The Church Today
If I asked you to describe what you love about your church, what would your answer sound like? Would you describe the dynamic style of the communicator? The community you’ve established overtime? Would it be the sound of the music? Perhaps the community service opportunities, the stage production or the state of the art children’s facilities? The list could go on and on and if we asked one thousand different people we would end up with one thousand unique answers. If that’s so and we agree that there’s an endless number of ways how we connect with God and engage in community; Why is it that churches both emerging and existing keep looking more and more like each other instead of birthing and becoming new and unique expressions of what it looks like to be the Church?
For the last 30 years the Megachurch movement has become the most culturally relevant and widely known expression of the Christian Church. Beyond its ability to gather multitudes in one or multiple locations it became the spoke-person for the modern Chirsitan faith in the public arena and consequently the model for emerging ministries. Megachurches gave validation to emerging voices and ultimately became the standard of “success” in the western Christian Church... and then we went through a global human experience that changed everything.
In the year 2020, the impact of the global pandemic drastically changed the way we did church. Our systems, metrics and practices became irrelevant as our ability to gather in person was interrupted. This drove some to make fast and drastic changes and sadly forced many churches to close their doors.
In the midst of uncertainty, change began to happen. Churches migrated to online avenues, larger churches diversified into smaller gatherings and as a result multitudes of congregants adapted a “new way” of doing church. This burst of innovation in the midst of challenges exposed us to the reality that there are more ways yet to be explored on how to do church and yet as the pandemic began to diminish it was those same churches that raced to get back to “normal” and do away with the innovation it had experienced.
I still eat outdoors from time to time at restaurants in San Diego, my home, as they kept a lot of newly built outdoors spaces open. I still engage with people through zoom since I learned how much more efficient it can be in certain scenarios. But when I look at the churches today it is almost as if the pandemic never happened. Things are almost if not fully back to “normal”. Creative innovation and new approaches to serve disappeared as churches rushed back to the old ways. After seeing secular organizations, media platforms and the service industry adapting new ways to better connect and serve people and the church’s rapid retreat to the old ways I began to see how the way people connect and engage with the world has changed but the way the church connects and engages with people has not.
Cathedrals are proof that every generation will vacate the buildings of the previous and in an age where the now generation searches for community over commodities, impactful over impressive and overall real over relevant, we are now faced with the choice of retreating to our comfort zone of old practices and risk losing the now and next generation. This is a call for the established and the emerging churches to step into the “now”. To discover, embrace and elevate what makes them unique in order to reach and care for the community that only they can reach. We call this process becoming a Boutique Church. A church that continually evolves while embracing a strong conviction for the biblical standards for the Church. This is not about reinventing the wheel, this is about redirecting it.
Boutique Church
I don’t know what your favorite coffee shop is but I know it’s not Starbucks. Shots fired! I mean no disrespect to them, they have been loyal to me since day one and are always ready to serve me a tall pike - no room and take creative liberties when it comes to writing my name on the cup. The challenge we’ve seen overtime with growing organizations like this is that in the process of scaling they unintentionally begin to lose their essence and ultimately their ability to create excellent, engaging and hospitable experiences where the customer isn’t just filled but satisfied. Now, just because it’s no one’s favorite coffee shop (by the way this is a joke, if it’s yours then you get that caramel frappe!) It doesn't mean that business is bad, on the contrary, I know most coffee shops pray to God for the type of traffic and business they get. But let’s be honest, you don’t take selfies at Starbucks or recommend Starbucks the same way you do at your favorite boutique coffee shop because your relationship with Starbucks is founded on convenience, not connection.
If churches fail to see the signs of the times and choose to stick to what’s comfortable and familiar instead of stepping out into the unknown, a similar case could be made about the church. The time is now to begin writing the new chapter in the Church’s story. A chapter of innovation, collaboration and championing people to build never before seen expressions of communities marked by the Gospel. We invite you to join us on this journey as we endeavor to occupy every space of the globe with the message of Jesus.
If the world is evolving, reimagining and reprioritizing how they connect with humanity could it be time for the church to do the same? What would a church look like if it did away with all the preconceived traditional and cultural expectations? What would a church look like that was encouraged to be unapologetic about trying new methods, collaborating in fresh ways and ultimately putting on display the expansive array and diversity that already exists in the body of Christ? Enter the Boutique Church.
A Boutique Church is niche by design; hyperfocusing on culture, mission and execution with world class excellence. In essence, a Boutique Church curates intimate church experiences with unlimited possibilities for impact.
Small By Design
My wife Crystal and I were walking to our car after dinner when we noticed a new Target store had just opened near the downtown area. There was something unique about this particular location, it was a quite smaller Target store than we were used to seeing. We walked in, were greeted by a very nice staff member and decided to take our own little tour of this boutique style store. We noticed that the signage and displays were consistent with the brand and that they offered a lot of the same products and services that they do at their bigger locations. The biggest difference was that the shopping experience was designed to fit the lifestyle of the community they decided to reach. What a thought, right? To build an experience based on the community’s needs and not the leadership’s wants. And as I began to pay attention, the more and more I noticed the presence and impact of “boutique” establishments. Restaurants, coffee shops, apparel, all so intentionally designed for specific audiences that you didn’t need to walk into the space to know what they’re about and who it was for. I began to see big stores launching smaller locations, established restaurants deploying food truck versions of their experiences and exciting new boutique pop ups with clear messaging, authentic culture and excellent service. Every boutique was so intentional about focusing on who they serve over what they serve and as a result they began to establish meaningful and impactful connections with their tribe.
I was blown away at the thought that boutique restaurants and shops were more intentional with detail and operated at a higher level of excellence than the churches I had been a part of. It made no sense. I thought the church was supposed to lead when it comes to serving and connecting with people. But the more conversations I had, the more questions I asked, I realized that the impact these boutiques were having on me was no accident, it was all by design.
A traditional mega-church may offer services, schools, personal development products, and possibly even dozens of ministries all in one place. A Boutique Church operates in hyper-focus when engaging their community, so it’s very intentional when developing and selecting programs that connect effectively. The goal is to move from a culture of “one size fits all” to “one size fits one”.
A Boutique Church knows where it stands in the broader church ecosystem and fulfills a niche in the global Church sphere. We live in a globalized era where people are able to create meaningful connections beyond the physical attendance experience. Through the use of technology, a Boutique Church is able to reach, connect and engage its tribe and exponentially grow in impact beyond the capacity of their in-person experience. It’s a church that is rooted locally but effective globally.
Let’s Talk Numbers
I served on staff at a church for 13 years and for a couple of those years we made Outreach Magazine’s “100 fastest growing churches in America” list. It’s an honor to be on that list, it opens doors for new friendships and it’s definitely accomplished to be proud of. The names on the list are churches that I admire, some continue to be on it and are doing incredible things for the Church at large. Being on the list gave us cultural credibility and access to new platforms. This list had an effect that served as a type of endorsement that let other pastors and leaders know this message : these churches are growing, and if they’re growing they’re doing something right. I believe that the church should always be growing, that’s at the core of our design. Every living thing that God created was created with the incredible ability to reproduce, the church is no different.
The church I served when we made the list was at the time what is known as a “megachurch” which sounds like an awesome name like a “mega-walmart” or “super-store”. The term can be swapped for others but in essence they give the same message “this place is BIG” and in the case of the name “Megachurch”, that’s what it means.
This identifier begins to build what I call the “megachurch construct”. What’s a construct you might say? I’m glad you asked: A construct is an idea or theory containing various conceptual elements, typically one considered to be subjective and not based on empirical evidence. In other words, it’s the version of reality that we all agree on, not because it is so but because that’s just what it’s been. The construct of the megachurch is that they’re healthy, successful and they are doing things right, therefore emerging and existing churches should emulate the best practices modeled by these churches in order to then as well produce results that are similar to those of the megachurch.
Here’s the problem with the label of “megachurch”. The problem is not that the label is wrong, the problem is that the label is incomplete. When you give a church community a label like “megachurch” it makes room to think that then every other church must also have a label and if they are not megachurch then they must be a minichurch, right? Going back to the problem with this label is how it’s obtained. The label of megachurch is given based on one metric and one metric only, the size of your attendance. That’s it. Not longevity and legacy of decades of service, not the amount of resources it provides the community, not the size of online impact that as we’ve come to learn is as real as a person on a seat, not the health of the marriage of the leaders, not peer reviews given by the staff. The only metric given is the attendance.
The challenge with this is that the rest of the world does not operate like this. We don’t invest into companies based on the amount of people they gather into a physical location. We don’t listen to podcasts based on the host's ability to gather listeners into a single room. We don’t purchase books based on the amount of people the author can gather at a book reading. Restaurants don’t make the prestigious “50 best restaurant in the world” list only by the amount of people they can filter through their spaces. Then why does the church insist on only looking at this one metric?
Let’s look at some data. To remind you, the only metric to be considered a “megachurch” is that your church must have at least 2,000 members in attendance.
Today there are approximately 380,000 Christian churches in america. Of those, 15,000 churches have 2,000 in attendance. 90 churches have between 10,000 - 45,000 in attendance. 364,910 churches in America are below that number. In other words, not megachurches.
46% of all church goers go to a church that is smaller than 100 average weekend attendance.
40% attend a church between 100 - 350 average weekend attendance.
This means that about 9 out of every 10 American churchgoers are going to a church that’s smaller than 350 members.
Why are we even talking about this? Because just 1 out of 10 church goers go to a church greater than 1,000 and the other 90% gather in what until this point has been considered a “small church”. When we label a group we must own the fact that we label everyone else as well and as a result we create a distorted perspective on what the goal is; that every church should strive to grow in attendance or else it’s not living up to the fullness of its potential. Again, every church should always grow but by now I pray you catch the revelation that growth is not limited to how many Christians we can get in a room, but how amongst many others how many Christians we can get out of the room and into places of influence in the world.
The Christian Church Ecosystem.
One of the main reasons why churches burn out or fail is because they run in a lane that they are not designed for. You can build a beautiful race car, but if you take that car offroading it will suffer damage. When we adopt systems and strategies just because that’s what works for “that church” without a clear revelation that is for us, we step out of our grace lane and inflict damage on the identity of our church. Doing this enough times will lead us into a pit that sometimes takes too long to get out of, causing damage to progress, killing momentum and sometimes hurting those that are called to be on the journey with us. We must stop chasing fads and focus on what never fades and know that when you follow the trend you fall in the traps.
In order to know where to go we must first find where we stand, so it's important that we understand where we stand in the church ecosystem.
Local Church - A church designed to serve its surrounding community.
Denominational Church - A church designed to serve people within a specific denomination.
Network Church - A church designed to serve people within cultural parameters given by oversight.
Mega Church - A church designed to serve all people.
Boutique Church - A church designed to serve a community that identifies with its culture.
When you’re a Boutique Church you get to build with open hands. You understand that everyone is called to connect with a church even when it's not your church. This revelation enables you to remain unapologetically true to the specific mandate and call that God has placed on your ministry.
We’re living in a time where people choose with their feet. If someone want to go to a boutique church they connect with they will tune in, drive, bike or walk if they have to because they understand that when there is a cultural connection the messages preached are tailor-made for their season, the experience is one that they won’t struggle to promote leading to exponential growth, relationships grow deeper, wider, faster and all because they understand that church is designed with them in mind.
Intentional focus shifts the Boutique Church makes when developing culture:
Real over Relevant.
Excellence over Dignified.
Community over Commodities.
Investing Power over Invitation Power.
Culture of belonging over culture of striving.
The 3 Levels Of Boutique Church Building
Building a Boutique Church is a process of discovery, design and ongoing development. It’s rewarding and sometimes freeing to do the hard work of digging deep and becoming the Church that looks like the vision God gave you from day one. When we partner with churches we walk with them through 3 levels of building:
Investigation.
Taking an in-depth, all access internal investigation of who you are as a church. What beliefs, practices and voices got you to where you are and with brutal honesty landing at the conclusion of what areas must be elevated as well as identifying where we need to be executing the necessary steps in order to lead your church to its new destination.
Innovation.
Through a variety of exercises, mood boarding, investigation and collaboration find the “unique you”. Innovation isn’t about disregarding the foundation but it’s about refusing to remain at the ground level. Build a brand new floor to express and engage with your community in order to reach them with the Good news and connect them to the local church community.
Implementation.
We don’t rise to the levels of our goals, we fall to the levels of our systems. A vision without a plan is just a dream, but by seeing your church through this new perspective you will identify and develop the systems and team that will help build the dream. This is about taking an all hands on deck approach in building the new you that will inspire your community to have a true sense of ownership of the vision and mission of your church.
Let’s Write the Next Chapter
As culture continues to grow and change so should the expression of the church. When I hear people walking away from church and ultimately their faith I don’t see a person who can’t connect with the Church but more often than not they couldn’t connect to a specific church. When you get food poisoning from a restaurant you don’t give up on all restaurants you simply find another one, I believe it’s the same for the church. As long as there are people there will be sin, pain and a community in need of Jesus and wherever that is we as the Church must run to them and establish a community that speaks their language..
There is only one way to the father and that is Jesus, but there’s an infinite way of finding Jesus. We should endeavor to equip and empower existing and emerging churches to express a version of the Gospel that is unique, that is fresh and connects with the new generation. We will never see a new revival if we stay bound to the old ways. It will never be a new chapter for the Church if it’s never a new version of those who are helping write it.
Thank you for taking the time to read this, it means the world to me and I can’t wait to meet you! I love you.
-Abe Camacho