10 Paradigm Shifts Toward Becoming Lifestyle Rather than Meeting Focused

By Dan Lentz | Published 08/2/2008 | Launch your New Small Group , Group Interaction , Community Building , August 2008 , February 2004 , Models and Strategy | Unrated
If I asked what the central activities of your church are, what would you say? By central, I am talking about the activities that are most emphasized and that consume the most time and resources to make happen. Those activities tend to become the “thing” church participants focus on as to what church is about. That focus becomes a paradigm for many church participants.

For a lot of churches, that focus is the Sunday/weekend worship service(s). That focus, for some, is a matter of theology. Certain activities and meetings, particularly the Sunday worship, is viewed as essential to our connection with God. For others, if not essential, specific meetings and activities are at least a long and strong tradition and heritage. Few church leaders that I have talked to would say Sunday worship, small groups, or other meetings are the essence of what church is about. However, because these events are where most of our time, resources, and emphasis go, it is natural for these activities to be the focal point of church life.

As leaders, if our vision of church life, our Christian community, goes beyond meetings to “things” involving our whole life and relationships, then we have to think intentionally about how to shift people’s paradigms beyond viewing the “meetings” as the central activity of church. Not that we do away with meetings, but we allow meetings to be a support structure for the lifestyle, rather than the other way around.

If you are very serious about changing the focus of your church from meetings to relationships and lifestyle, there are several paradigm shifts that need to take place. Here are 10 to consider.

1. Conversations – How many times do we say, “It’s time to go to church.”? Whether going to church means going to weekend worship or it means going to small group, you have to get people to quit “going to church” and instead get them to “be the church.” Some will say it is just semantics, but our vocabulary speaks to what we value. If you want your value to be lifestyle focused, then help people see that they do not have to go somewhere to be the church. Instead, they ARE the church wherever they happen to be.

2. Recruiting volunteers – For what do we ask people to volunteer? Is it to serve on a committee or to be a greeter before our Sunday worship service? What if we asked people to signup to invite their neighbor over for dinner, or if we recruited them to do devotions with their family? What we ask people to do is what tends to get perceived as important. Make your “asks” relevant to what you want your people to value.

3. Scheduling – If church calendars are so full of events and activities that church members have no time to “be the church” in their neighborhoods and workplaces, then why should we be surprised that members only have enough energy to do those activities and events that are initiated by the church, and not self-initiated as the Spirit may lead.

4. Resources – What percent of the church budget goes to support activities that happen off the church campus? We might not think about putting our small group leaders on the payroll, but we might do well to consider investing in other things. For example, subsidizing babysitting at seeker groups, giving small groups a modest budget to pursue community service, or purchasing family devotional journals for families to work on at home.

5. Vision – Does your vision emphasize a church building full of people or a community full of Christ-followers? Having a vision that paints a picture of the lifestyle you are aiming for people to lead helps people get excited about where you are headed.

6. Training – Make training hands-on and lifestyle-oriented with relational coaching and accountability as important components. Use public testimonies and relational modeling as a way to keep momentum going.

7. Handling suggestions and complaints – A lot of energy is expended from church leadership dealing with conflict and complaints about church events and programs. How many people complain about how their personal worship during devotions is going, or how their witness to their co-worker is going? Help people re-orient from consumers to producers. Help them to focus their discontent on their own lifestyle rather than on how the church is serving them.

8. Front door – Redefine the front door of the church. Help people see the front door as their individual relationships with the unchurched, rather than a worship service or event.

9. Leadership – Make absolutely sure that key leadership are not only teaching about the life you want people to lead, but also modeling and living the life you want people to lead.

10. Attendance – We tend to “expect what we inspect.” Focusing on attendance at Sunday worship or even at small group says that showing up at the meeting is what is important, and it very well may be. Are you doing any inspection or counting of the lifestyle practices that are important to your values? Maybe occasionally taking a tally of the number of hours of prayer at home that happened this past week would be enlightening? How about counting the number of relational encounters people had this week where Jesus entered the conversation? That might be interesting to see posted on the attendance board!

There are many more things that are important when making a paradigm shift in the direction of lifestyle focus. I would love to hear what you have found to be important. Perhaps you would be willing to share specific ideas that have worked for you. Visit the SmallGroups.com blog and share your thoughts!