WILLOW Magazine, Issue 2, 2004 Getting the Church Back On Course The church was in decline. Members were leaving, staff was abandoning ship, infighting broke out. See how these“turnaround churches” were able to flip the tables. Turn, v. – (1) To cause to move around in order to achieve a result (2) to change the purpose or intention (3) to cause to go in a specific direction Unpaid bills. Church infighting. Empty pews. Is it true that the night is darkest just before the dawn? Three Willow Creek Association churches that enjoy healthy, relevant, growing congregations today can look back to those “dark night” days and see God’s hand in their turnaround. Turning a Ship Around Crossbridge Community Church (Fort Wayne, Indiana) Walk into a Sunday morning service at the Park Forest Church of God in Fort Wayne, Indiana, and you would be one of a small group of 90 in attendance. “Things weren’t pretty,” says Crossbridge Senior Pastor Greg Crim. Crim was a campus coordinator for Youth for Christ at the time and on the church’s search committee for a new pastor. Eighty resumes later, the Park Forest search committee turned its sights on Crim. What was his response? “I didn’t want the job,” he laughed. “But God reprimanded me that I needed to be open to what He wanted for my life, not necessarily what I wanted.” So Crim, somewhat reluctantly, shared his heart with the committee. “In my interview I said ‘Here’s the deal. I think God calls us to be a Great Commission church and that means being as passionate about evangelism as about discipleship.’ I wanted to be a church that was serious about both halves of the Great Commission.” The church leadership agreed and hired Crim. He spent the next five to six years laboring to make significant, lasting change. “It was hard. Really hard. I can’t tell you the number of people who left, or who literally backed me into a corner pushing a finger into my chest telling me that I was ruining the church, or who stayed but withheld money,” said Crim. And he was enduring the backlash mostly alone. His only real teammates in ministry at that point were his wife Andrea and then 18-year-old Bruce Colbert, who today serves as director of programming at Crossbridge. All except for one member of the original search committee and trustee board left the church. “When they brought me on board everyone was chanting and cheering for change,” said Crim. But wanting it and seeing it happen are two very different things. It was a trying time for the small band of change pioneers. “I had to keep saying to people — and to myself — this is God’s thing. This is a Bible thing. If we’re not supposed to live out both halves of the Great Commission, I’m thinking Jesus would not have said it,” said Crim. Three years into his efforts a brochure about an upcoming Willow Creek Association Church Leadership Conference crossed his desk. Crim and one other staff member went to the conference. “At one point during the conference I leaned over to my buddy Kelly and said ‘For the first time in my life I get to see what I’ve been talking about. This has been my vision for what the church could be but I’ve never seen it happen,” said Crim. Within five years the church grew to 320 members. To build a new culture meant eliminating services and outdated traditions. Out went the organ music and potluck dinners. Sunday morning services were fully contemporary and seeker oriented. Eventually the church knew that additional growth wouldn’t happen without moving. “It was a tough, tough sell,” said Crim. “There was still a small, strong remnant of about 50 people who I think really believed that at some point we were going to go back to the way it was in the beginning.” The church sold its building after only six days on the market. They moved out of the building in August 2002. “When we sold the building, I think folks finally realized we were serious and we weren’t going back to the way things were. That was the breaking point for people who had been simply tolerating the change. Most of those people left when we went portable.” In fact, within four months after leaving their original building, 120 people in the congregation left, including 9 of the top 15 givers. Crim wanted a burning bush experience to make sure moving wasn’t a mistake. “People were leaving, our finances were through the floor, and I desperately needed to know that we didn’t read God wrong,” said Crim. Crim had his answer in a few months. After dropping to 200, Crossbridge popped back up to over 400 attendees within a few short months and doubled in size within six months. The growth wasn’t just numerical either. Lives were being changed. “Up to that point we had maybe four baptisms in nine years. In the next few years we were averaging nearly 30 a year,” said Crim. Today Crossbridge is getting ready to move into its third school in two years. Their new building has been designed and the land has been paid off. The staff is now working to see how quickly they can begin breaking ground. “Our story is about slow, steady change,” said Crim. “We’re not a story of a church making significant change and then seeing exponential growth the next week. Our story is about turning a ship around. And that takes time.” The High Cost of Becoming Healthy Rivertree Christian Church (Massillon, Ohio) More than 3,500 miles and the Atlantic Ocean separate the country of Ireland and the state of Ohio. But in 1989, Rivertree Christian Church (originally named Jackson Christian Church) asked an American missionary in Ireland, Greg Nettle, to serve as senior pastor. Twenty seven-year-old Nettle, who was planting a church in Ireland, returned to the States to head up a dying congregation. “The situation was pretty desperate,” said teaching pastor Al Dangelo. Rivertree was planted in 1965 by Canton First Christian Church, one of the biggest churches in the country in the earlier part of the century. Rivertree grew steadily through the 70s, but by 1987 the church had dwindled to 100-120 people. “The church was looking at 100 people trying to make a fairly large mortgage payment and support a ministry that was for all purposes dying,” said Dangelo. “They knew they had to make a last ditch effort at change.” According to Dangelo, Nettle was given quite a bit of latitude when he was first brought on board. “One of the benefits of Greg coming straight from the mission field is that he was used to the idea of learning the culture and knowing who it is you’re trying to reach.” One of the first things Nettle recognized was that the church was mismatched to its community. The first core membership of church was primarily blue-collar families, which reflected the church’s original rural roots. But in the 70s the area grew and changed to become a “bedroom community” for the nearby cities of Akron and Canton. Nettle began making basic changes to identify with the area’s new demographics. Nettle made two significant commitments — to make sermons culturally relevant and to make his personal sermon prep time a substantial portion of his week. The changes began taking effect. A second staff was added in 1991 and Dangelo joined the team as teaching pastor in 1993. Then the floor fell out. “1993 and 1994 were two of the most difficult years we have ever had,” said Dangelo. The church was faced with a divisive couple within their body. The situation escalated and eventually the church leadership had to go through a discipline process and removed the couple. “We didn’t know what a turning point that process would be for us,” said Dangelo. “At the time we were averaging about 300 people a Sunday but we lost more than 70 people within six months.” But those seats didn’t remain empty for long. Within the next six months the church gained 70 new people. “Our growth really started to accelerate during the period that we were getting healthier,” said Dangelo. “I think that sending a message that we were going to do our very best to be a healthy church was a real turning point in our church life.” Starting in 1993 Rivertree saw an average growth of between 25-45 percent every year for seven years. By 1997 the church was holding three Sunday services for nearly 800 members. Realizing that a fourth service wouldn’t gain them space, they decided to move. The church became completely portable, setting up a stage, band, and 700 folding chairs for two and a half years. “Moving to an elementary school was good for us,” said Dangelo. “It taught us how to be a church without a building and how to sacrifice. It wasn’t comfortable and it wasn’t easy but that was important for us to learn together.” The move also gave the staff a chance to catch their breath. “We were doing a great job on the front half of the Great Commission but it wasn’t until 1995 that we really got serious about doing substantial work on the back half. We were treading water just to keep up with the explosive growth,” said Dangelo. The church began backfilling with classes, seminars, and small group opportunities to help new and young believers grow in their faith. While discipleship efforts were underway, so was a new building program. Within 16 months the church added 85,000 square feet and 1,100 seats to their original 12,000 square foot facility. They moved into their new facility in 2000 and averaged over 2,000 attendees this past spring. They expect to head towards 2,500 in the fall. On any given Sunday 30-40 percent of Rivertree’s congregation are not yet Christians. Not yet. But they will be soon if Rivertree’s strong history continues. Getting Fired and Firing Ministry Up Central Christian Church (Beloit, Wisconsin) Few WCA churches can claim a nearly 100-year history. Even fewer can claim a one-day building construction. Central Christian Church in Beloit, Wisconsin proudly claims both. The church moved locations a few times and stood at about 200-250 in attendance when David Clark came on board as the senior pastor. According to executive pastor Craig Zastrow, “David was a 29 year-old former associate pastor who came here with big church ideas.” The result? He was fired after six months. The congregation quickly stood up to the elders who made the decision and pleaded with Clark to stay. “That was an early, significant turning point,” said Zastrow. “That ground swell of support — of people saying ‘this is the right thing to do,’ helped to propel and solidify David’s leadership.” The church soon grew to 250 people. In the mid 1980s the church decided to relocate. Forty people in the church signed promissory notes on their homes to purchase seven acres of land and begin building. Their first Sunday service in the new facility in 1989 attracted 400 people and within the first few months the congregation settled to a membership of 350. Over the next five years the church grew to 500 members and the church leadership refined its focus. “One of David’s critical decisions was to look around to see what God was blessing and get on board with that instead of doing what we wanted and asking God to bless it,” says Zastrow. “That led to a gradual change in our philosophy that paid staff wasn’t there to provide ministry but simply to arrange it.” As the staff equipped its members for ministry they began looking outside its walls and saw real need. Beloit has the highest unemployment rate in the state of Wisconsin (more than 10 percent of the population is unemployed) and one of the highest child poverty rates in the state. The church got to work. Today the church’s mission statement identifies itself closely with its community: “We … seek to transform the state-line area by feeding hungry people, helping hurting children, and reaching out to people who are far from God.” That translates into a feeding program that provides 200,000 meals to people in our community, an exciting outdoor outreach for inner-city students, and a rapidly growing Spanish-speaking service. The congregation also strives to meet similar needs overseas including running a feeding program for 110 elderly Haitians. The 1,700 member church owns its vision and is actively creating transformational life change for people in their backyard and abroad. Common Denominators Ask Crim, Dangelo and Zastrow what they wish they had known or done during those “dark days” of turnaround and the answer is the same. “Find someone who has walked the same road and is just a little bit ahead of you,” said Crim. “Seek those people out and learn from them.” “We benefited tremendously from seeking out mentors — other churches that were at just the next stage of growth. We were very intentional about finding churches that were not so far ahead of us that they couldn’t remember what it was like to be ‘here,’” said Dangelo. “Try to find somebody who has been through the turnaround process and has made it in a positive way,” said Zastrow. “You need the encouragement of feeling like you are in God’s will and you can get that by partnering up with somebody who is jut a little bit further along in the game.” Today these three churches are not only in the game, but also out in front and running strong. Top