A session, someone raised their hand and asked, “Why do you think your church is growing so fast?” It was the first time someone had asked me that question, and I looked at them and said the only answer I could come up with: “I have no idea.” I really didn’t know. I knew we were having a blast, we were growing like crazy, and everything was going right; I just didn’t know why.
Checklist to evaluate if you’re in Stage Two
Attendance is growing.
Finances are growing.
Everything you do just seems to work.
Everything is going right, but you can’t honestly explain why.
Stage Three: WHIRLWIND
All the excitement and success you experienced in Stage Two has pushed you right into the middle of a whirlwind. You are most likely still growing, but now what is swirling around you is the harsh reality that you can’t keep up with the growth. As a matter of fact, you can barely take care of the people you already have. You are realizing that you lack so many things necessary to create consistent and sustainable growth. The systems and processes are behind in many areas: follow-up with guests, new believers, getting people involved in serving, discipleship, small groups, developing leaders, budgets, job descriptions, organizational charts. . . . Few of these things, if any, are in place and you’re caught right in the middle, realizing that if you don’t do something, you won’t be able to keep up the pace of growth you have experienced so far in your church. There are so many areas to correct, you don’t even know where to start. The problem is you can’t stop Sunday from coming each week, and you can’t seem to slow down the already overwhelming pressure you’re experiencing from day to day. Where in the world are you going to find the time, energy, or maybe even the right person to help you put all this in place so you can keep growing?
A few years back, in the city where I live, a brand-new little Mexican food place opened up. It wasn’t a sit-down restaurant; it was designed as more of a fast-food place. People began to talk about this little place and how great the food was. Now a little-known fact about me: I love Mexican food. Not only do I love Mexican food, I married a Mexican, and so I know the difference between good and bad Mexican food. Plus I live in Southern California, where good Mexican food can be found on almost every corner. So to hear people buzzing about this specific Mexican food got me curious. One day I decided to stop in for lunch. The line was out the door. Fortunately for me, I knew someone toward the front of the line, and feeling that they needed me to pray with them, I moved my way up there. (Just kidding. I just didn’t want to stand in that long line.) I have to tell you, the food was delicious, but the wait to get the food was long and the line moved very slowly.
Over the next couple weeks, I stopped by there a few more times and continued to notice how long it took to get my food and how slowly the line moved. I started to notice that people would walk up, see the line, and walk away. They began to realize that, although this place had great food, they didn’t have a system down to get it to you quickly. Not enough people behind the counter, not an effective process to quickly make the food or to get the food to the customer. So the food was great, but everything else wasn’t. After a while I noticed that the lines weren’t that long and I began to wonder how much money and how many customers they were losing, or maybe had lost altogether. They had a great product, but they didn’t have the systems in place to sustain the growth. (Sound familiar?) I think it would have been safe to say that this restaurant was in the Whirlwind stage.
One other sign that your church may be in Stage Three—and completely opposite of the first reason—is that your church has hit an attendance lid. You were growing like crazy in Stage Two, but now it seems like you bounce around the same attendance number, never able to break through. Sometimes you go over that attendance lid, but the growth is short-lived; it only seems to happen for a couple of weeks and eventually it drops back down. The attendance lid could vary (in my experience, from fifty to seventy-five people); sometimes it’s up a little and sometimes it’s down a little, but there is an identified number that you cannot seem to break through. The reason is simple: your current structure is perfectly designed to give you the results you are getting. Think of it like a small table. If I stand on top of it, it holds up. But if I add another person and then another and then another, eventually the table is going to break. Why? Because the structure of the table was only designed to handle so much weight. A church is no different. Your structure is designed to handle only so much attendance. Until you develop stronger, healthier, and more sustainable structures and processes, you will most likely not experience the growth you desire. You will, outside of a complete act of God, stay the same size.
Checklist to evaluate if you’re in Stage Three
Growth is outpacing finances.
Multiple systems and processes are lacking.
You have an attendance lid that you can’t seem to break through.
Stage Four: INCREASE
A lot goes into arriving at this stage and, most importantly, staying in this stage. It’s a place of continual and sustainable growth. The trend is consistently moving upward and forward. The stage of Increase is not only where each church should arrive, it is also where each church should stay. Going back to Stage Three or moving on to Stage Five is not the goal. The goal is to stay right here, in this place we call Increase. In the coming chapters, we will go into great detail on how to enter into and maintain this stage. If you are already here, however, then congratulations. You are here because you have:
- Given clarity to your mission—what your church is all about.
- Developed the systems and processes to give you a winning strategy.
- Defined your values; you know what to say yes to and what to say no to.
- Identified the “wins” for your church, as well as a way to measure them and hold each other accountable to them.
- Aligned your team—it’s healthy and has members in the right seats.
- Created the environment and culture; you have the right DNA in your church.
- Dialed in your services to reflect your mission and strategy.
This may sound a bit too corporate for the church world, but it is no different than the early church we find in the book of Acts. Scripture shows us why the early church experienced so much growth. Let’s take a look at the reasons.
Dependence on God
The early church understood that if God is not in control and we are not working under the direction of his Holy Spirit, nothing we do will matter. We see this in Acts 1:4–5: “Once when he was eating with them, he commanded them, ‘Do not leave Jerusalem until the Father sends you the gift he promised, as I told you before. John baptized with water, but in just a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit.’” It continues to be stated by Peter and the others over the next few chapters: if we don’t operate under God’s direction and the Holy Spirit, nothing we do will last.
Leadership Driven
Immediately following the reminder of the God factor, Peter (before anything else happens) got the right people on the bus in Acts 1:20. This early church understood the power of having the right leaders in place; so much so, they decided that before they did anything else, they needed to get the right leaders in the right seats. We are dependent on God, but God is also depending on us as leaders.
Clarity of Mission
They knew what Jesus had called them to do because he made it clear: “Go and make disciples of all the nations” (Matt. 28:19). They were to reach the unchurched, and did they ever. Acts 2:47 tells us, “And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved.” This early church had clarity of mission, and that clarity drove everything they did.
Strategy
Once people got saved, they were immediately brought into the fellowship. The early church created community by gathering in groups in their homes, getting people involved in serving, teaching them to live a God-centered life, and moving them toward acts of generosity. Think about it. We don’t see this kind of strategy until this early church is established. Jesus gave the clear mission and the disciples created the clear strategy.
Team Alignment
Acts 4:32 says, “All the believers were united in heart and mind.” They shared the same heart for the mission that Jesus gave, and they shared the same mind about how to fulfill that mission. This is absolute clarity. No one was wondering what the church was all about or what its mission was. They weren’t doing a bunch of programs for the simple sake of doing something. They were clear and aligned.
This was the early church and this was what made them experience Increase. They kept growing, seeing people saved, creating new disciples, developing a culture of community, service, and generosity. But it started with a clear mission and clear strategy. They were able to answer the two questions I ask every pastor when meeting with them: “What is your church all about?” and “How do you get it done?”
Checklist to evaluate if you’re in Stage Four
You have a clear mission and it’s being lived out in your staff, leaders, and church.
You have a clear strategy in place to fulfill the mission. It’s simple and effective.
Your church is seeing continual growth, both spiritually and numerically.
Your leadership is aligned. They are crystal clear on the mission and their role.
Your services, programs, strategy, and overall DNA match the mission of your church.
Stage Five: MERRY-GO-ROUND
This stage is called Merry-Go-Round because there’s a lot of movement but no progress. You were once in the Increase stage, but something happened. Something changed either in your heart or your spirit. Now you feel like you are simply going through the motions of church life. There may be a few contributing factors as to why or how you got here. Maybe you slowly began to drift away from the risk-taking entrepreneurial spirit that you had in the early stages and now you have settled into a much more comfortable place. Maybe your church has slipped more into an event-driven church rather than a process-driven church. Maybe you have allowed vision to leak. Some time ago, everyone in the church knew the mission and strategy and were all marching to the same beat, but maybe now if you asked an average attender what the mission is, they would recall with a level of uncertainty some sentence they heard at a service or in a meeting. Or maybe they would point to some bright green banner on the wall, with a lifeless statement on it that is miraculously supposed to keep the mission clearly planted in everyone’s heart. This Merry-Go-Round stage keeps the church busy but not productive.
Checklist to evaluate if you’re in Stage Five
You experienced a great season, but now you seem stuck.
The clarity of mission you once had among your leadership has faded.
Programs have overtaken process.
It’s been quite some time since you’ve done anything big that required faith.
At this stage, the church is in a slow decline. The challenging part of this stage is that the decline is often slow enough that it’s difficult to recognize. It doesn’t show up from month to month, sometimes not even from year to year, but it’s happening. I always say that churches are a lot like trees. A tree is either slowly growing or slowly dying; there is no in-between. The death may not show up for years because it is a very slow process, but it’s still happening. The same is true for a church. It may be a slow death that doesn’t show up for years, but it’s still happening.
There are a few reasons churches enter into the stage of Slow Death. Sometimes it’s because of pride: they know they are hurting but are unwilling to get help. In some cases they are holding on to past successes, believing that if they continue doing what worked in the past, the excitement and growth will return. It rarely does. The battle can often be one of tradition: they see the culture around them changing but are unwilling to change themselves. They view any new approach as a “watered down” gospel and will often criticize the growing church as being shallow, somehow making them feel a little better about their situation. In the battle of tradition, the pastor’s preference wins over the community’s needs. Finally, the most difficult reason for being in Stage Six is denial. This happens if the pastor is unwilling to admit or even see the problem. This stage creates conflict among other staff members who may see the problem but grow frustrated because they can’t do anything about it.
Checklist to evaluate if you’re in Stage Six
The trend of church attendance is not moving up but slowly moving down.
Tradition is winning over the changes that may be needed.
Conversations and tension continue among the staff about the church being relevant to the community.
Criticism toward growing churches and labeling them as “shallow” or more about “the show than the Spirit” becomes a frequent conversation.
After walking Jeremy through these stages, I concluded by asking him a simple question: “What stage do you think your church is in?”
Jeremy told me, “I think we are in the Whirlwind stage.” I asked him why, and he went on to tell me that “our church loves Jesus and wants to reach people, but that is the general feeling of most churches. What we lack is a clear and identifiable mission and strategy that is unique to our church, something that every person in the congregation knows and is striving to fulfill.” He went on to say, in a sort of funny way, “The reason I know they don’t know is because I don’t know.”
So my question to you, pastor, is this: What stage are you in? Please go back and review each stage, dialogue with your team, be extremely and brutally honest, and try to discover what stage your church is in. Ask yourself questions like:
- Why are we at this stage?
- What changed about our church, our leadership, our passion?
- What characteristics did we have in other stages that we don’t have in this one?
- What are we specifically lacking that the early church in Acts had?
- What in our church or staff will need to change for us to move to the Increase stage?
There are some specific traits that move churches (and any organization, for that matter) to the Increase stage. The rest of this book will detail those traits and explain how you can implement them in your church. I didn’t pull these concepts off the top of my head; they are the lessons learned by countless churches we have worked with, the results from hundreds of hours of research, and the insights from books written by leaders much greater than I. They are biblical methods used in churches and, quite honestly, in the corporate realm as well. Bottom line is, they work. Well, they work if you are willing to work them.
After Jeremy identified his church as being in the Whirlwind stage, I stood up in front of his desk, shook his hand, and said, “Okay, Jeremy, I think we know where your church is, and now we need to implement the elements that will lead you to the Increase stage I believe you desire. If you’re ready to get to work, then so am I.”
“I am willing to do whatever it takes,” he said. “I just want to get my church to a place of continual and sustainable growth.”
“Great! We will set up another time to connect and begin the journey.” Our time was over for the day, but now the real work was about to begin. We were about to move into the first of the seven unavoidable questions every leader must answer; this first one is always the most difficult because it forces you to get to the heart of what God has called you to do, to become clear on the unique mission your ministry has been designed to fulfill. This next step will be a little challenging, but I promise the reward is well worth it.