Church

4: Christians behaving badly

By Murray Robertson, Leadership Development Network

Of all the possible reasons why churches stop growing this is the saddest one to write about. Even more sadly, it could perhaps be the most common. In travelling around the country, I constantly hear stories about churches that were doing really well, when sadly something went wrong, the church split, the pastor left, attendance nose-dived and the community looked on in scorn at yet one more example of Christians behaving badly. It would be very easy to lose sight of the fact that on his final night Jesus prayed for unity among his followers, not as an end in itself, but so that the world might believe.

Why does it happen? It's easy enough to say it's a manifestation of sin, which it obviously is. Or that the Devil is having a go at us, which is equally true. But why do we give sin such a place among us? I suppose at one level we should not be surprised. Reading the Gospels is a sobering lesson on how badly religious people are capable of behaving. After all, Jesus' greatest opposition did not come from hard-bitten sinners. It came from the devoutly religious who were utterly sure they were right and Jesus was wrong. But we are followers of Jesus. Presumably we have faced the issue that Jesus is right, that's why we profess to follow him. But in fact many of us do not. The behaviour that is seen in some churches is a pretty clear indication that we are not following...

3. Missing the tide By Murray Robertson, Leadership Development Network
Since the Second World War there have been three periods when evangelical churches in New Zealand have experienced times of rapid growth. The first was in the 1950s, when all denominations experienced their last time of overall growth. It culminated in the hugely effective visit by Billy Graham in 1959. No one could have anticipated at that time that the 60s would turn out to be a very difficult decade for most churches.
The tide began to turn again in the 1970s with the Jesus movement that morphed into the charismatic renewal, which witnessed a time of rapid growth in many churches and the emergence of a number of newer denominations. One interesting thing was that many of the churches that had experienced encouraging growth in the 50s looked with some suspicion on some of the new phenomena that were occurring in the 70s. It was certainly different to what had happened in the 1950s.
By the mid 1980s, the renewal movement was running out of steam, as renewal movements do. Another difficult decade followed, followed by the beginnings of another upswing starting in the mid 90s. This again was different to what happened two decades previously. Not all those churches that had previously experienced healthy growth were impacted by what started happening in the 90s. The primary emphasis moved to more of a church-based evangelism emphasis, encouraged by things like the Alpha course, Willow...

Evangelical/Pentecostal churches have increased across Auckland, according to Dr Peter Lineham of Massey University.

New Zealand Christian Network (visionnetwork) plays a significant role in connecting evangelical and Pentecostal Christians, not only in Auckland but also around the country, and many church leaders at local and national level say this greater connectedness is an integral component of this growth.
Dr Peter Lineham, Associate Professor of History and Head of the School of Social and Cultural Studies at Massey University, spoke at a recent Auckland Church Leaders meeting on "Stock-taking: Where the Church is at in 2010 in Auckland." He said not all new Christians are evangelical or Pentecostal, but this grouping is now a significant one in the wider Church.
Some of the important points made from his, and others', research included: The constant rise of unbelief by Aucklanders in the past 40+ years is shown in a number of surveys. Asian and Pacific Island immigrants have swelled the numbers in many churches, especially the historic churches like Catholic, Presbyterian and Methodist, and this has further served to mask the true level of unbelief by so many Pakeha. The Catholic Church has coped reasonably well, whereas others, such as the Anglican Church, have markedly declined. Catholics have significantly benefited by their school system and huge immigrant support. Evangelical/Pentecostal churches have increased across Auckland. Not...

By Murray Robertson, Leadership Development Network 2. Controlling leadership A second common reason why otherwise healthy churches stop growing is a misunderstanding of the very nature of leadership. Far too many of us when we are in positions of leadership understand this to mean "I am in control" rather than "I can empower others". For when we look at the ministry of Jesus we see that his ministry is about empowering rather than controlling others.
We can see this happening at every level of the life of most churches. At the denominational level, leaders so often see than their role is to ensure that the congregations under their control remain faithful to patterns of doing church that have been decreed by others often centuries before. Any really growing church will have a high level of entrepreneurial characteristics which will mark it out as different to other congregations in the particular denomination, but sadly all too often these things cannot be accepted by those in charge, regardless of how effective they are, in the interests of denominational conformity.
For those denominations with a congregational pattern of government we can often encounter clear instances of control in the leadership exercised by the congregation. Rather than the congregational meeting entrusting leadership to the elders or governing body they keep power to themselves. Empowerment happens when both responsibility and authority is delegated to others. Many hesitate to give...

By Murray Robertson, Leadership Development Network 1. The phenomena of glass ceilings Normally, healthy churches will be growing churches. But virtually every church will sooner or later encounter a strange phenomenon. The church may have been experiencing very encouraging growth over many years, but one year for no apparent reason the church will stop growing. I've called it a glass ceiling because no one can see any apparent reason why this is occurring. If the issue is not addressed in some way after a couple of year's frustrations can begin to emerge. People become nostalgic for the good old days when many people were coming to faith and the church was growing. The situation can often turn septic and people can become very judgmental in their attitudes and before long we have one more dysfunctional church. The scenario can be seen all over the country. Denomination makes no difference in this case. What is happening is actually a very natural and very explicable thing. As a rule of thumb every time a church doubles in size it basically has to reinvent itself. But this is a very difficult thing to do and it is far easier to do things as they have been done in the past. The difficulty is that for every change that is made most people in the church will perceive it as loss. For example the thing that smaller churches highly prize is the intimate relationships possible in a small congregation, but as a church continues growing it is mission that replaces relationship as...

The Director of the Leadership Development Network, the Rev. Murray Robertson, spoke on the "glass ceiling" of church growth at a recent network gathering. The following is a summary of his talk. .................................... Two things have struck me about churches in New Zealand. Firstly, a huge level of churches are imploding. A major factor in many is that the leadership is controlling, rather than empowering. Second is the mystery of glass ceilings. Why do churches grow to a certain point and then stop for no apparent reason? Although I don't think the ultimate goal should be numerical growth, but to be effective agents for the Kingdom. If we do this, churches will grow. There seem to be four principal ingredients driving growth in a church:
Preaching. I don't think preaching is valued in our culture. In many churches I have visited, the senior pastor was not doing the preaching. I don't think you will find a thriving church where preaching is not valued. It's through preaching that vision gets communicated. If you don't have vision, you get frenzy. A sense of belonging. There needs to be an adequate small group ministry to connect people. A commitment to mission. Without mission, you are just spinning the wheels. Structure. Structure - the way the church is organised - is a problem in many places. The structure may be adequate at first, but as the place grows, the structure does not change, which can inhibit growth. As a rule of thumb, every time...

The South Sea Evangelical Church (SSEC), based in the Solomon Islands, has severed ties with one of its ministers, Michael Maeliau, because of what it considers to be heretical teachings. The Church's bishop, Matthias Lima, said the leadership of SSEC has had discussions with Mr Maeliau over a number of years concerning his teachings. However, he had chosen not to change his position, and the Church no longer recognises him as an ordained minister. The national director of visionnetwork, Glyn Carpenter, said he is saddened by this development. Mr Carpenter also serves as the current chairman of the South Pacific Evangelical Alliance, which is the regional body of the World Evangelical Alliance. At one time, Mr Maeliau was president of the Evangelical Fellowship of the South Pacific, which was the previous name of the South Pacific Evangelical Alliance. As chairman of the SPEA, Mr Carpenter is well acquainted with the history involving Mr Maeliau. Mr Maeliau had left the EFSP in 2004 after issues were raised about some of his teaching. He had continued to run prayer assemblies around the Pacific, but considerable tension had developed in some of the island nations over issues that have obviously now come to a head. The name change to SPEA was caused partly by the need to make a distinction between the two movements. Mr Carpenter said he was sorry to see the situation had reached the point of the SSEC publicly announcing their position regarding Michael, but he hoped they...

The Inter Church Working Party and Anglican Tax Unit has just sent out its latest review of motor vehicle rates, as follows: The vehicle reimbursing rates are based upon the 2009 AA review of costs. We are not proposing any change to the rates we calculated last year and have reproduced below the 2008 update Memo. The 2009 AA survey shows an overall reduction in costs of about 9%. Much of the reduction in costs comes from lower financing costs (ie, lower interest rates). Our formula gives less weight to financing costs as often the church is bearing at least some of this cost, and so our calculation is less sensitive to reductions in this area. In the context of the wide range of circumstances these rates are used the small changes in costs are not significant, and the existing rates as below are still fair to employer and employee. The suggested (maximum) reimbursement rates be the following (present rates in brackets) -
• up to 14,000 km annual running for all purposes - reimburse work running at 65 cents (64 cents).
• up to 20,000 km annual running for all purposes - reimburse at 53 cents (52 cents).
• up to 26,000 km annual running for all purposes - reimburse at 46 cents (44 cents).
• for mileage beyond chosen band range - reimburse at 25 cents (22 cents). Alternatively, the flat rate of 36 cents (32 cents) per km can be paid for unlimited running (ie without the need to record annual mileage and be concerned about exceeding a chosen band). Notes: Read More...

Religious liberty is not in imminent peril in the West. In both global and historic terms, countries like New Zealand enjoy a healthy measure of religious freedom. But there is no need for complacency.

These slides formed part of a presentation by Visionnetwork National Director Glyn Carpenter at the Equipt Conference (April 2009) co-hosted by the NZ Methodist, Wesleyan Methodist, and Nazarene churches, and the World Methodist Evangelism Institute.