100 Days to a Healthier ChurchSample

Pick a Project

Week 7

Day 43 (Fourth BIG Saturday): Decision Day

Today’s Big Idea: Mission or Culture? Like the seed in the Parable of the Sower, the mission is always good, always available, and always up to Jesus, not us. What is up to us is how ready and willing our soil is to receive and give the mission a chance to thrive.

The quality of the seed is up to Jesus, not us, so it’s always healthy and ready to grow. Create a healthy culture, and you’ll have a healthy harvest.

Key Verse: Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. (Matthew 13:3-8)

Thoughts to Consider: Changing the soil. Nothing good will grow in bad soil. The bad dirt needs to be removed and replaced with healthy dirt. This is not about small tweaks to the programs, schedules, or style of the church. You won’t turn an unhealthy culture into a healthy one by singing new songs, experimenting with different service times, or upgrading your facility.

A change in soil means a change in attitude—from Stubborn to Adaptable, from Shallow to Deep, from Busy to Simple. Let’s get to work.

First soil: the Stubborn culture. 

Change will take a softening of the soil and the heart. Of all the soils, this is the one that usually takes the longest to turn over. The sheer difficulty of affecting real change here is often a reason that the neglect of the soil has gone on for so long. 

Stubborn soil: Where does it hurt? This isn’t about finding solutions, it’s about discovering pain points. When a patient tells a doctor, “It hurts when I jump up and down on my left leg,” a good doctor doesn’t say, “Then stop doing that!” They pay attention to what’s hurting and why.

Second soil: the Shallow culture. 

The Shallow church doesn’t say “no” to anything. Good ideas aren’t rejected, they slowly wither from lack of nourishment. The Shallow church culture is soft on the surface, but there’s no depth, no maturity, nothing to sustain a deep root for the long term. The Shallow church is an immature church. 

Shallow soil: Where can we go deeper? A Shallow church may have a lot of Bible studies, but the members are relying on someone else to digest it for them and then they want more of the same. A mature church listens to good teaching, of course, but then decides to do something about it. They read the Bible for themselves. They share their faith with others. They get involved. They serve. Because that’s what grownups do. So take a look at where your church needs to go deeper. 

Third soil: the Busy Culture.

Life adds clutter. Sometimes the clutter is physical material, like old furniture and boxes of VBS materials that will never be used again. Often, it’s activities we keep on the calendar even though they serve little or no purpose. Sometimes, it’s systems, committees, and processes that would work better if they were streamlined—or axed. If your church has a Busy culture, the answer is simple. Literally.

Busy soil: Where do we simplify? Today is the day to take all the items on that list and move them into one of three categories. You know what they are! Put another fresh sheet of butcher paper on the wall and write the three headings Keep, Toss, and Give.

But how do you decide which category each item belongs in? Here’s a simple formula: If it it’s an essential ministry item already being done by the people who must do it, put it under Keep. If it’s an essential ministry item, but it can be done by someone other than the person(s) currently doing it—even if it will take some training first—put it under Give. Everything else (yes, everything!) goes in the Toss pile. After all, if you don’t have someone who is already doing it well and there’s no one who can do it well, it’s time to stop trying.