"By Design or Default: Creating a Church Culture That Works," Kevin Gerald (Thomas Nelson, paperback, January 2007)

Gerald is founder and senior pastor of Champions Centre, one of the largest congregations in the Pacific Northwest. His book, "By Design or Default" centers on its ministry and examines the practices and principles that have helped Gerald and his team build their church.

According to Gerald, church culture is most often created by default. That is, chance, circumstances, life patterns, inherited habits and traditions, usually converge on a church. These factors unintentionally create a culture that is often more concerned about preserving the past than about addressing present and future needs.

In addition, Gerald contends that in such a case, church leaders become managers of a culture they are at odds with, rather than leaders of, a culture intended to grow a healthy congregation.

Purposeful design

Choosing to design a church culture purposefully requires church leaders to frequently evaluate, and sometimes overhaul, ministry programs according to the way they undermine or support the culture they are consciously working to make.

The author defines church culture broadly as a "packaging and presentation of the gospel," which determines who attends your church. Along that line of thinking he touches on seeker-sensitive approaches to worship, racial diversity, building design and atmosphere, valuing excellence and youth involvement.

Gerald also takes a broad-brush approach to leadership essentials. He offers five attitudes that the leadership at Champions Centre have used to induce a healthy church culture: humble service; abundant life; valuing people; excellence; and proclaiming God’s faithfulness, trustworthiness and grace. Gerald maintains these attitudes combine to create a magnetic force that attracts multitudes to God.

"By Design or Default" is a small book (160 pages), but full of big ideas painted broadly. Chapters on defining a mission, achieving goals, and staff development, offer time-tested ideas on success with communicating and achieving specific objectives and for honing a powerful team of church leaders. But Gerald isn’t really saying anything new or different from other church or leadership development books. In fact, in many instances he defaults to clichés that express well-worn ideas about church health and growth.

A refresher course

At best, "Design or Default" is a quick refresher in the basics of church growth and a sort of case study on the Champions Centre. The principles implmented there that have resulted in tremendous growth, both numerically and spiritually, are presented both as examples and as overall philosophy.

Still, Gerald’s book will be new for hundreds, possibly thousands, of churches nationwide who have yet to separate church culture from purpose. Gerald is careful not to advocate the sort of church marketing that usually has traditionalists turning up their noses and muttering words such as "syncretism." Instead, he admits that what attracts one person will repel another and that any church’s work is not merely to pull in the crowd, but to compel members to eventually go back out to spread the message of Christ.

Gerald encourages church leaders to examine their own congregation with the understanding that, like it or not, every church already has a culture—and that its attractiveness to present-day unchurched people is worth examining. That, he contends, must be a constant examination.