Our staff recently read Breakout Churches by Thom Rainer. The book was very similar to what Good to Great was for the business world. That was done on purpose. Thom and his research team set out to find some churches that broke out of mediocrity and had great success under certain conditions:
- They had to have a period of decline
- They had to break out with the same pastor leading the church the entire time
- They had to have at least 26 conversions/year after breakout
- They had to have no higher than a 20:1 conversion ratio (20 christians for every 1 conversion per year)
Here are some points that hit me:
- It's a sin to be good if God has called us to be great (my favorite!)
- When pastors grew in their leadership, the growth of the church was directly affected in a positive way
- The breakout churches consistently had a vision that was outwardly focused
- Breakout churches faced the brutal facts about their ineffectiveness and changed. Churches that didn't break out were either in denial of those problems, or didn't have the courage to do something about it.
- Almost all of the breakout churches were influenced by conferences, books, consultations or other similar outside influences.
- Breakout churches had a culture of serious fun
As I read through the book I thought of the countless churches that are declining. That's probably 95% of the churches in America. At the Drive Conference Andy Stanley talked about the fact that their are tons of churches that have resources & people, but aren't effective, that are declining and aren't making an impact on their communities. He said that somebody will figure out how to get those churches to take their resources and marry them with new ideas to actually make an impact.
I've mentioned a couple times that my BIG prayer is for God to help Baltimore become known for strong, healthy churches, for His glory. I believe a huge part of making that happen is church planting. But, I also believe it will take a lot of churches breaking out. Hopefully somebody can figure out how to do what Andy talked about, here in Baltimore.
