What Pep Boys can teach us about why people leave the Church.

I drive a lot.  More than I like.  In fact, last year my business mileage was just a tick over 32,000.  That is not including family trips and personal trips.  That means I change the oil in my car often, every 3500 miles to be exact.  My Honda has 330,000 miles and my goal is 500,000 before I sell her.  I have become fast at changing the oil in my car-7 minutes not counting putting the tools up.  Part of my routine was to go to the local Pep Boys, pick up the filter and oil, and occasionally a few other things.  The trip to Pep Boys took longer than the oil change itself.

Last month, I received a $10 off coupon. I was thrilled because last year I estimate that I spent about $500 at this Pep Boys.  I would get the oil change done for less than $20.  Alas, it was not to be.  The bar code on the coupon was apparently unrecognizable to the register.   Things were tried, other things were tried, and the clerk pronounced curses against the computer and its descendants. 

The supervisor was called over.  Things were tried again and other things were tried, and the ancestry of the computer was questioned.  Finally, the clerk turned the screen to where I couldn’t see it, hit a few keystrokes and said, “There, that takes care of it.”  But the $10 was not taken off the ticket.  When I questioned the total I was told, “No, it is all good.”  The supervisor left and disappeared into the place where staff members go to hide in times of frustration.   I felt like my concerns were less important than company policy.  I felt like I was not heard.  I felt like they wanted me to go away with as little noise and trouble as possible.  I am not the sort to make a scene so I paid the ticket and left.  All total, I had spent 45 minutes in the store, the vast majority of which was at the counter. 

By that evening, I had discovered that I could buy oil filters and oil from Amazon.  And if ordered in sufficient bulk it is just as cheap as the local Pep Boys.  Not only that, a nice man saves me the trip to town by delivering it to my front door.  Yesterday, it was oil change time again.  I went to my shed, got my tools, filter and oil and had the job done before I could have driven to Pep Boys.  Now that Amazon knows my car make and model I can order almost everything I need and have it at my front door in a few days.  What do you suppose the chances are that I will ever go back to Pep Boys?

I doubt that the two clerks were evil people. They wanted to be helpful, but they didn’t have the will or most likely the ability to step outside of policy and protocols.  They very likely, like me, felt powerless against the “machine”.  Somewhere in the vast 800-store chain the needs of one $500 a year customer is not terribly important.  After all, I am just one.

Interestingly, my experience at Pep Boys is not unlike the reasons people are leaving organized religion in record numbers.  Jason Jennings in his book “Hit the Ground Running” refers to this provocative quote, “People do not quit jobs, they quit bosses.”  We might restate it for our purposes to say, “People do not quit churches, they quit leadership.”  No one ever left a church because they were so well loved, so appreciated, so cared for, or so listened to that they were overwhelmed by grace. 

I fear that in the Church’s mad rush to grow numerically, to be the next cutting edge ministry, to have great systems, music, teaching, light show, fog, etc. that we are forgetting the individual.  People are lost in the processes and become frustrated.  Sometimes churches and leaders can treat people like dairy cows, “give your 5 gallons a day and the rest of the time stay out of the way.”  The member gives and gives and gives and then one day, drops off the face of the church and we wonder what went wrong. 

To illustrate from the world of business, a focus group of clients were giving their honest evaluation to the executive team of a company.  One of the clients was an admiral who took his turn to ask how many of the executives had even been on a ship or even talked to a sailor.  The answer was none, not a single one.  The admiral went on to offer the advice that instead of trying to sell products or services to the Navy the business leaders should take some time to listen, to see what sailors do, how they use the product and how it fits in their life at sea.

When was the last time as a church leader you sat down with your people, without an agenda, or a meeting and asked, “How are you doing in life?  How do you feel about the church’s direction or progress?  Are you getting the help you need?”  Most church leaders are deeply dedicated men and women of God.  But they are feeding a monster called church growth.  They unconsciously know that if they don’t feed the monster, the monster will eat them.  So, they are always after the next thing.  But in the process of the next thing, people become giving units or available volunteer hours, or a human resource to be used. 

I was once tasked with contacting a high profile individual from a mega church to be a speaker at an event.  I could not speak to this individual directly, nor could I reach their executive assistant, but I could speak to the secretary to the executive assistant that would make sure my message got at least that far.  I wondered what it would be like to be a member of that congregation.

People are leaving the church in America in staggering numbers.  The back door of the church is open wider now than ever before.  The only way to close that door is for the priority of people to return to the forefront of the life and ministry of the church.  We can only close that door by making sure that people know they are a priority as an individual.

Bee Keeping and Growing a Church

I am a beekeeper now.  But it is mostly by accident and I don’t deserve much credit.  In fact, I would like to keep track of who does get the credit.  Let me give a little backstory and then make an application for the church.

Late last summer, a friend called and asked if I would like a couple of bee boxes.  Her ex-husband had bees in town, but the colony died off due to the city spraying for bugs.  I have long been interested in keeping bees, so the offer of free equipment was a no-brainer. 

·      Credit:  My friend and her ex-husband.

A couple of days later, I make the arrangements to go pick-up the bee boxes and a few other things associated with bee keeping.  It was more than would fit in the back of my little Honda, so my son agreed to help me and to use his truck to haul all the  stuff home.  Counting the cinderblocks on which the boxes sit it was actually two loads of stuff.  Not only did my son use his truck he did the heavy lifting and loading the collection. 

·      Credit: Mostly my son, but I get a little.

Once home we found the boxes had been neglected for a long time.  They were dirty and I thought they might need to be burned.  But with the advice from real beekeepers and the hard work of my wife and I, the boxes cleaned up very nicely and were stacked and ready to use.  (Side bar: of all the hobbyists in the world I believe that beekeepers are the most helpful for novices.  Their willingness to offer council and to help is remarkable)

·      Credit:  Beekeepers, my wife-and I will take a little.

I learned that late summer/early fall is not the best time of year to start beekeeping (see above comment about the helpfulness of beekeepers).  So, I stored the boxes by my shop where they sat through the winter.   During this time I talked up by new hobby with a neighbor who sells honey; naturally, he was interested.  Then last Saturday his wife calls and asks if I wanted some bees.  Their neighbor discovered a honeybee colony in a lawn decoration that looked like an old fashioned well house.  I was out of town, but later that evening I went over to look at the bee colony.  There were a few bees and some comb in the overturned well house.  Not a lot of bees, but it would be a start.  I told the neighbor I would come and get them as soon as I figured out the best way to do it. I had the beginnings of a bee colony.

Credit: My neighbors

Saturday night I re-cleaned a bee box, affixed a jar of sugar water and began to look up Youtube videos on how to capture a bee colony.  I came up with a plan (which was not a very good one) and went to bed anticipating the beginnings of a new hobby.  Sunday morning before church I walked over to the over turned well house to find less than a dozen bees.  I was crestfallen.  When they turned the well house on its side the bees were so disturbed they swarmed off.  After church I finished setting up the bee box planning to buy a colony soon, but I did so without much excitement.

·      Credit:  In this, the least successful part of the process, I get the credit.

In the middle of the afternoon, I was checking on a sick chicken when I heard a buzzing roar.  I could not tell where it was coming from.  I called my wife, who had been over near the chicken pen a few minutes before, to help me identify where the sound was coming from.  I think it is coming from the old water oak overhead.  My wife came over and points to the bee box and says, “There they are!”  Thousands of bees were swarming around the box, hundreds were hanging off the front, and thousands more were in the air above us. 

·      Credit: The bees.

As of sun up this morning, the bees were coming and going, and now I am the most unmerited and unqualified beekeeper in America, perhaps the world.  I did very little to get the bees.  The most that can be said is that I provided an environment that was conducive for bees.   They would not have come if I had put kerosene in the feeder instead of water.  Based on my experience I should not expect to be asked to speak or write about beekeeping, at least not beyond this blog.

Many times in ministry we work hard to grow a church.  We do all the right things. We pray, we serve, we teach, we care, we market, we do all the things recommended in the books written by the guys at the big churches and yet our churches don’t flourish.  We blame ourselves.  We blame our people and if we don’t blame God we might occasionally question Him and His ways.  There are things we can do to provide a environment conducive for church growth, but we can’t make it happen.  I know a church where folks swarm in every Sunday and within a few miles are dozens of other churches that experience very moderate growth.

The point of this blog is not to argue for or against church growth principles or techniques.  Nor is it to offer advice on how to make your hive conducive to growth.  It is simply this word of encouragement for minsters, pastors and church leaders: if the bees swarm to another church and not yours, don’t assume that it is because in some way you are not adequate to the task or deficient in personality.  The other preacher is not as good as they may look and you are not as bad as you may feel. 

BUZZ ON

What about all those strangers you saw yesterday?

Continued from last week's "Dead for a year and No One Noticed."

Yesterday I bet you saw a lot of people you will not see again till Christmas, unless you are called to do their funeral between now and then.  They are disconnected from the community of faith.  They have not part of the fellowship, the community of the faith.  As far as their spiritual walk is concerned they are like Yvette Vickers, dead and no one noticed.

The most important number from yesterday is not how many people attended Easter service.  The most important number from yesterday maybe how many people have a vague connection to faith but are not a part of the community.  These twice a year attendees have a tenuous connection to the faith but have no community, no belonging, no way to say "us' or "we" about faith.  It is all but impossible to over state the importance of community for the Christian faith.   For example... 

Jesus

The incarnation is about belonging to the community.  The Hero of the story enters history into a community of Mary, Joseph, and an oppressed people.  He lived in a community, made a habit of going to synagogue service, and was part of the construction industry.  Why not have God in flesh descend from the heavens on a cloud with glory?  Because we could never accept such a one into our community to be one of us.  For the Savior to save us, He had to be one of us and He could only do that by experiencing our reality of community.   Jesus was never alone.  Even when He was “alone” He was in the community of the Father.  He died in the community of the guilty, the hurting, the helpless, the humanity He came to save. 

The Church

Before His death He planned for the Church and on the day of Pentecost He established His church.  The very meaning of the word church implies the plurality of people in the solidarity of the community.  Church is never a place; it is always a people.  It is sometimes a local community, speaking a common language, with a common culture and heritage.  Sometimes it is a global army of love that stuns the world by the way they love one another.   But biblically it is never a single individual, it is never a building, it is never a person in isolation. 

Titus 2:11-14 

For the saving grace of God was revealed to all people, teaching us that having denied impiety and worldly desires, we shall live sensibly and righteously and in a godly manner in the present age, waiting for the blessed hope and appearance of the glory of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ, who gave Himself on our behalf, so that He should redeem us from all lawlessness and purify for Himself a people as His own special possession, zealous of good works.

The Saving Grace of God and the self-giving of Christ was so that a people, plurality, the group, the crowd, could be His own, pure and eager to do good works.  Jesus saves us individually, but he also saves us in a collective.  In saving the individual, He makes that individual a part of the community.  That community of faith is so much more powerful in doing good deeds than any individual.  By our very nature we are part of each other-belong to each other.  A Christian alone is like a finger severed from a hand, the finger is lost, but the whole person suffers.   (Believe me I know from personal experience)

The Future

At the end of the first century, a person identified with their city of origin, Saul of Tarsus was not the same man as Saul of Corinth.  The city was a place or corporate belonging, the community of people living together and sharing life.  It was a place where the citizens have their home, their belonging, and their identity.  In the book of Revelation, the home of the saved is described as a city.  Heaven is the eternal city of the saved; it is our common unity of belonging which we fore taste in the church. 

What?

What does all of this have to do with church calling programs we started talking about three weeks ago?  As the church we MUST have community.  At their best, church calling programs helped foster community in their day.  Perhaps you use Small Groups, The Shepherding System, Sunday School, or fellowship groups.  My great concern is that we have rejected old forms, in this case a calling program, without understanding what those forms were there to accomplish.  Your church needs to have an intentional approach to make sure everyone can be connected in community. The goal is not to pop in on people and hit them up for a commitment or rebuke them for an absence.  But it is to enable people to return or be a part of the community that is needed for their faith to flourish and the church to thrive.  It is about returning to our connections that will help us live out our lives as friends, followers, students of Jesus, aka Disciples of Christ. Because it is community that is the anvil of life upon which we shape a life of faith.   

Dead for a Year and no one noticed.

Dead for a year and no one noticed and I am not talking about a church.

Continued from last week's "The Epidemic of Loneliness"

Alone in life with only the most vague and general connections to others we become like Yvette Vickers. Yvette was an actress with such great films as “Attack of the 50-Foot Woman” and “Attack of the Giant Leeches” to her credit.  She was well known in the narrow genre of 50’s sci-fi, space monster films, and had many fans.  But she was utterly disconnected in any personal way.  When she died her body lay in her home for almost a full year before a neighbor noticed there was mail piling up and decided to check in on her.  To live in such a way that one can die alone is a tragedy that can never happen to a person in an authentic community of faith.   A community of faith coming to her home, loving her, talking to her, and offering to serve her could have blessed Yvette’s life!

We need each other more than we can know or imagine.  Many people are too proud, or too cautious, or too timid to ask for a visit from a friend. 

Human Community is a non-negotiable for human growth.  Adam was surrounded by paradise and still God said it was not good for man to be alone.  There was no material lack in Adam’s life and world.  He enjoyed perfect health, perfect fellowship with God, perfect diet, perfect calling and work.  So what was it about paradise that was a problem? He was not in human community.

Belong to Posterity

Especially after the fall God calls us to community, to belonging to each other, because godliness is formed in community.  If you trace the history of God’s dealing with people He is always working toward or in the context of community.  Abram was to become Abraham, the father of many.

The Covenant of the Law

When God called a nation to be His people they are not a group of individuals, but a community.  Understanding our identity is not possible in individuality.  Even before the giving of the law the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were to be a people.  Ex 19:5-6a,  “Now if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”

The Exile

Throughout the books from Genesis to Malachi we see that God dealt with a community called Israel.  They were in it together in thick and thin, good and bad.  When the majority of the chosen people pursued idols and God sentenced them to captivity, Daniel, though innocent, was not exempt.  Righteous as he was, he suffered perhaps more than most in the community of Israel.  The sorrow and brokenness of Jeremiah didn’t grant him exemption from the devastation of the siege of Jerusalem.  We never get the idea that any of the prophets of old said, “You people are awful! I am quitting my Jewishness.”  They were a community. 

Jesus

The incarnation is about belonging to the community.  The Hero of the story enters history into a community of Mary, Joseph, and an oppressed people.  He lived in a community, made a habit of going to synagogue service, and was part of the construction industry.  Why not have God in flesh descend from the heavens on a cloud with glory?  Because we could never accept such a one into our community to be one of us.  For the Savior to save us, He had to be one of us and He could only do that by experiencing our reality of community.   Jesus was never alone.  Even when He was “alone” He was in the community of the Father.  He died in the community of the guilty, the hurting, the helpless, the humanity He came to save. 

To be continued...