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These 2010 church trends are changing the way that churches operate. This will be a year when people start to slow down in their desire for service projects and that type of community volunteering.  There has been an increasing involvement in reaching out to the people around us through community service, but we are reaching a turning point where people are losing interest.  This year we are going to start seeing churches trending away from this type of interaction.

The major reason that I see this type of service slowing down is that churches haven't seen the kinds of results (as far as people coming to Christ) that they would like to see in their ministries.  I think that many volunteers are starting to feel like they have been working with the same outreach ministries and the same people keep coming, but either they don't get chances to share the gospel or it is a setting where people are not responding.

For instance, the Grand Junction church where I serve is involved in several types of outreach service to the poor and hungry; we serve food at a shelter, give gifts through angel tree, and and even help at the catholic outreach.  Our volunteers had been getting discouraged by the lack of response that people were having; it was great to be helping people, but we also wanted to see lives changed.  We ended up refactoring our service work to center more around getting people in touch with God, rather than just meeting their physical needs.

The challenge for churches will be to continue to make those strides and move their service ministries to true outreach ministries.  If you are just doing service, it is easy to jump from project to project and help whoever seems to have the most urgent need, but when you are doing outreach, the church will want to stay places where they are continually able to reach out to people with the gospel.