“We’re doing everything we can as a church and yet we are not growing. What is wrong?”

Before you can determine the explicit purpose of your church, you must understand what purpose is. When we look in the thesaurus at the word “purpose,” we find cross referenced words such as “intent” or “aim.” Your purpose depicts your intent, your aim, or your objective. A purpose validates the intent, extent (outward focus), and direction of the church.

What is the intent of the church? Is it to reach the community around you? Perhaps it is to send out missionaries or to take care of hurting church and community members? Every church has an intent. Most churches start out with a combined intent. However, over time, many churches lose the outward focused intent. It is prudent to say that if you asked church leaders or members, they will almost always state their intent is to reach the lost community. However, in declining churches, the actions of church members will demonstrate a different intent. Reaching the lost community has become only an expressed intent, not a genuine, tangible intent.

A purpose validates the intent, extent, and direction of the church. The extent of the church is the degree or level to which the church exerts energy and resources to fulfill its purpose. In declining churches, we often see the majority of energy and resources being funneled into maintaining the ministries of the current church body of members to the neglect of the community. The further a church sinks into the phases of decline the less genuine ministry endeavors are provided for those outside the church. The extent of our church becomes less and less.

It is important to know the intent of your church before you attempt to move forward in reversing decline in your church. Can the intent be revolutionized? It can if the church is willing. In a declining church this always requires change. Once you know and set the intent of the church aright (ministering to the lost community), it is important to set the bar for striving to achieve the explicit intent. To what degree are you as a church and as a church leader/member willing to commit to achieve the explicit intent of the church to fulfill the purpose of the church?

The purpose of the church is to fulfill the Great Commission. “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” Matt 28:19-20 (HCSB)

As a church you have a purpose. The question becomes; If there were no obstacles or barriers in front of you, what is the one thing you would be doing for God to fulfill your purpose – as a church?

Before you move on, this is a great time to pray. Pray asking God to assist you in seeing and understanding what His specific purpose for your church is and what is your individual part in your church in discovering the uniqueness of fulfilling that purpose as a body of believers. Ask God to open your eyes, mind, and heart to receive from Him what you have as a church failed to see or believe in the past.

George Yates is an Organizational Health Strategist and coach, assisting churches, organizations, and individuals in pursuing God’s purpose for life. Click here to receive this blog in your email inbox each Tuesday.

We all – individually and corporately – have periods in our lives that necessitate rebuilding. The book of Nehemiah in the Bible is a great book to read, study and be encouraged through the rebuilding process. The book also demonstrates that when God is in it and we follow Him, the rebuilding is far greater than we could imagine.

An interesting fact about Nehemiah is that he did not pass the blame. He shouldered the responsibility, and he had not been in Jerusalem. It is very probable that Nehemiah was born in captivity in Babylon and very possible he had never been to Jerusalem. Even so he felt a great burden and passion for the city of his ancestors.

Too often people want to play the blame game, never taking individual responsibility for our situation. Those who play the blame game never get the rebuilding job done. Nehemiah refused to point fingers. Instead he shouldered the responsibility. Look at verses six and seven of chapter one.

 “let Your eyes be open and Your ears be attentive to hear Your servant’s prayer that I now pray to You day and night for Your servants, the Israelites. I confess the sins we have committed against You. Both I and my father’s house have sinned.
⁷ We have acted corruptly toward You and have not kept the commands, statutes, and ordinances You gave Your servant Moses.”

This behavior follows a rebuilder who has made an open and honest assessment and has identified with the needs of the looming situation. In our individual lives and in churches, people often want to blame the broken walls on other people. In churches I’ve noticed people often place the blame of current situations on past leaders and former members of the church. This may in part be true, but, when we fail to accept responsibility, we have fallen into the snare of failure. Falling into this trap keeps us from moving forward.

This point more than any other perhaps is what keeps men and women from being rebuilders. It is much easier to blame others for our broken-down walls and burned gates than it is to make an honest assessment and move forward with what might be uncomfortable rebuilding.

Nehemiah could have blamed others but he didn’t. His goal and focus was getting the walls rebuilt. This was the matter of highest importance. It was not about who did or did not do something in the past. It was not about what could’ve been or what once was. Nehemiah had a burden and a passion from God. And he would not be deterred. Nehemiah’s focus was on getting right the task before him today so God’s work would be glorified into the future.

Reversing decline and rebuilding will never be accomplished until individual responsibility is accepted by all involved. One of the great facts revealed in the book of Nehemiah is that it only takes one person to begin the rebuilding process. In this case it was Nehemiah. In my circumstances it is me. In your life it is you. You are the only one who can start the rebuilding process. Nehemiah was one man. But what a difference he made. He led this small remnant of Israelites to accomplish a feat that was humanly impossible. But it did not happen until one man, one rebuilder, started right.

George Yates is an Organizational Health Strategist and coach, assisting churches, organizations, and individuals in pursuing God’s purpose for life. Click here to receive this blog in your email inbox each Tuesday.

Perhaps you have seen video clips in movies or on television shows of a steam engine train taking off from a depot. You hear the water boiling and see the steam rolling and at the right time the engineer pulls a lever, and you hear that steam being transformed into energy, energy to turn the wheels on the train. It is then that you see the wheels turn slightly and ever so slowly. The engineer pulls again, the engine bellows, and the wheels turn again slightly more, but slowly. Another pull, and the wheels turn a little more and slightly faster. The actions are repeated again and again. Each time the wheels move a little farther than the last. All the wheels turn simultaneously in the same direction. Each turn is faintly greater than the one before, each turn building momentum from the previous turn.

This process continues until the train is moving and generating speed and seemingly pulling its own weight. Momentum has kicked in and the train will continue to move down the track, headed for its destination. The wheels are now turning with ease. The engineer’s job now becomes maintaining the correct pressure on the boiler and as needed convert that steam into the energy needed to maintain the forward motion and speed of the train.

To reverse the decline in a church requires not one turn of the ignition, but a series of good decisions, each one building upon previous decisions. Like the steam engine locomotive, it takes time and energy exercised in the right direction. All of the train’s wheels are always pulling in the same direction. To get the train moving, each blast of energy is pushing the wheels in the same direction. Every blast is for forward motion.

As a church you must set the course and from that moment every decision made needs to be to move the church forward. You cannot go in different directions. The track is set and every move will be either forward or backward. To make one not so good decision or the lack of a decision to move the train forward only thwarts the momentum gained by previous actions and good decisions. To gain momentum is to make each decision with God’s wisdom and with the express intention and purpose to move the church forward. Each good decision will improve the church’s momentum until the church appears to be moving on its own as does the train. Every good, solid decision you make is fueling the locomotive of the church forward. It is helping gain the momentum to propel your church to be the church God desires.

The caution here is to remember the engineer did not stop or let off the lever creating forward progress. As the train moves forward, it still requires energy and power to arrive at its cruising speed and to maintain that speed. In the church there are always decisions to be made. There is always forward progress required. Good decisions require a team effort. It is imperative that you strive to have and keep the right people in positions of leadership.

Develop a process for making decisions that will positively impact the forward progress of your church. Who will be involved in the decision-making process? Who will be impacted by the decision? What could the decision impact negatively? What could the decision impact positively? How will your decision-making team come to a resolution? When will you know the decision is the right decision at the right time? Successful leaders realize they need not “yes men” but people with freedom to think, discuss, and debate the pros and cons of each impending decision.

George Yates is an Organizational Health Strategist and coach, assisting churches, organizations, and individuals in pursuing God’s purpose for life. Click here to receive this blog in your email inbox each Tuesday.

On the other end of the phone on this particular day was a state convention leader of a mainline denomination. He was calling to ask if I would speak with the leaders of a church in his state to possibly assist the church in a transition after the recent retirement of the senior pastor. Meeting with this group of leaders for about an hour, it was apparent to see this church had been making a series of injurious decisions for several years. The detriment of decisions is not always visible to those making the decisions.

However, just as success comes from making one good decision after another, likewise a series of bad decisions will lead a church through the phases of decline at an accelerated rate. This church had been in existence for many years and found itself in phase four decline. In their own words one major decision the church had made within the previous twelve months was made on the presumption of being the “savior” decision for the church. It was an act of desperation. The expectations were built on a model and a hopeful desperation grasp to keep the church from falling into phase five of decline, relinquishment of the ministry.

I agreed to meet with a team of members from the church and met with them on several occasions over the next three to four months. Entering into the third month I asked if I could share an observation. The agreed. Beginning with the decision made a little more than one year prior, I reiterated several decisions they had made over the previous five years. I stated, “You made that decision based on one you had made 18 months prior that caused more decline than before, and you made that one based on a previous decision 3 years ago, correct.” Again, they agreed. I walked them through four or five decisions that had been made in the past five years. I closed with this question, “It appears that you have been making (as a church) bad decisions for five years, doesn’t it?”

One lady who had been with the church for more than twenty years snapped back quickly, “Oh no, you’re wrong…” My mind immediately kicked into gear thinking, “I’m going to have to explain this a little more and walk them through this series of decisions again.” However, I was pleasantly surprised as she continued, “Oh no, you’re wrong, we’ve not been making bad decisions for five years. We’ve been making bad decisions for at least twenty years!” As I had walked them back through the decisions that had been made, she and others were able to relate and understand the detriment of the series of decisions – enough to realize it did not stop where I stopped.

We do not need to grasp for the latest and greatest technique or program. To dig out of phase four of decline, we do not need the newest methods. What is needed is to follow a methodical process that leads the church back to its first love and reaching people for Christ. Considering and implementing the concepts is only the beginning. Church leaders and the church body must be committed to following the designed course of action to effectively reverse the decline in the church. A church does not reach stage four in one week. Neither will you dig out in one week. Reversal comes one step, one good decision, at a time over a period of time. Each good decision is based on the previous good decisions.

How is your decision-making process? Do you use any outsiders, for a different perspective, an unbiased objective observation?

George Yates is an Organizational Health Strategist and coach, assisting churches, organizations, and individuals in pursuing God’s purpose for life. Click here to receive this blog in your email inbox each Tuesday.

In the decline of every organization, there comes a time when the organization realizes the methods, products, or systems of the past are not working and a staggering change is necessary, and the change needed to begin yesterday. The leadership in many organizations suddenly switches to survival mode. The ship is going down, and the first thought is to throw everything overboard that is weighting the ship down.

There may be extra, unneeded baggage on the ship, but first priority should go to determining the cause of the vessel’s sinking. The ship is possibly going down because there is a hole in the hull below the waterline. If so, no matter what you cast off the boat, the hole will continue to fill with water. In most scenarios, I see casting overboard the items of weight as three things: 1) A knee-jerk reaction 2) A waste of time and manpower that could be used to diagnose and begin repairing the cause of sinking 3) You may be casting off some of the very items you will need to make repairs to stop the sinking.

As in other businesses and organizations, the church is often guilty of looking for and focusing on symptoms instead of causes. We look for symptoms and think we can “fix” the problem by addressing the symptom. Shrinking attendance is a symptom, not a cause. Another example, a church that realizes it has wandered away from reaching out to the community may react by offering more classes on evangelism and addressing the need through other means, sermons, etc. While these may be helpful, without providing church members opportunities and practical applications to practice their ability and faith, little will change. The emphasis becomes more classes, not more outreach opportunities. The focus is on the existing members, not fulfilling our mission. We are only working to hide the pain of decline.

This phase also becomes the Grasping phase. As a church or similar organization sinks further in decline, they begin to grasp for that one silver bullet, that one great saving program or event, or style change. Sinking deeply enough, some churches will grasp for anything that might still float.

Many churches in phase four of decline believe they cannot afford the time to rebuild the church upon solid biblical principle-based labor for the Lord. For a few, at the end of phase four and entering phase five, this might be true, but most can be reversed. However, grasping for straws is not the answer. Jim Collins refers to this as “Grasping for a savior.” The church already has a savior. We do not need another one. What we need is to follow His commission to the church, The Great Commission.

We do not need to grasp for the latest and greatest technique or program. One principle to follow, “Don’t Copy Models, Capture principles”. Just because it sounds good and it worked for another church somewhere, does not mean it will work for you. Instead, determine what are the biblical principles that made it work for the other church and ask how God has gifted your church to use the principles- not the method. To dig out of phase four of decline, we do not need the newest methods. What is needed is to follow a methodical process that leads the church back to its first love and reaching people for Christ.

How will you begin praying for your church to reverse declining trends and become The Great Commission lighthouse for your community?

George Yates is an Organizational Health Strategist and coach, assisting churches, organizations, and individuals in pursuing God’s purpose for life. Click here to receive this blog in your email inbox each Tuesday.

All churches and other organizations will at some point experience decline. In Reaching the Summit I have identified five phases every church will encounter if corrections are not made. Denial of reality is phase three.

A church (or other organization) moves into phase three when the evidence of decline becomes obvious to those inside and outside the church. In this phase church leaders often enter a stage of denial. It is hard to ignore when church attendance drops from 300 to 200 or from 125 to 84. If Home Depot lost one third of its customer base, someone in leadership would take notice. In an organization such as Home Depot, action would be taken long before this size loss occurred. Yet in some churches the realization of the denial phase may not happen until the church has lost up to half their attendance.

Jim Collins states, “There is a tendency to discount or explain away negative data rather than presume that something is wrong with the company (organization).”[1] In the church this is all too common. Church leaders are busy. With weekly services, visiting the sick and grieved, ministry programs, committee meetings, sermon and teaching preparation, there is so much going on in the ministry of the church that it is hard to accept the data declaring decline.

One way we attempt to explain away the obvious data is to blame outside sources. It is much easier to pass the blame onto outside influences that we have no control over than it is to accept our role in the decline of the church. We need to accept responsibility for the ministry effort and the community to which God has called us. Great leaders shoulder the responsibility rather than pass the blame for decline in the church.

To reverse decline in your church requires strategic planning following an examination of the cold hard facts of where we have been, recent results, and needed changes. Reversing decline is not an overnight turn around, but it can be accomplished. The longer decline is allowed to continue, the deeper into the phases of decline a church will plunge.

Denial – turning a deaf ear or a blind eye to the severity of reality will not bring about the needed change for reversing decline. We must engage in a vigorous face to face summit with reality and continually refine the path to achieving the purpose of our church, fulfilling the Great Commission.

You and your church will be much better off bringing in an experienced coach and consultant to assist you with the assessment of your ministry (Vigorous face to face summit with reality[2]). An experienced outsider trained and equipped in asking the right questions will bring the objective perspective of reality to the table. Without this perspective, you have far less of a chance to succeed in reversing the decline in your church. God has not given any one person all the answers or all the gifts needed to turn a church around. But your church leadership together with a trained, experienced coach from outside your church can realize the severity of the situation and God’s new direction can be found.

It is time to move from denial of what is happening and passing the blame, to accepting responsibility and conducting a Vigorous Face to Face Summit with Reality before your church drops further into the phases of decline.

George Yates is an Organizational Health Strategist and coach, assisting churches, organizations, and individuals in pursuing God’s purpose for life. Click here to receive this blog in your email inbox each Tuesday.

[1] How The Mighty Fall, pg. 81

[2] Reaching the Summit, chapter 7

We don’t have enough Leaders!

A church may enter phase 2 of decline when the decline in attendance and/or membership reaches a point where replacing capable leadership becomes difficult, ministries and programs begin to be compromised or condensed.

When a church begins to lose some of its key leaders, what often happens is the remaining current leaders take on extra responsibility. As the church continues to decline and more leaders exit the church, some of these same leaders will take on yet another position of responsibility. And the cycle continues. It is not uncommon to see five to eight people in a smaller declining church (150 or less members) each carry five to seven areas of responsibility, sometimes more.

One church I worked with faced this dilemma. This church was averaging about 125 in worship on Sunday morning. A few people in the church were carrying the major load of responsibilities for church administration and ministry. One woman served in no less than ten positions of leadership that I can remember. Her husband was almost as busy at the church serving in about seven positions of responsibility in the church.

This couple was not trying to take over the church. Rather, they had such a passion for the church that when a leadership position was open, if no one stepped up to fill it, these were two of about five people who would step in and undertake the responsibility. God bless people like this who are willing servants with a passion. However, too often this leads to burn out and the loss of even these willing leaders.

As I worked with the church, I realized two missed opportunities. My first assumption was this church had done very little if any leadership development in the previous ten years, which church members affirmed to be true when I inquired. Without building potential leaders and opening up leadership responsibilities, potential leaders will leave your church. Thus began part of the church’s decline. Contrary to some belief, people do want expectations.

Any person’s satisfaction comes from serving and leading. Churches need an open door to leadership development and a strategic process for recruiting, and developing new and future leaders. Unfortunately, many churches simply recruit to fill an open slot with any warm body.

The second missed opportunity I recognized in this church was when things were going good those who were in leadership positions remained in the positions until relocation due to retirement, or death. There was nothing in place to train new leaders or give younger and newer members an opportunity to move into leadership positions. This was not a blatant closed-door policy of the church. It was simply an oversight.

Several years earlier, things were going okay for the church. Positions were filled, the programs and ministry were being carried out. Herein often lies the signs of phase one of decline, which the church had not realized. One good stop guard for this scenario is to have a policy for every leader to be apprenticing a potential leader.

Does your church have a strategic plan for recruiting and apprenticing leaders? Is that process active? Are current leaders required to apprentice and bring along other potential leaders? All leader training should include a spiritual growth aspect as well as the academic performance.

What is your personal first step in assisting your church in becoming a spiritual leader developing congregation?

George Yates is an Organizational Health Strategist and coach, assisting churches, organizations, and individuals in pursuing God’s purpose for life. Click here to receive this blog in your email inbox each Tuesday.

Common practice for most personality types is to sit back and let things turnaround, while we do the same things we’ve been doing. If you keep doing what you’ve been doing, you will continue to get similar results. In fact, if your life, your church, or other organization is in decline, you are receiving less and less results each year and by continuing on the same path, you will see less results this year, even less next year, and less each ensuing year until you or the church (organization) has worked itself into a hole that you cannot climb out of.

When the reality of your situation is realized, it is important that you identify with the necessity of the situation. If a correction is to be made, you or church leaders first will need to identify with the necessity of the situation. Identifying the situation is not where the struggle begins. Identifying the situation should bring an uncomfortable and unsettling of our mind, heart, and soul. But the battle to turn around begins only when we identify with the necessity of the situation.

Realizing and stating, “Our church has lost thirty percent of our attending members in the last five years.” is identifying the situation. Identifying with the necessity of the situation will burden your heart, mind, and soul, driving you to your knees in prayer for repentance and redemption from your current situation. This remorseful spirit comes not from an emergency rescue effort to save your life, job or even your church. It will be as a result of a broken spirit upon realizing the neglect of appropriate elements and action to reach the community for Christ and carrying out the Great Commission.

The same is true with your personal life. Identifying the situation of your life does not bring about the needed and desired turnaround. Identifying with the necessity of your situation should drive you to change course in your turnaround journey.

The biblical book of Nehemiah renders a great study on Identifying with the needs of a detrimental situation. Nehemiah identified with the needs of the city Jerusalem. He felt compassion for the people living there, for the rich heritage of the city and for the God he and his forefathers served.

In life we more often identify the perceived needs of a certain area or ministry than we truly identify with the necessity of a situation. Nehemiah had never lived in or even visited Jerusalem. Yet, he identified with the necessity of the situation so much that he put his own life at risk to help lead the turnaround.

Nehemiah was about to take on a daunting task that was far beyond anything he had ever been part of. But he would accept the challenge without question because he was following the direction of God almighty. When you and I follow God as did Nehemiah, we do not see a challenge before us. We see our next act of obedient service to God. And God will provide and deliver.

The need is not about what has happened or about rebuilding the Past. The need is about finding your place and purpose in moving God’s kingdom work forward. Nehemiah says, “I sat down and wept. I mourned for a number of days, fasting and praying before the God of heaven.” Nehemiah set everything else aside and contemplated the matter. He fasted –went without food, and he prayed.

It has been said that one will never rebuild until he or she comes to the point of weeping over the ruins. When was the last time you wept over the current situation of your life, your church, or this nation?

George Yates is an Organizational Health Strategist and coach, assisting churches, organizations, and individuals in pursuing God’s purpose for life. Click here to receive this blog in your email inbox each Tuesday.

Do churches (or other organizations) have character traits?

Much like behavior patterns, organizations as well as individuals have character traits and the organization will in many cases take on the character traits of certain leaders within the organization. The difference between character traits and behavior patterns is the character traits taken on by the organization may not be of “the official leader.” In the church, the character traits may not be of the senior pastor. In smaller churches for example, the character traits may be similar to those of a certain family or two in the church. In this situation, members of a particular family (or two) have had key decision making leadership roles in the church for a number of years and most other members have resigned to some of the family character traits becoming the church’s as well.

Example: If an influential leading family in the church has a disposition toward the education level of a pastor, the church will accept and adopt this disposition. I have witnessed this on both ends of the education spectrum: One church would not consider a pastor without a doctorate degree while another church believed that a pastor with a doctorate degree wasn’t spiritual enough to lead their congregation. In both cases I could see where this line of thinking came from– one influential member or family.

Another church for years allowed (I’ll call her) Linda to make decisions concerning the community. Her decisions were always negative toward the community. Throughout the community the church became known as “Linda’s church” and that was not a good reference. It meant stay away from that church. The church for a couple decades had faded into the background of Linda’s character traits.

I’ve been in churches where people would not make a decision or vote in a business meeting until they heard what “Dave” had to say. The Dave (or Diane) in your church may be a spiritual person, Sunday School teacher who reads the Bible through every year. Yet, that does not make Dave/Diane the expert on all subjects nor the person whom we follow in all situations, sometimes blindly. We are to follow God’s word. Our commission, The Great Commission came from Christ, not Dave. It is the gospel according to Christ, not Dave.

God has placed great spiritual leaders within our churches, yet He expects us to turn to Him and His word so that He can grow and stretch us as we make decisions, follow our leaders, and progress in our spiritual walk. Do not abandon your leaders, but always turn to God’s word and His Holy Spirit for his confirmation, not leaning on your own understanding. There is not one person alive on this earth who makes the right decision 100% of the time. God created us to be dependent on Him and interdependent on one another. God always has the higher seat.

Working with some churches I have discovered the person(s) who set the character traits for the church was no longer alive, but the trait lives on in the church and for years has had detrimental effects on the health of the church. Not all character traits are bad, but we must be careful when our character traits run the risk of dismissing or replacing the work of the Holy Spirit within our personal lives and the church.

Character traits are part of your personality affecting your behavior, expressing who you are as a person. As a church, character traits are those parts of your church body that cause you to act (or vote) in certain familiar ways. Waiting to see how someone else acts or reacts is borrowing their character, not utilizing your own God-given and desired traits.

What two actions are you willing to take to begin evaluating your own and your church’s character traits?

George Yates is an Organizational Health Strategist and coach, assisting churches, organizations, and individuals in pursuing God’s purpose for life. Click here to receive this blog in your email inbox each Tuesday.

“Is this a trend?” asked the new Pastor. Then he continued, “I’ll be out to supper with my wife and a church member will come up to me and say, ‘Pastor, I want to introduce you to Bill and Jane. They used to be members of our church.’ Then I’ll be visiting someone in the hospital and the patient will say, ‘Pastor this is Judy. She used to be a member of our church.’ Everywhere I go church members are introducing me to people who used to be members of our church. Is this a trend?”

He posed the question to me, but I turned it right back to all the members of the revitalization team sitting around the table. “What do you all think? Could this be a trend in the church?” Within a few minutes they had indeed identified a trend that had been ongoing for twenty years. It seems that over the years each time the church had to say good-bye to a staff member, they lost several families.

What the team did not know, and the pastor had confided in me, is that the church was about to lose another staff member. Had that conversation not come up in the team meeting, it would have breezed by everyone including me. But now that I did know, I was able to work with the pastor and the church lost only the staff member, his wife and son and one other couple. This was a victory for the church.

Eight months later I received a call from this pastor. He was about to lose another staff member. I worked with him on this one and the church lost only the staff member and her husband. Total victory. A trend had been identified and a course correction had been set.

Churches and other organizations of people can develop trends in a very short term and can carry them for many years. Unhealthy trends are not easy to overcome, but they can be broken and healthier trends can be instituted to guard against falling backward into old trends.

Your church has trends. Some trends may be healthy. Most are unhealthy in moving the church forward to reaching its God-given goal of fulfilling the Great Commission. What will it take to rightly identify and correct the course of these trends? It takes willing hearts and steel-toed shoes.

Actually, the shoes may not be required, but an open, honest assessment to identify trends is needed. In the story above had the pastor’s heart not been disturbed of so many people – friends of members – who were now former members of the church, no one would have considered a conversation to connect the dots of former members and past staff. Don’t be afraid, start the conversations. Trends cannot be corrected if they are not first identified.

It is important when looking at the trends of an organization to attempt to unveil any subdued or hidden causes or reasons. When similar actions are taken on numerous occasions, a trend is being cultivated.

The important part is to unearth the reasons for trends in the organization. Many church members and leaders are actively involved in the trends of the organization and may not realize the reason for the trend. The detriment of the trend may not be realized by the church – until irreplaceable damage is made.

There is also a Ministry Evaluation that can be used to identify ministry trends in your church. You can download this Ministry Evaluation at soncare.net or alsbom.org/churchhealth .

George Yates is an Organizational Health Strategist and coach, assisting churches, organizations, and individuals in pursuing God’s purpose for life. Click here to receive this blog in your email inbox each Tuesday.