Sermon Tone Analysis

Hey You! (Get the audience’s attention)

Story Wildwood express, needed an intervention.

We need to intervene

For example, take what I was raised to expect like many of you.

W

Review part 1

Review

Most churches are in decline or plateaued.

If we don’t intervene, we will likely decline.

We don’t need List

The early church did all they did without all of these things.

Church growth is closely linked to the religious practices of young people.

A Thriving Church Grows Young

A Thriving Church Is Christ Centered

Christ’s Methods Slide

By committing to these 6 core items, we can thrive, grow, and grow young

List items....

Six Core Commitments to Become a Thriving Church:

Six Core Commitments to Grow Young:

Leadership

Discipleship/Evangelism

Empathy

Discipleship/Evangelism

Community

Priorities

Neighbors

To truly be thriving, there needs to be not just growth, but young growth.

In other words, growing young.

Like in a vineyard.

When vines die off, they need to be replaced.

To enlarge the vineyard, the fastest way is to plant more.

But you aren’t going to go and buy a full-size old vine.

You will get a cutting or small vine.

The size of a house plant or smaller.

That’s how you get vitality and longevity.

Of course you will accept oder transplants, but to have very little new or young growth from young transplants, would not be the most healthy way to grow or enlarge.

Older vines may already have certain habits that are hard to change.

More time spending getting change to happen.

Where as young vines are ready to learn and be trained, and can be set off on the right foot early.

We talk today about the first core commitment.

It showed up in the research conducted by Fuller Youth Institute.

Who is collaborating with the SDA NAD church.

Thriving Looks like this...

Fuller identified congregations that have ministries with young people that are numerically growing, are engaging a large number of young people relative to the size of their congregation, or have something “exciting or missional” going on with young people.

Using this list of criteria, nominators identified a total of 363 congregations.

Interviewed, examined.

Powell, Kara.

Growing Young: Six Essential Strategies to Help Young People Discover and Love Your Church .

Baker Publishing Group.

Kindle Edition.

Story of receiving keys at a young age...

Keychain Leadership

This was an example of a powerful kind of leadership pervasive in churches and parishes that grow young—a type of leadership that can unleash the limitless potential of young people and infuse your entire congregation with new life and energy.

Churches that grow young and are thriving, and brimming with staff, volunteers, and parents who demonstrate keychain leadership.

Whoever holds the keys has the power to let people in or to keep people out.

Keys provide access to physical rooms, as well as to strategic meetings, significant decisions, and central roles or places of authority.

The more power you have, the more keys you tend to possess.

Keys When we refer to keys, we mean the capabilities, power, and access of leaders that carry the potential to empower young people.

Keys = the capabilities, power, and access of leaders that carry the potential to empower young people.

By keychain leaders, we mean pastoral and congregational leaders who are

Keychain Leaders are:

• acutely aware of the keys on their keychain; and

• intentional about entrusting and empowering all generations, including teenagers and emerging adults, with their own set of keys.

Beyond simply the launching of a student leadership team, keychain leadership is a spirit and commitment demonstrated by both paid and volunteer leaders that permeate every area of the church.

Why this type of leadership is so exciting

Any current leader who spends long hours doing church work and dreams of finding others to help share the load, guess what?

As you unlock doors, prepare papers and lessons, wash dishes, etc.

You might think the only ones willing to do the work are the same group of people.

If you’re a ministry volunteer, member of a leadership team, or parent, the number of keys on your church leadership keychain might be fewer than for those on staff.

In reality, other leaders may make the primary decisions for your church and you’re not always sure how to shape those discussions.

You might think this means you’ll have less impact on helping your church grow young.

Think again.

No matter your role, here is what we want you to know: if you are willing to entrust your keys to young people, they will trust you with their hearts, their energy, their creativity, and even their friends.

Yes, it requires a bit of work to disciple, train, and lead, and the reward is worth it—and by giving them access, you will have the opportunity to touch a whole generation.

Furthermore, recent research shows that 77% of members attributed their church’s effectiveness to the leadership itself.

In other words, the type of leadership a church and its ministries employs, makes all the difference in its effectiveness to thrive, grow, and grow young.

Of course this is at the same time that a church is praying and focusing on Jesus.

There are different styles and approaches to leadership.

Dogmatic, autocratic, CEO type in the church.

While it has merit in the manufacturing sector, or to use temporarily to get a project finished.

Among a volunteer organization, the drawbacks of this approach to leadership seem to outweigh its benefits.

Leadership Styles

Autocratic leadership drawbacks include:

Discourages group input

Can impair morale and lead to resentment

May impair or ignore creative solutions and expertise from subordinates

A little more effective, is the “pastor as CEO” style.

That could be applied in subsets, where a department leader is the CEO of the department.

Either way, it has its drawbacks because these types of leaders dominate decisions and little happens without their consent.

There are other more effective styles in the church setting that have received attention lately such as:

In the past few decades, there has been much attention placed on “missional” leadership, which emphasizes the sending nature of God and our “sent” nature as the people of God.

Attention has also recently been given to “emergent” leadership, which paints leadership as highly flexible and responsive to our shifting culture.

While there is great merit in both of these models, the keychain leaders we studied didn’t neatly fit either of these categories.

Neither did they fit the “pastor as CEO” model in which leaders dominate decisions and little happens without their consent.

In fact, the personality or approach of keychain leaders was difficult to classify with any one existing adjective or profile, including “purpose-driven,” “servant leadership,” or being “seeker-sensitive.”

By naming these as a list of models that we did not find, we are not suggesting they are unhelpful.

They all have certain merit and validity.

More effective leadership styles:

“missional” leadership, which emphasizes the sending nature of God and our “sent” nature as the people of God.

“emergent” leadership - which paints leadership as highly flexible and responsive to our shifting culture.