Trend-Spotting in the Church

Good morning everyone and welcome to Made for Mondays. I'm so glad you're tuned in with me today as we continue to go on. And can you believe we're almost to the month of July? This is unbelievable that we're almost halfway through this. Well, literally we're almost halfway through this year. It's crazy to me to think about 2023 in that way. So welcome to Made for Mondays. I'm so glad you're tuned in with us. Thank you to all of you faithful Made for Mondayers that keep coming with us each and every week as we just kind of see what's in the mind and go forward. This year I've taken a turn to look at some more practical things and every once in a while intersperse some leadership in there. And this next couple of weeks is gonna be one of those practical moments. I love trendspotting, I love trying to forecast the future. And so I thought why not give some principles over the course of the next couple of weeks to try to forecast the future for minority based churches. And that's where my little expertise is at. And so I want to have some fun doing so. So whether you're a pastor, a layperson, a person, a part of the church as you're going to work today, or if you're thinking about the meetings and things you have this summer early, or wherever you are in your own local congregation, hopefully the next couple weeks can encourage you and to give you some practical steps and tips on to forecasting the future of your church and engaging with it. So after the break we'll take some time to see why we're doing this and four steps to forecast and four steps to seeing trends in local churches that every person in the church can do. Not just the pastor, but also you as well. So welcome to Made for Mondays. You were Made for Mondays Mondays to own you. You own your Mondays and hopefully this podcast podcast can encourage you to own your Mondays before Mondays try to take you over. So let's jump into it today. 1. Let's jump right into our time together today. Welcome to week one of understanding trends in minority based churches. And this week we're going to talk about how to spot trends. Let me tell you why we're having this conversation and then we'll jump into our conversation. So a couple of weeks ago the Lord began to reveal to me some things about the upcoming season of my own church and that God was going to send a fair amount of people and that we are in a community in Vallejo, California and Surrounding cities. It's one of the most biblically illiterate and least biblical minded church communities in the country. Here in this area, 3 to 5% of people go to church once every five weeks. It's a really low percentage. So it's a lot of people in our area who don't know Jesus and are not a part of a local church. So God began to reveal to me about how there's a couple of months coming up, August through October, where our church is going to see an influx of people in our community who are seeking for an opportunity to make known the Lord Jesus and to understand Jesus. And so I'm really excited to welcome them in. Well, the moment the Lord shared that with me, I pulled my staff aside and said, you know, we have to evaluate our own church. Are we ready for what God says is going to happen? Are we ready for people? Do we have enough paper? Do we have enough postcards? Do we have the space? Do we have the personnel ready to receive them? Do we have the ministries ready for volunteers? Do we have volunteers ready for the people? I began to evaluate a lot of those things as I began to not only see in the Spirit, but then as I began to consider some other things in our church. I could see the trends heading in a direction that's going to be really good for us. And as I was thinking about that, I thought, why not share that with you other church leaders or laypersons across this screen or across this podcast who might be thinking about your own churches and considering the future of your churches and considering spotting trends in your church. And so my background as from qualitative research and design centered approach, human centered design approaches and things like that. I wanted to share with you four ways that you can spot trends in your church. Now these spotting trends can lead to positive things as well as negative things. There might be some things you spot as you begin to evaluate your church that you see that you're leading going to a negative direction. And it's good to see it before it happens and prayerfully avoid it. And if you're seeing things going in a positive direction, good, hopefully you can see it and engage it so you can sustain it. The goal is sustainability. The goal in spotting trends is not just astronomical growth. The goal in spotting trends is sustainability. One of the areas I failed as a leader is where I've spotted a trend, put all of our energy and resources towards it, and failed because it happened, it grew, it went well, but we had nothing to sustain the growth. This time around. I wanted to spot the trends and sustain it in the process. So are you ready? Let's talk about four ways that you can spot trends in your church that can prayerfully lead to sustainability. Number one, observation. Observation. I want to challenge you as a leader in your church to observe the different topics you raise and the different ways that people respond in their interests and preferences. Now, here's what I want to tell you. Here's a secret that I've learned. I don't like affirmation. And that's not because I don't like people saying, oh, it was a good job. Affirmation says that you have lived up to the expectation of somebody else. So affirmation is literally someone saying, hey, this is the lane and the layer that I'm saying that you can exceed the moment you exceed it. I don't know what I'm going to do with you, but as long as you stay within the bubble that I've painted for you, congratulations. Good job. Right? Think about, we do that with people who get a new job, they got a new job, and it's a job that's not yours, but it's a decent job. Good job, they do. Someone does something at your job that you told them what to do, the parameters that you set as a leader, good job, they stayed at the level that you told them to. Here's what I want to challenge you to do. I want you to exceed expectations and I also want you to monitor leader. Hear me. When someone says thank you, I don't want you to get caught up on the good jobs. I want you to get caught up on the thank you. Here's the difference. The good job says you stayed in your lane. The thank you says, I'm here, I'm invested. It agitated a part of my core. I want you to consider the areas where your members, where leaders, where laypersons. People have come to you as a leader of a ministry and said, thank you, stay there. That's the trend. That's the part that is agitating the hearts of people that are going to make them stay and keep coming again. Things changed for me as a preacher and as a pastor where I stopped living for people that say that was a good sermon, began to live for, hey, thank you. That topic, that sermon series, that, that observation, that engagement, that attendance, that, that duty that happened, that you, that you attended to, that was important. So be mindful of the thank yous. Observe. So when people tell you good job, that means that just the layer of church that people are saying is cool, is cool. You're gonna stay right where you are. If you keep living for the good jobs, if you live for the thank yous, things are gonna be a lot different. I want you to then in the conversation of observation, pay attention to those topics that generate enthusiasm. The thank you, the engagement, the thank yous. Number two, I want you to analyze data and I want you to consider things like your attendance patterns. Make sure you're taking numbers for attendance. I want you to analyze things like the giving trends among generations. I want you to analyze things like feedback from surveys, taking surveys. One of the things I like to do is send my leaders a survey every quarter just to evaluate where we are, how's our communication, things like that. And look for changes in language, one, positively, negatively, and two, to see what is evolving in your culture. Are people buying into the language that you're using? Are people buying into the language that you're putting out to people? One of the things I used to tell churches when I used to do logo work for them and things like that was I refuse to make a website for someone where there is no vision because you're giving me a bunch of language that doesn't match the context. And I don't like false advertisement. And one of the things I've suffered from personally and I'm trying to get better at as a leader as well, the one thing I've told my colleagues as well is you got to make sure that if you're going to market your church, what you market is what they'll show up to. So be mindful of your attendance patterns, demographic information, your giving trends. And let me tell you this to encourage you pastors across the screen as well. If your church isn't where you want it to be, if your community is not where you desire it to be, Rome was not built in a day, but it was built. Your responsibility is to be faithful in the journey, but know your data so you know how to get there. The people are telling you the story, and the people are telling you what works or doesn't work. God is revealing through those individuals the affirmation of what he told you. Now, if you were telling God what to do and not God telling you what to do, that's a whole different story. So take a moment to look at that data and see what the data is leading you, and you'll be able to see that maybe you can get there overnight, or you can get there in 20 years, but you're going to get there. Number three, I want to challenge you to stay informed. Your Church is only as big as your community. And if you're not in your community, your church is going to grow as well. I want you to stay informed on current events, on social issues, on cultural changes that are going to impact your church community. I want to challenge you to have to know what's going on at city council, to know what's going to go on different articles and blogs and to know the different things. I want you to even challenge you as well. Leaders, get on the TikTok of your community. Just search the name of your community on your TikTok and begin to see what different generations are doing and saying after dark, during dark and during the light. I want you to do the same thing on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter, not so much, but on TikTok, search and see what people are saying and doing in your community and understand and know and challenge yourself to be a part of that community. A pastor who drives in and a pastor who's a part of are two different pastors. Either you're pastoring from or you're pastoring to. And lastly, I want to challenge you to network, not only to connect with leaders of other churches, I want you to connect with the people, the civic and social leaders in the community, but who are the ground leaders now in some communities, that's the drug dealers or some communities, that's the pimps for some community, as some business owners. For some communities, it's the print shop owner. Here in Vallejo, there's some, There's a print shop owner who's one of the most powerful brothers in Vallejo and a cool, cool dude. Is it a restaurant leader? Is it a chef? Is it an owner of a number of gas stations? Is it owner a bunch of dry cleaners? Know who is in your community. Not only is it going to speak to the people, I mean, sorry, to the people, but also speak to giving as well. Those are the influencers. Those mindsets and thoughts may devalue what you say until you have their say so as well. So I want to challenge you to spot that, to spot trends in your church. Observing, realizing where they say thank you, looking at your data and being comfortable with seeing positive or negative data, staying informed of what's going on in the community outside the church that's influencing. So when you see dips in giving, you know what's going on in the community, right? You know what's going on. There's graduations, there's vacations, there's life, there's a big, There's a big, I mean Whatever it is, big, fair. And then also networks, you know, the other influential people in the community, so that when you have enough equity built with them, they can also help influence some decisions that you're making. Now, this is not me saying manipulation. This is me right now saying, before you make a whole bunch of changes and try to change a bunch of things and try to build a bunch of stuff, I want you to spot what's going on first. See what's happening first. Understand what's going on in your culture first. Understand what's going on in your community first. By observing, grabbing data, being informed and networking. And that way you can build sustainable growth, sustainable long term growth that will be maintained even when you're not there. That's my first step into this today. And I hope this is helpful to you. Whether you're a pastor, a layperson, or someone coming in, you can take those principles and apply to your job as well, like your organization. Observe, analyze, be informed, stay connected with others. I promise you you're gonna see some trends happen. And hopefully your trends are going like this. And even if they aren't, if they're going like this, we can taper them, hopefully get in the other direction. Let's say our affirmation. Someone say, I am me. I can be me. And no one will stop me from being me. Have an amazing Monday. Remember this, you were made for Mondays. Mondays don't own you, you own your Mondays. Now go forth and prosperity and be all that God's called you to be. I'll see you next week.