TREND 3: Church Trends toward personalized spiritual growth and discipleship:
Effective discipleship has always been challenging in the church. Moving forward, churches will focus on providing more personalized spiritual growth and discipleship programs tailored to individual members’ unique needs and preferences.
While this sounds challenging, and to be fair, it is, it’s also achievable when churches better integrate online options and understand how spiritual growth works.
TREND 4: Emphasis on social justice and community outreach:
Churches are likely to continue emphasizing social justice and community outreach, seeking to positively impact their communities and address issues of social and economic inequality.
The danger here is seeing churches turn into non-profit community organizations. The church is the hope of the world. Great churches will find ways to keep the church mission in focus while supporting social justice and community outreach.
TREND 5: Innovative worship experiences:
Churches may explore new forms of worship and creative expressions of faith, incorporating new technologies and cultural influences to engage members in new and meaningful ways.
This is a perfect example of a trend that churches must meet. We are living in the experience economy. Everyone in our church and surrounding community is engaged in the experience economy. The church cannot ignore the necessity of the experience. This doesn’t mean lights and fog, though. It’s about engagement, not entertainment.
As a church leader and consultant, I aim to help church leaders discover what’s happening in and around your church, help you design new and better ministry models, and deliver your mission better than ever.
To this end, if you visit my website the next several posts I’ll unpack these five trends with you. No matter your size, location, or age, each trend is permanent to your church.
