Exponential Conference Orlando Tossed Salad

DAY 2 – Wednesday April 23RD 2008

1.  The First Baptist Church Orlando is laid out like a college campus – or at least my personal depiction of what a college campus would look like. I never attended college, so during these three days at the Exponential Conference I got to be the college kid that I never was as I walked to and from sessions in classrooms and portable buildings carrying books, folders, pens, and paper. As the ‘Professors’ talked I listened intently and took lots of notes, and when it was time for all of us to meet assembly-style en masse we all did so in the big auditorium. That’s right – for three days I felt like a 41-year-old college kid !  😎

2.  Dave Olson was my Professor for 3 hours today. He’s the Director of ‘The American Church Research Project‘, and he wrote the book ‘The American Church In Crisis‘. Dave highlighted a lot of negatively-trending statistics. On a typical weekend in 2006 only about 17% of adult Americans attended a church service. That percentage is expected to continue to drop ever so slightly (just as it has for the past 50 years), and it could be in the 14% to 15% range a decade from now. Overall church attendance (in raw numbers) is pretty much exactly the same as it was 15 years ago despite the fact that there are more than 50 million new U.S. residents today than there were back then.

3.  Small churches (less than 50 attenders) and large churches (more than 2,000 attenders) appear to be growing just fine (or at least keeping up with population growth). It’s the mid-size churches that appear to be declining and even dying. 1% of churches close annually. That’s about 3,700 churches that cease to operate every year. At the same time about 4,000 new churches are born every year, so that’s a net gain of about 300 churches every year. Older Pastors tend to attract older attenders. These are the churches that are typically in decline, as there is no biological growth (new babies in the family), there is little to no conversion growth (people being saved), and they are not birthing any new churches because they are very set in their old-fashioned ways. They tend to be older than the surrounding community that they are supposed to serve. They tend to be more closed than open to the general public.

4.  Is the American church an endangered species that is headed towards extinction ?  If you look at what it was during its peak in the mid-1950s versus what it is now then perhaps you may think that is the case. The church (in general) needs to figure out what century and what decade it is living in. ‘Where Are The People ?’ A slightly positive trend has developed since the catastrophic life-changing events of Tuesday September 11TH 2001. The bleeding may have stopped, and overall attendance appears to be headed back in a slightly positive direction. But a lot of churches are stubborn. They refuse to adapt and change with the times. The times are changing. Churches need to change the way that they do business in order to be alive and relevant.

5.  C3 Church in Orlando put on a really nice presentation for us at the Cinemark movie theatres at Festival Bay on International Drive. This is actually not where they set up their church every Sunday morning, but on this night they set up three theatres there to show us what church looks like in a typical movie theatre setting. They had a lot of nice features, gadgets, and storage units with their setup, but they also spent a lot of money for it all. The C3 ‘Praise & Worship’ band played on the main stage, and complimentary dinner and a movie was provided during and after the presentation. I think if I ever find myself in Orlando on a Sunday morning then I may just have to check out one of their church services and compare their movie theatre environment with our movie theatre environment at Life Pointe Church.

6.  One last notable item of interest here. I met up with this cool guy during Lunch on this day. I personally thanked him for what he did for me. When he was at Life Pointe Church back in early-March as a special guest speaker he did an assessment of our church and reported to Travis and Paul that I was being underutilized as a leader. Travis and Paul then delegated their authority and gave me a whole bunch of work to do every week. I was given the amusing title of ‘Director Of Cool’, and I was put in charge of the assimilation process at our church. Yes – It is a lot of work every week, but this work is God’s work. He put me in this place at this time to do this work, and there’s no denying Him. I serve Him enthusiastically.