The following post is from Nathan Dean, CBF church starter and pastor of Edgewood Church in Atlanta. This blog was written for the churchworks! e-newsletter. You can subscribe to one of our many e-newsletters here.

I received an email the other day from a wonderful Christian woman who is concerned for her church.  Her church is steadily declining.  This isn’t an unusual situation.  Approximately 90% of the churches in the United States are plateaued or declining. She is on a committee that is trying to figure out how to reach out to their neighbors and stop the decline and asked us for ideas on what to do.

Since this almost certainly is or will be an issue for your church, I thought I’d share my advice with you.  For whatever it is worth, here it is: 

• Lose any agenda you have to grow your church – People can sense an agenda a mile away.  Your church will grow as a byproduct of it being the presence of Christ in its community.  People long to be loved without an agenda.  They will sense this when they interact with you in the community and even when they walk through your church doors.  You will find your life, organizationally and spiritually, by losing it. A great mindset to take on is, “If this is the last year God allows my church to exist in this community, I want people here to know that there were Christians here who loved them.  I want them to mourn its passing.”

• Trade the Us-Them paradigm for an Us-For-Them Paradigm – Paradigms grow from an individual, to a group, to the organization.  Find ways to get to know and love the people in your community, in your parish, like they were your church family, your real family. A great quote from William Temple says, “Christianity is the only co-operative society that exists for the benefit of non-members.”

• Minister to the broken places and the stretched places in your community and in people’s lives – The places where people and communities are hurting or stressed are the places where they can best see God and their need for God.  Find out when people are having babies, moving, lose their jobs, go to the hospital, lose their home, etc.  Seek out places that need justice, peace, racial reconciliation, hope, etc.  Seek out community organizations that are working for hope, peace, building community, etc. (schools, police departments, fire departments, non-profits, etc) and find ways to support and bless them.  When we went into the schools we would tell them with all sincerity that “Whether you believe it or not, we believe that when you are working to give children hope and a future, that you are doing God’s work, and we want to bless and support you however we can.” You may not meet all the needs of your community directly, you can’t and that isn’t even the best solution most of the time.  You may often find yourself connecting community needs with community assets.  You may find yourself being a relationship and resource broker for your community and your church.  Be the leaven in bread, the salt in the flavor of your community.

• Make a List of Community Leaders – Police and firefighting major and captains, principals, organizational leaders, council members, etc. and make friends with them. Get their cell phone numbers in your phone.  Get their email addresses.  Take them out to lunch every now and then.  Check in on them from time to time to see how things are going with them personally and with their organization.  Take them cookies or special coffees. Offer to pray with them and for them.  Offer to help them however you and your church can.  Don’t worry about having major moments or breakthroughs with them.  Those will come in time, maybe a lot of time, but they will come.  Just be consistent.

• Listen to Carrie’s Sermon – On April 21st Carrie preached a sermon called “Someone to Follow.”  She gave great practical advice there on how to disciple people who are not Christians. Click here to listen.

• Be Patient – Change takes tons of effort and tons of time.  I am still overwhelmed by the reality of this truth many days, but change does happen.  I have to remind myself to not be any more impatient than God is.

• Pray – When it is all said and done, on our best days, we are only participants with God in what God is doing in the world. It is God and only God, that really changes people’s lives and changes communities from the inside out, one person at a time.

I hope this helps.  Helping the church be who God has called and empowered it to be is near and dear to our hearts.  Emails and conversations on the topic are always welcome.