This is the fifth episode of a six-part series focusing on worldviews. In this episode, Dr. Kent Hunter takes a look at windows 6-7 of biblical worldviews.
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Drift and Decline in American Churches: Good News for Turnaround (Part 2)
Unpacking Kingdom Culture
To get a handle on the elements of Kingdom culture, we began to look at the impact of any culture and how to understand it. We have found it helpful to think of culture in five areas. They are interconnected and overlap. They reflect, together, cultural DNA. Just like a DNA helix, they imprint everything you think, say, and do. The mission effectiveness of your church, as we have come to understand it, is greatly dependent on the DNA of Kingdom culture among the people.
The five components, in summary form, are as follows: (1) values — what you demonstrate is important, (2) beliefs — what your life reflects you understand as truth, (3) attitudes — the posture of your life before God, (4) priorities — what you will consistently do first, and (5) worldviews — how you understand the world and the way the world works.
When you focus on Kingdom culture, as taught by the Master and His immediate followers, you can see the five components quite clearly. But when you apply them to local churches — not so much! What follows is two examples of Kingdom culture drift for many churches.
Example one: the recruitment of volunteers to complete a task. This is “life as usual” in many churches. It sounds harsh, but most volunteer operations use people to fill a task. From the perspective of Kingdom culture, it’s clear that God wants people to experience divine fulfillment — which is more important than getting any particular task accomplished. In Kingdom culture, people don’t have jobs, driven by a need. They have a calling, driven by their spiritual gifts. They aren’t recruited to a ministry, they are discipled into the work. Again, this is not meant to be critical of any church, just insightful.
Example two: the church decision-making structure often reflects high control. Many churches have boards, committees, votes, congregational meetings, even — in some churches — Robert’s Rules of Order. In the Jesus culture, the movement is low control. The New Testament movement, like every revival, was out of control — humanly speaking. Before you get concerned about church disasters that come from low control, you should include the Kingdom balance: high accountability. This is reflected in Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 18:15-17 about confronting one another. Paul, in his letter to the Ephesians, adds commentary to this culture: Christians are to “speak the truth in love” (Ephesians 4:15). An analysis of many churches is insightful: low accountability allows gossip rather than confrontation. Some churches even encourage anti-“high accountability” by having a “committee” (high control) to hear grievances about the church staff, without the church staff present!
Healthy Churches are Possible!
Our analysis demonstrates that culturally healthy churches are more effective in outreach and mission. We developed metrics that measure nine categories of spiritual health. (Only nine, simply because we wanted to be able to monitor the data.) These nine categories are a sampling of Kingdom culture. When those in worship are surveyed every six months, these nine categories show a significant increase in spiritual health. While the survey does not reflect every dimension of a Christian lifestyle, it is a dramatic start in the right direction. This is great news for anyone who loves the Body of Christ.
The growth of Kingdom cultural vitality takes time. Our work with churches shows a tipping point in vitality after about three years of guided growth in Kingdom culture. The time length is counterintuitive to most church leaders. Why? Because our secular culture is all about a quick fix. You may recognize that Jesus spent about three years with His disciples. Honestly, it’s a hard sell for church leaders to focus three years on becoming rather than doing. It just works!
Most church leaders want to purchase programs, which implies a top-down approach, starting with fanfare from the pulpit. Again, read Jesus. He even asked His disciples to keep quiet on occasion. We have discovered that real change occurs from the bottom up, a movement through relational invitation. That may remind you of one of the fruits of the Holy Spirit: patience. Jesus spoke regularly of planting seeds and harvest. Growing Kingdom culture is organic, like planting a garden.
“Yeast” is the centerpiece of what we do to help churches. Jesus said the Kingdom of God is like yeast in bread. What does that say? Yeast is practically invisible. It takes time — and it changes everything! Remember when Jesus warned His followers to watch out for the “yeast of the Pharisees”? What was that? It was the culture of rules, regulations, a religion of burden, of programs, of works — not grace, not relationships.
What scholars say about Jesus’ use of the concept of yeast is interesting. The word reflects “unconscious influence.” Think about that. Kingdom culture is not another program. It is about who you are and who you become. It is a 24/7 lifestyle, not an activity. It’s not about programs, it’s about empowering (discipling) people to be Christ, every day, everywhere.
This leads to exponential growth of the local church, sometimes called a revival. So, what is God saying to you? And what are you going to do about it?
Byline: Kent R. Hunter is the founder of Church Doctor Ministries. His most recent book is Who Broke My Church? 7 Proven Strategies for Renewal and Revival.
Why I wrote this book
How do people of faith effectively influence a nation for the benefit of all? When militaries are strong, but politicians seem impotent; when emperors and dictators rule, and change seems impossible; when civil disobedience, moral decay, and corruption dominate newsfeeds—how is it that those with spiritual convictions can make a difference? How is it, in a world frequently described as leaderless, that a religious leader, Pope Francis, can become a major spokesperson for global warming—influencing the attitudes and worldviews of billions, inside and outside of Catholicism?
My call to ministry, through a football injury in high school, surprised everyone who knew me, including me. I followed the prescribed path of my Lutheran denomination—four years of college, followed by four years of seminary. My training was great in Bible knowledge, and almost entirely absent from my greatest passion: how can I share this faith that turned my life around? After seminary, I needed more, so I stayed for graduate school—three intensive years and a PhD in Theology—and I still didn’t get the practical fuel for the fire in my heart.
My first placement in ministry was a large, dying church in the inner city of Detroit. In the ten years before my arrival, the congregation had declined in worship attendance by 67 percent. I thought, “Do they need a pastor or an undertaker?” The congregants were older, and many had fled to the suburbs, making the weekly worship journey to the church in what they called the “old neighborhood.”
My wife and I lived in the home owned by the congregation, right behind the church. We soon discovered the “old neighborhood,” for my all-white congregation was a “new neighborhood” for the young black families who were our neighbors. I was perplexed, “Why can’t my church people share the love of God with those who bought their homes?” This dilemma was the beginning of a thirty-five-year journey to this book.
Anger, discouragement, and frustration overwhelmed me. One day, in what I consider an act of God, a brochure came across my desk. It was material from Fuller Theological Seminary. What caught my interest was the Doctor of Ministry program for busy pastors, which included education, two intensive weeks at a time, preceded by selected reading, and followed by a paper on what the student will do in his church, based on what he learned. I was most captivated by the statement, “Fuller is one of the largest mission schools in the world.” My worldview was reshaped. I thought, “I’ve never been trained to be a missionary, and I’m here, in Detroit, on a mission field.” Three years later, even before I finished at Fuller, the biblical strategies we were using in my church were working. My people were changing. We were effectively reaching our neighbors—our church was growing, and our people experienced spiritual fulfillment at the highest level ever. So did I.
The journey God had in mind led me to start Church Doctor Ministries, a platform for writing, teaching, and consulting churches. It also led me, a few years later, to a very different, but equally devastated, rural church in Indiana, which God also turned around through mission strategies.
Our colleagues and Church Doctor consultants have helped hundreds of churches in North America and have trained church leaders in teaching events on six continents. My passion for breakthrough-level change gave me holy discontent. “We help churches, but not enough,” I felt. This led my colleague Tracee and me to study the movement in England for ten days each year for the last fifteen years. In the spiritual cycle, England is about twenty years ahead of the United States. Each year, we took church leaders with us, to expose them to the revival-level impact in scattered churches throughout England.
During these fifteen years, we began to focus on the causative side of how churches influence their communities in ways that lives are changed. I studied the Scripture, from cover to cover, verse by verse, through the lens of Christian impact on others. I looked at the early church in the context of Rome. Armies could not defeat the Roman Empire, but it disintegrated through moral dry rot from the inside. In this context, the New Testament church movement was launched, and within a relatively short time in history, Emperor Constantine declared the Roman Empire Christian.
Meanwhile, Church Doctor Ministries had the opportunity to work with church leaders experiencing flashpoints of revival in Nigeria, Kenya, and South Africa, during the change from Apartheid. We worked with young evangelical churches in the former Soviet Union, during the unraveling of communism—a great movement toward faith. We also worked with Christian faith movements in South America, particularly the indigenous people of the Amazon Basin. Our focus was persistent—what happens among Christians in churches when they “wake up” and influence their area of the world? What barriers are removed that allow God to move in extraordinary ways?
The breakthrough discovery surprised us as much as anyone: so simple, yet so profound; so doable, yet so rarely practiced by Christians. We field-tested and measured the “Fruits of Faith,” results of spiritual growth. We worked with churches across the U.S. for ten years, adjusting, learning, growing in our desire to help churches experience breakthrough.
I wrote this book, with great help from my colleague Tracee, to share what the Church Doctor team has discovered, and to provide a plan for those churches who want to be a greater part of what God does to impact communities and nations. When things are at their worst, Christians are at their best.
I wrote this book because my country is in moral crisis with millions mired in massive hopelessness. I wrote this book because my country is a reflection of mighty Rome in fallen ashes. I wrote this book because with the passing of every day, every newscast, more of my fellow citizens are asking questions at a much deeper level, questions for which the church Jesus founded has profound answers. Resurrecting a nation is an inside job. That is why I wrote this book.
I am committed to contributing to a reversal in the trend of decline of the Christian church, particularly in North America. The church is God’s mechanism for changing the world. The church, the local church, as Bill Hybels says, when it does what God has called it to do, and does it right, is the greatest mechanism for change in the universe. I am committed to helping the local church, one church at a time. However, the end goal is not that church. It is one church after another until a momentum is formed, a momentum that will provide influence on other churches—and then a movement is formed. My call from God is to do this. I am prepared to make the sacrifice, and I am committed to the process. By God’s grace, this will be accomplished, or I will die trying. Either way, I die fulfilled. My nation, on my watch, will not go down the toilet.