The Reinvention of Highland (Pepperdine Presentation)

Below you’ll find the text and slides from my 5/6/15 Pepperdine Bible Lectures presentation on “Reinventing Highland: How an 80 year old Memphis Church Lost 600 Members But Found Its Soul.”

SLIDES (PDF):

 

TEXT:

The Reinvention of Highland:

How an 80 Year Old Memphis Church Lost 600 Members But Found Its Soul

 

A Summary of Reinvention

John Eldredge writes this:

“Life unfolds like a drama…Each day has a beginning and an end. There are all sorts of characters, all sorts of settings. A year goes by like a chapter from a novel. Sometimes it seems like a tragedy. Sometimes like a comedy. Most of it feels like a soap opera. Whatever happens, it’s a story through and through.” (John Eldredge, Epic, 2-3) 

Life, indeed, is a story. Our lives as individuals unfold like stories. And, our lives as churches unfold like stories.

But we are not always aware of this story. N. D. Wilson writes,

“Each of us is in the middle of a story. But for some reason, we don’t show the slightest desire to read it, let alone live with any kind of humble self-awareness.” (N. D. Wilson, Death By Living, 5)

It’s easy to miss the forest for the trees, the chapter for the pages. Our lives as Christians and as churches are stories. But we often miss the larger story because we’re stuck in a run-on sentence or two.

Our church in Memphis has completed a significant section in our story. And we are far enough now from those chapters to be able to look back with some perspective. We can put that part of our story into context, and do so in a way that may help inform the story of your church. We’ve gained some humble self-awareness about this segment of our narrative. And perhaps in hearing our tale, you’ll find insight for your own church’s tale.

It goes against my highest values to frame these chapters in one of the infamous “B’s” too often used to describe churches: budgets, baptisms, buildings, and butts (that is, attendance). Yet, for simplicity sake, I’m going to do just that. Along the way, I’ll flesh out the narrative in more appropriate ways. But for now, here is part of the storyline of our 86 year-old-church:

1. From 1986 through 2006 our church increased in membership and ministry. In terms of attendance, we rose from the 700’s to the 1300’s. A gain of approximately 600.
2. Then, from 2006 through 2010 our church decreased in membership and ministry. In terms of attendance, we dropped from the 1300’s to the 700’s. A loss of approximately 600. It took us only four years to lose what we had gained over twenty years.
3. And from 2010 through the present we have once again grown in membership and ministry. In terms of attendance, we now average about 1000. A gain of approximately 300.

George Barna calls this a “turnaround church.” These are churches which had been thriving congregations, then experienced a steep decline, then ultimately pulled out of the dive and became revitalized. He begins his book Turnaround Churches with this alarming statement:

 

“When a church takes a nosedive in attendance or membership, it generally does not make a comeback. The typical experience seems to be that, once a church loses its momentum, the most probable outcome is either death or stabilization at a much smaller size.” (George Barna, Turnaround Churches, 17)

Thankfully, by God’s grace, we at Highland experienced “turnaround,” and in the typical 3-4 year period which is experienced by the handful of churches that do turnaround (Barna, Turnaround, 41). And thankfully, on a very personal note, we experienced revitalization without the firing or resignation of me! Barna found that “In every one of the churches we explored, a new pastor had to be brought in to create the climate and plans for an effective resurrection of the congregation.” (47). Only by God’s grace did our story skip that chapter. I’ve been blessed to stand in Highland’s pulpit through the growth, decline, and turnaround.

Thom Rainer calls this a “breakout church.” These are churches that have been in a decline or a plateau, and then experience a change of momentum and significant growth. Such turnarounds are difficult. Rainer’s team combed through the stories of 50,000 congregations and only found only 13 churches who “broke out” (Thom Rainer, Breakout Churches, 22). Though Highland does not meet Rainer’s exact criteria, we have, nonetheless, experienced our own kind of “breakout” and renewal.

Some would call our story is a turnaround, breakout, renewal, or revitalization. I’ve decided to call it a “reinvention.” And I’d like to share with you how God reinvented us; how God took a declining church, an old and established church, and transformed us once again into a church breathing new life. A congregation growing in membership in ministry once more. I will share with you some broad principles we learned along the way which I believe can be applied in many contexts, perhaps in yours. If you find yourself in an established church in need of reinvention, my hope is that you’ll find courage and wisdom for your journey through this look at our journey.

Not everything needed reinvention or renewing. The long tenures of two Highland preachers (Harold Hazelip, 1968-1986; and Harold Shank 1986-2006) created such healthy and robust DNA at Highland that no amount of crisis could wipe it out. In many ways, our turnaround was built from the strands healthy DNA left by these two and many other godly leaders and servants of the past (e.g., E. H. Ijams). In talking about the reinvention of Highland, I in no way wish to reflect poorly on the great legacy of those who came before me. We drank from their wells in those dry and dusty years of decline.

It is important to note one of the major reasons for Highland’s rapid decline: a relocation that required four years and moved the church from its urban location thirteen miles to a suburban location. Declines in churches have a number of causes. Some declines are the result of something that slowly built up over time. Some are the product of crises that appear suddenly. Ours was a  crisis caused by growth. By the mid-2000’s, Highland had become a regional church, ministering to places and people all over the Mid-South. Our membership was comprised of people from three states (north Mississippi, east Arkansas and west Tennessee). The result was four Sunday morning services and two Sunday Schools on a land-locked campus of eleven acres. After two years of listening to an internal task force and external consultants, we believed God was calling us to expand that regional ministry and to find a campus large enough to fulfill that vision. We also considered multi-site options and church planting options. We were led, however, to relocate the church as a whole to a larger site. At the same time, a much beloved Senior Preaching Minister resigned to pursue a career in higher education. The strain of leadership transition and relocation reached a critical level and Highland began to hemorrhage members. With this came tremendous financial strain. Three staff positions were cut and radical cuts were made to ministry budgets. Thankfully, not a single foreign or domestic mission work was cut during this time.

This was the event that triggered our decline and which triggered the reinvention I’ll discuss next. My belief is that even if your church’s decline or plateau has been triggered by something radically different, you can learn some things from our reinvention that will help nurture your own.

A warning: reinvention is not easy. Ed Stetzer writes this:

 “Leadership, especially with church revitalization, is a long and slow labor of love in the face of resistance. Not every member will be on your side during revitalization.

If you want everyone to love you, go sell ice cream, don’t revitalize churches.” (http://www.christianitytoday.com/edstetzer/2015/april/leadership-challenges-in-church-revitalization.html )

 

The Reinvention of Prayer

At a gathering of staff and elders of the Highland church recently, one of our elders gave an unexpected confession: “I sort of miss those hard times. We never prayed more as a leadership than we did back then.” “Those hard times” referred to the dark days when, in about four years, we lost as many people as we had gained over the previous twenty years. At the bottom of that rapid descent, we had no church building, baptisms plummeted to the ten’s and the budget was broken. Yet, this leader looked with nostalgia at this season because it was a time that drove us to our knees.

This spiritual renewal was, in part, a survival move. During our downturn, we had no other recourse but prayer. Years later I would read a line from Eugene Peterson which was a picture-perfect description of our state during the drop. Peterson told of a friend who wished to paint Peterson’s portrait. Reluctantly, Peterson agreed. After much labor, the artist was ready to reveal the final product. When Peterson viewed it, he was shocked. The painting showed Peterson gaunt, deathly white, with dark and sunken features. The artist explained:

“I was painting you as you would look in twenty years if you insisted on being a pastor. Eugene, the church is an evil place. No matter how good you are and how good your intentions, the church will suck the soul out of you.” (Eugene Peterson, Pastor, 164).

Pastoring a church in free-fall was the hardest task we had ever tried. It sucked the souls from us. Thus, praying wasn’t a choice or an option. It was a reflex, the way gasping for air is a reflex for a drowning man. Almost every staff and staff/elder meeting turned into a prayer-meeting. Our once-cursory “Let’s pray briefly before our meeting starts” turned into a desperate “Let’s get on our knees and beg God to do something here!”

Prayer not only helped us deal with the confusion going on around us. It aided us in dealing with the resentment going on within us (at least within me). Henri Nouwen once wrote,

“Anger in particular seems close to a professional vice in the contemporary ministry. Pastors are angry at their leaders for not leading and at their followers for not following. They are angry at those who do not come to church for not coming and angry at those who do come for coming without enthusiasm. They are angry at their families, who make them feel guilty, and angry at themselves for not being who they want to be…If there is anything that makes the ministry look grim and dull, it is this dark, insidious anger in the servants of Christ.” (Henri Nouwen, The Way of the Heart, 23-24).

We wrestled with dark emotions and the Holy Spirit became our Counselor during these furious times. Prayer was a lifeboat in the storm around us and within us.

And while most of the leaders at Highland experienced levels of spiritual renewal, none did more than me. I recently asked a friend to comment on some possible topics for a class I was going to teach at a gathering of church leaders. One of the topics had to do with prayer. He wrote this: “I’d go with the last one [the one on prayer], for what it’s worth. Spiritual renewal is our task ahead, and we’re going to have to go outside our own narrow set of experiences for it, in many cases.” I began to see that this was especially true for me. My calling became one of personal and congregational spiritual renewal. Thus, I sought out spiritual advisors outside of Highland who could train me in deeper ways of prayer. I began consuming books on unfamiliar practices (to me) such as centering prayer, contemplation and meditation. I started praying the Psalms regularly. I attended every seminar or workshop on spiritual renewal I could find.

And God continued this training well into our turnaround as a church.

• One year into the turnaround I spent five days in silence at an Ignatian retreat.
• Two years into the turnaround I spent thirty days in silence practicing the Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius.
• Four years in I met with a group of Memphis Catholics for eight months to learn other forms of prayer.

But prayer didn’t merely remain a survival move. It became a strategic move.

• On dozens of occasions during the decline we called the entire church to prayer.
• In addition, as we began to envision a new church home, prayer demanded a space–we planned (and built) a wooded prayer-path that would circle the new building. It was perhaps one of the greatest symbolic statements we could make. Our new home would, literally, be surrounded by prayer. The nearly one mile prayer path would become a circle of prayer around the church and our future.

Prayer became more deeply woven into our DNA.

• For example, one year into our turnaround we devoted almost an entire year to congregational prayer. We realized our turnaround was incomplete. So we asked the church to pray about 2018, the year our congregation would be 90. What did God want to do in us and through us between now and 2018? This nearly year-long prayer-conversation was transformative and resulted in a number of steps which only accelerated the recent revival in momentum.
• Further, my preaching began to take up prayer more and more. During the first three years of turnaround, I preached for months from a book I wrote on the prayer-life of Jesus  (Prayers from the Pit) and from a book I was writing on spiritual disciplines (Ten Minute Transformation).
• A weekly prayer-group launched in the first year of turnaround. Another launched last year–a group dedicated to praying comprehensively for each nation covered in the massive book Operation World.
• In January, 2015, Highland staff and elders began the year by praying together for every ministry at Highland and every room in our facility.
• In March, as we celebrated our Grand Opening of a space dedicated to ministry to children, we called Highlanders to take the name of one of the hundreds of public and private schools in our three-state area called the Mid-South and to pray all of March for the school they drew.
• And during this year, as our attempt to live out Jer. 29, a text I preached on in January, we are praying once a month for every municipality in our area.

This partnership of prayer and turnaround was not unique to us. Thom Rainer finds that churches which eventually “breakout” of decline and experience growth have leaders who devote significant time to prayer (Rainer, Breakout Churches, 42). George Barna writes that “turnaround” churches were turned around in the context of prayer:

 

“[A] turnaround church is resuscitated partly due to the widespread and heartfelt prayer that is lifted to God on the church’s behalf. The pastor emerged as a true prayer giant, taking hours and hours every week to beseech God for all that was needed in the turnaround experience. The congregation was led to a place where it, too, embraced prayer as a special, hidden weapon in the battle to turn back the forces of darkness that were pushing the church toward the edge of extinction.” (George Barna, Turnaround Churches, 52)

Prayer has always been important at Highland. But it was truly reinvented in my own life and ministry, for many others in leadership, and for us as a church. That reinvention continues to-date. It is a journey, not a destination. But it is, we believe, one of the key aspects to our turnaround.

 

The Reinvention of Success

One of the most significant steps we’ve taken in our revitalization journey is to redefine success. To draw a new target. This didn’t happen overnight. It’s been a long process that started early in our decline and has only recently concluded, years after we bottomed out. In some ways, it’s probably a lifelong project.

Reinventing what we labeled “successful” became a necessity during the four years of rapid membership loss. It was a survival mechanism. We needed some way of dealing effectively with our failure fatigue.

Because we had experienced twenty years of steady growth in members and ministries, we had implicitly adopted a narrow sense of success.

• The number of Sunday morning worship services offered.
• How many had been baptized.
• The level of financial giving.
• The square feet in the building and the acreage of the property.

These are what brought smiles to our faces. These are what filled year-end reports. At the height of our growth, these are the types of stories we shared with laughter around the conference room table at staff and staff/elder meetings. Budgets. Butts. Buildings. Baptisms.

But when each of these began its own vanishing act, we suddenly needed some other reason just to get out of bed. We didn’t feel successful as we watched giving, attendance and conversions drop consistently for four years. But in our hearts, we also knew that we weren’t necessarily failures. Part of our decline was related to our attempts to prioritize an aspect of our pursuit of the mission of God. We were taking hard and costly steps to follow God’s mission, yet we were experiencing failure in critical categories. How could resolve this tension–his tension between being obedient to God’s mission yet watching every arrow shot at every target we thought to be important fall short of its goal?

We leaders were not the only ones struggling to define success. Some of our members were as well. From some there was a yearning for the past. The golden years of growth. The golden glory days of Highland’s yesteryear. And with that nostalgia there was pressure to return to programs or traditions which some believed would take us back in time to those brilliant days of old. For them, redefining success meant returning to the 1950’s or 1960’s or 1970’s (pick a decade).

But slowly, we began to articulate a different view of what it meant for us as a church to succeed. We began to tell a different set of stories around our conference room table. Stories that illustrated an alternate version of success. And, as a church, we began to celebrate a variety of “wins” outside of those traditionally celebrated.

In the words of Thom Rainer, we were struggling once again with what it means to be “great.” Rainer tells of a small-church preacher who approached him:

“Dr. Rainer, I hear you are writing a book about [breakout churches]. I can’t wait to read it. But I really don’t have a desire to lead a megachurch. I hope your book will help pastors like me.” (Thom Rainer, Breakout Churches, 188).

In other words “great” = great in size. Implicitly, that had been our assumption as well. But we started learning and focusing on other forms of greatness.

Today, we finally have an explicit and more biblical view of success. We call it “7 Practices.” We teach these to every new member. We measure these once a year. These are the kinds of stories we share, the kinds of victories we celebrate. We try to eliminate things from the church calendar if we feel they take time away from these 7. In fact, we’ve instituted a 3-week buffer on each side of major events on the calendar to help ensure Highlanders have time and energy to practice these 7. We work now in ways that help each person associated with Highland to engage in these seven practices:

1. Worship God in one of Highland’s Sunday morning services weekly.
2. Grow with others in one of Highland’s adult SS classes weekly.
3. Grow closer to God through personal spiritual disciplines one hour/week.
4. Serve in a ministry regularly.
5. Share Jesus in one of Highland’s small groups monthly.
6. Give at least 10% to one of Highland’s collections weekly.
7. Share Jesus with others one hour/week.

It’s not a perfect target. We still slip onto old and unhealthy pathways of success. We still occasionally find ourselves aiming at the wrong target. But the 7 Practices are a huge step forward. They keep us directed toward things that aren’t as glamorous but that are more consistent with God’s purpose for us. They are ultimately the fruit of that time of decline. Without a season in which more traditional forms of success were impossible, we would not have been open to God’s leading to consider prioritizing things less traditional. But in the end, these targets make us a healthier church, one even more likely weather future times of crisis.

 

The Reinvention of Leadership

From its founding in 1928 through 2006 Highland’s leadership model suffered from certain systemic weaknesses. They were rooted ultimately in  what I’ll call the “Merry-Go-Round” (MGR) model of leadership. In the MGR model, two things were in constant rotation.

First, the elder-chairman was in constant rotation. Every elder, regardless of ability and experience, served as chair of the elders for about six months. As chair, he had authority to call or not call meetings of the whole eldership and staff/eldership. He could determine what was on the agenda or not on the agenda for those meetings. And he had the capacity had to determine what decisions were made and how they were made during meetings.

At the very least this created leadership logjams when a sensitive ministry issue arose and the chairman did not have the ability to lead the staff/elders productively through the issue. Some elders were very gifted in other areas, just not in leadership and administration. Asking them to guide the leadership group through a difficult decision was like asking me to lead worship. They could do it, but the result didn’t sound pretty. During and after our decline, we faced issues and decisions greater than we’d ever faced before (e.g., Which staff do we cut due to funding shortfalls? Where does the church move now that our number one option has fallen through?) Some chairman simply were not gifted in leading a group through those issues. And due to the fact that our elders essentially had lifetime appointments, those elders regularly faced the daunting task of doing what they were not truly called to do (and thus not doing what they were called to do).

At the very worst, this resulted in a second thing existing in a constant state of flux: the “boundaries” within which staff members were empowered to make their own ministry decisions. Each chairman basically ruled by his own preferences. Thus, for example, the staff might conclude that a change in a worship style would help the church achieve its mission. But elder chairman A would veto the idea because it ran contrary to his worship preferences. Elder chairman B would green light the idea because it suited his worship preferences. This created a particularly divisive and dysfunctional context during our decline. The response the staff got to an idea depended on where they happened to get on the merry-go-round. Staff morale thus plummeted.

These rotating boundaries also made it difficult for the elders and staff to address complaints. These dark years of attendance and budget short-falls led to intense grumbling by some members. Some weeks it seemed we could do nothing right. People complained about the songs chosen for the worship service, the wardrobe worn by the preacher, having too many announcements or too little announcements in worship, and what ministries were being started or stopped due to funding issues. Criticisms that touched on church vision or theology were handled in completely different ways by different elder-chairman. At times this created scenarios in which one critic who talked to just the right chairman could shut down an important initiative.

The MGR model was further complicated by the fact that all elders generally made all decisions. And the number of decisions coming at us during the years of decline and then the years of turnaround fell as fast as snowflakes in a blizzard. It literally became impossible for the entire eldership to understand, discuss and decide every issue in a timely manner.

It became clear to me and to a new elder that Highland could not survive under this leadership structure. The two of us worked together over a period of about two years to reinvent our leadership model. We were helped greatly by Lynn Anderson of the Hope Network, Evertt Huffard at Harding School of Theology, Dickie Porche from the Highland Church of Christ in Abilene, TX and by other elderships in several other churches.

We eventually replaced the MGR model with one focused on three things: gift-based roles for elders, greater empowerment of the staff, and streamlined decision-making. Gift-based roles meant restricting eldership roles as well as expanding eldership roles. Through a regular process of self-selection and peer selection, only those elders with recognized leadership gifts served as chairman. This resulted in a small group of elders with the capacity to lead the larger group effectively. Through that same process of self-selection and peer-selection, elders with recognized gifts in other areas were now freed to serve in one of three new “Areas of Service” (AOS). Elders in the Pastoral Area of Service were empowered to devote the bulk of their time to shepherding and pastoring. Those in the Ministry Area of Service could pursue their passion for encouraging staff and other ministry leaders, developing additional ministry leaders and clearing any obstacle keeping leaders from productive ministry. Those in the Missions Area of Service could help guide the foreign and domestic mission work at Highland.

Part of recognizing that elders, just as staff, should serve in gift-appropriate ways also meant creating a more timely way for current elders to step down and new elders to come on board. We moved from “lifetime” appointments to four-year appointments. At the end of every four years an existing elder could decide to move on to other forms of ministry more suited to his season in life, and new elders could begin using their gifts within the eldership.

A greater empowerment of the staff (and an end to constantly-changing standards) came through the creation of a document called “Core Beliefs and Values.” This document, created by a partnership of the staff and elders, laid out basic theology and practice for Highland. It attempted to address a wide-array of issues, from gender roles to leadership structure to theological priorities. Each existing staff member and elder was required to agree to minister under these guidelines. Any new staff member or elder would be required to do the same. Staff members could lead in any way they saw fit within those guidelines and could make any decision they wished within the parameters of the CBV.  Only ministry decisions that moved beyond the CBV had to be brought to elders for further conversation. Even if a particular practice or decision violated an elder’s personal preferences or was criticized by a member, if it fit wiithin the CBV, the staff had advance approval to move forward.

The document is “living” in the sense that it is open to revision. For example, two years ago our elders and staff had to revisit this document because of tension in the leadership and congregation related to gender roles. We spent almost a year in prayer and study together, changed the appropriate places in the document, and once again empowered to staff to operate under these revision.

Streamlined decision-making happened through the creation of a fourth Area of Service: SEAG (Staff Elder Administrative Group). The SEAG consisted of three elders with recognized leadership abilities (the current chairman, the previous chairman and the upcoming chairman) and three staff members (the Senior Preaching minister, the Associate Preaching Minister and the Administrative Minister). This group began meeting weekly and was authorized to address the day-to-day operation of Highland. Most administrative items, many ministry decisions and budget/expenditure considerations up to a certain level could be made by this group without needing to call a larger meeting of staff and elders. Decisions that once took months now were often handled in one hour.

Changes like these were ultimately used by God to help Highland experience a turnaround.

The Reinvention of Neighborhood

From the mid 1980’s through the early 2000’s Highland excelled at one particular ministry: urban ministry. Located in one of the poorest cities in the nation, and watching churches flee from the inner city, Highland leaders felt called to do something. Led largely by Highland Senior Preaching Minister Harold Shank, Highland launched MUM–Memphis Urban Ministry. MUM planted five new churches in poor urban locations in Memphis: the Downtown Church, Iglesia De Cristo, the Wonder City Church of Christ, the Raleigh Community Church, and the Frayser Mission Church. New staff was hired to oversee the church plantings. Highland volunteers were funneled into the new churches. And literally millions of dollars from Highland were invested in the starting and nurturing of these churches. Highland helped fuel a wave of urban ministry in Churches of Christ across the country.

One unintended result of this laser-like focus on urban ministry was the loss of focus on the neighborhood immediately around the Highland campus, and the neighborhoods dwelled in by Highland members. Inner-city Memphis would certainly notice if Highland and her five inner city church plants ceased to exist. But virtually no one in our church neighborhood would notice. And few in our members’ neighborhoods would notice.

Tyler Edwards is the author of a book called Zombie Church. He warns that too many churches are like zombies – undead; not truly alive; consuming everything and contributing nothing. The cure for zombie churches, he proposes, is love. You’ve got to restart the heart. At one point he realized his own church was a zombie church. It was contributing nothing to the people and neighborhoods around it. It needed to restart its heart. It needed to rediscover how to love those nearby. Edwards wrote this helpful line:

“Bombs have kill-radiuses, churches should have love-radiuses—anyone living within twenty miles of a church should know it.” (Tyler Edwards, Zombie Church, 60)

There was a sense in which we had become a Zombie Church—as far as our immediate church neighborhood. This realization crystalized for the staff when we were forced to plan what church and ministry would look like for two years as we temporarily relocated to a school in a new neighborhood while we waited to finalize a permanent location. As the countdown for leaving our current building and neighborhood began, we suddenly began asking basic questions:

Who lives in the neighborhood near the school where we will be meeting?

Why would they want to become part of Highland?

What are their needs and dreams?

How can we get to know them and form relationships with them?

Further, we started wondering Why would anyone in our members’ neighborhoods come to Highland with the Highland-neighbor now that we don’t own a building and are having to make cuts in ministry budgets? What does Highland offer them?

These questions resulted in healthy and needed changes at Highland. We certainly did not turn away from urban ministry. We actually increased urban ministry even though we moved to a suburban location. For example, we adopted an inner-city school (LaRose Elementary), began work in the two city prisons, adopted the NICU at LeBonheur Children’s Hospital in Downtown Memphis, significantly increased our support for an urban ministry called HopeWorks, and invested $500,000 to stabilize one of our urban church plants. But the process of re-engaging a neighborhood which started when we temporarily moved to that school reached full steam when we finally moved to a new permanent location. While we believed God was calling us to expand our role as a regional church we also believed he was calling us to expand our role as a neighborhood church.

Here are some of the ways we connected and continue to connect to our church neighborhood:

• For six months prior to our Grand Opening, a team of Highlanders went door-to-door to homes in a three mile radius from our new location with only one agenda–to pray with and for the homeowner.
• Our Women’s Ministry blanketed area businesses with love and goodwill, taking cookies to them and inviting them to use our new facility for staff  development meetings, etc.
• Our Women’s Ministry also forged a relationship with the school nearest to our new building–Macon Hall Elementary–and helped Highland become and official “adopter” of the school.
• We began a FriendSpeak ministry on Wednesday nights. People from the neighborhood come come to our building and get free conversational English lessons. This remains one of our most popular ministries.
• For several years we held an event called Go MAD (Go Make A Difference). After an abbreviated worship service, members were released to go and serve. Many of the service projects benefited the immmediate neighborhood.
• Our Children’s Ministry began hosting Storytime. Once a week in the summers parents from the neighborhoods were invited to come for a play date with kids and a fun story.
• Two Highland women began MOMents, a ministry devoted to encouraging and equipping mothers, including those in the church neighborhood.
• We relaunched the Highland Day School which quickly reached capacity, drawing kids from the church neighborhood and elsewhere.
• A Highland woman now holds a home-school Community Tutorial in our building two days/week. Home-school kids from the neighborhood come for tutoring. We have the chance to serve and get to know them and their families.

We also began focusing on ways to help Highlanders reach their own neighbors. These initiatives included the following:

• For several years the Women’s Ministry help sponsor a weekend simply called “Go” during which we brought in guest speakers to inspire and instruct Highlanders in reaching their neighbors.
• The Women’s Ministry and Adult Ministry partnered one year to launch multiple neighborhood Bible studies using newly developed curriculum from organizations like Let’s Start Talking.

We also refocused on the importance that Sunday morning could play in helping Highlanders reach their neighbors. In the dark and difficult days of our decline, the one and only consistent experience for the church became our Sunday morning times together. While we seem to be experiencing many other failures, Sunday morning was the one bright spot. And thus we discovered something that was actually part of our legacy. In the late 1960s when Dr. Harold Hazelip was preaching at Highland, he had hired a young evangelist from Texas name Larry McKenzie. Larry loves to tell the story of the many times when Harold Hazelip would say to him, “Larry you fill the bases on Sunday morning, I’ll hit a homerun.” We begin to realize there was some truth to this. Unable to control many other things, with us began to redouble our focus on Sunday mornings.

I put together a team of staff and members that met every week to pray over and discern what needed to happen each Sunday morning. In addition, we revisited a decision that had earlier been made, not to replace our full-time worship leader. We began to sense that if indeed Sunday morning were to be a critical part of our move forward, we needed someone with skills and expertise to lead the way. Thus even though many other cuts had been made we took a step of faith and put money in place to hire a full-time worship leader. Most at Highland today would comment that that hire was perhaps the most important hire Highland has ever made. God has used that individual to help us not only experience unparalleled Sunday morning times of worship, but also a greater opportunity to utilize Sunday morning as a place for Highlanders to bring their neighbors.

Today we offer four distinct styles of worship services to fit the many different neighbors of Highlanders. And it seems to be working. Recently, our associate preaching minister Eric Gentry did a study of the hundreds who placed membership over a three-year period during our turnaround. Importantly, he found a 20% of those who placed membership had not attended a church for a year prior to coming to Highland. Even more significantly, Eric found that 85% of those who had placed membership during that three-year period had their very first experience with Highland on a Sunday morning. And they had come at the invitation of Highlander.

We are still growing in our ability to connect with the neighborhood and neighbors. We are still learning how to do this. But it’s been a central piece of Highland’s reinvention.