3. Look for it.
Pinpointing when churches stop changing can be hard, especially when a congregation is growing older together. Usually it’s not one moment, but a series of small decisions that resist the new. Eventually these decisions leave a church struggling to connect with today’s culture.
Leaders committed to continual growth and change must be self-aware. Time for reflection and seeking feedback can highlight opportunities for change:
Is the average age of the people attending our church increasing or decreasing?
What percentage of our church is new over the last few years?
How much life change do we see taking place and among new followers of Christ vs. people who’ve been here many years?
4. Keep it going.
Regardless of where we sit on the spectrum of relevancy today, we will be stuck there unless we build in a culture of change. See change as a verb, not a noun: It’s not a change, but a process. As church leaders, our challenge is to keep things moving.
We don’t want to change merely for the sake of change. Instead, we can adopt an action bias and work toward a consistent, ongoing approach of meaningful change.
There’s no question that our culture is changing at an increasingly rapid rate. If we’re passionate about sharing the unchanging message of the Gospel with the more than 7 billion people on our planet, we must embrace change.