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If you’ve experienced God at work, you know that transformation doesn’t always happen in big crowds and that impact doesn’t always equal attendance.
However, in our modern church culture sometimes even the most beautiful Kingdom wins gets dwarfed by the conversation of who didn’t come.
Measuring ministry success by numbers alone is far from Biblical and yet it’s widely practiced. If you want to learn an alternative way to measure success without throwing numbers to the wayside, listen in.
In this episode, we’ll talk about …
- Why eliminating numbers isn’t the goal, but changing the emphasis is
- The power of sharing heart stories and how to ask the right questions to get there
- A free resource that can help the focus shift from attendance to transformation
Links Mentioned:
Get the free 6-session Untapped Study and check out the ministry training course bundles at resources.smallchurchministry.com
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Episode 097: Two Strategies To Help Change A Small Church Culture From Numbers-Focused To People-Focused
Laurie Acker 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Acker. Welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast.
Laurie Acker 0:15
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the small church ministry podcast. I personally cannot believe it is November already. And I’m not the kind of person who usually says that, but man, the end of the year is just climbing back upon us pretty quickly here. This is probably going to be a little bit of a shorter episode for a couple of reasons. First one, I gotta leave to get my husband at the airport pretty soon, he’s coming back from an out of town trip. And secondly, I am coming back after a planned week and a half off away, that kind of turned into almost two and a half weeks of being off. When I got back into town, I had a really I want to say a hard time clicking back into work. But it wasn’t really that I’m just developing some new rhythms I was blessed to be on my last week retreat of the soul shepherding Institute with Bill and Christie gold here. And the past two years have been just quite a journey in my life, emotionally, spiritually relationally, just so many different ways of just diving deeper into just different places with God and understanding of myself and others. And it’s just been such a joy and also difficult and hard and trying. And there’s been a struggle in pain and heartache and so much stuff in the process. But this past week, if you ever look into the soul shepherding Institute, which I can’t even recommend more highly than I do. But this past month was my last of four retreats with them. So if you join the institute, it’s just a deep dive into kind of a mix of spiritual direction and psychology mixed together, again, with Bill and Christie Galtier, who lead this thing called Soul shepherding, they have a podcast they’ve authored, they’re also both, you know, highly degreed in the field of psychology, and they love Jesus deeply. But spending these weeks with, you know, 30 to 40 other people who just love Jesus, and are on the journey, and just being so focused and being together for times of listening and reflection, and, you know, Lectio Divina and just being with Jesus and diving in, I, it just changes you, changes me. And so here I was trying to get back into work. And I just felt like spending some more time hanging out with some really deep times with Jesus. And I’m really dwelling on being a non anxious person. And I believe that was what Jesus was and what he embodied and in the world that we live in now, like, how beautiful it would be to walk into any situation. And our small churches and our families in times of stress in the world. And embodying, you know, more of just who Jesus was. So anyway, that’s my little download my little musings on my last couple weeks. But here we are, and it’s time for another podcast episode. What I wanted to talk about today was really a question that came up in the small church network and Academy. If you’re part of the academy. Every month, we have a zoom call where you can hop on ask questions. I give some coaching and ministry, but one of the questions that came up was, how do we get away from numbers and move toward relationships and conversations more than numbers? And this is not a new conversation. When I started the podcast, I believe it was even probably the second episode in I talked about, like, it’s not about the numbers, and it never was. And this is a constant struggle. It for people in small churches, and it does not need to be okay. Can I just say that? Again? numbers do not have to be the struggle. And I don’t believe Jesus struggled with numbers. And I don’t believe it’s biblical to struggle with numbers. I don’t think it should be our focus. But the question that came in was we’re so concerned about how many people attend versus the people who actually show up. So how do we move away from numbers being the judgment of success of programs, events, and move more toward the people, the people who are present and so this is what I want to talk about today. And the first thing I want to say is if you struggle with this, like kudos to you, because I believe walk in this Jesus life is attention in probably every single area of love, and justice and outreach and in reach and, you know, this this thing of, you know, just knowing that we are saved by grace and and it’s faith but yet we also want to work and, and give to the best of ability and serve others. So I believe this tension that we’re walking is a good thing. It’s a good thing to be aware of, it’s a good thing to have conversations on, or it’s a good thing to get off autopilot. And really question some things that maybe we’ve been practicing a long time in our own spiritual lives or in our churches, that what we’re really talking about is that our heart matters, the value of relationships. Now, if it comes down to how do we get people to move away from numbers, and maybe you’re already embracing this change, of course, we can only be responsible for us, we can’t really change other people. But we are called to influence. And if so, if you are embracing this thought that it’s not about the numbers, and we need to focus more on the people who attend. And even the people who don’t attend, we really can’t be an influence. But I also want to remind you that turning a ship takes time, it’s not an instant, and it’s not an overnight. But I do want to talk about to two amazing things that we can utilize to help people maybe focus not so much on the numbers, and one is testimonies and stories. And one is increasing awareness and understanding the truth, right, the truth that that we get from the character of Jesus and the character of God and who he is. So before the end of this episode, I’m really going to give you two really practical ways to move toward this and to help others move toward more of a focus on people, the numbers. And we’ll unpack that in a little bit. But before we get to all that, the one thing I want to make clear, is numbers are important. So when I say numbers don’t matter, or it’s not about the numbers, please hear me when I’m talking about that. I’m talking about in, in, like evaluating Kingdom impact in looking at whether we did well or where we could do better. That’s where I think numbers are really, really limited. But numbers are important. The Bible is full of numbers. One of my favorite verses about numbers is Luke 12. Seven, when when Jesus says the very hairs of your head are numbered, the very hairs on my head are numbered. Like, is that not a crazy thought. But the rest of that verse goes on to say, Don’t be afraid, you are worth more than the sparrows. So this is a way of Gods saying you are worth so much, because I even know the numbers of hairs on your head. Like, how amazing is that. But you see that the numbers are used to express care, to express love.
Laurie Acker 7:56
Numbers are necessary for so many things. In our modern church culture, statistics are good. It’s good to know how many people were there. And how many people were there last year, and the year before. In fact, I do entire units on planning. And so many of the trainings I create for the Academy for the ministry specific courses, even numbers are necessary on this planet that we live on. We plan for space, we plan for food, we plan for budgets, the real temporal life that we are living requires numbers. If we don’t have enough money to pay our pastor, well, that’s an issue. Now there’s ways to solve that. It it may not even be solved in the way that you are thinking it should be solved. But numbers are actually are absolutely necessary on the planet where we live. I think algebra is a great thing to learn. Not sure about pre calc for everybody on the planet. But algebra really, really good. Math is good numbers are good. One things that I’ve seen people do is when they they embrace the fact that that people matter so much more than numbers, they go back to their churches, and they try to throw out all the numbers and what happens. The people who love numbers, wow. Like we are asking for a fight right there. So please don’t eliminate numbers. Numbers are important. But I do want to suggest putting them in their place where they belong, where they are limited. Because numbers are not are not where we should be evaluating Kingdom impact. And I believe this is so biblical. Because when we look back at Kingdom impact throughout Scripture, Old and New Testament, it was often small numbers. That will be that we’re making the biggest impact. And I’m not going to go into all that right now. Because a lot of those examples are in a free resource I’m going to share with you at the end And you may already even have it because it’s not been a secret. It’s been on our website for a while. But I do want you to think even right now, if you’re not driving even close your eyes, think of how many times God in Jesus Himself, used small things, used the limited things used the things that the world thought was ridiculous. The people, the places, the kinds of people, the numbers of people to do amazing things amazing, big, huge Kingdom impact things. But again, instead of eliminating numbers, let’s put them in our in their place. And this is how we do this. I want you to kind of picture a balance, like those old judgment kind of balances where there’s like, a scale, right? There’s two scales, there’s one on each side, like, we often see that scale as a symbol of justice. So can you picture that scale, there’s like a, it’s always gold in my head, but there’s like a pillar coming up in the middle. And then there’s two arms. And there’s like little, I don’t know, little, little plates on each side, that if you put a bunch of things on one plate, it goes up and down, almost like a teeter totter, right? So if you can picture that scale, or there, that balance, being super weighted, like numbers are really important. And on the other side are the hearts of people. Right? I’m not suggesting you eliminate numbers, I just want to increase the sharing the heart sharing the understanding of Kingdom impact. So there is more of a balance. And this can happen slowly over time. It doesn’t have to happen overnight. But the great tools that I want you to think about in changing the balance of numbers, versus the kingdom impact the stories that testimonies the heart sharing is really increasing the numbers of testimonies and stories that we hear that we ask for that we share. So let’s say you’re coming to a meeting, and you’re going to evaluate how this program went. And maybe you do start with numbers. How many people came? Did we hit our budget? You know, was this okay? The way that the money played out? The numbers? Did we have enough space? These are all numbers, okay? And that should be the shortest part of your sharing. And then as you’re evaluating this Sunday school class, this outreach event, whatever it is, to say, Hey, what happened? What stories happened? Who did you meet? Did you uncover any needs? Did you build a relationship where there was none? Was there someone new that came? What did you learn about them? How about even how did that impact you as a volunteer? As a leader? Where did you see God working? Where did you see God show up? Where did you see growth? Where would you want to grow? Not in numbers, but in character in heart? How did it go? Do you see how asking these kind of questions, these kinds of questions, kind of put numbers in their place? Yeah, we can start with numbers. But then let’s spend the bulk of our time evaluating, and sharing where God is working in your life, in my life, in their lives, in our lives together, as a community. Now, if this is new for you, when you talk about programs, when you evaluate things, it’s going to be a little bit of pulling teeth, but people will get used to it, there will be a shift, you may need to share first, and it may make you tremble in fear because maybe nobody in your community does this. But if after a programming event, a worship service, hearing a sermon. If we start getting used to what a God speaks to me, what do I think God was speaking to me? How is this changing my life? How is this changing my heart? Then you can ask others to? What was your biggest highlight? If the word testimony is scary, use the word highlight. What is one reason you are glad you came? What is one way you would love to grow? Who was one person you met with? You had a conversation with? And maybe the first time everybody says no one. I didn’t have a conversation with one person that I didn’t know. And maybe your next challenge is, hey, maybe at the next event, we could all try to have a conversation with one person we haven’t had a conversation with. If you’re part of the hospitality team on Sundays, is there a time to come back and say, Hey, did you meet somebody new during the fellowship time? It doesn’t even have to be a new visitor. It could just be somebody who comes to your church that you don’t always talk to. So can we make more space for sharing? What did God do in your life this week? What did God do for you at your work this week? Where did he meet You, where did you meet him. So if you really want to get the emphasis away from numbers, we need to replace the emphasis with something else. And this is where I just want to encourage you to make space for sharing for stories for testimonies. makes space for it, encourage people, maybe it’s gonna push us all out of our comfort zone a little. And that’s okay. That’s okay. But it’s not just about eliminating the numbers. It’s about looking, raising our awareness, growing into seeing God at work. Whether there’s one, whether no one shows up, whether there’s 20, whether there’s 100. I don’t even care to celebrate the 100. That’s great. You had 100, whoo, what happened with the 100. That’s how the emphasis changes. So the second thing I mentioned, the first thing was sharing stories, hearing more hearts. The second thing is really increasing awareness and understanding. This can be very intellectual, it can start with our brains, before it goes into our hearts, increasing awareness and understanding. So if you’re listening to this podcast, you are probably all about God working in small places, or you probably stopped listening, I don’t know, 10 episodes ago or two episodes ago. Because we’re all about seeing where God’s working in small places, we get so excited, and you want to get others on board, because you are so excited about this. And maybe they are not. I just want to remind you that it took you a journey to get here. It took me a journey to get here. My first job out of college was working in a church of 3000. It was amazingly fun. We never worried about not enough people coming. We worried about too many people coming truly we did. Because we might not be prepared for that. It took me a journey to get here to see where God is working in small churches to go to a small church and feel like oh my gosh, what is this? How do I do ministry? Because it is different. Small church ministry is different. It’s not less.
Laurie Acker 17:16
But that was a journey. For me, it’s probably also been a journey for you. Maybe your journey included growing up in a small church and seeing God work, maybe the people who are pushing back on this, that wasn’t part of their journey. But sometimes we are so excited, we found the answer, we’ve got this thing we need you guys to get with the program. And we’ve got to remember they are on a journey to. So how do we change their minds? If you’re serving with a bunch of people who are stuck on numbers, who just feel like it’s not successful? If we don’t have enough butts in the pews, right? Or enough people at the event? How do we change our minds and I want to go back to something I said earlier, we don’t change their minds. Everybody’s got free choice to do what they want to believe what they want to hang on to what they want. We need to release that because that becomes our demand. But we can influence minds. We can start discussions, we can have conversations. We can, as I mentioned, share more testimonies of work out of moving in these smaller spaces. But I want to give you a free resource that can really help with this in about a million ways. It’s called the untapped study. If you go to Resources, dot small church ministry.com, you can sign up for it and just get it for free. It’s a six session study. There’s a short video which you can use or not. There are scriptures, there are discussion questions. And I want to tell you where this came from, and also how churches are using it. A couple years ago, I put on the website, the five day challenge to do small church better. And it was quite a hit and continues to be quite a hit. Over 10,000 People have used it have gone through it. I’ve shared it with people. But people kept coming back with how do I share this with people in my church. I want to take this not just as a personal study, but to share it and the basis of that five day challenge. We turned it and tweaked it and added to it to make it into a more substantial six week study for you to use in your church. So the base if you have done the five day challenge, that is the base of the untapped study. And I’m going to tell you how people have used this in their churches. There’s been pastors who’ve actually used the six weeks the theme, and they’ve created sermons around it. And then they’re using the study afterwards in discussion groups or in Sunday school. We’ve had women take it back in women’s ministry and use the untapped study for six weeks of study in their women’s group. We’ve had friendship groups take it back and to say I did this with us Ron, had people take it back with their spouse, we’ve had people take it with, share it with their pastors going through it individually as a small group. And honestly, I think it could also be used in youth groups. If you have a youth group, I think it would be very cool to let them see how God is working in smaller spaces, and how Jesus used the one. And often took big groups and wielded them down to small so that he could get the glory. So that untapped study is free. As most of you probably know, you probably already know this, we create a lot of free resources. We also have paid resources, because that’s what keeps us our ministry and our business kind of going here and keeps it alive. But this is a totally free six week study, for you to use and share in your church. You don’t have to buy extra books, extra videos, A Leaders Guide, a separate thing, this untapped study, this resource is actually copyrighted, and gives you permission to share it within your local church. Okay. And please don’t share it throughout the dominations. Just just send the link to them so they can get their own. It’s just copyrighted for use within your local church. But you can make as many copies as you want from that to use in your local church. You can share that link. Let other people get it to in other churches across the country, across the state, wherever you are across the regions. Please get a hold of that study, even if it’s just for you. So again, get the untap study, go to Resources dot small church ministry.com. And you can just sign up for it. And I also, before we go, I also just want to give you this encouragement, please don’t feel rushed to turn the ship in your church. There’s no panic. Jesus did not walk around the world panicked, there was a lot wrong. You think there’s a lot wrong in your church? There’s so much wrong in the world. There was tons wrong when Jesus was on the planet. Can you imagine what he walked by? You know, I’m gonna go more into this probably next week on the podcast. But Jesus was never in a hurry. Do you think it might be because he knew God was at work? Like God’s got this. Don’t be in a hurry to fix other people to fixed mindsets to, to just do this overall huge change at your church. I’ve really been leaning a lot more into trust in this season in my life. If Jesus was at your church right now, he’s not panicking. Think of how he would move in your church right now. I believe he would listen, I believe he would have more conversations. But I don’t think he would push everybody and say you got to change this. Right? Just kind of let that sit a little bit and just see where it resonates with you. Because again, sometimes we are so excited to share what we know what we found what we’ve learned. And we forget to let other people be on their journey, their journey with Jesus, their journey with the Holy Spirit, their journey in their faith. So be that person that doesn’t just force. Hey, numbers don’t matter anymore. numbers do matter. Let’s elevate the stories though. So we can get numbers more in their place. I’m all about that. The conversations, loving the people you’re with and just knowing that God is absolutely at work right now in your church. Go with him. Go it Godspeed. Godspeed. Which if that’s like Jesus, it was a little slower than most of us would prefer to go. All right, before I go, if you are listening when this episode goes live, this is the last week to get on the fabulous get in on the fabulous pre sale price of the ministry specific trainings that we are creating. They are so good. If you are not on my email list. You might not know about these yet. So like spread the word this week. We are creating by request. Ministry specific trainings for youth ministry, children’s ministry, women’s ministry, worship ministry. We have one cre we’re creating on ministry burnout. There’s others that will be created down the down the line but we put these on a pre sale which I’ll just explain to you what that means. Each one of these there’s going to be a bunch of courses in youth ministry, a bunch of courses in women’s ministry, a bunch of courses in worship ministry, and we’re pre selling them as a bundle. So if you get on on this, it’s a lifetime cost. It’s a lifetime price for a pre sale. It’s just $149. So far, we’re promising at least 12 courses in each bundle, but I know there’s going to be more There’s going to be things that come up and somebody’s going to say, wow, we really need more help in social media and youth ministry or something. And we’ll create another course around that. So if you grab the presale bundle, you’ve got all 12 plus anything that ever gets added into these ministries, specific courses. So definitely take a look at him, you’ll also be able to see the how to get to him from resources, the place where you’re gonna go to get the untapped study. So go to Resources dot small church ministry.com, you can grab the free untapped resource that six week course, to use anywhere small groups sermons, your personal use whatever, so, so good. And then take a look at these ministry specific trainings. It is the first time we have created ministry specific trainings that are really comprehensive. So whether you’ve just gotten thrown into children’s ministry, and you’re like, I’m willing, but I’m not sure where to go, or you want to refresh and you’ve been doing ministry for a long time. And you need some encouragement, some step by step. How do we do this? Where do we start? Where do we restart? That’s what’s it. So I won’t take time to go through all the different things. But if you go into that, onto you know, resources dot small church mystery.com click into one of those bundles, you will actually see every title of every course it explains it a lot more. So good. But get it before Friday. So Friday is the last day for the presale. After that. All these courses will be released, you know, one at a time and you’ll be able to grab them even individually if you want. But this is like so like way the best deal you’ll ever get. It is under I think it’s like less than a third of the cost of what just the 12 would be. So definitely go take a look at that. Go grab the untapped study. And we’ll put the link below in the show notes as well. And we are so excited about what God is doing, where we’re headed, where you’re headed and where we’re headed together. I hope you’re excited too. So until next week, be light
Laurie Acker 0:01
Hey, this is Laurie Acker. Welcome to the Small Church Ministry Podcast.
Laurie Acker 0:15
Hey, welcome back to another episode of the small church ministry podcast. I personally cannot believe it is November already. And I’m not the kind of person who usually says that, but man, the end of the year is just climbing back upon us pretty quickly here. This is probably going to be a little bit of a shorter episode for a couple of reasons. First one, I gotta leave to get my husband at the airport pretty soon, he’s coming back from an out of town trip. And secondly, I am coming back after a planned week and a half off away, that kind of turned into almost two and a half weeks of being off. When I got back into town, I had a really I want to say a hard time clicking back into work. But it wasn’t really that I’m just developing some new rhythms I was blessed to be on my last week retreat of the soul shepherding Institute with Bill and Christie gold here. And the past two years have been just quite a journey in my life, emotionally, spiritually relationally, just so many different ways of just diving deeper into just different places with God and understanding of myself and others. And it’s just been such a joy and also difficult and hard and trying. And there’s been a struggle in pain and heartache and so much stuff in the process. But this past week, if you ever look into the soul shepherding Institute, which I can’t even recommend more highly than I do. But this past month was my last of four retreats with them. So if you join the institute, it’s just a deep dive into kind of a mix of spiritual direction and psychology mixed together, again, with Bill and Christie Galtier, who lead this thing called Soul shepherding, they have a podcast they’ve authored, they’re also both, you know, highly degreed in the field of psychology, and they love Jesus deeply. But spending these weeks with, you know, 30 to 40 other people who just love Jesus, and are on the journey, and just being so focused and being together for times of listening and reflection, and, you know, Lectio Divina and just being with Jesus and diving in, I, it just changes you, changes me. And so here I was trying to get back into work. And I just felt like spending some more time hanging out with some really deep times with Jesus. And I’m really dwelling on being a non anxious person. And I believe that was what Jesus was and what he embodied and in the world that we live in now, like, how beautiful it would be to walk into any situation. And our small churches and our families in times of stress in the world. And embodying, you know, more of just who Jesus was. So anyway, that’s my little download my little musings on my last couple weeks. But here we are, and it’s time for another podcast episode. What I wanted to talk about today was really a question that came up in the small church network and Academy. If you’re part of the academy. Every month, we have a zoom call where you can hop on ask questions. I give some coaching and ministry, but one of the questions that came up was, how do we get away from numbers and move toward relationships and conversations more than numbers? And this is not a new conversation. When I started the podcast, I believe it was even probably the second episode in I talked about, like, it’s not about the numbers, and it never was. And this is a constant struggle. It for people in small churches, and it does not need to be okay. Can I just say that? Again? numbers do not have to be the struggle. And I don’t believe Jesus struggled with numbers. And I don’t believe it’s biblical to struggle with numbers. I don’t think it should be our focus. But the question that came in was we’re so concerned about how many people attend versus the people who actually show up. So how do we move away from numbers being the judgment of success of programs, events, and move more toward the people, the people who are present and so this is what I want to talk about today. And the first thing I want to say is if you struggle with this, like kudos to you, because I believe walk in this Jesus life is attention in probably every single area of love, and justice and outreach and in reach and, you know, this this thing of, you know, just knowing that we are saved by grace and and it’s faith but yet we also want to work and, and give to the best of ability and serve others. So I believe this tension that we’re walking is a good thing. It’s a good thing to be aware of, it’s a good thing to have conversations on, or it’s a good thing to get off autopilot. And really question some things that maybe we’ve been practicing a long time in our own spiritual lives or in our churches, that what we’re really talking about is that our heart matters, the value of relationships. Now, if it comes down to how do we get people to move away from numbers, and maybe you’re already embracing this change, of course, we can only be responsible for us, we can’t really change other people. But we are called to influence. And if so, if you are embracing this thought that it’s not about the numbers, and we need to focus more on the people who attend. And even the people who don’t attend, we really can’t be an influence. But I also want to remind you that turning a ship takes time, it’s not an instant, and it’s not an overnight. But I do want to talk about to two amazing things that we can utilize to help people maybe focus not so much on the numbers, and one is testimonies and stories. And one is increasing awareness and understanding the truth, right, the truth that that we get from the character of Jesus and the character of God and who he is. So before the end of this episode, I’m really going to give you two really practical ways to move toward this and to help others move toward more of a focus on people, the numbers. And we’ll unpack that in a little bit. But before we get to all that, the one thing I want to make clear, is numbers are important. So when I say numbers don’t matter, or it’s not about the numbers, please hear me when I’m talking about that. I’m talking about in, in, like evaluating Kingdom impact in looking at whether we did well or where we could do better. That’s where I think numbers are really, really limited. But numbers are important. The Bible is full of numbers. One of my favorite verses about numbers is Luke 12. Seven, when when Jesus says the very hairs of your head are numbered, the very hairs on my head are numbered. Like, is that not a crazy thought. But the rest of that verse goes on to say, Don’t be afraid, you are worth more than the sparrows. So this is a way of Gods saying you are worth so much, because I even know the numbers of hairs on your head. Like, how amazing is that. But you see that the numbers are used to express care, to express love.
Laurie Acker 7:56
Numbers are necessary for so many things. In our modern church culture, statistics are good. It’s good to know how many people were there. And how many people were there last year, and the year before. In fact, I do entire units on planning. And so many of the trainings I create for the Academy for the ministry specific courses, even numbers are necessary on this planet that we live on. We plan for space, we plan for food, we plan for budgets, the real temporal life that we are living requires numbers. If we don’t have enough money to pay our pastor, well, that’s an issue. Now there’s ways to solve that. It it may not even be solved in the way that you are thinking it should be solved. But numbers are actually are absolutely necessary on the planet where we live. I think algebra is a great thing to learn. Not sure about pre calc for everybody on the planet. But algebra really, really good. Math is good numbers are good. One things that I’ve seen people do is when they they embrace the fact that that people matter so much more than numbers, they go back to their churches, and they try to throw out all the numbers and what happens. The people who love numbers, wow. Like we are asking for a fight right there. So please don’t eliminate numbers. Numbers are important. But I do want to suggest putting them in their place where they belong, where they are limited. Because numbers are not are not where we should be evaluating Kingdom impact. And I believe this is so biblical. Because when we look back at Kingdom impact throughout Scripture, Old and New Testament, it was often small numbers. That will be that we’re making the biggest impact. And I’m not going to go into all that right now. Because a lot of those examples are in a free resource I’m going to share with you at the end And you may already even have it because it’s not been a secret. It’s been on our website for a while. But I do want you to think even right now, if you’re not driving even close your eyes, think of how many times God in Jesus Himself, used small things, used the limited things used the things that the world thought was ridiculous. The people, the places, the kinds of people, the numbers of people to do amazing things amazing, big, huge Kingdom impact things. But again, instead of eliminating numbers, let’s put them in our in their place. And this is how we do this. I want you to kind of picture a balance, like those old judgment kind of balances where there’s like, a scale, right? There’s two scales, there’s one on each side, like, we often see that scale as a symbol of justice. So can you picture that scale, there’s like a, it’s always gold in my head, but there’s like a pillar coming up in the middle. And then there’s two arms. And there’s like little, I don’t know, little, little plates on each side, that if you put a bunch of things on one plate, it goes up and down, almost like a teeter totter, right? So if you can picture that scale, or there, that balance, being super weighted, like numbers are really important. And on the other side are the hearts of people. Right? I’m not suggesting you eliminate numbers, I just want to increase the sharing the heart sharing the understanding of Kingdom impact. So there is more of a balance. And this can happen slowly over time. It doesn’t have to happen overnight. But the great tools that I want you to think about in changing the balance of numbers, versus the kingdom impact the stories that testimonies the heart sharing is really increasing the numbers of testimonies and stories that we hear that we ask for that we share. So let’s say you’re coming to a meeting, and you’re going to evaluate how this program went. And maybe you do start with numbers. How many people came? Did we hit our budget? You know, was this okay? The way that the money played out? The numbers? Did we have enough space? These are all numbers, okay? And that should be the shortest part of your sharing. And then as you’re evaluating this Sunday school class, this outreach event, whatever it is, to say, Hey, what happened? What stories happened? Who did you meet? Did you uncover any needs? Did you build a relationship where there was none? Was there someone new that came? What did you learn about them? How about even how did that impact you as a volunteer? As a leader? Where did you see God working? Where did you see God show up? Where did you see growth? Where would you want to grow? Not in numbers, but in character in heart? How did it go? Do you see how asking these kind of questions, these kinds of questions, kind of put numbers in their place? Yeah, we can start with numbers. But then let’s spend the bulk of our time evaluating, and sharing where God is working in your life, in my life, in their lives, in our lives together, as a community. Now, if this is new for you, when you talk about programs, when you evaluate things, it’s going to be a little bit of pulling teeth, but people will get used to it, there will be a shift, you may need to share first, and it may make you tremble in fear because maybe nobody in your community does this. But if after a programming event, a worship service, hearing a sermon. If we start getting used to what a God speaks to me, what do I think God was speaking to me? How is this changing my life? How is this changing my heart? Then you can ask others to? What was your biggest highlight? If the word testimony is scary, use the word highlight. What is one reason you are glad you came? What is one way you would love to grow? Who was one person you met with? You had a conversation with? And maybe the first time everybody says no one. I didn’t have a conversation with one person that I didn’t know. And maybe your next challenge is, hey, maybe at the next event, we could all try to have a conversation with one person we haven’t had a conversation with. If you’re part of the hospitality team on Sundays, is there a time to come back and say, Hey, did you meet somebody new during the fellowship time? It doesn’t even have to be a new visitor. It could just be somebody who comes to your church that you don’t always talk to. So can we make more space for sharing? What did God do in your life this week? What did God do for you at your work this week? Where did he meet You, where did you meet him. So if you really want to get the emphasis away from numbers, we need to replace the emphasis with something else. And this is where I just want to encourage you to make space for sharing for stories for testimonies. makes space for it, encourage people, maybe it’s gonna push us all out of our comfort zone a little. And that’s okay. That’s okay. But it’s not just about eliminating the numbers. It’s about looking, raising our awareness, growing into seeing God at work. Whether there’s one, whether no one shows up, whether there’s 20, whether there’s 100. I don’t even care to celebrate the 100. That’s great. You had 100, whoo, what happened with the 100. That’s how the emphasis changes. So the second thing I mentioned, the first thing was sharing stories, hearing more hearts. The second thing is really increasing awareness and understanding. This can be very intellectual, it can start with our brains, before it goes into our hearts, increasing awareness and understanding. So if you’re listening to this podcast, you are probably all about God working in small places, or you probably stopped listening, I don’t know, 10 episodes ago or two episodes ago. Because we’re all about seeing where God’s working in small places, we get so excited, and you want to get others on board, because you are so excited about this. And maybe they are not. I just want to remind you that it took you a journey to get here. It took me a journey to get here. My first job out of college was working in a church of 3000. It was amazingly fun. We never worried about not enough people coming. We worried about too many people coming truly we did. Because we might not be prepared for that. It took me a journey to get here to see where God is working in small churches to go to a small church and feel like oh my gosh, what is this? How do I do ministry? Because it is different. Small church ministry is different. It’s not less.
Laurie Acker 17:16
But that was a journey. For me, it’s probably also been a journey for you. Maybe your journey included growing up in a small church and seeing God work, maybe the people who are pushing back on this, that wasn’t part of their journey. But sometimes we are so excited, we found the answer, we’ve got this thing we need you guys to get with the program. And we’ve got to remember they are on a journey to. So how do we change their minds? If you’re serving with a bunch of people who are stuck on numbers, who just feel like it’s not successful? If we don’t have enough butts in the pews, right? Or enough people at the event? How do we change our minds and I want to go back to something I said earlier, we don’t change their minds. Everybody’s got free choice to do what they want to believe what they want to hang on to what they want. We need to release that because that becomes our demand. But we can influence minds. We can start discussions, we can have conversations. We can, as I mentioned, share more testimonies of work out of moving in these smaller spaces. But I want to give you a free resource that can really help with this in about a million ways. It’s called the untapped study. If you go to Resources, dot small church ministry.com, you can sign up for it and just get it for free. It’s a six session study. There’s a short video which you can use or not. There are scriptures, there are discussion questions. And I want to tell you where this came from, and also how churches are using it. A couple years ago, I put on the website, the five day challenge to do small church better. And it was quite a hit and continues to be quite a hit. Over 10,000 People have used it have gone through it. I’ve shared it with people. But people kept coming back with how do I share this with people in my church. I want to take this not just as a personal study, but to share it and the basis of that five day challenge. We turned it and tweaked it and added to it to make it into a more substantial six week study for you to use in your church. So the base if you have done the five day challenge, that is the base of the untapped study. And I’m going to tell you how people have used this in their churches. There’s been pastors who’ve actually used the six weeks the theme, and they’ve created sermons around it. And then they’re using the study afterwards in discussion groups or in Sunday school. We’ve had women take it back in women’s ministry and use the untapped study for six weeks of study in their women’s group. We’ve had friendship groups take it back and to say I did this with us Ron, had people take it back with their spouse, we’ve had people take it with, share it with their pastors going through it individually as a small group. And honestly, I think it could also be used in youth groups. If you have a youth group, I think it would be very cool to let them see how God is working in smaller spaces, and how Jesus used the one. And often took big groups and wielded them down to small so that he could get the glory. So that untapped study is free. As most of you probably know, you probably already know this, we create a lot of free resources. We also have paid resources, because that’s what keeps us our ministry and our business kind of going here and keeps it alive. But this is a totally free six week study, for you to use and share in your church. You don’t have to buy extra books, extra videos, A Leaders Guide, a separate thing, this untapped study, this resource is actually copyrighted, and gives you permission to share it within your local church. Okay. And please don’t share it throughout the dominations. Just just send the link to them so they can get their own. It’s just copyrighted for use within your local church. But you can make as many copies as you want from that to use in your local church. You can share that link. Let other people get it to in other churches across the country, across the state, wherever you are across the regions. Please get a hold of that study, even if it’s just for you. So again, get the untap study, go to Resources dot small church ministry.com. And you can just sign up for it. And I also, before we go, I also just want to give you this encouragement, please don’t feel rushed to turn the ship in your church. There’s no panic. Jesus did not walk around the world panicked, there was a lot wrong. You think there’s a lot wrong in your church? There’s so much wrong in the world. There was tons wrong when Jesus was on the planet. Can you imagine what he walked by? You know, I’m gonna go more into this probably next week on the podcast. But Jesus was never in a hurry. Do you think it might be because he knew God was at work? Like God’s got this. Don’t be in a hurry to fix other people to fixed mindsets to, to just do this overall huge change at your church. I’ve really been leaning a lot more into trust in this season in my life. If Jesus was at your church right now, he’s not panicking. Think of how he would move in your church right now. I believe he would listen, I believe he would have more conversations. But I don’t think he would push everybody and say you got to change this. Right? Just kind of let that sit a little bit and just see where it resonates with you. Because again, sometimes we are so excited to share what we know what we found what we’ve learned. And we forget to let other people be on their journey, their journey with Jesus, their journey with the Holy Spirit, their journey in their faith. So be that person that doesn’t just force. Hey, numbers don’t matter anymore. numbers do matter. Let’s elevate the stories though. So we can get numbers more in their place. I’m all about that. The conversations, loving the people you’re with and just knowing that God is absolutely at work right now in your church. Go with him. Go it Godspeed. Godspeed. Which if that’s like Jesus, it was a little slower than most of us would prefer to go. All right, before I go, if you are listening when this episode goes live, this is the last week to get on the fabulous get in on the fabulous pre sale price of the ministry specific trainings that we are creating. They are so good. If you are not on my email list. You might not know about these yet. So like spread the word this week. We are creating by request. Ministry specific trainings for youth ministry, children’s ministry, women’s ministry, worship ministry. We have one cre we’re creating on ministry burnout. There’s others that will be created down the down the line but we put these on a pre sale which I’ll just explain to you what that means. Each one of these there’s going to be a bunch of courses in youth ministry, a bunch of courses in women’s ministry, a bunch of courses in worship ministry, and we’re pre selling them as a bundle. So if you get on on this, it’s a lifetime cost. It’s a lifetime price for a pre sale. It’s just $149. So far, we’re promising at least 12 courses in each bundle, but I know there’s going to be more There’s going to be things that come up and somebody’s going to say, wow, we really need more help in social media and youth ministry or something. And we’ll create another course around that. So if you grab the presale bundle, you’ve got all 12 plus anything that ever gets added into these ministries, specific courses. So definitely take a look at him, you’ll also be able to see the how to get to him from resources, the place where you’re gonna go to get the untapped study. So go to Resources dot small church ministry.com, you can grab the free untapped resource that six week course, to use anywhere small groups sermons, your personal use whatever, so, so good. And then take a look at these ministry specific trainings. It is the first time we have created ministry specific trainings that are really comprehensive. So whether you’ve just gotten thrown into children’s ministry, and you’re like, I’m willing, but I’m not sure where to go, or you want to refresh and you’ve been doing ministry for a long time. And you need some encouragement, some step by step. How do we do this? Where do we start? Where do we restart? That’s what’s it. So I won’t take time to go through all the different things. But if you go into that, onto you know, resources dot small church mystery.com click into one of those bundles, you will actually see every title of every course it explains it a lot more. So good. But get it before Friday. So Friday is the last day for the presale. After that. All these courses will be released, you know, one at a time and you’ll be able to grab them even individually if you want. But this is like so like way the best deal you’ll ever get. It is under I think it’s like less than a third of the cost of what just the 12 would be. So definitely go take a look at that. Go grab the untapped study. And we’ll put the link below in the show notes as well. And we are so excited about what God is doing, where we’re headed, where you’re headed and where we’re headed together. I hope you’re excited too. So until next week, be light