POP GOES THE CHURCH: First Session

I attended the POP GOES THE CHURCH workshop sponsored by Granger Community Church on Friday, March 14, 2008. The premise for this workshop, as stated previously, is that the church needs to adapt to today’s world if it expects to continue growing and being an influence in the community. Old church habits need to be left behind and modern methods need to take their place.

The speaker (Tim Stevens, executive pastor at Granger Community Church) began by describing some of the reasons church attendance is declining:

  • The Church tends to target people that are already ‘churchy’ – that have grown up in the church culture.
  • The Church is often oblivious to the larger culture (perhaps even disdainful of it) and as a result, alienates itself.
  • Most churches are ineffective in reaching new people.
  • Spiritual interest is growing in our culture, but the church is not seen as a place to explore this spiritual growth.

The first session of the workshop addressed the following question:

Is leveraging the culture in the church okay?

Within that category, these additional questions were raised:

How do we:

  • Use the culture to make church appealing to all generations?
  • Make sure the ‘message’ is not just a ‘show’?
  • Reach out to new people, not just transfers from other churches?
  • Create a great experience for new people?
  • Transfer church values to new believers?
  • Make sure we don’t cross ‘the line’?
  • Figure out how far is too far?
  • Balance two styles of churches?

The point was made early on that it may not be helpful to simply mimic a specific prop. What might work at Granger Community Church may not work at another church. Instead, we need to understand the principles being used at Granger and apply them to something that might work in our particular church.

There were also four main points the workshop examined:

  1. Churches tend to condemn things. As such, they become famous for what they oppose instead of what they stand for. The problem with this approach is that instead of changing to make our content relevant to the culture, we expect the culture to adapt to us and what we value.
  2. Churches tend to separate themselves from the culture: Sometimes churches have too many rules we can’t follow. The example given was of Jesus becoming angry with the religious leaders for his day because they imposed rules that weren’t in the Scriptures.
  3. Churches tend to embrace the culture: sometimes church becomes so relevant that it seems to be worshiping the culture instead of God. The difference between embracing and leveraging is this: leverage is a tool used to spread the message. Embracing is accepting the values of the culture as your own (or as the churches) and can go overboard.
  4. Churches tend to ignore the culture: sometimes there are opportunities presented by our culture that churches choose to ignore.

The workshop was presented in a somewhat interactive format. The speaker made his point, played a video (a clip from a popular TV show, or a small video created by the church) and asked the audience for comments or questions.

For example, we saw a video from a popular TV show called 24, but while the main characters acted out their parts, Granger Community Church dubbed over their voices to present their own message. Jack Bauer, the main character, was seen frantically flying a younger man in a helicopter while talking on his cell phone with a woman. The modified audio for this clip had the characters frantically talking about trying to get to church on time in a helicopter.

The clip was fun and entertaining and it made its point well: using a character from a popular TV show grabbed our attention, appealed to something we were already familiar with and helped us associate it with church, and it also served as an incentive to find out what else this church had to offer.

Although clearly an unorthodox approach to increasing church attendance, it’s nonetheless an effective approach. Granger Community Church has used this approach over the years, and it is currently the largest church in Northern Indiana.

The first session ended with a question and answer period followed by a break. I’ll take a look at the second session in my next blog…

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