Back at the beginning of the year, Carey Nieuwhof published this info-graph highlighting some of the major trends he believes churches can’t ignore in 2014. Now that we are at the half-way point of 2014, I want to revisit these trends to see where the church stands.

Honestly, I couldn’t agree more with Carey’s observations. These 5 trends are alive and well in our culture…and as church leaders we need to know they are here to stay.

At South Tampa Fellowship, where I serve as an Associate Pastor, much of our conversations and leadership decisions have inadvertently centered around these 5 trends. For example, at one of our campuses we are running out of space. To expand and reach more people we could either invest a ton of money into our existing campus or look for additional campuses. We decided that the best option for our better future is to add new campuses in our area. This enables us to reach more people at a fraction of the cost of renovating our current facility.

This morning I was in a conversation with one of our team members who brought up the fact that we need to do a better job at utilizing foursquare “reviews” to tell our story. We haven’t figured it all out yet, but it’s something that’s on our radar.

We are also interacting more and more with our community through social media. Many people in our church are highly active in serving our community…to the point that there is an overwhelming number of request each week for announcements from the stage to highlight various areas where people can serve those in our city. There is no way we could adequately announce everything from the stage, so we are trying to use social media to get the word out. We have seen huge success in mobilizing people to serve our city by using social media instead of Sunday morning announcements.

I recently read that Tampa Bay ranks second in the most unchurched metro areas in America. Again, this is a trend that is happening all across our nation and a reminder that churches must embrace change for the sake of the mission in order to thrive.

Leave a comment and let us know which of these trends you are seeing. Are there any that you disagree with? Anything surprise you? Or are there any trends that you would add?