George Barna has become for the Western churches
in the 1980s and 1990s what Alvin Toffler was for Western society:
the cataloguer of new directions, discerner of trends, the mentor
for leaders on ‘where we go from here’…

His MARKETING THE CHURCH, (Colorado Springs: Navpress,
1988) asked a lot of interesting questions not often on the agenda
of church vestries’ or deacons’ meetings:

Does your church have a marketing director? Did you
know Jesus had a marketing strategy? Do you know what the person-in-the-street
in your suburb thinks about your church? Have you researched which
of the 25 media available to potential church-attenders you should
use to communicate your existence? Did your last visitation programme
produce a host of new people? Do newcomers tell you your church
sign first attracted them to your church?

If you are a church-leader and your answer is ‘No’
to any or all of the above you should read this book.

George Barna is president of a marketing research
company and teaches at a Christian university. Pastors, he says,
are not trained in marketing, but they lead a business enterprise,
and are judged by parishioners on their marketing expertise. However,
some of their church-leaders may be brilliant in this area, but
aren’t given the opportunity to apply their skills to the church.

Then, too, some churches piously say they read the
Bible and pray and let God do the rest; they don’t believe in
these ‘modern techniques’.

Whenever a church-member invites a friend to church
there’s a marketing activity involved. So too with a letter-box
drop, carols-by-candle- light, a special sermon-series, evangelistic
crusade, ad in the local paper, or when the pastor offers the
prayer at the local council or rotary club.

Marketing, says Barna, is simply a ‘way of thinking’
about the effectiveness of these activities in achieving their
goals. The whole exercise is really about ‘organized commonsense’.

For example, if there are 20,000 persons in your
church’s catchment-area, how many attend church regularly, and
why don’t the others (research)? What’s your church’s vision for
reaching those the NT calls ‘lost’? What are your various strategies
to make contact with different people-groups in your area? (‘If
you fail to plan you plan to fail’). Who’s responsible for implementing
these (and what sort of congregational survey have you done to
ascertain church-members’ gifts and skills?). How is feedback
generated and organized?

Traditional evangelical church tactics for ‘outreach’
(home visitation, sign on the church lawn, ads in the local paper)
are generally ineffective, says Barna. Better: personal invitations,
home group studies, specially targeted programmes. Appoint a marketing
director (ideally not the pastor), and make sure your public communications
have rational and emotional as well as moral messages. One church
delivered thousands of leaflets in letter-boxes and didn’t attract
one customer: probably because people reacted against being told
they were going to hell! And if you promise you’re ‘the friendliest
church in town’ beware of promising something your congregation
may not be able to deliver. (And the other churches will get off-side
too, for some reason). Perhaps it’s best not to put your church
ad. in the religious section of the paper: your unchurched clients
don’t read in that area.

Generally it’s a most helpful book. Barna is cautious
about the church growth ‘numbers game’, as we all should be. He
also warns against marketing gimmicks that lose touch with the
essentials of the Christian gospel. In Christian marketing it’s
always important to marry hard/management and soft/spirituality
disciplines (is there a ‘spirituality’ of marketing?). What works
isn’t necessarily what’s right.

A special edition of the book adapting American models
and statistics to the Australian situation was released by Albatross
Books. My suggestion: get a copy for each church-leader, and analyse
it at your semi-annual retreat. Become more pragmatic, and more
prayerful, both.

THE FROG IN THE KETTLE (Regal Books, 1990) is subtitled
‘What Christians Need to Know About Life in the Year 2000’. The
1990s, says Barna, will bring significant changes in values, beliefs,
life-styles and opportunities. The frog in the kettle, of course,
was not aware of its environment hotting-up until it got cooked:
Christians are invited to be more aware than that.

For example, the effects of secularism in England
lead Barna to estimate that there are only 2 per cent of ‘true
believers’ left there. America (and presumably other Western nations)
will follow this trend. Our societies are rotting from the inside
out…

The only constant thing is change. Some prognostications:
* We are becoming more selfish, more materialistic; * time is
replacing money as our currency of choice; * the 90s will see
more varieties of pop religion emerge; * loyalty to the institutional
church is on the wane…

In short, materialism is in, commitment is out. New
sets of traditions will emerge; old traditions must be reshaped.
Churches must emphasize convenience (child-minding, parking, care
for the elderly or the handicapped etc.). We think the information
age has arrived: we now have access to only 3% of what we will
have at our fingertips in 2010! Even now the average American
household receives over 1000 pieces of unsolicited mail each year.
Portable computers, smart cards, ‘phone malls’, ‘smart houses’
(which regulate temperature, lighting etc automatically) will
be commonplace in 2000. ‘The effective church of 2000 will be
technologically savvy’.

The third millennium AD will see family and marriage
norms change. Divorce and multiple marriages will be much more
commonplace; loneliness will be more widespread. ‘By 2000 Americans
will generally believe that a life spent with the same partner
is both unusual and unnecessary.’ Multi-generational households
will increase. So the church will need to model commitment to
marriage vows and family life, and provide avenues for the lonely
to meet each other.

Leisure is becoming a more treasured resource, so
churches must adapt extra-curricular programs to focus on ‘value-added
events’. Modern westerners think the more different experiences
they have, the more likely they will be to find fulfilment.

Home-based work will be three times as common in
2000 as in 1990. More and more companies will offer their employees
flexible time-schedules.

The over-all challenge for the church is to expand
people’s concept of Christianity is a life-style and a purpose
rather than simply a ‘theology’. In the 1990s the fastest-growing
religious groups in America will be Christian sects (eg Mormonism),
or non-Christian (Islam, Buddhism, New Age). The number of clergy-women
will double by the year 2000. Loyalty to churches will decline:
among adults, one in four may attend several churches instead
of identifying only one as their ‘church home’. The denominations
that will make the greatest headway in the 90s will not be the
mainline churches, but those which are smaller and willing to
take greater risks.

As litigation increases, churches will have to be
ready to face legal challenges of all kinds. There are still millions
who believe it’s OK for businesses to knowingly harm the environment,
endanger public health in pursuit of corporate profits, sell products
known to be unsafe, consciously market products of inferior quality
and risk employee health and safety. So the church will need to
run educational programs to confront these issues.

Another factor is the composition of the population
of America (and by extrapolation) other Western societies. By
2000, the native-born Caucasian population in the U.S. will experience
zero population growth. Ministries will also need to refocus on
the changing needs of an increasing number of older adults. By
2010, one out of four senior citizens will also have children
living who will be senior citizens!

The middle-class will continue to shrink, resulting
in an economically polarized society of haves and have-nots. More
and more adults are being re-trained, going back to college to
earn another degree or certificate.

Barna concludes the book with ten imperatives: win
people to Christ, raise Bible knowledge, equip the Christian body,
establish Christian community, renew Christian behaviour, enhance
the image of the local church, champion Christian morals, live
by a Christian philosophy of life, restore people’s self-esteem,
and focus on reaching the world for Christ.

The book, in short, is about serving Christ better
by being smarter!

USER-FRIENDLY CHURCHES: What Christians Need to Know
About the Churches People Love to Go To (Ventura: Regal Books,
1991) has bad news and good news. Relatively few of America’s
300,000-plus are growing, but hundreds are ‘user-friendly’, ie.
in touch with the needs of those it wants to serve. This book,
while describing the principles that underlie the ‘success’ (my
quotes) of these churches, warns against naive ‘imitation’ of
these churches: ‘ministry by mimicry almost invariably results
in deterioration, rather than growth.’

The Willow Creek Community Church has grown in a
single decade to more than 14,000 weekly attenders. It is America’s
most copied church today. But most replications have failed. And
where increases in attendances have resulted, these have often
been due to ‘saints recirculating’. Each church, Barna emphasizes,
is unique.

The churches Barna studied range across America’s
denominational, theological and geographical spectrums. They all
have been growing at least 10 percent each year, and growing spiritually
too. (Some churches which grow numerically have spiritual depth
‘a mile long and an inch deep’).

What do these churches have in common? (1) A positive
attitude of expectancy: ‘adults these days are too busy and under
too much pressure to cheerfully and willingly offer their free
time to activities that continually fail’. (2) They major on growing
people rather than profilerating programs: programs not pulling
their weight are axed without anguish and anxiety. (3) They focus
on what they can do well: they don’t try to be the answer to everyone’s
search for the ideal church. (4) They invite feedback: they major
on integrity, excellence, consistency, credibility and reliability
than merely ‘going for the numbers’. (5) These churches’ teaching
majors on equipping and modelling: they remind their peop;le that
their responsibility was to be the church, not just to attend
one. (6) These churches have no ‘sacred cows’: all their ministries
are open to fair and constructive evaluation. (7) There is a passion
for vision: handed down from the top of the leadership ladder,
this vision can be articulated by the average member. (8) A high
proportion of the membership are ‘marketers’: they invite their
friends and neighbours, and follow up the initial contacts. (9)
The people themselves articulate the ‘lifestyle’ issues that confront
them, dictating the paths along which they are growing spiritually:
they then entrust the means and integrity of that growth to the
church leaders. (10) These congregations emphasize prayer: the
pastoral teams model this emphasis in their meetings, and in the
worship services. (11) They major on ministries to young people:
today’s youth have come to expect excellence from church; they
are quality driven, unwilling to accept mediocrity. (12) These
churches do not hold fast to outdated systems or structures: they
are flexible, and can respond quickly and decisively to a situation.
(13) The pastors of these churches are ‘real leaders’: they have
gifts of delegation, inspiring confidence, interaction, decision-making,
visibility, practicality, accountability and discernment. (14)
These pastors do not mind sharing the spotlight with others: they
are not afraid of taking ‘refresher’ absences or study leave;
indeed their churches benefit in many ways when they do. (15)
Truly successful churches enable their people to identify their
gifts: they then help these volunteers grow in the areas of their
giftedness. (16) Finally, some things these churches do not do:
they don’t limit God, they don’t beat dead horses, they don’t
humiliate visitors, they are not insulated from their communities,
they don’t alienate those who are different, they don’t pursue
cold-call evangelism, they don’t apologize for seeking help, they
don’t avoid confrontation, their staff is not based on precedent,
and they don’t necessarily take the safe route.

Growth is generally easier in a newly planted church
than in an existing congregation suffering from ‘hardening of
spiritual arteries’. Pastors of dynamic churches don’t necessarily
have a proven track-record of success in previous ventures; sometimes
they had failed. But in every case studied, ‘the church was more
than the sum of the efforts of the senior pastor. The church was
growing because the pastor had helped people catch the vision,
gain necessary training, have ample opportunities for personal
ministry and feel good about their involvement in the work of
the Church.’ If pastors and people are willing to give it everything
they’ve got, and are willing to fail, they’re in for a satisfying
Church-experience. ‘And let’s get on with it!’

George Barna’s later offering, THE POWER OF VISION:
How you can Capture and Apply God’s Vision for your Ministry,
Ventura: Regal Books, 1992, is a passionate call to church leaders
to grasp God’s vision for their life’s ministry, and pour themselves
into actualizing that vision in their churches. Seminaries, unfortunately,
virtually ignore vision as a critical dimension of ministry. Pastor
and people must work together to create and actualize a vision.

Barna’s vision for what a local church could become
was stimulated by his attendance at the well-known Willow Creek
Community Church, representing a radically different version for
a church-based ministry.

A vision statement is a one-paragraph summary of
a church’s or organization’s purpose in the Kingdom of God. It
is a clarification of the specific direction and activities the
church will pursue toward making a true ministry impact. A mission
statement, on the other hand, is a definition of the key ministry
objectives of the church. Mission statement are philosophical;
vision statements are strategic. While vision relates to specific
actions, mission relates to general approaches to action. By definition
all leaders are visionaries: the purpose of vision is to create
the future; it is conceptual, but also practical and detailed.

Vision has no force, power of impact unless it spreads
from the visionary to the visionless. When properly articulated,
vision does not make people afraid or doubtful. But be careful:
too much emphasis on a slogan can be detrimental; and encouraging
to pledge themselves to survival is an admission of defeat. Effective
leaders must be visionaries, but the best visions outlast the
visionaries.

How can a leader grasp God’s vision for his or her
ministry? Barna suggests four elements: Know yourself (in a self-evaluation,
ask some tough questions); Know your ministry environment (your
community, colleagues, congregation, and competition); Know God
(study the Word, pray and fast); Verify the Vision (don’t be discouraged,
but get the advice of visionary counselors).

A God-given vision helps us to dream big, giving
us continuity direction and purpose to his ministry through us.
It results in increased interest and commitment, and acceptance
of change rather than the status quo. The benefits of a clear
vision include an ability to say ‘no’ to other possibilities which
are not focussed on the primary purpose of the ministry; and an
opennessto what God wants to do in people’s lives. Visions breed
encouragement, confidence, loyalty, efficiency, and productivity.

Vision killers include tradition, fear, stereotypes,
complacency, fatigue, and short-term thinking.

Barna concludes with some Bible studies on vision-building,
an overvies of vision as a business management concept, and some
hints in moving a congregation towards articulating and owning
a vision for their ministry.

Rowland Croucher