The 70/30 Principle

It is no secret that as many as eighty percent of all the over three hundred thousand churches of all denominations in America are either plateaued or declining. Having spent twenty-five years trying to turn around six of those churches as their pastor, I can attest to the difficulty of the task. A vital key to turning those churches around is to get their eyes focused upon the harvest instead of on themselves. Too often, churches exist for themselves. I have said that we have too much navel gazing going on in church and not enough eyes on the yet unborn within our sphere of influence. I believe it was Kennon L. Callahan in Effective Church Leadership, pp. 208-209,who suggested that if a church has seventy percent of its volunteers focusing on serving within the church and thirty percent serving the outreach into the unreached community, that church is in maintenance mode. On the other hand, if a church uses seventy percent of its volunteers in outreach and only thirty percent within the church family, it is in a missional mode. Do yourself a favor, if you are a leader in your church, and get familiar with how your church family stacks up against this fact. If I am ever allowed to serve as a pastor again, rest assured that I will be proactively seeking to get the 70/30 principle correct! Remember that He who died for the church came to seek and to save the lost! (Luke 19:10)