Mark Hilbelink

I would tend to agree if I hadn't visited and been a part of congregations that operate perfectly fine without membership - still holding eachother to accountability and still differentiating between those who were part of the committed body and those who are less so. There are ways to do church discipline and honor articles 28, 32 & Q&A 54, I believe, without paper membership - many of us are already playing on that field out of necessity, if not principle.

At a different time in my life, it might have been a thing that I triumphed, as well, but I have trouble doing so when there's no real Scriptural precedence for this sort of thing. I'm all for being cross-cultural, but is paper membership really an area of the Church that we feel like we should be expending large amounts of energy to "preserve" when the Church is eroding in so many other areas? I'm not sure its realistic, necessary or even Biblical.

Hey JT, love the discussion topic - one of my favorite things to do is go to the nursing home and play hymns on the guitar, as well. My favorite (and theirs) seems to be "In the Garden" - they request it every time and I gladly oblige. Oddly enough, however, it seems that even in nursing homes, there's a large variation of what people know depending on what tradition they grew up in.

I think the "longevity" of songs is a legitimate issue, as is the idea of having a theoretical "songbook" - what my worship professor at Dordt would describe as the 40-100 songs that are repeated fairly often. I think this number reduces if churches only have one service on Sundays and how transient the group is (we're lucky if many of our folks show up every three weeks).

To the latter, we solidly focus on the team approach - 2-3 fixed bands that always play together (just like in the real world). With that, we have teams select songs they'll play (whether hymns, worship songs or songs they write) and they are then ineligible for the other teams to pick. Each of the teams works with about 20 songs at a time (if they add one, they drop one) and get really good at those. The added benefit is that we repeat enough music that the church gets to know the music, too.

There's another church in GR that writes all their own music and gives CD's to guests so they can know the "songbook", as well.

To the former, I think longevity of songs is nice, but I think it can become an idol like any other good thing in life (and church life). I love being able to hum songs to myself (and God) during quiet time, but I'd say its 33%/33%/33% between hymns/songs I sang when I started in worship in the 90's/songs my bands play now. Maybe that's indicative of the modern worshipper - we all hide certain songs in our hearts.....and it might mean I don't know the songs the guitarist plays in MY retirement home, but I'm cool with that. :)

Its really a lot like classic rock and modern pop songs.....everyone knows a couple Beatles songs, a couple Elvis songs, a couple U2 songs.....and something by Lady Gaga we heard last week and wish we didn't. Music has both a personal and corporate dimension and both are important, though not exclusively.

We've hit some stagnation here, so I'll throw a hot topic out there: paying team members.

You may or may not realize that many large churches keep their worship musicians (both instrument & vocalists) on staff, or at least pay them a per-gig fee. The larger the church and the higher the commitment to quality, the more prevalent this is (although church plants are often pinned into this situation, as well). For those of us in large cities, it is an even bigger issue because church musicians are at a such a high premium with multiple mega-churches competing for the best guitar players, drummers, etc. in the Christian world.

Then there's this: when I tell people back home that I pay a couple of my musicians, they get up in arms about how church is "not supposed to be a concert". BUT, they've been paying their organists for years. When I first got into worship leading, the organist would make $75 for playing 2 songs and we got a pat on the back for leading the other 5 with a full band that required coordinated rehearsals.

So what do you think.....pay musicians or no? And in what situations/how much?

Hi Allen.....funny meeting you here :)

This really brings me back to the Willow GroupLife conference. On the way home from Chicago, the discussion in our car went something like this:

Most church experts agree that there's three big keys to growing, healthy churches: small groups, great [modern] worship and children's ministry. Oddly enough, these are the three things that seem to be most lacking in our pastoral training.

That said, I've been wrestling with the issue myself. Here's the deal - if you're a chuch planter, you can infuse small group DNA into your church, and everyone talks about that. However, if you're a church "resurrector", the situation we both find ourselves in, how do you infuse small group DNA into an established church?

This is now my second try (my first one wasn't good in the small group development dept.). I see two key lessons that I learned and am now trying to apply:

1. Don't fool yourself into thinking EVERYONE is going to get into a group (ie, the old "household" model). This is bad and good. Bad because even the best big churches have 50% participation. It is good because it also means accessibility for the unchurched. For instance, our small group is meeting next week and I can invite my neighbor, who has absolutely no interest in church but wants to belong.

2. Don't fix what ain't broke --> usually, established churches already have men's groups, women's groups, bible studies, prayer groups, etc. Instead of replacing those for people, recognize that they work and grandfather them into the small group structure. Start calling all your bible studies small groups; call your worship teams small groups; then encourage them to act like small groups and work unconnected people into new groups.

What's your take on this?

Great thoughts on reaching the "Alpha Cities" in North America. I agree whole-heartedly. Population in North America is increasingly urban, so that's the place to focus our resources, IMHO.

However, when you visit the NAMB website (http://www.namb.net/cities/), the source of the Alpha Cities focus, one other MAJOR trend is seemingly ignored, the Latinization of North America. As a Texan, I noted some really strange Texan cities missing from NAMB's map that are in the top 20 population centers in America (Houston-#3, San Antonio-#7, Dallas-#9, Austin-#11, Forth Worth-#16, El Paso-#19), as well as Mexico City, which is the biggest city in North America. What do all these cities have in common? Loads of Latinos and loads of Spanish-speakers. Are we scared or ill-equipped to reach this demographic?

I think, in addition to focusing on cities, we need a couple other focii:

-Regearing & reloading to reach post-Catholic and post-Christian Latino populations, which doesn't fit with many of our financial-sustainability or education-laden church planting models

-Breaking down the walls between international church planting & domestic church planting. For instance, Mexico has 9 of the top 25 most-populated cities in North America and there are lots of English-speakers there, as well as Spanish-speakers. That's true of urban centers all over the world, which is why many American mega-churches now have satellite campuses in foreign countries. We've got impressive networks all over the world we could be leveraging in this direction and co-learning with them.

Thanks, Phil, for this post. Its something our church has been discussing for pretty much the whole time I've been here. That said, I think there's two things I'd like to add to the discussion:

First, I think we need to figure out why attendence of worship services is important. I mean, I know all the cliche and even some theological ballpark reasons why, but why is weekly attendence important - and why is that better than bi-monthly attendence....and for that matter, why are we not meeting daily as the early church did? If we don't know the answers to these questions, that's a good place to start.

Second, I think we need to recognize our own bias & emotional investment as pastors. I don't know about you, but sometimes I feel really discouraged when we get a small turnout with no real explanation. And that personal pain shouldn't factor into the "why" rationale for attendence - for those of us where every-2-weeks is the norm, I think all too often we fall into the trap of resentment - the heading off of which is something we've now purposefully built into our leadership development - our musicians & artists take the pain of poor attendence & lateness even more starkly than we as pastors often do.

Love it, Allen.  I think the key thing that stops most churches, especially in our tradition, from becoming alive to the idea of small groups is fear.  That may seem odd, since small groups are, by nature, small and unformidable, but I think its true.  The base fear of small groups is that people know your business, know your deep thoughts and struggles, know your pains and weaknesses.  The irony, of course, is that this is also what makes small groups so great in the life of the Christian.

In my opinion (maybe also in yours) the BEST way to make small groups work as the core contigent of the church is to eliminate programs that would compete with it (ie, the Simple Church) method.  While there are certainly some demographic groups that need programs (kids, people with disabilities, etc.), most other programs could probably be eliminated because they'll compete for time and energy with small groups.  Its a bod and difficult step, because people LOVE programs - especially those who fear most the idea of sharing life in a small group.  But we're attempting that bold move - running our service projects, adult ed, pastoral care and most other things through the channel of the small group (so, if you're not conected to a small group, you're virtually unconnected). If you really want Hydra to grow six new heads, you need to chop a few off first.