Are We Making Children a Priority?

Every pastor has found the occasion to use the famous quote by Jesus, where He said, “Let the little children come to me and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” (Matthew 19:14) Certainly, Jesus was being very directive to those of us who would lead his Church today.

One of the tragedies of the Church today is that children’s ministry is so easily neglected. When budgets are cut, we cut out of the children’s ministry. When we are looking for staff, we staff first, the choir, then finance office, then the youth director, then a personal secretary for the pastor and maybe, sometimes later we hire one of the parents to do a little part-time work for the children’s programs.

It is so easy to neglect the children. We would not call it neglect, because we know there are parents who will take care of the needs or there will be some kindly grandmother who will teach the third grade Sunday school class. Maybe we can find someone who will do the children’s sermon. With a lot of persuasion and arm-twisting we recruit the workers for Vacation Bible-School and the Children’s Christmas Program. It seems that in the work we do in the church, it is so easy to put children’s ministry near the bottom of our priority list. This is ironic because most pastors have spent a good part of their lives trying their best to be good parents to their own children and to see that they had a good Christian education.

Most pastors realize that to have young families as a part of your church, you must have an effective children’s program. Yet, we as pastors, along with the partnership of older lay leaders of the local church, often put children’s ministry as our last priority.

I believe that Jesus’ advice about children is to the Church today. It’s time for us to change our priorities and make children’s ministry at the top of the list!

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Make plans to join us now for The Next Generation: Children, Youth and Family Ministries Training Conference at First United Methodist Church Arlington, Texas on October 22-24, 2014. We will feature workshops and keynote topics on the most effective way to minister to children, youth and families. Please invite your laity and leadership staff for this very important event!

How Do We Stop the Church From Declining?

Statistics on every denomination and religious group in America indicates that churches are on a significant decline. There are a lot of reasons for this decline; cultural changes, secularism, and we could speculate on many others. Ultimately, this leads to a significant question, “How do you reach people today and help them to come to know Christ, as well as get them involved in your church?”

This means doing something different not just more of the same old thing. These days, you can’t just pass out more leaflets about your church. You can’t just put bigger smiles on your greeter and make hospitality better. You can’t just advertise on the radio.

With the secular community we live in, simple invitations to church just don’t seem to work. A person might come if they are a good friend of yours but they are unlikely to stay and become involved. It is possible someone who is already a church-goer and an active Christian might respond to an invitation to become involved if they are looking for a new church, but this approach is not reaching most of our secular society. Inviting them or entertaining them is just not enough to lead them to Christ. We need to do more.

So what can we do? We must do what Jesus did. We must help people. Meeting the needs of people in your community through ministries is the way to reach them. How do you meet these needs? You do this by identifying the needs in your community and developing ministries to meet those specific needs. For example, if you want to reach young moms, then develop a “Young Moms Club”, where you deal with some of the issues of raising a family. If you are trying to bring in more Singles (which is the best way to grow your church), devise an effective divorce recovery program for divorced Singles or plan more Single events to help people meet.

This type of ministry is the way we can reach people today. I call it “Needs-Based Evangelism”. However, it’s not just about offering a class or a workshop to people; it’s about offering them help. It’s about showing them someone cares. This is what will help them understand what being a real Christian is about. These support ministries allow people to get to know others in the church better and want to be involved more. Through the friendships they develop and the encouragement they receive they will come to know the way of Jesus Christ. This type of ministry really works.

As pastor of a large Methodist church in Tulsa, I used this method of reaching new people and it worked all the time. Our church grew significantly because of ministries that I set up just like these. I now offer Needs-Based Evangelism training for churches, districts and organizations of all sizes throughout the U.S., Europe and Canada.  Please contact me for more information on this training or visit online.

It’s time we start doing ministry the way Jesus did, by meeting needs and maybe then we will see an end to the decline of the Church.

Recommended reading on this subject:

TELL and Needs-Based Evangelism, are two books I have written to help church leaders and congregations to be more effective in communicating the Gospel. I recommend these, as well as, The Great Evangelism Recession, by John S. Dickerson and The American Church Crisis, by David T. Olson.

Communication Matters: Are You Being Effective?

Recently, I read an article by a Catholic Priest. He was sad about the
quality of worship in the churches in his denomination. In his article,
he grieved about the poor way in which we conduct worship and lead
the Church in a time when the secular world is speaking so critically
of us. We need a more professional element in our service to Christ,
the commitment to do our best.

We have learned from contemporary businesses, both large and small, that you simply do not stay in business unless you do a good job. For businesses to succeed they must truly meet the needs of the public. The same is true for the Church. The gospel of Jesus Christ does meet our needs and yet so often we present it in a way that makes it seem truly irrelevant. So often our preaching is ineffective and our local church programming is just completely irrelevant. Much of it is out of date even for the 1950’s much less for today’s society. It’s time for us to understand that quality matters. Not only in what we share but in how we share it. Communication matters, be it effective or ineffective, it will have an impact.

Every churchgoer or church member wants to know, “How will I benefit from doing this? Will I learn? How will it help me in my daily life? Will I receive information that will help me make decisions or be a better parent?” We must learn again how to do “church” and do it more effectively to meet the needs of the public and reach new people for Christ.

There are churches that are succeeding today and we must learn from them. There are writers, speakers, leaders, and seminaries that are on target but most are not. It’s time that we become more effective at our callings and understand that effectiveness is part of our calling.

The organization I have created, Leadership Nexus Foundation, is committed to providing training to help the Church be more effective in reaching new disciples for Christ. On October 20-22, 2014 we will be holding a Leadership and Preaching Conference in Arlington, Texas. This conference will feature leaders from across the Church and from all areas of business to lead us in the best ways to communicate more effectively and lead the Church out of this decline. Make plans now to join us!  

Recommended reading on this subject:

TELL and Needs-Based Evangelism, are two books I have written to help church leaders and congregations be more effective in communicating the Gospel. I recommend these, as well as, The Great Evangelism Recession, by John S. Dickerson and The American Church Crisis, by David T. Olson.

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Dr. Bob Pierson travels all over the country and world doing his effective evangelism training. He is available to teach your church, district or congregation his proven and effective methods to reach new disciples for Christ and grow your church. For more information about this training, visit online, today.

Resolving Conflict in the Church

Recently, I received an email from a young clergy grieving over conflict in his church and the ineffectiveness of the techniques used in handling the conflict. Research is showing that churches are literally being destroyed by church fights.  A recent documentary, Betrayed: The Clergy Killer’s DNA, by US Films, effectively demonstrates the destruction that is happening across the Church worldwide.

The number of ministers leaving ministry today due to conflict is overwhelming. G. Lloyd Rediger's book, Clergy Killers is a great resource for outlining the damaging conflicts pastors encounter in their ministries and how to manage them to achieve the best outcome for all. In it he writes, “We are not just talking about conflict anymore, we are talking about emotional and spiritual abuse in traumatic proportions. And we are discovering that such abuse is exhausting pastors and draining the energy and resources of congregations and denominational programs.”[1]

We must learn how to find healthy resolutions for the conflict occurring in our churches and find healthy ways to deal with the hurt we have suffered at the hands of our abusers. On August 19-21, Leadership Nexus will sponsor the Developing Healthy Clergy and Congregations Conference  in Richmond, Virginia, to deal with this topic. This conference will seek to offer solutions for dealing with church conflict and restoring church unity, vitality and overall church health. I encourage you to participate you will find all kinds of instructions, help, and encouragement.

There has been conflict in the Church since the first century. It is time that we learn how to handle it before the Church is destroyed! Make plans to join us for this very important event!

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[1] Rediger, G. Lloyd, Clergy Killer’s (Logos Productions, Inc., 1997), 7.

What Are We Doing to Help Those Hurting From the Devastation of Divorce?

There are few problems in American society more terrible than divorce. We grieve over the violence of cancer. We struggle with violence in our streets. We are angry about injustice done in our companies and our country. However, one of the issues that we are not dealing with is divorce. I am not talking about how to prevent divorce, which, of course is most important. The reality is that half of our marriages are ending in divorce, and churches are not helping people through this difficult time in their life. I’m talking about ministering to the people who are going through this terribly painful, agonizing experience. 

Jesus taught us to be like the Good Samaritan. When someone is hurting, we are to help. Why don’t we help our brothers and sisters when they are going through one of the worst things any human being has to go through, a divorce?

In order to provide this type of ministry we need training. Leadership Nexus has designed two very helpful workshops to minister to this need:

First, we are offering a ministry to those going through divorce called, Single Again. It is a 3-day supportive workshop that will help anyone who has or is going through divorce. It is modeled off of a very successful divorce recovery workshop I began during my time as Senior Pastor of Christ United Methodist Church in Tulsa. 

Second, is a two-day workshop, Creating an Effective Singles Ministry, held in conjunction with the divorce recovery workshop. During this workshop you will be able to observe Single Again in progress and learn invaluable tools to use in your own ministry. 

I am very passionate about Singles Ministry and Divorce Care Ministries. It's time we start reaching out to this ever-growing population of adults. If we would reach out to them maybe our churches would grow and not die. We need to fulfill the call of the Great Commission and serve as the Good Samaritan to those going through the intense pain of divorce.

I hope you will make plans now to join me for this training and invite your family, friends or congregation to be a part of the Single Again event. I have had many people tell me it saved their life!

You can read more about both of these workshops by visiting our website or contacting me today.

The Church is Becoming a Rock Pile

I have just returned from England, where I was speaking to several groups of leaders of the Anglican Church, as a part of a series of lectures on “Effective Evangelism Today”. I was excited about this opportunity to get acquainted with these British church leaders, to sense their commitment, their interest and their concern. I was most impressed with the denominational leaders and their desire to be more effective in reaching new people for Christ today. I was also very excited about new methodologies that are being used there, and their openness to new approaches to help the Church. 

I am concerned about what is happening to the Church in England as it compares to what is happening to the Church in the United States. In the U.S., we are experiencing decline in all of the mainline denominations. Church leaders are closing churches; we have inadequate finances, and declining attendance. We have a crisis in the Church in the U.S., and we must respond, so that God’s Church can be strong and vital to reach new people for Christ.  In visiting England, I realized they have experienced this decline in a more significant way than we have in the U.S. And that simply reminds me of how serious the issue is for God’s Church around the planet.  Certainly there are places across the globe where the Church is vital and growing, and filled with excitement and success.  But the sad reality is that there are many places, particularly in the so-called ‘western world’, where the Church is declining in a significant way. 

In Scotland, we met a leader of the Methodist Church.  He explained that in the city of Edinburgh, the number of Methodist Churches had dwindled down to five. The five of them got together and decided there weren’t enough people, so they combined everyone together in one church.  Now, on most Sundays, there will be as many as 100 people.  Only one hundred Methodists in a city of over a half million – that’s a significant decline!

In England, we visited lots of interesting sights. At one point we were shown a series of garden areas on a church property. Around one of the beautiful ponds, there were rock markers. One of the old buildings stones, in fact, marked the garden areas. On one corner there was a stone that looked somewhat like the top of a steeple. I asked the pastor who was showing us around what it was, and he said this was the top of a church that had been torn down some years ago. All across England, we saw beautiful church buildings used for meeting halls; one was a café and retail store. Beautiful old cathedrals now empty of any church relationships, and serving meals and merchandise, rather than Jesus. 

The leaders of the churches in England are trying hard to change the negative trend. I’m enthused about any help that I can give. But the picture of that church steeple now in a rock pile around a garden reminded me of how critical our efforts are.

The secular society that we live in today will put the Church in a rock pile. We must change that enthusiastically, effectively, and immediately!

For information on doing evangelism more effectively and ending this epidemic of Church decline, please visit Leadership Nexus Foundation online or contact me today!

Why is Singles Ministry Dying?

Jesus was clear that we, as Christians

and as church leaders, must have a major concern about making new disciples for Christ and building His Church. The tragedy is so many churches that have had good Singles Ministry in the past are shutting down them down. What was once a thriving ministry is now dying and the overall Church is declining rapidly in most denominations, all over the country. The answer as to “why” this is happening may lie in how we are doing Singles Ministry.

There are many solutions being offered, but not all work. I believe that the solution that works best is to do needs-based ministry. When we help others, they come to know Christ. The secular society in which we live today cannot be reached by using condemning methods or simply by preaching to them, nor by just inviting them to church. We must reach people by helping where there are hurts and needs. I have found in my ministry, this “needs-based” approach works so successfully.  

For example, if you hold a cancer support group, a young mother’s club, or a widow and widowers fellowship at your church, you can integrate those groups into the life of your church. People from those outreach groups will start attending, becoming involved in the church and finding Christ in their lives.  

It is time for us to begin new and vital ministries to singles, particularly to those who have gone through the hurtful struggle of divorce. Half of all marriages are ending in divorce. It is painful for everyone involved, not just for the couple divorcing, but their friends and family, too. It is such a major need. 

Ministering to the needs of those going through divorce is a significant way to not only help the hurting but also to lead people to Christ. I have found it works over and over again. If you put together a divorce adjustment or ministry program it will lead people to your church and to Christ. In over thirty years of doing successful ministry, I have found that if twenty-five people come to your workshop or your class, half of them will become active in your church and make or remake a commitment to Christ within six months of the participating in the class. We have reached, literally, thousands of people with this Christ-centered model of ministry.

Jesus told us to be like the Good Samaritan. In Matthew 25, He told us to help those who are in need. One of the biggest needs in American culture today is ministry to people going through divorce. If you want to know how to do Singles Ministry in a way that works, I will be glad to teach you. By following my training, your church will grow significantly.

All of us are deeply concerned about the decline of the Church. If you are interested in reaching the over 100 million singles in America* and growing your church for Christ contact me today for more information on receiving effective divorce and singles ministry training. You may also visit online for more details and to find out about any upcoming workshops.

*Data from the US Census Bureau, 2011 report (www.census.gov/newsroom/releases/pdf/cb12ff-18_unmarried.pdf)