JC Penney was a successful chain of stores, but it was time for a new CEO and as times were changing, the company knew it needed to make sure it stayed current so as to reach customers and accomplish its retail mission. They decided to tap a successful CEO who had a track record of success with Apple. Ron Johnson was thought to be behind the Apple store design which had done well. He was a follower of Steve Jobs and had taken some of his greatest lessons to heart.

He came to JC Penney and began to quickly make the changes he thought would help update the store for future success. His changes emulated what had worked for the Apple stores. One not-so-minor problem; JC Penney wasn’t Apple, it wasn’t selling technology and its target clients were not the same as Apple. If you watch the video embedded below, you will see the catastrophic decline that immediately followed these changes.

There is a cautionary tale for today’s church. Culture is changing and the church must constantly adapt its methods so that it can continue to deliver the Message and accomplish the Mission that Jesus gave it; to Make Disciples. Some churches choose to go the way of Blockbuster Video (a separate idea and future blog post) and just quietly go out of business by not figuring out newer ways to do the same thing. There are many churches that do know that there needs to be change and often they look to what has been successful for others and try to copy that success.

Churches need to change, but each church needs to change according to their own culture, their own community, and the unique circumstances that God has placed them in. Even in the early church, things that worked in Jerusalem didn’t necessarily work in Galatia. As some churches became primarily filled with Gentiles instead of Jews, there were cultural differences that had to be taken into account.

When we try to blindly emulate the style and methods of someone else’s success, we will run a great risk of destroying the good parts of what we have. Change must be done carefully and thoughtfully with a careful study of your own culture, your own gifts and weaknesses, and the unique situation that God has placed you in. This is why I’m a big fan of churches bringing in an Assessment Team who can listen to the church, help the church take stock of itself, and then help guide the church through the correct changes. Otherwise, we risk thinking that one size and one method will fit all and we will only hasten the decline we were trying to avoid.

If you are a pastor or other leader who longs to see the church grow in its Mission to make disciples, make sure you don’t trade your Penneys for Apples.

There are people who believe that their spiritual gift is “Church Critic.” They have a fun ministry of pointing out to others all the areas that we need to “fix.” Pastors oftentimes really struggle with people with this particular gifting, not only because its generally pretty discouraging, but also because most pastors desperately want to fix each of these things and when a Critic is expressing their gift, the pastor often adds pressure to himself.

A few years ago I was approached by someone with the gift who opened the discussion with, “do you know about the problem with this church?” My response was, “Yes, and I’ll bet my list is longer than yours. It’s actually worse than you think!” The Critic didn’t quite know what to say. I had out-gifted them! Rather than defend and try to explain the fact that we were failing in some area, or feel defeated, I was just honest. Our church is very far from perfect and has many areas that need work.

At the heart of the issue is the feeling by some that our goal is to achieve as much perfection as possible. We should seek to do things well, and we should continually work on areas where we are weak, but the goal of the church is to proclaim the grace and mercy of God and His love expressed through the death and resurrection of Jesus on the cross. As fallen human beings we continually demonstrate that we “fall short of the glory of God.” The fix is not to try to be perfect, but to again rest in and proclaim the grace and mercy of God.

When someone approaches me and tells me they are unhappy with an aspect of our church, I can easily find common cause with them. There are always areas that I am unhappy with as well. I ask them if they thought that the goal was to make us happy? My happiness is not a goal, nor do I make it a goal to try to please each person who attends. Instead, my goal is to proclaim, share, and show the love, mercy, and grace of Jesus, and sometimes my own and the churches own failures help communicate that.

So if you come to our church, you will observe a failing church with failing people. We have this treasure in clay pots. If we are who we’ve been called to be, our weakness and failings will provide a showcase of the power of God who saves sinners and is kind to evil and ungrateful people.

And He has said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is perfected in weakness.” Most gladly, therefore, I will rather boast about my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me.

(2 Corinthians 12:9)

You don’t the term “Church Social” much anymore. It is a term of our past. Now we have fellowship times or, in the case of Bean’s Corner, Koinonia which is just another word for fellowship. No matter what form getting together takes or what name we give it, coming together as a group is a social activity and like any gathering of people, there can be pressure to conform.

Social pressure to conform has perhaps gotten slightly magnified in our current culture. As our political climate has become more divided and heated, we expect people to align within our group. We tend to want to hang out with our “own kind” more and we seek out people with whom we feel most comfortable. This is human nature, but there is a dark side to it. We tend to call it peer pressure, and it can affect any group, from kids through all adult stages of life.

The most dangerous part of this kind of socialization is when it takes the place of the transformation that is supposed to characterize a person who has put their faith in Jesus. Too often our churches have actually created and wielded socialization as a tool to affect change in people’s lives. It starts with the youth group as we have rules of speech, dress, and conduct that must be observed in order to be considered a “good” kid and a member of good standing in the youth program. If you don’t conform, you will be excluded from your social group.

Too often churches have done the same with the adults. You are expected to look a certain way, sound a certain way, act a certain way, or you will not “fit in” and will be under pressure to conform. This can seem like a good and appropriate thing to keep people in line if it didn’t fly in the face of what the Bible says about the change that should take place. We are not to conform (an act of our own volition) to this world, but instead, be transformed (an act by an outside force) by the renewing of our minds. In other words, we are to be changed by what we learn, not change ourselves based on social pressure. This is a crucial difference. Jesus didn’t come to change our behavior, He came to change our hearts through His work, and a changed heart will result in changed behavior.

The goal is the heart, with the behavior being a result, not the primary goal. This is why the Bible refers to our outward behavior sometimes as fruit. Remembering that the behavior is a result of a heart issue, we should focus less on trying to change people’s behavior or enforcing behavioral conformity, but instead use the behavior as a window into the heart and focus on bringing hearts to Jesus. If we focus first and foremost on getting outward conformity, we will often end up creating people with a form of godliness but no power, and Pharisees that follow the rules well but are dead inside. We will also create a culture of concealment rather than a culture of confession.

Let us, especially if we are leaders in our churches, move away from trying to enforce outward conformity, but instead encourage people to meet, accept, and submit to Christ who will transform us.

But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

(Philippians 3:20-21)