Why Aren’t We Growing? – Episode 399

Just Maintaining (Part 1)

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Has your church’s growth slowed down or hit a plateau? Maybe you’re financially stable, and everything seems fine on the surface, but something feels off from your perspective as the leader.

There are telltale signs your church is drifting away from sustained health. In this candid series, we’ll explore why churches unconsciously slip into “maintenance mode,” what it costs them, and most importantly—how to break free.

In this episode, Sean and I discuss the warning signs of slipping into maintenance mode, the key metrics to pay attention to, and the first steps to take toward getting unstuck.

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The Unstuck Church: Equipping Churches to Experience Sustained Health

In The Unstuck Church, our founder, Tony Morgan, unpacks each phase of the church lifecycle, and offers specific and strategic next steps the church leader can take to find its way to sustained health . . . and finally become unstuck.

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Transcript

Sean:

Hey, podcast listeners. I have heard from a lot of pastors who feel like they struggle to keep the church organized and really well connected. Well, Planning Center is an all-in-one church management software that can help you solve those administrative challenges. You can really pretty effortlessly track first-time guests, manage your volunteer schedules and then also create easy ways for your congregation to get involved—all on just one platform. Whether you need a check-in system, event signups or an online giving solution, Planning Center helps you nurture your community and keep people connected. You can learn more by visiting planningcenter.com and get started today for free.

Well, welcome to the Unstuck Church podcast. I’m Sean, your host here with my friend and my teammate, Amy Anderson. Amy, today we’re starting a new series, all about churches in the maintenance phase of the life cycle when growth has slowed or sometimes stopped completely, and you really aren’t seeing much life change happening. Our founder here at The Unstuck Group, Tony Morgan, he wrote about the seven phases of the typical life cycle in his book, The Unstuck Church, and Maintenance Phase is that first spot that you slip to after a season of growth and sustained health. It’s the very early beginning of decline. So Amy, what’s your experience with churches in the maintenance phase of the life cycle?

Amy:

Yeah. This is actually a fairly common phase that churches find themselves in when they reach out to the Unstuck Group. And you know, I’ve said a lot lately that I’ve worked with just so many growing churches this last year, and that was true. But we also work with a lot of churches that are still, you know, finding themself in a place where they’re losing some momentum. In fact, I just got back from a great church, a multi-site church these last few days, and they’re doing a ton of amazing ministry beyond the church, meaning they’re running a ministry school that’s just producing future ministry leaders that are serving churches. They’re leading a network of churches so that these churches have someone to connect to and ask questions of and to build relationship with. They have this great media ministry, but they realize that the church itself is in maintenance.

So I’m super proud by the way that they’re paying attention right to that. That actually clued them in. But when churches are in maintenance, I think the first reaction is just to have a little bit of denial, because they’re probably still growing in this phase. But it’s not the growth that they’ve experienced in the past. And so I think the initial feeling is denial, but then it just starts to get discouraging for pastors when those numbers aren’t coming back. Right? You get used to being in a growth and momentum season.

Sean:

That’s right.

Amy:

And for our listeners, if you’re feeling like you’re losing momentum and maybe slipping into maintenance mode, I just don’t want you to be discouraged because you’re in a spot in maintenance to get back to a place of growth. You’re just starting that, like you said, that early stage of decline. It’s not churches that have gone, you know, from maintenance then even slide into further preservation. They should be discouraged ’cause they have some bigger, bolder moves they’re gonna need to take to get back to a place of health. But in the maintenance side, if you’re recognizing it early on, we’ll be talking about ways to get you back over to that momentum side.

Sean:

That’s good. Well, let’s dive right in. What are some of the common signs that indicate a church has shifted into that maintenance phase?

Amy:

That’s a great question, Sean. There’s several key indicators that we see regularly. The first one is the most recognizable, and it’s one attendance has softened. Maybe plateaued or is showing a slight decline over the past 12 to 24 months. This is what kind of raises the alarm, right? And causes the pastor to ask, you know, why are we not, we were growing and why are we not growing now? What’s going on? But there’s also some other indicators. If you look, you’ll notice as well. You’ll often see a decrease in first time visitors and a decrease in the number of people getting baptized.

Churches in maintenance often are showing that they’re overstaffed. And we talk about staffing numbers a lot, but they’re becoming more staff-driven with reduced empowerment. So not necessarily a loss of volunteer, Sean. The percentage of people serving in the church might still remain high and sometimes really high, but we’re not really equipping volunteer leaders in the ministry. So we have a lot of volunteers who are doing things, and if we have a lot of ministry, they’re very spread out, but we’re not empowering volunteers.

And then the last indicator is, boy, when you get a sense that the church is aging, meaning there’s fewer younger families showing up, and becoming a part of the church. And so often you’ll see that, you know, the percentage of kids at the church, you know, the benchmark is 20 for healthy growing churches. It’s below that. Even when student numbers are really strong, their kids’ numbers are softening. So that just demonstrates we’re not really replacing those kids who are now students.

And you know, even as I’m talking this through Sean, I think not all of these indicators may be showing up and you still may be in maintenance. It’s not a complete science to diagnose if your church is in maintenance, but if several of those indicators are showing up, there’s a good chance you’re losing momentum. And that’s the big word here. It’s momentum. When you’re on the growth side of the church life cycle, you’re experiencing a significant form of momentum. When you’re on the right side of the life cycle, you’re losing momentum. So sometimes pastors, leaders, they just feel it in their gut first. They can sense or feel that there’s been a slow down. So if you’re just seeing a slowing in your growth, but there’s no other indicators supporting that you’re in maintenance, meaning you’re still baptizing lots of people, you’ve got really strong kids numbers, you’re seeing really high volunteer empowerment, then I would say you might wanna look elsewhere. Right? There could be changing dynamics in the community. It could be something seasonal, but again, if there’s multiple indicators, it’s probably time to understand that you’ve probably slipped into maintenance.

Sean:

Those are some just really clear warning signs. But why do you think churches often don’t recognize they’re in the maintenance phase until it becomes a more serious issue for them?

Amy:

That is such an important question, and it really goes back to what I was saying about it being a combination of factors that indicate maintenance phase. And here’s a few reasons why. Let me start with finances. The truth is, when the church is in maintenance, they might actually be very financially healthy. They might be in a very healthy season in their finances. In other words, growth is slowing, but finances are still strong. So I think financial health could be a mask in sensing that the church is losing momentum. A second reason churches might not recognize they’re in maintenance is because the staff, the volunteers, the ministries, they’re very busy, right? There’s lots of activity going on. Activity and busyness. But I think we have to recognize that they’re probably not busy because the church is growing. They’re probably busy because we’ve let complexity creep into our church.

Sean:

Right.

Amy:

And that’s a key general characteristic of the maintenance phase. That complexity has crept into our ministry model. Lastly, sometimes leaders have just lost their sense of urgency. Right? When you’ve been growing, when you’ve been a growing church for years and attendance begins to soften, some ministries just get comfortable with that status quo. They almost appreciate the slowdown a little bit. In fact, it’s pretty common that when a church is in maintenance, that they really don’t have a bold vision they’re working towards anymore. Often their vision has just, you know, it’s faded a little bit.

Sean:

Yeah. Amy, let me share a story of a real church that we worked with that might illustrate some of this. Back in 2019, we started working with this church. So this is pre pandemic, so, I think most churches felt like they were in maintenance during the pandemic when 2020 rolled around, but back in 2019, and I could share the name of this church, but I didn’t ask for permission ahead of time, so I won’t do that. But growth was still happening in their church. But just barely.

They were growing, I look back at their vital signs just a few minutes ago, one point a half percent year over year. And they weren’t seeing many new guests at all walking through their doors for the first time. Kids and family engagement had dropped off in their church. Their baptisms were actually still strong. Their giving was still strong. It’s part of that giving lag that we experience. But they were an overstaffed church, and in their church, they only had about 37% of their church that was engaged in serving. So we typically see staffing correlate with a decrease in serving numbers.

The leadership of this church just knew that something had to change. It’s one of those gut feelings that you mentioned. And they got, they started to pivot and honestly, I think the pandemic gave them an interruption that they needed to be able to do this, but they got serious about reaching new people in their community again. They leaned into generosity and especially giving to community organizations during the that pandemic season. And they put a real focus back on kids’ ministry and families within their church.

And, coming outta the pandemic and fast forward to, let’s say just this last year. Looking at their new data, they had actually grown by 14% year over year.

Amy:

That’s great.

Sean:

They were seeing a very healthy flow of new guests into their church. Now, the kids’ numbers have taken off. They’re completely different. Their staffing was in a great place also. And their volunteer numbers, honestly, they’re still playing a bit of catch up. But I think it’s actually because they’re growing so fast right now that they can’t onboard new people well enough. And so I just share that story as some encouragement for our listeners. That these are some of the common warning signs that we see for churches that are in the maintenance phase. But gosh, this church has done significant work over the last number of years, and they are reaping the ministry fruit of that now in the impact in their community. And it’s just really fun to see.

Amy:

And I bet they’re having a lot of fun now.

Sean:

Absolutely.

Amy:

Yeah. Going back to the church, I mentioned in the beginning of the podcast, the church I just got back from, I wanna add just how proud I am of them because they’re busy and they have lots of exciting things going on at their church. But I’m proud of them because I love their focus coming back to the church, you know. I mentioned they have these other ministries like schools and networks that they’re pouring into. But they recognized if we don’t keep the church strong, because the church has birthed out all these other ministries. Then everything, including those other ministries is gonna lose momentum.

So another church I worked with recently, Sean, you just reminded me, they found themselves in maintenance. And as we worked through the process, that issue of complexity was what was really pulling them out of growth mode. Their ministries lacked alignment. They had launched a fairly autonomous multi-site location a few years back that was requiring a lot of attention. They also have a school attached to their church, so they too are pulling the spotlight back on the church to make sure that they can get that back to a place of health and momentum.

Really, for a lot of churches that do other things besides church, that’s still the epicenter of the organization. That’s the ministry these pastors moved into. So just for a little encouragement, like I said at the beginning, and Sean, as you just illustrated, you can get out of maintenance. There are predictable things that you can do to get your church back to a place of momentum, growth, or sustained health. In fact, we have a webinar coming up, and I am hoping to interview one of the pastors that has been working with Unstuck for the past four years. When I started with them, Sean, I think I mentioned this recently, they were in maintenance mode. And now they’re in strategic growth, and I’m just excited whether they share their story or I share it with our audience. It’s such a great story of just perseverance and focus and like I was guessing with your church, they’re having fun again. They’re having fun again.

Sean:

Absolutely. So, Amy, once the church recognizes that it’s more than just slowed growth, that they’re actually showing signs of being in the maintenance phase, what’s the first step that they need to take towards getting unstuck?

Amy:

Yeah. I have hardly ever stayed a one step, don’t I? I’ll try. The first step is always an honest assessment. So that includes looking at your data, right? Get familiar with your attendance trends, your volunteer engagement, kids and student engagement, giving patterns. In fact, I would just encourage you to take our vital signs assessment. The vital signs assessment will give you multiple data points that will really help you have clarity around your numbers. There is no one metric that will help you understand your health. You need several metrics that you can look at as a whole to do an accurate assessment. Right? And we know this in the physical world, right. We can’t go to the doctor and just take our temperature and be like, oh, we’re okay. We just can’t look at our glucose level and feel like that’s indicating we’re healthy or unhealthy. It’s how all these numbers work together. And the same is true when assessing, you know, the health of your church.

And so, actually I have a second one, so I’m gonna breach that. Second, I would say take a fresh look at your community. Look, take a fresh look at the community where God has placed your church. Has it changed? You know, do the demographics outside your church walls look like the demographics inside your church walls? If not, I think it’s time to get clarity around who it is you’re trying to reach. And we say this a lot, but I know we wanna reach everyone with the gospel, but churches that effectively reach people for Jesus are focused on who they’re trying to reach. Churches who are just trying to reach everybody and don’t focus their ministry. They actually reach less people. So get clear on your community and how well you’re reaching them.

And let me just give you a practical example of this. There are two churches I’ve served in the past six months that were in the maintenance phase of the life cycle. They were getting after it, you know, kind of scratching their head, trying to diagnose what things needed to change to get back to a place of health. And both of these churches have 90-minute services on Sunday. And both churches are trying to reach parents who are raising kids. And I’m not an expert on their service or their community, but I do know that most people who are in that raising kids stage of life are very busy.

And so I encourage them to have a conversation around their weekend service length. You know, both churches admitted this is their big front door. Our weekend is our big front door where we wanna reach people. This is where we want them to explore God, explore faith. But both churches, again, had about 30 minutes of music, over 10 minutes of announcements, 45 minute messages. And I just challenge them to think through that experience through the filter of someone who’s stepping into their church for the first time.

Sean:

That’s good. Right.

Amy:

Thirty minutes is a long time for someone who doesn’t know any of the songs, to stand and watch the church sing, 45 minutes is a long message. In my experience, it’s even long for the best of the best teachers. So, again, I just encourage both of these pastors to think about, how do we leave people? Do we leave them wanting more or do we leave them checking their watch? Because based on that experience, they’re gonna decide if this is worth their time to come back.

Sean:

You know what’s funny, Amy? The people that are listen to our podcast, we often hear the feedback. Well, sometimes they’ll just say, thank you for keeping it short and concise.

Amy:

Yeah. Right.

Sean:

And sometimes that would be good to hear on the weekends with our services as well. Right?

Amy:

That’s right.

Sean:

Yeah. Amy, so I know I asked you for a first step, you already gave us two. So any other first steps that you are thinking about that pastors should consider towards getting unstuck?

Amy:

You know me, don’t you, Sean? My brain starts to just list them out. Yeah. Related to that last one where I was challenging, you know, our listeners really to take a look at your reach strategy, look at your weekend service, and ask yourself if it’s effective, is it actually designed? Is that weekend actually designed to reach the people you’re reaching?

But I think you also need to look at the effectiveness of your current ministries. Are they aligned with your mission? They probably are. Or how well are they accomplishing it? This goes back to purpose, right? Every ministry we design is designed to accomplish something. Is it working? We have to remember that those ministries are just strategies. We should evaluate those strategies against the results they’re bringing. And when they’re not working, we’ve just gotta reinvent them.

And by the way, if they are working, we also need to understand why they’re working, right? Because we can take some of those learnings to help some of our other ministry areas. And by taking any of those first steps, you are beginning the journey out of maintenance, you will be above average. I always love the phrase it takes so little to be above average. And it’s so true. Honestly, just by doing that assessment, and you’re looking at your data, starting to look at your weekend services and the effectiveness of your strategies, you are way ahead of so many other churches who just get comfortable in maintenance and slide into preservation. I really believe that God will reveal some things that need to be changed to get back to a place of health.

And if you’re a senior pastor listening today, it’s gonna require your time and energy. In fact, you might be the only one right now recognizing that you’re losing momentum at the church. So it’s gonna take the vision and urgency from you to help turn things around. And we’ll get into what the senior leader can do, you know, to lead the church out of maintenance in the next few episodes. But today I just wanted you to hear it can definitely be done.

Sean:

That’s good. So, Amy, going back to the metrics and data that you mentioned, what are some of the key metrics that church leaders should be tracking that will actually help them just to prevent from drifting towards this maintenance phase?

Amy:

Yeah. There are several vital numbers to watch. The first one is first-time guests. You wanna watch the data that’s indicating, do we have new people, first-time guests coming to the church? And I don’t know if you find this, Sean, but it’s often a squishy metric because every pastor will tell me, yeah, we have so many more first time guests than we get names meaning, that they’re there but they aren’t stepping forward so that we actually can count them and know they’re there. And you know what? I agree. I think this one’s a hard one to measure. And I think deciding how to get better metrics here is actually just a perpetual problem. You know, we try lots of different things.

But I just wanna highlight the work that we did in the Reach and Retain podcast series a few months back. In that podcast we highlighted Orchard Church out in Brighton, Colorado. And they had taken an experiment with a new 15 minute next steps experience after every weekend service. I just have to say they are now capturing so many more people and they’re really focused on helping people find relationships early in that journey. So they did some R & D and they found some great things.

But what we have found, maybe this is more global for all churches at the Unstuck Group, is that there’s one fairly consistent measurable metric that will indicate to you if you have a front door problem. And that’s by comparing the number of new people in your database this year to the number of new people in the database for the previous 12 months. So if you compare those two numbers and you have a decline, you probably have a front door problem. ’cause there’s not as many people becoming known at your church this year than there was the previous 12 months. And if it’s a bigger number, if it’s up by five, 10, 15%, well that’s a good news because we’re seeing more people become known. So that’s the first one. Some metric on first time guests.

Second look at your baptism numbers. Look at the percent of baptisms compared to your average weekend attendance. So healthy churches are baptizing 5% of their average weekend attendance over the course of a year. So to calculate that, you just take your average weekend attendance, everybody, you know, auditorium, kids, and then divide that by the number of people that have baptized over the past 12 months. If that number is less than 5% of your average weekend attendance, it should be a red flag for you.

And then the last one I’ll call out is just the ratio of kids to total attendance. Churches that are healthy and growing have 20% of their total attendance represented by kids. That’s birth through fifth grade. So if your percentage is significantly lower than that, it’s going to be an indication that you’re probably in maintenance.

Sean:

That’s good. Yeah. Well, Amy, we’ve got a lot of information to help understand the maintenance phase. As we close, could you kind of summarize some of the practical steps that church leaders can take this week to begin addressing the maintenance phase in their church?

Amy:

Absolutely. So here’s the three steps. First, just start gathering data on the key health metrics that we discussed. Second, I would encourage you if you’re feeling this in your gut schedule a leadership team meeting specifically on this topic to process the warning signs you’re seeing. And if you haven’t read The Unstuck Church book by Tony Morgan, I encourage you to pick up a copy of it for your leaders and have them read through it. It’s an easy read, but it’ll help prepare everyone for the conversation.

And then third, I encourage you to sign up for the webinar that we have coming up on June 26th. It’s free. But we’re gonna do a deeper dive into the differences between strategic growth phase and the maintenance phase and how you lead changes from either space to get back towards sustained health. And we’ll talk about how to recognize and interpret the signs of declining momentum and how to grow more confident in your ability to lead change for the health of the church. So you can sign up for that. Again, it’s free at theunstuckgroup.com/webinar.

Sean:

That’s good. Amy. Those are three fairly easy. Very practical next steps. I love that. Alright, so let’s wrap up today’s conversation. Any final thoughts?

Amy:

Yeah. The key to remember is that maintenance mode, it is not a permanent destination. It’s a phase that many churches go through. And with intentional leadership and the right strategies, you can reverse that. You can get beyond it. And again, don’t be discouraged. This is actually an opportunity to reset and refocus you and your church on your mission.

Sean:

That’s good. Well, thanks everyone for joining us today for this podcast episode. We know that you don’t want to be stuck in maintenance phase if you’re there. Yyou know, churches can hang out there for a long time. But next week we’re gonna be specifically looking at how to frame up the next growth barrier you have in front of you as a way to kind of rally your team towards actions that will get you out of the maintenance phase.

Don’t forget, as Amy mentioned, we have the free webinar coming up on June 26th. We’re gonna do a deep dive into those differences between the strategic growth phase and the maintenance phase, and then how you can lead changes from either of those phases towards sustained health. We know that you as leaders, you see stuckness first. And we want to help you kind of learn how to recognize and interpret the signs of declining momentum and then to more confidently grow in your ability to lead change and really increase the overall health of your church. So don’t forget, sign up for free at theunstuckgroup.com/webinar. And then also don’t forget to subscribe to our podcast show notes. You can subscribe at theunstuckgroup.com/podcast. Alright, we’ll see you this time next week.