Dave: Welcome to Thrive On Mission, the podcast of the Christian Restoration Association. I'm Dave Jones and as always with Jim Book and Jim looks like you're back home in Alabama.

James Book: Yes, yes. We Dave, we were able to we left the the Ohio Bible conference, CRA's conference in Ohio. By the way, you did an outstanding job. I mean our our trustees were well represented and you were one of the speakers and Dave, great job. kudos to John and his and the team for putting it together. But left there to go to Waverly, Ohio and spend three days with one of our mission one twenty churches and They've rolled out 120 and their heart and soul is on getting to that hundred and twenty every Lord's Day over the next four years working on that. Derek's had a couple of baptisms. So yeah, we're home and and get ready for our next venture here in a in less than twenty-four hours to Grover Church of Christ in Grover, Pennsylvania.

Dave: right, appreciate all the the work you're doing and the compliment. It's just a great line great lineup of speakers.

James Book: Well now pre preaching you.

Dave: It's always a great program down at Mason. And the CRA also sponsors another conference, formerly called the Florida Bible Conference. Now it's the Florida Ministry Summit. And Jim, I know you're not a Florida boy anymore, but I think you're speaking there this year, right?

James Book: Yes, and we're grateful that the CRA is sponsoring it. They're partnering with the Florida Ministers Association. John, you know, is expecting anywhere from 350 to 400 at this event. the Fairway Christian Church is a huge supporter of the CRA. They're sponsoring it at their congregation, their facility. It's in the villages, by the way. Beautiful piece of property in the heart of Florida, Central Florida. you could probably fly into the Tampa Airport if you want to come from out of the state and get there in about 50 minutes to an hour. but man, you're not going to miss this conference. They're basically taking the A, the axe model that we have been using for Mission 120. A accelerated growth, C, obviously speaks to culturally relevant, the Bible's most culturally relevant book ever written. T, you gotta be theologically sound, and S the spirit's gotta drive us, and man. Just speaking of spirit, one of the speakers at the Ohio Bible conference just I think it was it was Presley. Man, just a great I he did the best seminar I've ever heard on the role of the Holy Spirit and churches, you can be spirit driven, man. And so so that's gonna be the fourth element. But we got workshops revolving around that. It's theological and very practical. So if you're looking for a seminar really charge you up and give you solid material to take into your congregation. You're not gonna wanna miss this conference. And Dave, the the dates are February. Okay. Yeah.

Dave: Twenty fifth and twenty sixth. Yeah, we're bet we're better to be than Florida in February, I'm guessing.

James Book: Yeah, who who who doesn't want to leave Ohio and Indiana in in February? Who needs an excuse to

Dave: Yeah.

James Book: get out of there and be in sunny Florida and play golf? Because there's 7,000 there's golfing everywhere. I mean, it's just this beautiful place. And that's such a great church. So we're we're excited about being back there again.

Dave: Yeah, and by the way, if anybody wants audio or video from the CRA Bible conference in Mason, it's available through Hutch Recordings. And I would highly recommend Johnny's lesson or sermon on the Holy Spirit. It was profound yet simple. And it was probably the clearest exposition of of the work of the Holy Spirit in the Christian's life that I've heard personally. And you you can't

James Book: Yeah, is excellent.

Dave: beat Johnny Presley with that kind of stuff.

James Book: And I was taking notes so fast I I said I may have misquoted something. I probably should get the C D or

Dave: Uh-huh.

James Book: because I but it was just really great. But again, the spirit does play a role in church growth, folks.

Dave: Well well Jim, between these conferences and summits and seminars, you're traveling to churches throughout America. And one of the things that I hear people asking from time to time is what does Jim do when he's out on the road and and what could we expect when Jim comes to our church and not not just preaches a revival you do so much more than just the preaching. You're actually working and coaching these these churches, the elders and the evangelists. So as you're headed into town and and once you arrive and you meet with the leadership of the church, what are the things you're looking for and identifying in that local church that helps you understand how to best coach them?

James Book: That's that's a great question. So what I try to do in my coaching and consulting is is get them to grade themselves because I don't want to be the guy that walks in and says, Hey, I've already noticed these things. So and and you know what? Most leaders, I Dave, almost to a person, they're they're very objective. They're not there to, sidestep. They want to do better. So I always start with internal programs. I said, let's let's list all the internal programs that you do from education, anything that's happening within The facility, or that's primarily for the saints, the Christian community here at your local church. And then we list those and then we grade them. You know, how effective are there? Is there other things that need to be changed? Or have you been exercising programs that are obsolete and dysfunctional that need to be either thrown away or completely revamped? And then we talk about external. And that's usually where we we run dry. It's like we just don't have a lot of externally focused. We're not really thinking of. the best ways to reach the community. So we're just assuming that people will drive by and and come in and and a lot of people will, but a lot of people don't. And so the goal is to help them find balance. You need a strong internal program. That's where discipleship takes place. But if we don't have a way to reach the community at large and get them here, then we're preaching to the same people every Sunday and eventually we'll we'll die. You if you if we're not growing, we're dying. So so and I I I I generally ask the church to to to find one of three categories they're in. This is one of my all-time f favorite questions asked because it's really telling. I said that every church is in a stage is one of these stages. You have your ministering churches. Okay. These ministering churches preach the gospel. I mean, the it's the it's that's what separates Christianity from every other world religion. It's it it the crux is on an empty tomb. It's the death, burial, and resurrection. That's what that's what accelerates us as a movement. All right. So we're outwardly focused, we're preaching the gospel, we're making disciples. We're praying, we're serving, we're reaching the loss. But what did Johnny say? PTA, praying, trust, and then accelerate. I'm gonna use the word accelerate for everything. But you pray, then you trust, and then you act. Then you act. Okay,

Dave: I got my notes somewhere. Act.

James Book: so so a praying. Acting serving church is always reaching the loss because we're always thinking about how do I take this program and connect someone to Jesus? All right. These churches expect, they're always expecting victory. Every Sunday, it's like Victory Sunday. It can't be victory Sunday. It's not Easter. Every Sunday is Easter Sunday. Okay. That's how these churches think. It's we're gonna we're gonna set another record, we're gonna baptize more people, we're gonna disciple more people, we're gonna start another class, we're gonna start another ministry. They're spiritually live and they're always on mission with Christ. They're always like, okay, Christ, how do we stay on mission with you? Cause you started a church. Here's what, here's what ministering churches always ask. Every elder's mean when there's a vision, and I know, Dave, I want you to speak into this later because you just, you guys are casting a huge vision for your church. You just rolled it out Sunday. These kind of churches are always asking, how can we reach more people for Christ? So they're always celebrating, but they're never satisfied. How can we do more? How can we do more? All right. That's a ministering church. Okay. So hopefully that's where everybody is that's watching this. Yes, a ministry. Category number two, and this is probably where most of our churches are functioning in. They're the maintaining churches. Now, maintaining churches are inwardly focused. They keep programs running. Okay. Their budgets are always balanced. Okay. They they preserve routine. They got a good routine going. Okay. All right. They're maintaining their facilities. They're concerned with survival more than expansion. That's why a lot of times when a leadership says we're going to expand, we're going to build, it's going to cost us this. You get people that get nervous and head for the hills. So they're concerned more with surviving and not necessarily with expanding. Now, here's what they ask. Okay, so the the ministering church, how can we reach more people? That's what the leadership's always asking. How can we reach more people? The maintenance church is always asking, how do we keep what we have? How do we keep what we have? Finally, the monument church. They live on memories instead of mission. Traditions become very sacred. Change is always resisted. Spiritual vitality gives way to just existence. And here's what the leadership of that church is asked. Remember when, remember when everything's about yesterday and nothing about tomorrow. So A ministering church, a maintaining church, and then a monument church. We got a lot of monument churches out there, Brother Dave, and it is frightening that everything revolves around yesterday's news. And there's nothing developing in within that body that would expand the people's spiritual center and the growth of that church. And that's what this podcast is trying to alleviate is help those churches get from being monuments to maintaining churches to ministering churches.

Dave: It's interesting the monument church. Let's talk about that just briefly and I think move backwards a little bit through those three stages, if you will. But as we talked about a couple of weeks ago, Andrew and I spent some time in England and it's been well known for years that the church in England is struggling. And I just did a Google search on my way to worship in London on on Sunday morning while we were there, and only seven percent of the population of London goes to any sort of Christian church now.

James Book: Well.

Dave: Even in New York City, that number's closer to 15%. And so London is really struggling for the gospel. They're hungry for the gospel. It's obviously dominated, I'm sure the the number of mosques have continued to grow. In fact, what what we really saw is that the old cathedrals and church buildings that that are all over London, they're beautiful, they're they reach high into the sky. They are monuments of what what once was. And now there's no life in them. The church does not meet in those churches, in those be buildings. We passed one that was a rock climbing wall facility. Some have been

James Book: Okay.

Dave: turned into coffee shops and restaurants. Others have been bought by Muslims and they're now mosques or the Masonic Lodge or whoever else is using these old cathedrals. And so we're seeing that in small towns across America too though. churches that are just holding on with one elder paying all the bills, asking a group of guys to come in and just fill the pulpit on Sunday morning. Don't tell us what we need to change or what we need to do. Just feed us every Sunday. And those churches have become very similar to what's going on in London. And

James Book: Yeah.

Dave: and part of that too is that, you know, I heard I read an article recently that the that the most influential man on the the modern American church Was Henry Ford. In that a hundred years ago, when people wanted to go to church, they had to walk down the street. And

James Book: Right, right.

Dave: if there were problems with that church, there was no other option in town. So they would have to stay there and work through the problems.

James Book: Right. Right.

Dave: Now you drive through multiple towns to get to the church of your choice. And if there's a problem there, you drive to another town to find a different one. And and go ahead.

James Book: Exactly. So go ahead, Dave. No, no. I I'm just thinking there's a way there's a way to rectify the situation. We can't throw our cars away. We can't, you know, curse Henry Ford every time we think of his name. But

Dave: Mm-hmm.

James Book: here's what we can do. We can sit down with the three or four churches within five miles of us and think smarter. How can we do more for the kingdom if we could come together? So so and I've I face this, David. You asked the question, what do I see? This is what I see a lot. I just left Bluefield, Virginia. I did a conference with the church leaders in the Greater Bluefield, West Virginia, Virginia area. It was a it was great, great conference. But here's what we're facing in small town America is you have churches in the holler that were built 150 years ago for just that reason. You you get up and you walked to church. You and you couldn't walk with so many miles, but now we have cars and and the towns have expanded. But here's what hasn't expanded those little churches. And some of those don't even have preachers, but one of them does. And and and they're the healthy church. And when I say healthy, we're talking 25. That's healthy because the two down the street are running 10. Well, what would happen if the two running 10 said say, hey, look, we're all preaching the same message. We got the same name on the side. We all love the Lord and we want to do something significant in this tiny little town that's almost dried up, but not totally. Well, why can't we come together and reason together? Right? Let's reason, let's let's let's consolid efforts. Let's sell those old properties, put into this one. Now we have critical mass. Now instead of 30, we have 50. And now we're attractive enough to if lost people walk in, they're like, hey, there's life in this church versus there's only 10 people. I'm not coming back. But see, we again, the monument church. It's a monument to grandpa because he's the one that put the flooring in. And great-grandpa, he put the bell in. And I can't imagine selling this property, leaving this property because my grandpa's gonna come out of the grave and stab me in the neck with a fork. So we're gonna stay here and just all die. No, we're not. We're gonna vicariously take grandpa's memory and shift it over to a highly functioning New Testament church, one of our sister churches, and actually do something before Jesus comes back.

Dave: that's good. That's good. what's interesting, Jim, is we talk about Mission 120, and I know a lot of churches desire to be bigger and have more people in attendance, but almost almost as bad as the monument church can be the maintaining church, where they

James Book: Yes.

Dave: may have two or three hundred people, they have a great VBS, they've got great revivals, they have great church meals, but they're not beyond themselves in their perspective of ministry. And I would contend as I look at my ministry at Millwood over 20 years, I think honestly we were there for a really long time. We're where we built a new building, but it was for ourselves. And when we moved up here, we designed it for ourselves. And we had programs that were built for ourselves. But as we got more people from the outside to come in and begin attending, we began to realize we've got to look beyond ourselves and and

James Book: Yes, yes.

Dave: go from a a maintaining church Which which I think by all all accounts we were a healthy church. If you were to ask anybody that knew us, because we had a sizable congregation, a stable leadership and a lot of good people who believe the doctrine of the New Testament church, that we were a healthy and stable church. But I think where I've sort of come the last five years or so, it's not good enough to be healthy and stable,

James Book: Right.

Dave: or to maintain. We've gotta go beyond ourselves and So Jim, that second category there of the ministering church is really where we all need to be growing into.

James Book: Yeah. Well that old that old saying, you have your risk taker, caretaker, and undertaker church, which one do you want to be? I look, I the fact of the matter is we were at that when I was at Kissimmee, we wanted to build the ministry center. And so there was, obviously I I I I mentioned to our staff and our leadership, we can't go to the church with this monumental plan unless we have a reason for this building. so I know what we want to do, build a ministry center. Why? If we don't have a strong why, forget it. So I sat down and developed a s a strong why. here are the things I want to do in that building. And I remember we we had a we had a crossroads. We wanted to build a huge stage so we could have performing arts and our drama department take part in in using that facility. The problem is a large stage would exclude classrooms. So we couldn't have them both. So I said to leadership, look, I've made a decision, guys, from my standpoint. We need to ditch the stage. I want to have a stage. I'd like to have our drama program and so forth, but that's very internal. That's we do that we because we have theaters. We did we do a th a play every other year. We'd sell tickets and it was our members doing it, and the outsiders could come in. It was a dinner theater, but it was you know fun, it was exciting. But it I knew it wasn't nearly as externally focused as I thought we needed to be with spending this kind of money. So I proposed classrooms and a school because I knew we started a school. I could influence children every day and families every day. So I had to learn in my ministry, whatever you do, it has to have something external attached to it. Because I just didn't want to entertain the saints. I wanted to make sure we fed the saints, but we reached the lost with everything we did. And so I just had to I had to learn that because I grew up in a church, was a great church, but I'm telling you, it was a family to the point where I'm not real sure. We didn't say it, but we it's not saying we didn't care if people came in, but by our actions and by our lack of vision, we were pretty much comfortable with our with that little nucleus of people. And I'm seeing a lot of that now, and it's frightening because we have to give an account for the community we didn't reach. We have to give an account for the spirit we quenched. Okay. David, you guys just got through a capital campaign not too long ago. I mean, your building is beautiful. If there's any church in the world that could get away with cruising, it's you guys. You're you're still growing. you're you're just paid off that massive new facility. I would say if I were if I were the you know, if I were one of your elders like Dave, back up a little bit. Let's just let's coast for a while. Let's enjoy let's enjoy this. And and but you're not that's not where you guys are because last Sunday you rolled out a a pretty aggressive vision for the church.

Dave: Yeah, it's interesting as I look back and that idea of the maintaining church, by the way, I think maybe a qualifier for that that you could look at and say, is this a maintaining church? Do they have a lot of transfer growth?

James Book: Yes.

Dave: And I think for years we had a lot of people that were just coming from other churches and didn't like where they were before, liked what we had here. And but what we've experienced in the last few years is conversion growth. And people that are outside of Christ have very little, if any, church background, people from the community that have heard about this church and been invited by people in this church that we've been able to disciple and lead to Jesus and baptize them. And because of that, we've got a lot of new young families coming in. And we're just we're stretched to the max in our children's facility. And so we launched last week an effort to raise money to build a new addition to the building that would have a giant youth room, junior high or middle school room, preschool area as well. And part of it is you know we've always tried to look to the future and you know you're the Visionary among visionaries, and and sometimes I'm just catching up with where the church is. But we're at a point where we need this now, but it's more important to look to what we'll need in the future.

James Book: Yes.

Dave: and and so we're trying to not just isolate to what we need now. And the challenge with that is when you when you have people that have been around for a long time, some of the feedback we've gotten has been well, listen, I didn't need a giant youth room when I went to high school. We just met in the basement. Of the old building, those kinds of comments really are out of touch with where culture is today, and at the same time out of touch with where teenagers need to be, and giving them the opportunity to have what the adults have had for five or six years now, this big beautiful facility, and give them a chance now to to experience the kind of environment that we've been able to worship in as adults, if you will. So

James Book: Well, and and I appreciate the fact that David, you understand that times have changed and maybe certain needs in yesterday's church weren't as prevalent as they are now, so we can't stop the clock. you know, and we've always said the message never changes, but our methods have gotta change. But you what's funny? If you go back into generations, you will always hear that. So, like if if you grab your grandpa and say, Hey, my TV's not working, he's like, who needs a TV? All we had was radio when I was growing up, you know? And if you if you go back to another four generations, like radio, all we had was sticks and we threw rocks at each other for entertainment. So it's like it's always a generation that didn't need what we have now, but we need this now. This is the world we live in. And

Dave: It is.

James Book: I'll tell you something that concerns me though, David. It's that look, so you get a guy, a preacher, he's you he's in mid-50s, you know, he gets into a church and and and and they're maintaining bills are paid, everybody's happy, you know, the ladies got their quilting room and the guys have their monthly breakfast and And then okay, everybody but see, everybody's content. I don't know that they're happy. They don't know the difference between joy because they've never experienced real growth, but they're content. So the elders are content, bills are paid, preachers content because he's kind of I hate to say it, he's kind of mailing it in, okay? He's making a good living, and he's thinking to himself, okay, if I go to my elders with this idea of expanding our ministries and expanding the church, it means I gotta I I hate to say this, but I might have to work a lot more. And I'm getting paid real well. And I don't know how I don't necessarily have to pull any of these stunts. So what ends up happening is he cheats the people because he doesn't create a vision. The elders cheat the preacher and the people because they cater to that. And the people are lethargic. By the way, people will go wherever their leaders tell them to go or not go. So I don't blame the people. They're the sheep. I'm looking at the shepherds and going, guys, light a fire in this church. And now I will tell you this: I have dealt with churches where the people are like, if we could just get our leaders to dream. And they're frustrated. But here's what's happening, according to Will Arne. They're leaving those churches and they're going to churches that are growing, expanding their vision, and and and empowering their people to serve. If we think we've done these people any favor by coddling them and and and and coaching them to do nothing. I'm telling you, the workers are leaving. Now you what you'll have left is the maintenance mode people, the, the, the, the the the habitual consumer. They'll stay. But the dreamers and the visionaries, they're leaving. And that that's the group we can ill afford to lose.

Dave: Yeah. so Jim, with the monument churches you discussed earlier that maybe some of those monument churches who realize it should get together and come come together to support a bigger congregation or to pool their efforts. And I I think that's an area maybe some of those churches need to dig into a little bit more. As far as churches that are maintaining, I like that term, the preachers mailing it in. I feel like at times I've I've mailed it in to be honest with you. But but

James Book: we I hey, I would I I was there too. we reach a victory

Dave: Yeah.

James Book: point and you you cross the victory line, you're celebrating, and then all of a sudden you're like, let's just take it easy, and I've done that too,

Dave: So so what are some things, and you over the course of our podcast, these many episodes we've done now, you've talked about a variety of things that some churches are doing to get out of maintenance mode. what are some common mindsets that you're seeing in churches that are out of maintenance mode and they're totally into ministry mode?

James Book: So I was on the phone earlier today. A church in Missouri called me and they're they're like Jim. We don't have a large Hispanic community. in fact the preacher was at the symposium in Ohio and he wanted to meet with me. I just we just didn't connect, but he called me and had a great conversation. And he's like, Look, we don't have a huge Hispanic population, but here's what we do have we have a New Testament Christian man who wants to reach the Honduran. And Central American and Mexican population that we have in our town. It's not very large. I said, Okay, is your church ready to do this? Because you need to. And he's like, We're ready, but we need to know the steps. So we spent a tremendous amount of time just walking them through some some challenges, but the victory. And it's exciting because they're ready to do this. You know, they're ready to say, Hey, if this is people in our backyard, it's one thing to send mission money to Central America, it's another thing to reach the Central Americans that are here. I'm working with a church, a great church, North Broadway Church of Christ in Seymour, Ohio. And they're our latest Mission 120 church, but they they have a passion to do more with family outreach and children. They want to create more ministries to reach families and children. And so they've put together this incredible governments policy, if you will, for this new ministry. And but they're not comfortable just maintaining. And they realize it's going to cost. You're going to have to develop a lot more ministry outreach concepts. But this is what they want to do. And it's just what what's happening is so great. It's just we're actually watching churches get excited about the term growth again. Well, we're bringing the term growth back to the table. It's not a dirty word. If it is, then we got to rip the book of Acts out of the New Testament. Okay. And I'm not talking about pragmatic growth. We're talking about principal New Testament growth. The kind of growth that we saw in the restoration movement, everybody was talking about the restoration movement, fine. Well, how can we take those same principles and develop them now? Well, I think churches have got to begin to think in terms of look, we've got, we can't just maintain anymore. If we haven't seen growth, if we haven't stirred the baptistry orders, if we're not discipling, if we haven't seen traffic coming in the building faster than the ones going out, then we've got to reevaluate everything we're doing. Re-evaluate everything we do. And when you know who you are, you'll know what to do. A lot of churches

Dave: Let's get it.

James Book: don't who they are. Once you know your premise, your purpose for being here, I'm telling you, you'll know what to do.

Dave: Yeah, and anybody who knows restoration history knows that the restoration movement was the fastest growing Christian religious group in America for decades in the eighteen hundreds, nineteen hundreds.

James Book: James Madison had Alexander Campbell speak at the joint sessions of Congress. An hour and a half he held that lawmaking body spellbound. One of our guys, we if you ask most senators, have you ever heard of the Christian church? They'll scratch their head and I don't know that I've heard of you guys. Or if they have, Church of Christ, yeah, you're the guys that keep fighting in my district over non superfluous nonsense. That's the kind of that's where I want to see the restoration movement. And I think we can. We could take that, we could take our place again. in the arena, but we gotta get out of the grandstands. Can't sit in the bleachers and be on the field at the same time.

Dave: Well let's wrap up this episode. I have one practical tip for the churches that are listening. Contact Kyova. We've had

James Book: Yes.

Dave: Race Martin on. Race will contact your congregation, work with you in getting a demographic study of where your community is and what the needs of that community are to help you develop externally focused vision for your congregation. And the second practical thing is to give Jim you an opportunity to talk about how people can get a hold of you and have you come in and talk about some of the principles that we've talked about here today.

James Book: Absolutely. You can always reach me. JamesCBook at gmail.com. Anytime you can reach me, I'd be happy to sit down with your leadership. we're already filling up the calendar already next year. but we will man will make time for you.

Dave: Well, Jim, the great thing about the work you're doing is the CRA helps to subsidize some of that work so that it allows you to come into churches. ideally they Become partners with the CRA and begin contributing to the work of the ministry, but that's not our objective. Our objective is to see the kingdom grow for these churches to get an idea of what God's mission is for them and whether they've got 20 or 120 or 2,020 to

James Book: Right.

Dave: just own the ministry that God has given them in their local communities.

James Book: Right. And just don't get comfortable being comfortable. That's dangerous.