Inward or outward focused church?

On www.churchleaders.com Thom Rainer has a very insightful article that because of my job as a pastor, the title caught my attention. In case you don’t know Dr. Rainer is President of Lifeway, which among other things is the publishing arm of the Southern Baptist Convention. He is also one of the premier researchers for churches of all denominations as well as prolific author. The article is entitled “10 Warning Signs of an Inwardly Obsessed Church”. So I decided I’d read the article and see where we (Eastwood Baptist in Bowling Green) are in regards to being inwardly or outwardly focused using his criteria. So here are his 10 warning signs with my comments about Eastwood after.

1. Worship wars – The direction of Eastwood worship was set before I arrived. I think maybe there was a good bit of angst as Eastwood transitioned to a more blended toward the contemporary format but our worship pastor is great about trying to blend in hymns and other styles of music.
2. Prolonged Minutia Meetings – Eastwood only has 3 standing committees (a record for Southern Baptists I believe) and 5 minute business meetings so we are doing great here.
3. Facility Focus – Rainer defines this as “One of the highest priorities in the church is the protection and preservation of rooms, furniture, and other visible parts of the church’s buildings and grounds.” While Eastwood does not meet this definition I think we need to be careful as think about a building for our Plano Campus; it would be easy to take the focus off of reaching people.
4. Program Driven – No church will ever be completely free of “programming” but the point Dr. Rainer makes is that we can’t let the program be the ends rather than the means. For instance we can’t make Bible Study Fellowship classes just about studying the bible. They have to be a door we use to reach people for Christ. Bible study fellowship classes are the means by which this is done.
5. Inwardly Focused Budget – I think we are doing great here. Eastwood was in the Top 10 Churches in the Kentucky Baptist Convention in both total gifts as well as per-capita gifts to the Co-Operative Program. About 20% of what is received this year will go to missions. I received notice last week that out of 40,000 plus SBC churches, Eastwood was in the top 50 in gifts to the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering for North American missions.
6. Inordinate Demands For Pastoral Care – Rainer defines this as having “unreasonable demands” for pastoral care. I am blessed with a great staff, which loves to minister to the people of the church.
7. Attitudes of Entitlement – From the most active to the least active I simply don’t sense this attitude of “deserving special treatment”. I’m sure not all pastors can say this, but I’m blessed here at EBC.
8. Greater Concern About Change than the Gospel – Eastwood is incredible in adapting to and embracing change. If the membership believes change will possibly produce a more effective way to reach people for Christ and disciple believers, they have willingly embraced changed in my 7 ½ years as their pastor.
9. Anger and Hostility – I told someone last week that after 7 ½ years I honestly don’t know anyone who is angry with me or the church necessarily. Oh, I’m sure there are some out there but I’ve only reached this length tenure one other time, and by then while the mood was still generally sweet, I knew who was throwing rocks and when to duck.
10. Evangelistic Apathy – Uh oh! I think this could be a major issue for Eastwood. We are strong in giving to missions and even going. Where I think we struggle is in inviting our lost, unchurched, or dechurched friends to church or even sharing the gospel with them ourselves. We have loads of guests each week but I’m not sure how many of them have intentionally been reached by our folks and how many of them are without Christ.

All in all I think we are doing great as far as keeping the focus on where it needs to be; on those outside the church. The church is the only organization that I know of that exists to a large part for those outside of the membership. Now I know some of my brothers might take issue with that statement and tell me “No, the primary purpose of the church is to make disciples and give God the glory He is due.” But I believe we have to reach people with the gospel before we can disciple them, and the more people we reach, the more the Father is glorified. Just my thoughts…

Bro Tom