The State of the American Church | Dr. Thom Rainer
Dr. Thom Rainer, founder of Church Answers and author of The Revival of the Analog Church, joins Mike Glenn to talk about why churches decline and often refuse to admit it. They cover the warning signs of a dying church, why transfer growth is drying up, and why Rainer believes today’s culture looks more like the first century than anything in recent memory.
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Mike Glenn: We welcome today to our podcast Tom Rainer. Uh, Tom and I go back a long way, and, uh, I have a great friendship with Tom and his family, and a great, uh, relationship 'cause we're both kind of, kinda number nerds when it comes to church life and what this means and that means. So you're gonna get to hear what our conversation, it usually happens over lunch with the two of us.
Uh, he brought me, uh, his book of the day. Um, what is this, the 47th or-
Thom Rainer: 46th ...
Mike Glenn: 46th book.
Thom Rainer: Yeah.
Mike Glenn: The Ana- The Revival of the Analog Church: Why Your Church Should Be Personal and In-Person. And we'll get to this in just a little bit. But first of all, we're gonna go way back, uh, and talk about your fascination with, with, uh, your morbid fascination with dying stuff.
And, um, of course, you were president of [00:01:00] Lifeway-
Thom Rainer: Yeah ...
Mike Glenn: and began to see the numbers, and you wrote a book called The Autopsy of the Dying Church.
Thom Rainer: Right.
Mike Glenn: Which shot to the top because everybody who was in a, a, a, a transitional church, as I would call it, and you would call it a dying church, thought maybe you would have the secret elixir to change all of that.
What did you find out doing that book?
Thom Rainer: Well, I found out a lot of people wanted change.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: They just did not wanna do the work for change. Yeah. So I did find out a lot of people were, were saying, "This identifies my church." It's a very small book. Uh, it actually came out pre-Lifeway when I was dean at Southern Seminary at the time.
Mm-hmm. And so I'd done a lot of research, and I said, "Let's do some research on, on dying churches." And it was a morbid curiosity, but what we did as, as one of these research projects, instead of gathering a lot of data, uh, we interviewed a lot of people who had been in churches that had died, and they told us their story.
And as you well know, Mike, stories can be powerful. Mm-hmm. And even though the data was [00:02:00] not the typical granular information that I put in a lot of my books, what we found that there was stories upon stories upon stories, and most of those stories were, "If I had to do it over again, I would."
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: And part of that I would was, "I would invite more people to church."
Just something as simple as that. "I wouldn't resist change as much as I did." Mm-hmm. "I fought change all the time. I would look at my church more objectively. I would get to know my community better." And there was a lot of regret in those interviews because these were the members who were among the last to leave.
To leave, right. They were the ones who turned the lights out, and one of them literally said, "I turned the light out, and then we padlocked the, the door." And so when it was all said and done, there was regret. I hope that these people when they go to another church or when they went to another church- Mm-hmm
hopefully, I hope that they really did put in effect the things that they said they would- Mm-hmm ... if they had the opportunity to do it over again.
Mike Glenn: So I, I'm a pastor [00:03:00] of a church whose numbers are declining. How do I know if it's a dying church?
Thom Rainer: That is subjective, but what we said about a dying church is a lifetime expectancy of five years or less.
And basically what you're doing is you're looking at the decline rate.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: So if you have a church that's gone from 100 to 80 to 60 to 40 to 20, you're probably a dying church- Mm-hmm ... because the path says you're going to close the door. That's a subjective number, but we had to use some number in order to interview these people and a- and also to begin to get data on dying churches too.
One of, one of the research projects we did that nobody read, I mean, if anybody read it, I even asked my wife if she read it, and she said, "I don't read any of your stuff." And it's, I, I, I, I, it, it was called moribund churches.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: And moribund churches were churches that were almost dead. I thought if I could do something to, to get a wake-up call into those churches, to give them encouragement, to give them exhortation, [00:04:00] maybe they wouldn't shut the door.
But the, the moribund churches thought everything was fine for the most part.
Mike Glenn: Right.
Thom Rainer: So when you, when you go from that stage to healthy, some growth taking place, to some level of plateau, whatever that means, to then in a sustained decline, the most common characteristic of church members at this stage is denial.
They do not accept the fact that their church is declining. They do not accept the fact that their church is moribund or on the precipice of death. They do not at any point say, "We need to make change." So the major reason that churches go from declining to moribund to death is- They deny that they have a problem, and usually they deny until the point that it's too late.
They can even get down to four and five in attendance. And y- I, I was called to ... Jess and I were actually, Jess is my youngest son, we were called to do a consultation near the town where he lives in Spring Hill. It was actually in Columbia. The church is [00:05:00] now closed. And, uh, they found, they got to know Jess, and they said, "Hey, is your dad Tom Rainer?"
And he, they said, "Yeah." He said, "But he's, he, he can't help you anyway. What do, what, what do you need?" And they said, "Can he come in and tell us how to, uh ... Y- you and him come in and tell us how to turn our church around." Uh, everybody who was a regular attender showed up, I think there were six-
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm ...
Thom Rainer: who showed up, and we told them some things that might help them, and all of them said, "That's never gonna happen at this church, and I'm never gonna do it."
So Jess said, "Well, that was fun." I s- I said, "Well, Jess, y- you've got about a year or less before these faithful," well, fa- whatever you wanna call them, "before these few remaining members close the door." And they ended up selling it, uh, the building, fortunately, to a predominantly African American church- Right
which was, which was the dominant, uh, racial group in that area. Mm-hmm. So that was a good story, but this church thought that they could turn it around. Their major characteristic, denial.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm. "
Thom Rainer: No, that's not us. No, that's not us." [00:06:00] Okay. Denial does not help you. But all the
Mike Glenn: facts say it is you.
Thom Rainer: All the facts, all the reality says it is you.
Yeah. So that's the number one characteristic of a church that goes from moribund to death, total denial
Mike Glenn: Wow. And how many churches will die over the next three years?
Thom Rainer: First of all, the, the honest answer is we don't know for sure. So we have to acknowledge that. How many years did you say?
Mike Glenn: Three. One to three, whatever.
Thom Rainer: I would say that you can go at about 7 to 8,000 per year at the current pace. There are some people who are saying, "No, that's too low. A lot more churches are going to die." That's not what our data indicates. We, our, our data indicates that there are going to be a lot more moribund churches, the churches that are about to die.
Mike Glenn: The, what, what we would call zombie churches.
Thom Rainer: Zombie churches. No, that's what you call them. I'll call them moribund. I'm going to have a little more respect. But you- Knowing you, you're gonna call, you're gonna call them zombie churches. Okay. Almost... Isn't a zombie already dead, Mike?
Mike Glenn: Mm. Yeah. Okay. But just walking around like they're not dead.[00:07:00]
But they're already dead.
Thom Rainer: Well, that has a lot of meaning to it, too. But I'm gonna still call them moribund churches 'cause it makes me sound fancy. About, if, if you look at the churches that are in the United States, and there are about 375,000 Protestant churches, okay? Mm-hmm. If you look at those churches, about 50% of them are in the moribund to death category.
So that is a lot of churches that are at death or near death, but not nearly that many will die. They will, they will hang on. You know, we're, we're, we're, we're child, we're children of the '60s, and, uh, one of my favorite songs is, uh, You Just Keep On Hangin' On.
Mike Glenn: There you go.
Thom Rainer: And that's what I see with it. You want me to sing it for you?
Mike Glenn: Hang On Sloopy. Yeah, we remember all those songs, right.
Thom Rainer: Yeah, but do you remember the artist for Hang On Sloopy?
Mike Glenn: No.
Thom Rainer: The McCoys. Come on, Mike.
Mike Glenn: Oh, yeah.
Thom Rainer: The McCoys. Not The Real McCoys- ... but McCoys. There's some- But we get off, we get off track, which we are, want to do quite often when we have conversations
Mike Glenn: When does a church go from a healthy [00:08:00] church To a declining church
Thom Rainer: It happens environmentally, attitudinally, and culturally before it happens numerically.
So that's the first thing that I would say. Churches don't wake up one day and we're declining. So the, Peter Drucker has one of my favorite quotes, the, the late business guru. He says, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." Right. And basically what it, what we would say with the church is, if the church does not have an outward focus, if, if, if its Holy Trinity is me, myself, and I, it may not be declining, but it's on the precipice- Yeah
of hitting there.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: Now, we are able to some degree, not totally, we're able to some degree at Church Answers through surveys to get attitudinal issues, and we can tell a church according to the way the members responded, are you near that point? Mm-hmm. It's not a perfect survey, but it's a good survey.
And so we can say, "Look, you're not [00:09:00] declining right now, but the culture is turning inward." It's asking- Mm-hmm ... what are you doing for me? Mm-hmm. What have you done for me lately? And the church beg- becomes more about my needs, my wants, what I want in the church. Look, the local church is one of God's greatest gift, and it's one of God's most flawed gifts.
Mm-hmm. From Acts 2 all the way to Revelation 3, think about that big swath of the New Testament. That portion of scripture is all about the local church, to the local church, to leaders in the local church, and the context- Mm-hmm ... of the local church. If the local church is that important to God, it better be that important to us.
Right. And yet, so much of the time we make the church about us- Mm-hmm ... instead about others. And so the healthy churches are doing the basics. They're about the great commandment. We're gonna love others. They're about the great commission. We're going to reach others. And you stop doing that with [00:10:00] culture that shifts inwardly.
And here's the thing. There is a natural inclination to move inwardly. Entropy is what happens naturally. Outward focus, reaching beyond ourself, is what happens supernaturally. And unless we have the supernatural intervention, which comes through the power of prayer, through the obedience of the great commission- Mm-hmm
unless we have that, we are naturally going to move inward.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: I was, uh, one of your church members. I was a bad church member, but I was, I was one of your church members, uh, when I was at LifeWay. I don't remember a lot of your sermons. I'm sure they were great, but, but, but, actually, folks, if you're listening to this, I do remember my sermon.
But, but there, there was something that stuck out in one of your sermons. I don't remember the, the text. I don't remember a lot about it other than this one thing. You would tell people, I heard this maybe five or six or seven times. You, it was important to you. If you're not reading the Bible, start [00:11:00] reading it.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: If you're, if, if you can't read a chapter, read a verse.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: If you can't read a verse, read just a few words. Yeah. You remember saying that? Yeah, yeah. I'm surprised you remember it 'cause I thought-
Mike Glenn: It started one word. Yeah. The whole word- the whole Bible's in the first word of the Bible.
Thom Rainer: And- Yeah
yes. And s- and that to me is pushing people to look beyond yourself because if you are regular in the Bible- Mm-hmm ... if you are f- faithful in prayer, if you are faithful reaching beyond yourselves, then your church is not going to fall into that decline. Mm-hmm. Your church is not going to fall into that moribund state.
But your church may be hanging on through transfer growth. And you-
Mike Glenn: Right ...
Thom Rainer: you know what happens with a lot of transfer growth is this: A lot of churches have grown, particularly in the '90s and the early 2000s with transfer growth, and transfer growth is defined as, we call it church hopping- Mm-hmm ... moving from one church to another.
Mm-hmm. And what's happening in those churches, people are looking for a church that meets their needs. Right. It's about me, [00:12:00] myself, and I- Mm-hmm ... and what, what, what can the church do for me? I would challenge church members to find a church where you can serve even if it's not meeting your need- Right
because you're not there to have your need met. Mm-mm. You're there to be obedient to God through His Word, through the Great Commission, and through the great commandment. So y- that's a long answer to that question, right? Well,
Mike Glenn: and it may actually meet your need better if you're serving and engaged than, uh- It, it
Thom Rainer: will
Mike Glenn: than just sitting back in a consumer mode.
Thom Rainer: It will. And our generation, the generation born between 1946 and 1964, those 76 million Boomers, we're the most narcissistic, self-indulgent generation that has ever lived. Our generation helped churches to grow because we went into churches and we sat and we said, "What are you doing for me?"
Mike Glenn: That's right.
Thom Rainer: We sat and we listened. Our generation started the decline of the church in America. The generation before us, and the generation before them, had started the ascent of churches. [00:13:00] Right. Our generation came along and said, "Hey, we're the Boomers. We're cool. Come do something for us." And I may be overstating the case, but you know full well that there, there, there are many people who just saw the church as a, as their religious country club.
Mike Glenn: Right.
Thom Rainer: And they, they said, "We're paying our dues. What do you wanna do for us now?"
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: I'm sorry. You asked a question and you got me started and I can't stop.
Mike Glenn: I get it. Got you. Well, you know, let, let's be honest. We grew up and it w- I had, uh, I had school and that met the educational requirement, and this school was, was, was supposed to give me a piece of paper that would then get me into the job market Uh, there was, uh, uh, the country club or whatever the social structure of the town was that would give me access to other people to continue to do business and live with.
And then once a week, I would go to my religious-
Thom Rainer: Club ...
Mike Glenn: club and institution and, and get what I needed to live a good, moral life.
Thom Rainer: And if we think about the [00:14:00] generation that preceded us, I call them the World War II generation or the GI generation. Mm-hmm. Think about them. I think about my late father. My late father was a top turret gunner on a B-24 Liberator He got two Purple Hearts.
He got shot twice in that little top of the air- of the air, the bomber. And I didn't ... There were so many things I did not know about him till near- Mm-hmm ... to near his death. His whole life was given to his country, giving to his church, and giving to his community. Mm-hmm. He lived in a small town in South Alabama, and he was a mayor.
And I look at his life and I said, "That's the life that Christ says is what it means to follow him-" Mm ... and to follow him to the cross." And our generation comes along, and we weren't all bad, but there were a lot of us who, who, who messed up. And I, quite frankly, I was among them. I was among that indulgent, uh, part of the generation, particularly in my teenage and young adult [00:15:00] years.
And it wasn't until I met a young lady named Nellie Jo that my life started turning around for the right way.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. You see lots of numbers and you do a lot of research. What numbers concern you right now?
Thom Rainer: Conversion growth rate. Conversion growth rate simply means our church is growing by reaching people for Christ.
Mike Glenn: Right.
Thom Rainer: There are two other kinds of growth in a church for attendance. One is biological, more kids are being born into the church. The other that I've already mentioned is transfer growth. Mm-hmm. The number that is declining, the ratio that is declining most precipitously is conversion growth rate. We are reaching fewer and fewer people with the gospel, and most of the transfer growth is gone.
And what I mean by that, most of the people who've made a decision to go to a church have already transferred. There's not this big swath of people available. Right. And what is happening, for example, in the mega churches, this isn't an anti-mega church, uh, comment. Obviously, I went to one when I was, [00:16:00] uh, at, at Brentwood.
But what is happening in the mega churches is that swath of transfer growth is not as big as it was because there are not as many of them as there used to be. Right. It's a matter of demographics.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: They're not there. And the churches that have depended upon transfer growth are the churches that will have some of the most rapid decline, whether they're mega, whether they're mini, whether they're mid- Mm-hmm
they're the ones that ... So, so the, the issue for me is, how many people are we reaching for the gospel? Now, if you want ratios, this is one possible one. Ratios are not infallible. But if you are reaching 20, if you are reaching one person for Christ in your church, by reaching, I mean they weren't a Christian-
Mike Glenn: Right
Thom Rainer: they weren't in church, and
Mike Glenn: they're in your
Thom Rainer: church.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: Not ... I, I love it when people are reached on the foreign field, but I'm talking about local people reached with the gospel. If you are reaching one person for every 20 in attendance, in attendance over, worship attendance over a year, you're in the [00:17:00] top 50%, maybe even top 40 or 30% right
Mike Glenn: now.
Wow.
Thom Rainer: So what that means is- If it takes 20 people a year to reach one person for Christ, you're doing better than most churches. Let me say that again. If it takes 20 attendees a year to reach one person for Christ, you're doing better than most churches today. So that's the metric, but believe me, it's a lot worse than that right now.
Uh, Sam ha- my son Sam, who works with me at Church Answers, handed me some data before I came over here unrelated to this podcast, and I think what I saw in the data he gave me, I'm gonna be close to it, the number right now, the median is 47 to 1. So it's taking 47 church members- Mm-hmm. It
Mike Glenn: was 40 to 1 when, before I stepped down.
That- It's 40 to 1
Thom Rainer: was- And that was SBC, that was Southern Baptist Convention. Right,
Mike Glenn: yeah.
Thom Rainer: Mm-hmm. Uh, I think the 47 to 1, it may be their Southern Baptist Convention or it may be broader than that.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: But once again, 47 people. It [00:18:00] takes 47 people a year to reach one person for Christ.
Mike Glenn: What are you finding out that most surprises you?
I mean, we were talking just before we came on about Free Will being the youngest denomination, uh, right now according to the studies.
Thom Rainer: Well, those studies were done by Ryan Burge, and Ryan Burge is probably the best church statistician today. Right. Uh, his, his, um, Substack graphs about religion is second to none, if you can understand him.
Yeah. He is a statistical nerd, and he's never met a sentence that needs a period. Yeah. So he just keeps on going. But when I dig, when I, when I look at what he puts out and I dig a little bit, it is absolutely amazing, and his, his research has... is seminal for everything that, uh, I do research-wise. And so he did a research based upon the data that comes from population and [00:19:00] religious trends that- Mm-hmm
the government actually does. Mm-hmm. He gleans that research, and, and what he found was Free Will Baptists were the youngest in terms of age of church members, church attendees actually, of any denomination. Blew me away. Free Will Baptists, smaller denomination, has a little over a million members, uh, real members.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: And, uh, their headquarters is here in- In Nashville ... Nashville. Eddie Moody's executive director, a good friend. And so I asked him, I said, "Eddie, how are y'all so young? You know, what's going on?" He said, "We are rural churches, and we are really rural churches where the people are not leaving. They feel an attachment-
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm
Thom Rainer: to the community, to the families, and so the kids are staying. They're raising kids." It's an anomaly in communities. It's certainly an anomaly- Right ... in churches that are taking place. Mm-hmm. So that is definitely one of the big surprises that are, that's, that's taking place.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm. Is there [00:20:00] anything we could learn from that and translate to an urban or suburban setting?
Thom Rainer: We would have to presume that there is something taking place in the church that is causing people to stick. And raise their kids there.
Mike Glenn: Okay.
Thom Rainer: Their, m- m-
Mike Glenn: You think it's more community than church?
Thom Rainer: Eddie would say- Family ... it is more demographic. Okay. He, he said, "We have unusual demographics." Okay. He celebrates the youthfulness- Right
of their churches. Um, I spoke at, um, Free Will Baptist Convention in Orlando a few years ago. Sam spoke last year. I said, "Sam," that's my son, "what, what stood out at the convention?" "How many young people were there."
Mike Glenn: Mm.
Thom Rainer: Just all over the pl- young people leading, participating. Now, I will say this, Free Will Baptists have an intentionality about bringing young people in to lead- Right
and do ministry.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: Eddie has led that. So yeah, it's demographics. You got them there, but he's doing [00:21:00] something that's keeping them involved, or at least their churches are doing
Mike Glenn: something. Right. Giving them a resp- yeah, I'm needed, so I show up 'cause I'm needed. Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: Yes. Yes, and when you go to these conventions, I mean, think about a Southern Baptist convention.
I try not to. But, but think about a annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention. What do we do? We fight. We have resolutions.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: We get mad at people. Or- Argue ... Southern, we argue. Argue,
Mike Glenn: yeah.
Thom Rainer: They go and they talk about the gospel. They go and, and the youth lead them in worship. They go and they talk about, they give stories of ministry, and people come away saying- Mm
"Man, this, we're, God's really doing-" Good, yeah. Yeah ... "something through us." So demographics, getting them there. Intentionality with the young people are keeping them
Mike Glenn: there. If I'm a pastor in a dying church, how do I know?
Thom Rainer: You've got to wake up to reality, and I would just... Here's the simplest thing to do to wake up to reality.
I would do a chart. I know I'm- Mm-hmm ... you're a numbers nerd. I'm a nerd. But [00:22:00] let's, let's do the chart, and I would chart out my attendance from 2019 to the present, average worship attendance.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: And I just simply ask the question, where are we? Now why 2019? Pre-COVID.
Mike Glenn: Pre-COVID.
Thom Rainer: 2021's going to be a stinky number because it's the first post-COVID number in full.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: But then continue to watch those trends. Even if you have not had a pre-COVID renewal, you should be increasing from 2021 following.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: The demographics would indicate you should be increasing. So I would just simply ask this question: How many people are showing up? Because it's one thing to have budgets, it's one thing to have members.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: I hate it. I wrote a book many member- many years ago called I Am A Church Member, and I, I, I want membership to be the metric because that is our commitment to a local church. Mm-hmm. When I joined Brentwood, y'all put me th- y'all put me through so much stuff before I could... I just, I, I almost [00:23:00] wanted to complain to you, but then I said, "No.
I, I'm, I'm, I don't wanna be a whiny church member." But I went through all of the stuff, but what you were doing is saying church mem- membership matters.
Mike Glenn: Right.
Thom Rainer: It is, it is not meaningless. So I would, I would just simply say churches that are making a difference, churches that are having meaningful membership are the churches of the future going forward.
Mike Glenn: What, uh, what number excites you?
Thom Rainer: The numbers that excite me are more localized than nationalized.
Mike Glenn: Okay.
Thom Rainer: And what I mean by that, there is a lot of good things that are happening in churches. Now, this sounds like a shameless plug, but I'm going to give it. We created a methodology, fallible, where we asked churches to go through 30 days of cultural commitment, and I told them, "Don't worry about how many sign up for it, just how many do it.
That's all you want." [00:24:00] And for 30 days they go through my little book, uh, called Pray and Go.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: And they make a commitment each of the 30 days. Now, here's what we have found. The churches that did that, the churches that went through that, were almost at 80%, almost at 80%, had numerical jumps because cultural change, because people made commitments.
And so we call it the Hope Initiative because we've, we've given it to churches, and we're, we're hoping that, uh, hoping, there's redundant. Mm-hmm. But we're, we're, we're asking that God will do a great work because every one of those 30 days a church member commits to something. First day, I'm gonna commit to pray for my church.
Second day, I'm going to commit to pray for my pastor.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: By the time they get to the 15th day of the 30-day commitment, it's the only time they're doing anything that expends a lot of commitment or modest commitment. They're walking in their neighborhood, if they're able to, or driving, praying for homes as they go by.
Mike Glenn: Praying
Thom Rainer: in their neighborhood. It's [00:25:00] low expectation- Mm-hmm ... but the culture shifts with these church members, and I continue to get emails from people who have done this. You don't have to have my book, obviously. That's not the issue. Mm-hmm. The issue is the culture shifted as church members shifted. The churches that have done that are the churches that are exciting me.
That's why I say it's localized- Mm-hmm ... more than nationalized. Uh, I, I'm, I'm seeing things happen with some denominations. We've already mentioned Free Will Baptist. I would say the Global Methodist Church, which is the fastest growing church in terms of number of churches. Mm-hmm. Now, to be fair, a lot of it is United Methodist churches that are moving to Global Methodist- Right
or their members are, so to be fair. But it's more than that. And I'm excited about them because they're starting anew, and I've worked closely with two of, two of their, uh, state, they don't call 'em conventions, I'm trying to remember what they call 'em. But two, two of their state entities, uh, North Carolina and then Great Lakes, which [00:26:00] is more than a state.
And, uh, they're starting in each of those entities by asking the question, "Since we are starting over, what do we need to be doing?" Their churches may not be starting
Mike Glenn: over- Mm-hmm ...
Thom Rainer: but their denominations- Right ... are starting over. I'm excited about them, and we have more Global Methodists going through the Hope Initiative than any other group because that's, that's the Pray and Go book.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: Uh, bec- because they wanna start afresh.
Mike Glenn: That's an interesting question that they're asking. Since we're starting new, what should we be doing? How often do churches ask that?
Thom Rainer: Hardly ever, Mike. Hardly, hardly ever. Now you want a sneak preview of b- a, about a book I'm writing?
Mike Glenn: Sure.
Thom Rainer: I don't want anybody-
Mike Glenn: Is it gonna be out at the end of the week?
This book, this book might do, yeah.
Thom Rainer: It'll be out in 2027. Um, publisher and I haven't set, dec- decided on a title yet. But basically it is going to be Renew. It's going to be, okay, how does a church [00:27:00] restart its attitude?
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: How does a church restart its commitment? And Right now I'm approaching it through starting with a one-day commitment in the worship service- Mm-hmm
and then going from there. But because of that, it will, it will cause many in the church to s- ask the question, where are we? Where do we need to go?
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: Uh, when we do church consultations, and obviously an organization the size of Church Answers cannot do 375,000 consultations, nor are they asking us to do that.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: Uh, when we do that, that's the question that we ask. If you are starting fresh, what would you do? That helps us with the church members who are expecting Church Answers in a consultation to deliver a silver bullet and say- Mm-hmm ... "Do this," because we say, "You dream again."
Mike Glenn: Yeah.
Thom Rainer: You- And that may be part of the aspect of the new book, what does it mean to dream again?
Hey, you remember that book that goes back to mine and your day by Robert Dale- Oh, yeah ... called To Dream Again?
Mike Glenn: To Dream Again, yeah. The, the [00:28:00] life cycle of the church and all of that. Yeah.
Thom Rainer: One of the best books that's never been read.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: But you and I-
Mike Glenn: Everybody had a copy of it, but nobody, yeah.
Thom Rainer: Well, a lot of people had a copy of it, but it, it's an incredible book because it says every church has a life cycle- Mm-hmm
just like any institution does.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: And you, you get to a peak, you get to a pinnacle.
Mike Glenn: Exactly right.
Thom Rainer: And before you start the, the part of the bell curve that's on the right side, which is the decline-
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm ...
Thom Rainer: you need to dream again.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: It was brilliant.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: I don't think anybody
Mike Glenn: has put- And put the S-curve in rather than the bell curve.
Thom Rainer: Yeah, put that S-curve in and, uh, I think Ri- Rick Warren borrowed it later and called it the Purpose Driven Church. And- Yeah. And then he had a book called The Purpose Driven Life, and I've been envious of that book ever since- Yeah ... 'cause, uh, I think I sold 2 million of one copy, but I never sold 35 million of one
Mike Glenn: copy.
Good gracious. Well, so when a church is going through the process, how do they look at something and say, "This is something we don't need to continue doing anymore"?
Thom Rainer: Well, you're talking about a simple church now. [00:29:00] Now, Mike, you're talking about a church... He, l- It, it sounds like I'm doing all these consultation plugs, but let me explain to you what we do with church.
We just did this with a, um, Assembly of God church up north, I believe it was Michigan, and, uh, they asked that question. We said, "We're gonna take you to the, through the simple church process." And the simple church process begins with, uh, focus. What is our purpose? Mm-hmm. So it's, it's kind of like that's the dreaming part.
Mm-hmm. Let's, let's begin with that. Then the next part is movement. How, uh, alignment. What, what are the pro- what's the process discipleship we're going through? And then movement, how do we move our people through it? And then focus. After we see these areas where our people are moving through a process of discipleship, what's left over?
And what we did, what Eric Geiger and I did in the first Simple Church book, we, we said, "If it's not in the process of discipleship, kick it out." Kick
Mike Glenn: it out.
Thom Rainer: That caused a lot of [00:30:00] consternation for churches because they kicked out Ma and Pa's favorite thing in the church. In fact, one pastor wrote me and said, "We kicked out the flower committee, and it didn't go over well."
And so we modified that in the revised version, and we said either eliminate it or de-emphasize it.
Mike Glenn: Right.
Thom Rainer: Let it go its natural path and do so. Mm-hmm. Let
Mike Glenn: down its own.
Thom Rainer: So most churches are doing too much-
Mike Glenn: Right ...
Thom Rainer: not too little.
Mike Glenn: Right.
Thom Rainer: Busy church is not the antidote. Simple church is by doing the things you are supposed to be doing.
Mike Glenn: So you're talking to a young pastor All of the numbers are negative. Culturally, all this and stuff. What would you, what, what are you gonna tell him?
Thom Rainer: I'd say welcome to the first century.
Mike Glenn: Exactly what I'd tell him. Exactly what I'd tell him.
Thom Rainer: Hey, you, this is, this is not the worst time, this is the best
Mike Glenn: time.
Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: Culture has [00:31:00] shifted the other way. Look what happened when culture was favorable to Christianity. Right. I'm not saying there are a lot of Christians. Yeah. Is we, we became lackadaisical.
Mike Glenn: That's right.
Thom Rainer: Our commitment level was low. Mm-hmm. We, we, we s- what growth we had was transfer growth. We're now back to the first century.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: And if you wanna read a book, and it ain't a Rainer book, so I'm glad I can say something other than a non-Rainer book. If you wanna read a book that's gonna be a slow read, but at the same time, a particularly a transformational read, I would read Evangelism in the Early Church by Michael Green.
Michael
Mike Glenn: Green.
Thom Rainer: Yes.
Mike Glenn: Another classic.
Thom Rainer: Another classic. Mm-hmm. Been around since 1970. I used to read the book every year. I can't, I can't say that I do now, but probably three years don't go by that I- Mm-hmm ... don't reread that book. And I'm used to now video and s- short books and all that.
Mike Glenn: Right.
Thom Rainer: He, he has as many footnotes as I have a vocabulary.
Mike Glenn: Yes, some pages are nothing but
Thom Rainer: footnotes on that. Footnotes, yes.
Mike Glenn: Yeah.
Thom Rainer: So, but it is an unbelievable book measuring what happened in the first three [00:32:00] centuries up until Constantine-
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm ...
Thom Rainer: uh, in the local church. And it's a reminder that we're in that culture now.
Mike Glenn: Yeah.
Thom Rainer: And we can either bemoan it or we can reach it.
Mike Glenn: Mm-hmm.
Thom Rainer: The opportunity is great.
Mike Glenn: The First 30 Years is also-
Thom Rainer: The First Thirty s- uh-
Mike Glenn: No, there's another book called The First 30 Years.
Thom Rainer: I'm not familiar with that one. Yeah. Is it Michael Green as well? I think
Mike Glenn: it is.
Thom Rainer: Okay.
Mike Glenn: But-
Thom Rainer: Not familiar with
Mike Glenn: that ... I don't know anything, so yeah. But it's what happened in, in the 30 years of the ear- the early church.
Thom Rainer: Like AD 33 to AD 60- Yeah, yeah ... 63.
Mike Glenn: Yeah, without, until the lo- loss of Paul and the Peter and all this stuff.
Thom Rainer: Yeah. Very
Mike Glenn: good. But yeah, we're gonna, the same thing that worked in Acts, the, or the, were gonna be the very same things that work here.
Thom Rainer: And if you just wanna know what happened there, go to Acts 2, go to the end of the chapter-
Mike Glenn: Yeah
Thom Rainer: and see what was happening. Mm-hmm. They devoted themselves to the daily reading of the word of God, to prayer, to, to the breaking of bread, and many people became followers of Christ. That's right. I firmly believe that's Acts 2:47.
Mike Glenn: Yeah. That works, that works. How do people get in touch with you?
Thom Rainer: You can go to, uh, [00:33:00] churchanswers.com.
Mike Glenn: Churchanswers.com. Yeah. It is an excellent resource. I go there often. This is his latest book, The Revival of the Analog Church by Tom Rainer, why your church should be personal and in person. You mean the video didn't take off like they told us it would during COVID?
Thom Rainer: No. As a matter of fact, uh, some of the numbers on, uh, streaming video for churches are abysmal.
And, uh, everything that we thought was going to happen, predicted was going to happen, that we were going to be a s- streaming-based church- Yeah ... has
Mike Glenn: not happened. Has not happened at all.
Thom Rainer: And where it has happened, the commitment levels are at their lowest.
Mike Glenn: Wow. Wow. We'll have to pick up on that one next time.
All right. Thanks for being here, Tom.
Thom Rainer: Thank you.
