We were in an old, musty church conference room. Maybe twelve of us.

There was a kitchenette in the back with an old microwave and coffeemaker. In the front was an antique sewing table next to a table with a television on top and three folded wheelchairs underneath.

Around the conference table were leaders from several churches surrounded by dark-stained wood panel walls.

The topic of the workshop that day was “Breaking free from survival and communicating for impact.” I stood at the front, to the left of the television, ready to dive in.

Everyone seemed nice as we chatted while they got settled.

For the first ten minutes, I presented the foundation of my philosophy on church communications.

We can’t communicate with our neighbors in any meaningful way unless we truly understand who they are and what make them tick.

What do they care about? How are they struggling? What do they love? What keeps them up at night? Who do they want to become?

If we understand them on a deeper level, we can create ministries that meet their needs on a deep level and communicate them in a way that drives action.

I gave the example of my church and the two summers we distributed free food to hundreds of families every week. Meeting a real and pressing need, and getting to know them in the process.

“This won’t work!” a weathered male voice forcefully chimed in from the back.

“I’m sorry?” I said, briefly startled.

“This won’t work. Been there, done that! Serving your neighbors doesn’t grow a church. My dad’s a pastor, and his church has been doing this for fifty years, and it’s still dying. No one is coming. It doesn’t work!” He explained, seemingly angered at the very idea.

His frustration hit at the heart of why churches aren’t growing in the first place.

Serving To Grow vs Serving to Serve

My grumpy friend generously illustrated the paradigm shift that I have been trying to communicate to churches for most of the last decade.

Service isn’t a growth strategy. It’s a ministry.

Can serving your neighbors grow your church? Absolutely! Is that the REASON we serve? God, I hope not.

People are smart. They can smell a scam from a mile away. Often, that smell radiates off the walls of our churches.

If our only goal, or even our main goal, in serving our neighbors is butts in pews, we will fail.

When our goal in serving our neighbors is making their life better for the sake of their humanity (image bearers, in Jesus speak), we will win, because they will win.

Play The Long Game When Serving Your Neighbors

The problem most churches run into when putting a focus on serving their neighbors is they get impatient.

AKA, “No one is coming!”

When the service doesn’t turn into butts in pews, we start to question the success of our efforts.

However, if butts in pews isn’t the goal in the first place, we can more effectively measure our success by the impact made in the lives of our neighbors.

Are they happy? Do they have what they need? Are we building relationships (actually KNOW our neighbors)?

I’m Tired of Working With Churches

I started my business working exclusively with churches on their communications.

Eight years later, my patience is wearing thin.

Unfortunately, most churches don’t truly want to reach their neighbors in ways that build long-term relationships and transform their communities.

When we do serve our neighbors, we prefer one-off efforts with minimal human interaction. We paint a house, build a deck, serve a soup kitchen, organize a thrift store, clean up a playground, pick up trash along the road, etc.

While all those are valuable efforts, almost none result in long-term relationships and transformed lives.

We’re not here to make lives better. We’re here to grow our church.

As two gentlemen at the table passionately debated the value of serving our neighbors, I glanced to my right and made eye contact with one participant.

“Well, this isn’t going well,” was the mutual unstated realization.

“OK!” I said forcefully. “Let’s wrap up with some Q&A time. If you have any questions, I’ll take a crack at answering them. Who wants to go first?”

I abruptly abandoned the rest of my planned content, and we closed out our session.

The message was clear. “We’re not here to make lives better. We’re here to grow our church.”

To be fair, that wasn’t everyone, or even the majority, in that room. It was, however, the screaming consensus of many churches I’ve consulted with around the country over the last decade.

Until we make peace with the reality that people aren’t showing up at church anymore until we go out and make their lives better first, we’re never going to survive.

“GO and make disciples.” Not “STAY and hope they pay our light bill.”