August 5, 2008
By Linda Green

ORLANDO, Fla. – Living Water United Methodist Church began in 2006 with 225 people, but membership gradually declined to an attendance of about 70.

"I felt like a failure," said the Rev. Ed Jones in a July 31 presentation to the 2008 United Methodist School of Congregational Development.

The church in Pearland, Texas, had been launched with much fanfare in the Texas Annual (regional) Conference. Jones struggled to understand why people were not attending worship while other area churches were experiencing growth.

"We took six months to sort things out, and now we are in a new day," Jones said. "I realized I was listening to words on church growth charts but not listening daily to the word of God. We were too caught up in building the church and not enough in connecting the disconnected."

Planting new churches and revitalizing existing ones is one of four newly declared areas of focus of The United Methodist Church. As the denomination seeks to return to its evangelistic heritage of starting a new congregation every day, its Board of Discipleship has established a new strategy team on congregational development. Called Path One, the team seeks to help the church start 650 new congregations by 2012.

Jones' presentation in Orlando before 300 people also was viewed via satellite by about 150 people attending the school simultaneously in Grand Rapids, Mich. The school is for church pastors, administrators, laypeople and other church leaders wanting to learn how to create and develop disciple-making congregations. Five of the ministry study tracks this year deal with starting new congregations.

Spending time with God

A former firefighter, Jones said that despite what "experts" might say, a church leader cannot start a new church or grow a church without daily listening to the voice of God. "Our daily reading of God's word is the nutrient needed to grow anything," he said. "I got so caught up in trying to build a church that I stopped allowing time with God to build me with his word."

Jones told participants that regardless of the number of bells and whistles they include in their worship services or Web sites, church leaders "must lead from the overflow of our devotional life."

After examining the decline in worship attendance at Living Water, Jones identified three areas that were circumventing the congregation's work: children's ministry, clarity of church mission and values, and a clear path of discipleship.

During the six-month self-assessment, he and his leadership team used John 7:38 as the basis for asking challenging and thought-provoking questions about the character and identity of Living Water.

"We brought clarity to our vision for transforming our community with the love of Jesus Christ," he said. The church focused its energy on reaching disconnected families.

"We took our values off of charts and we placed them in our people's hearts. We let go of all of the trendy values that were important to other people" and "focused on the opportunities to serve living water to a thirsty world in our context."

Church leaders developed a strategy called GAUGE, highlighting five values:

Grow spiritually; Authentic relationships; Use gifts for ministry; Give cheerfully; and Extend a hand

Be salt for the world

Noting that different types of salt bring out different flavors in cooking, Jones told the school audiences that they are the salt of the earth and urged them not to lose their saltiness.

Salt penetrates, preserves, protects, transforms and cleans. "Salt is a change agent," and Jesus proclaimed his disciples to be the salt of the earth to "bring the flavor that I placed in you for that particular community ... so that God's purposes can be accomplished," he said.

The church needs many flavors and varieties in order to be the body of Christ in every community. "Be who God called you to be for that particular community," he said.

Jones advised those who want to start new churches to engage the disconnected and to "preach Jesus."

Living Water church uses cultural patterns, including popular movies, to get people's attention, engage them and move them from the shoreline to deeper waters-as Jesus did in Luke 5:1 when he took a boat from the shore into deep water to speak to a crowd.

Jones said the church must understand and use the cultural patterns that exist around them as opportunities to engage the disengaged.

"If you trust God, God can trust you," said the pastor.

United Methodist News Service
Linda Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer based in Nashville, Tenn.