Home Pastors Articles for Pastors People Aren’t as Loyal to Their Church Anymore—Good for Them

People Aren’t as Loyal to Their Church Anymore—Good for Them

What will people be loyal to?

While people’s commitment to brands has changed, human nature hasn’t. People will commit to your church for the same two reasons they’ve always committed to anything.

1. Something worth committing to.

Loyalty to a worship style, a building, a denomination or a pastor is a poor substitute for being committed to Jesus. But, too often, one has been mistaken for the other.

We need to stop asking people to commit to things they don’t care about—and probably shouldn’t care about—and give them something and someone they want to care about.

People want to be challenged. Believers want to be discipled. Everyone wants a cause worth living for and a person worth dying for.

Jesus is worth committing to. Anything less and you might as well stay in bed.

Doing church better isn’t about serving people’s every whim and reinforcing the unbiblical, consumer-oriented church paradigm. That’s a big part of the old-school model that is dying out.

It’s also not about adding an additional burden to my already overworked peers in pastoral ministry.

Quite the opposite. Doing this won’t add an additional burden, it will relieve and re-energize us.

There’s nothing harder on a pastor than a church half-filled with half-awake, half-committed people.

And nothing will encourage and energize us more than a church full of passionate, worshipful, ministry-oriented Jesus-followers.

1
2
3
Previous articleWho Is the REAL Proverbs 31 Mom?
Next article10 Signs You've Got a Toxic Children's Ministry Leader
Karl is the author of four books and has been in pastoral ministry for almost 40 years. He is the teaching pastor of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship, a healthy small church in Orange County, California, where he has ministered for over 27 years with his wife, Shelley. Karl’s heart is to help pastors of small churches find the resources to lead well and to capitalize on the unique advantages that come with pastoring a small church. Karl produces resources for Helping Small Churches Thrive at KarlVaters.com, and has created S.P.A.R.K. Online (Small-Church Pastors Adapt & Recover Kit), which is updated regularly with new resources to help small churches deal with issues related to the COVID-19 crisis and aftermath.