Emerging Trends Affecting Ministry

Whoever Gets There First, Wins
George Barna 

There are two key principles that are relevant for every leader who wants to emulate both the style and substance of Jesus the leader:

1. You cannot get the right results from the wrong people
2. You get what you measure

You Cannot Get the Right Results from the Wrong People

The church today is stagnant, no matter what areas we look at. The Barna Group put out a report, The State of the Church 2005, where we looked at 45 different beliefs and behaviors related to people's faith. We discovered that the Church has plateaued in all areas, including attendance, giving, evangelism, prayer, and Sunday School involvement.

What we have is a nation in which Christians are being affected more by the culture than Christians are affecting the culture. Or as I pointed out in a book I wrote in 2003, Think Like Jesus, we have a church in the U.S. in which people do not act like Jesus because they don't think like Jesus, and they don't think like Jesus because they do not possess a Biblical worldview.

We may try to combat this problem by focusing our ministry efforts on adults, to teach them how to have a Biblical worldview. But the research is proving this to be near impossible. We are focusing on the wrong people. We cannot get the right results from the wrong people.

It wasn't until I started doing this research that I began to recognize that we've all missed the boat. We should be focusing on children in our ministries, prioritizing them. We have made profound discoveries in our research:

1. We have come to realize that the moral development and foundations of a person are in place by the age of nine years old. Very little changes in the moral perspectives of individuals after that age.
2. We have also discovered that faith commitments of a vast majority of Americans are already solidified by the age of 13. This includes their perceptions about the existence of God, their perspective on the Bible, the means to salvation, making a commitment to Christ based on grace or deeds, and their role in the local church.
3. The most efficient ministers of the gospel in America today are kids. We find that a large share of the kids who accepted Christ did so because one of their friends, who has just done the same thing, got so excited they couldn't contain themselves.
4. Many adults who accept Christ do so because their children have accepted Christ. Their children were so transformed by the experience, and through their ongoing relationship the parents could no longer ignore the significance of it.
5. What you believe by age 13 is what you will likely die believing. We came to this conclusion after doing a couple of major national studies looking at the theological beliefs of children through people in their 90s.

But in the church, we wait until a person is an adult to get serious with them spiritually. We assume they need to be older to grapple with theological truths or handle moral polemics or have the reasoning capabilities to become a good apologist.

Whoever Gets There First, Wins

The problem with such well-intentioned assumptions is that they are wrong. We've learned through our research that it's too late. Their character, outlook and their spiritual nature has already been determined. We need to think about it differently: Whoever gets there first, wins.

Satan is getting there first. Satan has targeted children and is set on destroying the future of the church. How? He is orchestrating the messages used through the primary communication channels that influence the minds of young people. He uses the seven dominant sources of influence: Movies, music, television, the Internet, books, family, and public policy or law.

The typical adolescent spends six to eight hours every single day digesting the messages from those media. And what are we doing? We're playing games with the kids for an hour on Sunday morning.

Why do we play games? Because of the second leadership principle I want you to consider: You get what you measure.

You Get What You Measure

Churches generally have about five different factors that they turn to, to indicate whether they're being effective or successful in ministry:

1. Attendance
2. Square footage
3. Number of programs in operation
4. Budget and the ability to raise revenue
5. Number of staff on payroll

The assumption is if the number for each of these is bigger each year we are growing and, therefore, healthy. Here is the problem. Jesus Christ did not die a horrifying death on that cross to fill the seats in your auditorium. Jesus died to see people's lives completely, and totally, and joyfully, and joyously transformed.

Since we get what we measure, we cannot continue to insist on measuring those five factors listed above. We have to measure for transformation to get transformation. You want to lead like Jesus? Then show me the fruit.

Measuring Transformation

How do you measure transformation? I'd encourage you just to go back to the seven basic steps of ministry. Look at things like worship, and people's commitment to worship, and their connection with God through that. Go back to their concern related to evangelism, and reaching out to people who don't know Christ in a deep and personal way. Look at the whole nature of spiritual commitment, and how people are trying to grow, and how well that's working.

Look at the notion of stewardship, getting beyond just the measures of tithing and into the recognition that every resource that's been entrusted to us has been given to us to invest in the advancement of His Kingdom.

And look at the whole issue of the family, at whether or not the family is actually becoming the church. Not just going to church, but being the church. The local congregation is there to support the family in that process.

If you look at all this and you say, what we're doing isn't getting the job done—and clearly our research shows that beyond a doubt—then you've got to change. And the best way to start is by altering what you measure.

Leading Like Jesus

Jesus invested His life in the people who had ears to hear. He invested in people who were capable of and willing to change. Who in our culture fits that description? Who is willing and ready to change? Children. The single most important group of people you need to invest in is the children.

We are losing our war with Satan because we are handing our children over to our enemy. We are failing to raise our children as spiritual champions and we are failing to support parents in raising their children as spiritual champions.

The business world would describe the challenge this way:

• Identify your target audience
• Execute a strategy that will satisfy outcomes with that target audience
• Evaluate the results against your desired outcomes
• Revise your plans accordingly, and then
• Re-engage

The Apostle Paul would say it maybe a little bit differently. "To fight the good fight of faith, love God's children in the same way that Jesus Christ himself did, for the Kingdom of God belongs to such as these."

Evaluate your life. Evaluate the ministry in which you're involved to figure out: Have you prioritized the right people and are you measuring the stuff that really matters?

Adapted from a presentation at the 2005 CMA conference by George Barna, Founder and Directing Leader of The Barna Group Ltd. He is the author of several books including Think Like Jesus and Transforming Children Into Spiritual Champions.