In the October issue of
Christian Standard is my story,
Mission-Driven Success, about how Rocky Fork Fellowship is dealing with the challenges brought on by their rapid growth. It's a follow up to the piece that appeared in
Lookout two and a half years ago,
Fellowship in a Small Town.
In preparation for the story, I conducted two interviews. The first was with Scott Rice, the chairman of elders. What follows are the parts of our conversation that didn't make it into the limited space of the published article. I think you'l find them informative and challenging.
Next week I'll follow up with the unpublished portions of another interview I did, this time with Mark Butrum and Chris Collier.
But first, Scott Rice:
"Five years ago I was just dreading the day that we were going to have to buy land and then build a building, because neither one of those things seemed affordable or even possible at all.
The school building gave us an incubator to work within that wasn’t very expensive, but it also provided people a safe place to come worship that wasn’t unfamiliar to them. They already kind of knew the school building so they could walk through the door and experience a service with the feeling of a church building. That’s who we were really setting our goal on was to find people who weren’t already attending church somewhere and let them have a comfortable atmosphere to attend. It really did help us that way. Honestly if we could create that same atmosphere in the new building, we’re going to try to do that. It’s going to be a challenge in its own way.
If I was to walk in here and never had been in a church before, what is it that is going to make me feel uncomfortable? A lot of it’s in the song choices or the way we dress or the traditions of standing up and greeting people around you, those kinds of things. We try to look at it from their perspective.
I want to get a cup of coffee. How many times have you been in a church where you couldn’t bring a cup of coffee into the sanctuary? Even the terminology, like sanctuary., things like that. Those are all valid terms, but people who don’t use them regularly just unfamiliar to them. It’s just one more thing that might make them feel uncomfortable. 'Meet me in the sanctuary'? I don’t even know what that is.
Another challenge is to get people behind the idea. It would seem intuitive that people would want us to be in a building, but then again, we’ve been in the school for ten years and they may thing, why don’t we just stay here, this is comfortable.
I have a feeling, the people of Hallsville themselves have kind of scratched their heads at who we are. Our founders, our leaders, weren’t people who grew up in the local community. All of us are from somewhere else. Hallsville, like a lot of small towns, has a tendency to think of itself as a network of people who have been here awhile who have a vested interest in the community. And now we’ve got an outside group that has come in and is seeing great success. There was maybe some questions about who we were and our motives, questions of whether this was even necessary. And may questions of these people are outsiders and they’re succeeding. They’re becoming a force in and of themselves.
We’ve had some people in our community who have had their kids raised up in these schools, so we’re getting involved in the graduations and local sports and those sorts of things. The familiarity of who we are now has begun easing. We’ve also begun having people who are from the established Hallsville community who have been attending and can help deliver that message to their friends and family members, to say “These people are all right, they’ve done a good thing.” We haven’t had any significant pushback.
There’s some resistance that you feel from the community itself, that we don’t need another church. Why would you decide that you should start here. You’re pulling from where we would like to pull from. You-re a competitor in the community, rather than a group with the same goal.
You address that resistance by staying focused with what you’re trying to do. You stay in communication with them, you engage them, you respect them, you honor what they’re trying to do as well. You don’t run them down, and you don’t try to take people from them, you don’t try to pull their members form them. If people come on their own, that’s something we don’t have any control over. You’re focus is on people who aren’t already attending. Beyond that you wish each other well.
You have to try to stay ahead of the curve of growth with staffing and programs and budgets. People were coming and coming but we had to bring on more staff, we had to expand our eldership.
Sometimes we wanted to stay ahead of the curve but couldn't afford it. Sometimes it was happening so fast we couldn’t get it done. There were many times we didn’t have things in place that needed to be in place, like certain parts of the by-laws weren’t done, or policies on how we handle things. Sometimes we were making decisions as things were already happening.
It's important to pay attention to the members that you have while also engaging the new ones that are coming in, and not dropping ball with them leaving out the door behind you without you knowing it. Paying attention to who you have as well as paying attention to who you might be getting.
Growth brings with it a lot of new ideas. Sometimes they’re helpful and sometimes they’re not. Sometimes they’re not mission centered - Rocky Fork’s mission. They’re nice to have, they’re community oriented, but they’re not about making disciples. So sorting through all things is difficult.
Pulling everything through the filter of our mission helps to explain why we might not participate in fund raisers for s sports team or a community banquet or a community event, why we want to dedicate our resources and our time to just that mission.
The mission is to make disciples. We used to say to make disciples by connecting with one another, growing in Christ, plugging them into services, and leading them to bring others to Christ. It’s a constant circle. We’ve shifted our language now to simply
Making Disciples, with an emphasis on helping people to make Jesus the most important relationship in their lives. They will do more than just call it their church home, they will be invested in it. That’s how we’re trying to reinvigorate us to refocus.
The challenge of having a large percentage of unchurched people, they don’t understand what the commitment of being a good church member or a good Christian would entail. It’s exciting because you’re seeing the people grow, but it’s challenging because you’re trying to keep them moving in the right direction.
Ultimately it all goes back to God’s working in our lives and in this community. Now that’s hard to say because I’ve seen other people who feel like God is working in their project also, and it just doesn't go as well. So I don’t know how to reconcile all that.
Some of the things we were blessed with, through him was a set of people who were very skilled and organized and motivated and committed. There was a small group of people who were really ready to pick up and to do the hard work to make this happen, for a long term commitment. They were blessed to secure a preacher who came in with skill sets already through his job history, but was new enough in the ministry field that we could afford him. There was a good match up right there.
And then our community was hungry for this kind of church. A church that isn’t wrapped up in the traditions of how it’s been for a hundred years. A church that can deliver the Christian message in a kind and genuine and well done way.
For whatever reason, the people of Hallsville found that to be inviting, and decided to come.
We want to do it in a good way, we don’t want to cut corners. We take this seriously. We do it with an openness and a transparency and the idea that we’re on this same journey with everyone else. The church leaders and the staff are all gong through the same things everybody’s going through. We want to do this altogether."
