Tag Archives: Becoming a Better Church

Why Do We Do the Things We Do In Church?

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Does anyone know how popular reading is?  Kind of a nebulous concept, but I decided to take stab at it. Many people say that Harry Potter has re-energized the world’s passion for reading. Kids everywhere are reading more, and the adults are following. So, researching the first Potter book should give me a good answer to my question, right?

i was kind of shocked at what I found. Do you know how many people in the U.S. alone have read any one Harry Potter book?  I remember once that a really popular book will see one copy borrowed and read for every copy sold.  So, take the sales of a book, double it… and you should have the number of people reading that book.  So I did that for the first Potter book, and then doubled that number (because it is really popular for kids to check it out and read).  What percentage of U.S. do you think I came up with? 50%, 60%, 80%? Not even close.  Turns out that even with my generous estimate of readership, the first Harry Potter book has probably only been read by less than 20% of the U.S. population.

Contrast that with movies. If you had a big budget Hollywood movie that was only seen by 20% of the population… you would have a huge box office bomb.

Yet in the Church, how to we usually set up learning opportunities? Book reading clubs.

Studies show that up to 80% of the people who don’t go to church would go if invited. The notion that people in the U.S. just hate churches and that we are losing ground because we are chasing people off just doesn’t hold weight to the evidence out there.  People rarely get invited, and when they do… they run in this weird event that they just can’t understand.

Why do we have sermons after all?  I still can’t figure that one out. I like them myself frequently… but I am still not sure why we have them.  In fact, if I think back on the times and events that shaped my spiritual life, not a single one of them involves a sermon.  I can barely remember any of them, come to think of it.

That is natural for humans. Hundreds of years of educational psychology have told us that we will only remember 10% of what we hear.  The sermon has never been educational valid (but for that matter, neither has the lecture), yet we still keep doing them, over and over again.

I ran into this article that sheds some interesting historical light on the topic:

The Godfather of Christian Media: Exploring the Sermon

Turns out, the sermon is a relatively new blip on the map of human history, something that has its roots in pre-Christian Greek society.  It is interesting to note that the modern-day equivalent of this ancient Greek practice would actually be a movie theater, not a church sermon.

Here is one of the most convicting quotes:

“The original proclamation of the Christian message was a two-way conversation… but when the oratorical schools of the Western world laid hold of the Christian message, they made Christian preaching something vastly different. Oratory tended to take the place of conversation.”

And we wonder why people are leaving the Church? They want a conversation and we give them a sermon.

Becoming a Better Church: Hearing vs. Doing

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William Glasser is quoted as saying:

“We Learn…
10% of what we read
20% of what we hear
30% of what we see
50% of what we see and hear
70% of what we discuss
80% of what we experience
95% of what we teach others.”

Right there is a good answer to preachers that ponder why their church never does anything that they preach about. If people disagreed with you, they would leave the Church… right? So they stay, listen to your sermons, nod their heads, and then… nothing. Few people get moved to action. Many pastors have grown frustrated trying to figure out why.

Here is where I have to say the hard stuff. You ready? Are you sure? You see, the problem is that sermons aren’t a good way to get people to learn.  As much as people talk about “experiencing” God at church, that is not the kind of experience Glasser was referring to above. If you ask a question during your sermon, I am sorry… but that doesn’t count as discussing. And no matter how cool your PowerPoint background animations are, they don’t count as “seeing” on the list quoted above.

Yep… this is the hard part. People are only going to learn 20% of what you preach. And if you tell funny jokes 20% of the time… guess which 20% they are going to remember best?

To be honest, the educational theorist in me can’t figure out a true use for sermons. I have preached many myself, actually. But I still can’t find a reason to justify their existence.  We will only learn 20% of what we hear at any given sermon… and that is if it holds our attention.

For that matter, I also can’t find a good, valid reason for a lecture at school.  There is over 100 years of educational research that has proven that the lecture is the least effective way to teach. But we still yak away in colleges, grade schools, and churches every day all the time.

The thing is, I love the communal aspect of the Sunday morning meeting.  Worshiping together, shaking people’s hands, getting caught up on someone’s life, hearing announcements (I like announcements. Really. I think I am the only one sometimes…), getting prayer,  and all of those other activities are vital for a healthy church.

But what to do with the sermon? I have thought that maybe churches should just cancel the sermon and have small group meetings after worship.  Everyone goes from church to the house they meet at, has a focused discussion, and then eats together.  Or maybe the sermon could be a time to cast vision for the church after an extended time of fellowship.

The best thing I have for the sermon, however, comes from an educational idea called the Microlecture. Maybe we should have microsermons that get right to the point. Then, people gather together in groups to explore the key concepts. Of course, that is supposed to be the point of having small groups midweek.  So, once again… what to do with the sermon time?

I can’t think of an effective alternative that just doesn’t recreate other things that are happening in church.

The only thing I can up with is this: don’t expect people in your Church to learn what is preached from the front.Their main avenue of learning has to come from another source – one that allows them to discuss, experience, and teach others.

Those are the avenues I want to explore next.

Becoming a Better Church: Building An Active Atmosphere

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Note to self: don’t start a new blog series right before a holiday. I will take forever to get around to continuing it….

Anyways, I started writing in my last post about how the church can become better at what we do.  Churches already do a pretty good job at what they do, but I also feel that there is room for more variety out there… or maybe, space to also do something completely different.

This, of course, is all a response to a post by Ryan about being better communicators. I responded that church leaders need to learn educational theory to be better communicators.  Ryan wanted me to expand on that, so naturally I posted about a new way to build church buildings.

Urrr… huh?  How do those two concepts fit together?  You see, in order to do something new with communication in church, you need an entirely different atmosphere. The current church atmosphere in most churches is of the “sit and soak” variety.  You sit and listen during the sermon.  That works for some.

However, I am going to go on a tangent about “active learning” and how we need it in church. Active learning won’t work in a passive church atmosphere. Note that I am not referring to worship style here. Some churches have a very lively, interactive worship time at church.  Once that is over, however, everything else is passive – everyone sits when the preaching starts, or Sunday School begins, or pretty much when anything else related to “discipleship” starts.  The result of this is that few people go out and do what they heard. Passive listening to preaching will lead to passive learning, which in turn equals a passive spiritual life.

What I am shooting for is an active spiritual life, which requires active learning.  Active learning requires active teaching.  Active teaching will require an active atmosphere – one where people are used to things happening all the time. Thus the need for a new church blueprint.

The ideas I explored in the last post are just one set of ideas for how to create an atmosphere that is active at church. People would become used to activity happening all around their building. They would also begin to realize that their church is different, and then they just might be ready for the different experience they are going to get during the sermon: an active learning experience.

Which I will go into more detail, Lord willing, next blog post.

Becoming a Better Church: Start With the Blueprint

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I’m reviving this blog because of a discussion on another blog.  I’ve always had ideas rattling around in my head about how the Christian Church of today could do a better job at… well… being a church.  My friend Ryan was blogging about being better communicators at church. I commented that if pastors want people to actually do what is preached on Sunday mornings, then they basically need a better grasp of educational theory – not just learn how to become better communicators.  There are many really excellent communicators out there in many churches, but we still see church attendance declining.  Ryan challenged me to share my thoughts on that. Basic summary, skipping some details, but you get the picture. You being Ryan, because I bet you are the only one that will read this post 🙂

Anyways, as I thought about it, I can’t really start with just how to do better preaching.  There is a bigger picture out there of how the Church needs to become a better Church. Not as in “toss everything out and start over,” or even as in “abandon the whole concept as obsolete,” but more as in “build on the strengths that are there and redo the things that aren’t working.”

The first thing that is not working, from what I see, is the church building itself. Why would I start a series on how to become better at preaching with a post on what we need to do differently with the Church building? Well, hang with me and find out.

Ever noticed how cold, uninviting, and abandoned church buildings look during the week? If you didn’t attend one – would you ever set foot in there? I even saw one Church building in Arlington that had a huge fence around it and a keypad-guarded iron gate. This “house of God” looked more like an exclusive country club than a place where people can find spiritual respite from the crazy world around us.

Let’s face it – no matter how “alive” your church is during your services and special events, the building itself looks dead 90% of the time.  And that makes the Church an intimidating place for new people that pass by it during the week.

When I first moved to Dallas, we lived in East Dallas and attended a church there. I noticed that many people who didn’t go to church were constantly in and out of the building all morning long… because we met in a community center. So that made me think: what if the church building itself were a community center?

I don’t mean “what if it met in a community center?” I mean, if you build a new church building and make that into a community center rather than a place that gets used a few hours a week, double bonus time if there is a wedding?

You would have a large meeting area, that could probably double as a gym or some other venue during the week. Then you would have your classrooms for Sunday morning. But then what if you opened up those rooms during the week for exercise classes, job skills classes, community meetings, family reunions, Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, you name it? Get the community flowing in and out of the building all day long.

But why stop there? Why not have a wing of office spaces. Members of the church that are doctors, counselors, lawyers, restaurant owners, artists, etc could rent out office space there.  They would get subsidized rent there, passing those savings on to their customers. They could also hold free clinics and festivals and other events for the community.  Of course, you could also see outreach ministries setting up office here, as well as the pastor. Think of the impact that would have on people to just be able to run in to a pastor in the hall when they go to see the doctor or grab a scone at a coffee shop. They could see he is just a normal person.. and maybe his church isn’t half bad?

And don’t forget about the land around the center. There should be enough there for outdoor activities, games, soccer fields, basketball courts, a community farm, picnics, playgrounds, etc.

The point is to make the church building an active, alive hub of activity throughout the week… a place to build community like never before.

So that is where I would start: redo those church building blueprints out there.  But that is not all: I do still want to examine how we preach in church, and why that is failing us overall. A few points that I will hit on in the future:

  • No matter how good of a communicator a preacher is, the typical church sermon will never get people to actually do the things that are being preached on a significant scale.
  • The best tool that most people have on them to help them learn is the cellphone… and we tell people to turn it off during church.
  • The Internet is one of the best tools that we have to teach people how to live out their faith, but most people in the church that are even interested in the Internet are too caught up in figuring out what Church people want in a website that they never ask what people really need from website. A Church leader need to lead people to what they need online, not just follow his or her flock in to whatever they are interested in.