Breaking Away from Status Quo

Pastor,

A couple of suggestions:

Get a copy of Spurgeon's "Letters To My Students" and John Piper's "Brothers, We Are Not Professionals" and read through them. Others may have more recommendations, but if you've not read these I think you will find them encouraging and helpful, even if you don't agree with everything they say or if not everything they say fits your situation.

If you can, recruit some people to come early and pray before and during your services. This is something that Spurgeon apparently did, and he credited his success to those people praying.

And of course, hang in there. Your Savior is at the right hand of God interceding for you, and the Holy Spirit also intercedes for you acording to the will of God, so how can you fail?

 

Lectures to my Students is priceless. Every pastor should have a copy.

 

Shoot, it is "Lectures to my Students", not "Letters". Sorry about that. Sure wish I could edit that post.

 

I am not making excuses, just stating fact.

I have not felt led to do door to door calling either. As a bi-vocational pastor, time is limited, so I am more intensional, like yourself.

The point I was making is that while Christ was ministering, He was also teaching the 12 to minister and modeled that for them. I am constantly attempting to emulate our Lord in ministry. Yhe pastor can do all of the ministry or .... The reason for the decline, IMHO, is apathy and an erroneus attitude that the pastor should be doing it all. Check Acts, all of the believers were ministering, not just the preachers... If we could get that kind of commitment from the folks we serve, the Church would explode.

sorry, didn't mean to preach to the choir....

 

SBC
I pastored in a small town of 2500 for 12 years we averaged during much of that time about 50 professions of faith a year from door to door visitation, VBS etc. Though we had high days of 130+ we could never top 100 consistently. This is my take (and only mine)on the situation.

Most people are not looking for a place to serve they are looking for a place to be served hence they will gravitate after conversion to churches that offer a variety of programs beit music, youth, friends etc.

Secondly smaller chuches seem to attract a particular strain of people who are looking for a place to establish their kingdom rather than Christs.

Satan does not leave smaller works alone the fact is spiritual wickedness that is found in leadership (not yours) teachers, deacons etc though unknown can in fact stifle God's power in the church.

Satan has the resources of the world so don't be amazed when you win someone to Christ that they suddenly get a job that takes them away from church, or moves them from the city, or family and friends that have never witnessed to them pull them to another congregation whose preaching is suspect.

The only true way to stay depression in a small work is to determine that you are going to invest for the next generation of the church. By that I mean to take two or three teen age or college age young men and invest in their lives for the future of the church. Teach them to study, teach them how to knock doors, teach them people skills and as they grow in Christ they will not only share the load but according to Paul in Galations 6:6 they will ultimately be the ones to encourage you to continue in good works.

Finally I would encourage you to read much about leadership. Dr. Chappel at Lancaster Baptist in Ca. has a great leadership series on CD. John Waterloo at Central Baptist in Ponca city , Ok,is a rising young preacher who seems to be doing it right and obviously Maxwell and others. "everything rises and falls on leadership" therefore it behoves you to learn all you can concerning principles of leaderhsip. I am not advocating forgetting prayer and bible study they are still the priorities and staple of all ministry.

 

SBC I have gone through this as well. I can't know that anyone has done anything wrong or become complacent. But I do know that I had to learn to pray. (Im not suggesting you do) My prayers went out for and against the people of the church. But Ephesians 6:12 is still true. We are not only preachers, and hand shakers but we are warriors. Many churches and pastors fail because we dont want to fight the battle on the right battle ground.
Pray and fast until a changs is made or revival comes.

 

If you guys figure out an answer for this let me know. I'm in a church about the same size as SBC's, but it is located in one of the fastest growing areas of Louisiana (between Baton Rouge and New Orleans). Prior to Katrina we saw 33% population growth between 1990 and 2000...and that has probably increased in the last year.

In spite of the potential, there are some that just have no desire to grow what so ever. They just want to stay "a little country church" even though our community is becoming more suburban as a bedroom community for both Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

It's frustrating to say the least...

 

I know Im not a pastor, and I thank you gentlemen for tolerating my "butting in" here now and then. I just love reading all the things the pastors here like to talk about!

I do see what my pastor does though, and perhaps it can give you a help, too.

I know in smaller works the pastor tends to get in the mode of doing it all himself....because he has to for the most part. But since you have a well-established base, could you find someone else to lead a visitation night/time? This seems to work well in our church, and in fact it works well at Lancaster Baptist Church too, where Dr. Paul Chappell pastors. He was mentioned by someone else, so I thought Id throw that in.

But having someone else lead a visitation time gets at least one more person interested in that time, and it fosters more of a sense of more people working together.

Just a thought I had in reading through this.