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How To Build A Church Without Silos!

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, tagged , , , on January 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Never building silos is easier than removing silos! I have heard preachers who tell about the first two years at their new congregation, all they did was break down the doors to silos and little kingdoms that had grown up over the years in that particular congregation.  My fear is that they are only the surviving preachers, i.e., the ones who can still talk about it;  the others who are not talking were not victorious in their battles with silos.

If you are planting a church, or if you have had a catastrophic event or truly phenomenal leadership that allows your church to reorganize completely, then here are a few suggestions for you to avoid building a missions silo:

  • Work on the mission and vision for the whole church before you start parsing that vision into sub-visions.  Discovering the big picture for a church is the result of lots of people praying together, talking together, praying together, searching the word together—and praying together.  Beware at this stage of the individuals who seem to have a single agenda or a single focus with no real interest in the other areas.  Help them either come back to working as part of the whole body or ask them to wait to speak until the vision for the whole is received.
  • Use a non-corporate metaphor for building your congregation’s organization.  I myself love the family metaphor, but there are others you might choose like the physical body or the tree and branches.  Using a different metaphor opens the conversation to different possibilities.
  • Build rotation into your model.  Nobody gets to be appointed to any position or becomes a member of any committee for life! Everybody understands that they are serving a defined term as elder, chairman, ministry leader, or committee member.  The term is not based on performance. You can’t run for re-election and get another term. Everybody steps down or away for some specified period of time before they can perform those same duties again for another term.
  • Build accountability into your model.  Nobody gets to be anything without being accountable to someone!  The hardest question here is to whom the elders will be accountable, both individually and collectively.  Without too much explanation, let me suggest that individually the elders need to be accountable to one another; collectively, they should be accountable to the flock they serve. 
  • Do budgets as representatives of the whole church, not as representatives of particular subgroups!  Try to remove any sense of competition for funds.
  • Do not idolize efficiency!  God did not call us to efficiency, but to faithfulness.  He is patient and longsuffering.  He tells us to wait on Him. Those are not instructions for efficiency, but rather for following in His steps. That’s where we want to be.
  • Don’t be afraid.  It’s God’s church, not yours! He is very much in control; you are not! Trust Him!

Tomorrow, look for the last post in this series on what to do if you find silos all around you!

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Who Built That Silo In My Church?

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, tagged , , , on January 10, 2012| 2 Comments »

Last week, we asked ourselves questions to discover whether or not the mission committee at our church works in a silo—that is, works independently of the main streams of church leadership and other primary activities of the local congregation.  Here’s the link if you missed that post:  Does No One Understand the Mission Committee: There Might Be A Reason

Before we explore remedies, let’s look at possible causes of silo organization.  If we can identify causes, then, I believe, we can do more than just address symptoms! We can cure the disease, not just manage it.

  • Silo organization can result by defaulting rather than strategic thinking. Since many larger corporations are organized by departments/divisions, each with its own budget and budget manager, those brothers who organize the church leadership into separate committees are just imitating what they have done at work.  There are other models to consider, for instance, the model of the physical body or perhaps the family.
  • Silo organization becomes a greater temptation as size of the church grows! The larger the church, the more difficult it becomes to gather input from multiple sources,  or to get diverse groups together, or to include larger numbers of people in decision-making processes, so the “natural” tendency is to opt for efficiency, moving decision-making into smaller, more specialized groups—the genesis of silos for many churches!!
  • Silo organization is often the result of the worship of specialization. I’m actually all for people learning lots about missions and using that experience and information for the good of the kingdom, BUT, I have seen mission committees dominated by the ex-missionary or the missions professor or the member who attended the last missions workshop, all to the detriment of the kingdom because no one knows so much that they can’t learn from someone else! No one’s experience is universal! No one set of mission principles works in every circumstance!
  • Silo organization may occur because of the budgeting process. If your budget is broken down into categories like local ministry, adult education, foreign missions, benevolence, building and grounds, then it is very easy to make two mistakes:  organizing your committees according to budget categories and assigning full responsibility for that portion of the budget to that one committee. 
  • Silo organization can happen with power players who want control of a fiefdom! If one person has to approve all the decisions; if only one person can sign the checks; if the meetings are just rubber stamping what one person wants to do; if one person sets the agenda for every meeting; if even one or two of these things are true, you are probably a member of a little kingdom within the church, no matter how benevolent the dictator is.
  • Silo organization often exists because of fear! While fear apparently is very real in industry because of job security issues, I tend to think that at church fear may be over loss of influence or loss of a sense of purpose, maybe even loss of relationships with certain missionaries. 
  • Silo organization can simply be a church tradition. Oops—the way we have always done it . . . . Surely I don’t even need to comment on that.

All of these First Causes are so common that I’m pretty sure many of you are saying, “Of course we do that. How else could it be done?” 

If you are a church leader and feel like there is always a little tension with the mission committee,

or if you are a mission committee member and feel like church leaders are always sticking their fingers into your business, or that they don’t understand how important this committee is;

If you are a minister and are frustrated by the lack of synergy and/or cohesiveness between the working leadership groups in your congregation, or

If you sense an allegiance anywhere in your congregation to a sub-group over the good of the whole,

look for silos, look for those who love silos—and I’ll finish this thought next time with some suggestions for actions to take to both avoid and remove silos.

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Does No One Understand the Mission Committee? There Might Be A Reason!

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, tagged , , , on January 5, 2012| 1 Comment »

The term silo effect is pretty popular in business and organizational circles.  You also hear about silo vision and silo thinking.  All of these phrases derive from agricultural storage silos, typically with each individual silo housing a particular kind of grain.

The assumption in anything silo is that each unit is segmented in such a way that there is little to no communication or exchange between the two silos.  When this happens in an organization you might see two departments which are, in fact, interdependent, but which have separate goals and are working in a counterproductive way—but they don’t know it, because they don’t talk to each other.

Your church may be a collection of silos!  Many are!  The elders are one silo, the minister and his staff are another, the benevolence group are another—and the mission committee is almost always its own silo!

Let’s just talk about mission committees.  Let me ask a few leading questions, and you be the judge as to whether your mission committee works in a silo:

  1. Does your committee include and people from other important church areas: elders, ministers, youth, adult education, women’s ministry?
  2. Does your committee make foreign mission decisions as part of the process of making local mission decisions? Local benevolence decisions?  Local youth decisions?
  3. Is your committee invited to participate in the vision-setting meetings of the church leaders? (Budget meetings don’t count! Planning a budget is not the same as setting the vision.)
  4. How many of your missionaries or mission points can the average member of your church name?
  5. How many weeks per year is your mission work mentioned from the pulpit?

So what happens when several different committees of the church work independently of each other? I mean they may have different goals, different processes, different timetables, and different organizational styles!  Is this the picture of a body working in harmony?

Read I Corinthians 12 from The Message and tell me if silos are good for the body of Christ?

 12-13You can easily enough see how this kind of thing works by looking no further than your own body. Your body has many parts—limbs, organs, cells—but no matter how many parts you can name, you’re still one body. It’s exactly the same with Christ. By means of his one Spirit, we all said good-bye to our partial and piecemeal lives. We each used to independently call our own shots, but then we entered into a large and integrated life in which he has the final say in everything.

 14-18I want you to think about how all this makes you more significant, not less. A body isn’t just a single part blown up into something huge. It’s all the different-but-similar parts arranged and functioning together. If Foot said, “I’m not elegant like Hand, embellished with rings; I guess I don’t belong to this body,” would that make it so? If Ear said, “I’m not beautiful like Eye, limpid and expressive; I don’t deserve a place on the head,” would you want to remove it from the body? If the body was all eye, how could it hear? If all ear, how could it smell? As it is, we see that God has carefully placed each part of the body right where he wanted it.

 25-26The way God designed our bodies is a model for understanding our lives together as a church: every part dependent on every other part, the parts we mention and the parts we don’t, the parts we see and the parts we don’t. If one part hurts, every other part is involved in the hurt, and in the healing. If one part flourishes, every other part enters into the exuberance.

 27-31You are Christ’s body—that’s who you are! You must never forget this. Only as you accept your part of that body does your “part” mean anything.

Next I’ll offer you some suggestions for remedying the problem of a silo mission committee.  In the meantime, start making your own list!

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Becoming a Good Missions Church, pt. 5 – Getting Leadership on Board

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, tagged , , , , , on March 15, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Fifth in Guest Series by Tim Spivey, senior minister of New Vantage Church (San Diego, CA)

It’s one of the most frustrating things in the world to have a deep passion for something and not be able to get leadership to care much or embrace it. Few places have I seen this frustration more common or misunderstood than when it comes to global evangelism. When you meet resistance proposing something to church leaders, it isn’t typically because they hate ministry or people or they want to be frustrating. The resistance you face is often based on stuff under the surface. Everything below is a generalization. However, if you are meeting resistance, some of these attitudes may be in play. Let the generalizations begin 🙂

In general, elders tend to fear conflict, ministers tend to fear failure. Church members tend to feel like the church is overstaffed and spends too much money on themselves. The minister feels like the church is under-staffed and under-resourced. None of this makes for easy persuasion or full buy-in from leadership.

If it were me, I would focus on getting the preacher on board first. Preachers tend to me more open to new initiatives and they know how to get the elders on board. Like it or not, they are also usually the functional leader of the church by virtue of having high visibility and an open mic for 30 minutes every Sunday. Some will disagree with this…but without the preacher’s support a ministry will have about half the octane it could have otherwise. The good news is that most preachers don’t know they have the power they have…and tend to care more about ministry than power-brokering anyways. However, when you propose something new, or want to go to the “next level” in global missions (or anything else), here are:

5 Things Your Preacher Won’t Tell You He’s Thinking (Some are reasonable, some aren’t)

  • “I think you might pitch the idea, and leave me with the workload.” Create a ministry that requires little more than vision-casting and cheerleading from him. Preachers enjoy these and do them well.
  • “I think you might blame me and the elders if it doesn’t work.” If it doesn’t work, don’t blame them.
  • “I think this will mean less money and human resources to carry out the work of the local church.” Most churches actually drastically underfund local ministry. I would recommend finding ways to get the job done without pulling additional funds out of local ministry. I would also find ways for the missions ministry to add value to the whole life of the Body…not silo itself.
  • “I need you to help me understand how this works, because people will judge the ministry’s success by the numbers.” This is sad but true. A ministry that doesn’t “work” will hurt credibility for all involved. Have a clear way to measure “success,” even if not by numbers–though numbers matter. Just make it clear.
  • “I’m always looking for new ministries that will work and bless the church, but ending ministries is nearly impossible.” Offer to try it as a pilot or experiment, and have a concrete end game in mind.

If you can find a way to put these concerns (many of which are shared by elders) at ease…odds are…you’ll not only get leadership on board–you’ll have real champions for your area of ministry.

 

 

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Becoming a Good “Missions Church,” pt. 4 – Alignment

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, tagged , , , , , on March 14, 2011| Leave a Comment »

Fourth in a Guest series by Tim Spivey, senior minister at New Vantage Church (San Diego, CA)

No-silosBuilding on the three previous posts, here are a couple of introductory steps you can take that will help your church more effectively embrace God’s call to global mission:

Seek alignment. Understand the church is like a mobile. Everything is connected, and this is a great blessing. Look at your existing ministries and see how your missions ministry can be properly aligned with what the church is already doing. In some churches, church planting, short-term missions, benevolence, long-term missions, etc. are all very separate ministries with independent objectives and marked territory. For the purposes of involvement perhaps this feels good. However, if ministries are organizationally, strategically and philosophically siloed, it will take twice the money and publicity to achieve half of the results with half of the joy.

“Alignment” means riding the wave of where the church is already going rather than charting your own course. It means building missions ministry around the broader objectives of the church, and with all church ministries in mind. This will not only bring the blessing and support of church leadership to missions more quickly, it will relieve “sideways energy” in the church system that creates a tug of war effect–lots of effort, little movement. If everyone heads in their own directions, the church will stuggle to make progress of any kind. With alignment, forward progress is much easier and results exponentially enhanced.

Here are some steps to this effect:

  • Seek a firm grasp on the mission and vision of the church. Ask, how can we build a missions ministry that affirms and accentuates that vision? If missions becomes a para-church ministry in the church, it will never soar, and those involved in it will find themselves wondering why leadership and the congregation don’t seem to care much about it.
  • Have those who lead ministries in the “externally-focused” areas meet together. Relationships are everything in the church. Knowing one another better and communicating what’s going on will help coordination and make it easier for people to give to one another when necessary down the road. Tomorrow’s post will talk more about the importance of relationships in global missions ministry.
  • Integrate those ministries by choosing to do things together. Could a short-term missions team be sent to build up and encourage your long-term missionaries instead of going to countries that aren’t a part of what the church is already involved in? Could some of the church’s benevolence money go to support the poor overseas? Here’s another one–can the global missions team play a part in helping further the cause of the poor and and reaching the international community around the building through a ministry like Friendspeak?
  • Trade out traditional “mission reports” for storytelling opportunities in sermons, giving time, communion, and other things that weave the narrative of what God is doing globally through all of church life. Consider having one of your missionaries video a communion thought or a brief thank-you for the morning and stream it to the screen. Now they aren’t a visitor from a faraway land. They are part of the church.

Those are just a few possibilities. There are many more. There are two more posts in this series. One with more practical ideas–and one talking about getting leadership on board.

How have you seen partnership between ministries rather than “siloing” pay dividends in furthering God’s mission in the church?

 

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Becoming a Good “Missions Church,” pt. 3 – Integrate & Mind the Goose

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 11, 2011| Leave a Comment »

World_face_north_america

Third in a series of guests posts from Tim Spivey, senior minister of New Vintage Church (San Diego, CA).

Today’s post offers some relatively blunt observations regarding the relative strength of a church and it’s ability to be a good “missions church.” I offer these with redemptive intent–wanting churches to become all God wants them to be.

  • My experience is that struggling churches struggle for good reasons. It usually has something to do with leadership issues, and those issues by nature permeate all aspects of the church. It’s important for the sake of missionaries these issues are dealt with. Typically (though not always), churches will do mission work with the same level of health and excellence they do local ministry. Bad local ministry, bad missions ministry. If they don’t show care for what is happening locally, they typically won’t care about what God’s doing half a world away. This is another reason to pay attention to local ministry…it buoys the eventual effectiveness of whatever happens overseas.
  • A lack of well-formed theology and ecclesiology manifests itself in silo thinking. In this mindset, church-planting, benevolence, global missions, local ministry, campus ministry, etc…are all completely different ministries needing their own advocates at the church leadership table. In this way of thinking, each ministry is separate and altogether disconnected. The silo mentality is one of the great enemies of global missions ministry and healthy ministry. The church is a Body, and each part is connected. Both practically and theologically, when all parts are working together for the common good of the Body according to their place, the church grows in unity, vibrancy, and effectiveness. We cannot just report on missions. Biblical teaching on the church, ministry and the nature of evangelism is an important part of becoming a good missions church.
  • Integrated ministry recognizes the symbiotic relationship between all ministries of the church. It leverages the strengths of all for the sake of all. This why effective global mission requires more ingenuity, a strong focus on integration with the ministries of the whole church and less initial funding than one might think.
  • Most churches still view “successful” mission works as those they have supported for many years…regardless of their effectiveness or the real impact of continual support for decades. This way of looking at missions bottlenecks resources at a national level and tends to build co-dependent relationships between congregations and mission points. Relationally, it’s wonderful to continue to support a particular work. However, the relationship can continue regardless of support…as a parent doesn’t cut off relationship with a child once they leave the house. It’s important that mission efforts become self-supporting after some reasonable period of time–for their good and that of the supporting congregation.
  • Here is a difficult one. Struggling churches usually have declining budgets as well. They often will only cut missions as a last resort and will thus kill the proverbial “goose” by first slashing local ministries, cutting salaries, etc. in draconian fashion–which often means more decline, which means less revenue, which means more cuts, etc. This is a noble impulse, but HUGE mistake. Sometimes this must happen–but not usually. More on that in another post. For now, I would recommend cutting what isn’t working wherever it’s located and moving the resources to where the most good for the Kingdom can be accomplished. That’s a delicate process of discernment…but a necessary one.
  • If the “goose” continues to be plucked or starved, at some point, the ministers of the church come to view missions as a competitor rather than an ally in what God’s doing in the church. This is never good…and isn’t necessarily all the minister’s fault. The minister may fear blame for the church’s decline when he or she didn’t have much to do with it–they simply had the ball taken out of their hands. The ministers need to be strong allies in building a vibrant global missions ministry. In fact, I would start building buy-in with them first.

Which brings me to the next posts in this series: Concrete steps to improve both your church and the church’s global mission efforts.

I would enjoy hearing to what extent to you believe world missions is separate or different from other ministries of the church? Why?

 

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Becoming a Good “Missions Church,” pt. 2 – Become a Good Church

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on March 10, 2011| 1 Comment »

Part Two in the guest series by Tim Spivey, Senior Minister of New Vintage Church (San Diego, CA)

 

Step one in becoming a good “missions church” is becoming a good church. I don’t mean churches should take care of themselves first, so to speak. I mean that true global vision emerges from an awareness of what God is doing everyday locally. Good churches have embraced God’s vision for reaching their community through them. This initiates a “flat earth” theology–in which God cares about all people, not just the people in my community. I have yet to see this work in reverse. Churches don’t usually come to believe, “Well if he cares about people in Africa, I bet He may even care about people here in Plano.” It usually goes the opposite way.

Embracing local evangelism is like learning the alphabet when it comes to becoming a globally conscious, “missions church.” If we don’t care about the people next door, we probably don’t care about the lost in Indonesia that much either. I’m not saying we don’t feel guilt about the lost in Indonesia. I’m saying we don’t really care about them the way God would want us to.

I’m defining “good church” (though I prefer “great”) theologically by its faithfulness to Christ and His mission. “Good church” practically means healthy and at least moderately effective in reaching its own community. You don’t have to be big to be a great church. But, being a good church is usually a prerequisite for building a strong missions ministry over time. As I said,  good “missions” churches have what God is doing globally in their DNA and awareness…not just in their budget. Many churches who give a high percentage of money to global missions don’t really care much about it.

Becoming a good “missions church” is actually quite similar to becoming a “good church,” because good churches think globally. Thinking globally, however, doesn’t make you a good church.

When a church is truly struggling, it can be difficult to build enthusiasm for visionary ministry abroad. Why? Sadly, the scarcity mentality embeds itself in the church psyche like a tick. It’s fair to say that sometimes new ventures abroad can defibrillate a dying congregation. Odds are, such ministries will never get the chance. The church can only think of survival. They cannot imagine new initiatives–like a family on the verge of bankruptcy has difficulty envisioning their dream home. If you’re in a church like this, trying to get buy-in from leadership on continuing to grow in global mission will be exhausting and depressing.

So, don’t.

Yet.

A more effective overall approach to the problem is to stay vigilant about local ministry while casting global ministry as akin to it–an extension of it. It’s all evangelism. God cares about all people. Global missions are not more important than local mission. It’s a vital part of being a Kingdom Church. Big difference. A healthy local ministry will allow for the funding, vision and “want to” for new global initiatives. It rarely works in reverse. Maybe it should. But, it usually doesn’t.

Do you agree?

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Becoming a Good “Missions Church,” Part 1

Posted in Christian Missions, Church Leadership on March 9, 2011| 1 Comment »

I’m proud to share with you a short series of guest posts by Tim Spivey, senior minister for New Vintage Church in Rancho Bernardo, CA –and my son-in-law! I know you will appreciate his perspective.

MissionsI presented a session at the Global Missions Conference in Arlington, Texas a couple of years ago on “Becoming a Good Missions Church.” I’ve decided to post some of the material from that class here along with some new perspectives, because it’s an issue churches continue to face. Many churches want to spend less on themselves and more on others, or they want to be more effective in how they do global missions with the money they have.

In the dozens of churches I’ve consulted with or served in ministry at, there have only been a couple I can recall that spent less than 10% of their annual budget on global mission efforts, including domestic church planting efforts and exclusive of benevolence spending. Some spent as high as 65%. That’s an extremely high number in comparison with national norms–and a number that isn’t healthy for reasons I’ll describe in this series.

Percentage of budget does not an evangelistic church make. Think about your personal finances as an example: most of the money God provides us personally is spent on purchasing food, paying rent/mortgage payments, utilities, etc. That doesn’t mean I’m more passionate about utilities than about the Kingdom. It just is what it is. Similarly, some churches think becoming a good “missions church” (a term well worth deconstructing) is basically devoting an ever-increasing portion of their budget to global evangelism. While that is a noble impulse, it isn’t equivalent to becoming a strong “missions church.” Here are just a few reasons why:

  • Many of the churches that spend high percentages of their budget on missions pay little attention or care to the works they support. This is also observable in relative congregational ambivalence toward global mission efforts.
  • Many “missions churches” support works for decades and develop a co-dependent relationship on the works they support. While the fellowship aspect of this model is a blessing, overall, this way of doing missions weakens both the church and ministry they support.
  • Many so-called “missions churches” are relatively inept at local evangelism and subconsciously use missions as an “out-sourcing” of evangelism– which they understand is a clear Gospel mandate. While this is better than doing nothing…a church of 100 that spends 60% of its budget overseas and didn’t baptize a single person last year should pause and consider the purpose of its own existence.

Tomorrow, we begin a new blog series on this subject–much of which can also be applied to benevolence spending as well.

Step 1 in becoming a good missions church is becoming a good church. To that we’ll turn tomorrow.

You can find a link to Tim’s blog site in the righthand column! MW

 

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A Question for Older Church Leaders: Do You Want To Be Mubarak or Mandela?

Posted in Church Leadership, tagged , , , , on January 31, 2011| 1 Comment »

Hosni Mubarak is 82 years old and has been a driving political personality in Egypt since 1975 when he became Vice-President under Anwar Sadat. He assumed the Presidency in 1981 after Sadat’s assassination and is the longest serving Egyptian president in modern history. Today, however, our daily news reports are full of images of dissenting Egyptians in the streets, protesting Mubarak’s government and demanding his overthrow.

Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa in 1994 at the age of seventy-five and decided not to run again in 1999 at the age of eighty-one, although he was still immensely popular and surely would have won reelection.  He withdrew from public life in 2004, but continues to be a extraordinarily popular father figure in South Africa. His 90th birthday was a national celebration, and his brief appearance at the closing ceremony of the 2010 FIFA World Cup games was marked by a “rapturous reception,” according to The Guardian.

Mubarak’s situation in Egypt is a classic example of why older church leaders might need to step down—as did Mandela—before they are thrown out.  Older church leaders would do well to look at the reasons Mubarak should step down and why he will not be celebrated like Mandela.

1.            Mubarak made a name for himself as a heroic Air Force pilot and officer during and after the 1967 Arab-Israeli conflict—but nobody cares about that anymore! The glory of former deeds is short-lived when your current actions are out of sync with your people.  Church leaders may have been great missionaries, former preachers, university professors, large contributors, community leaders, and so forth, but all of that is meaningless to church members who don’t remember, never knew, or weren’t around then. God will certainly remember your good works, but your ability to lead must be based on what you can currently do, not what you have done in the past.

2.            For many years now, Mubarak has been intolerant towards his critics and his opposition! A feeling that one is above being criticized is a sure sign that it is time for you to step down. No leader is above criticism. If you feel in anyway exempt from or entitled to a free pass from criticism, then you are showing signs of staying in leadership too long.

3.            Age itself can expose an inability to keep up with inevitable changes. Both Mubarak and the recently overthrown dictator in Tunesia Zine El Abidine Ben Ali ignored—or at least underestimated—the power of social media like Facebook and Twitter until it was too late for them to survive as leaders. Older church leaders should ask themselves if they are in touch with what their flock is watching, listening to, thinking about, even twittering about?? If you don’t know—or worse, don’t care—then you should consider stepping down before you are overthrown!

4.            Age-related physical weakness affects your ability to lead others. We laugh about “senior moments.” We sit around the table talking about surgeries, arthritis pains, and friends who have recently died.  I was with an older church leader just the other day who listed off ten of his family members that died in a ten-year period, and I thought to myself, why did that surprise him? He was 78 and his family members and close friends were all slightly older or slightly younger. This particular Christian was very much alive and very spry, but many church leaders get to a point where they are physically unable to be a leader. Mandela had reached that point after the abuse his body took under apartheid, but he stepped away before it inhibited his ability to lead—so he continues to have great influence!

5.            Mubarak has dismissed his government in an attempt to appease his critics; he has also imposed curfew to control the protesters. Both these defensive and offensive orders have been ignored by the people! When no one is following you, you are no longer a leader—regardless of the title that you wear.  When older church leaders can no longer effect change without resorting to their office as the sole reason for demanding obedience, they have remained a church leader too long. If you have ever said, “We are the elders and we will decide, not you!” then you should resign immediately. Power can be exercised long after leadership has evaporated, but church leaders  are given the gift of leadership from God, not power!

6.            The 86-year-old Saudi king came out strongly backing Mubarak. If only people your age are backing you, if only people in your generation agree with you, if only people in your family are following you, then it is time to step down.

Good News for Older Church Leaders

The good news is that many great leaders do recognize that it is better to step down than to be a top-level leader too long! More good news is that stepping down does not mean the same thing as becoming non-productive or losing one’s influence.  In fact, one’s influence probably grows because you show such vintage wisdom!

What stepping down does mean is usually giving up power!  And power is the opiate from which it is so difficult to withdraw!  If we could only realize that losing power is inevitable–almost no Mubarak-type leaders avoid eventually being thrown out.

Churches don’t have demonstrations. We might sometimes see mild protests, but no riots in our churches against older church leaders who should but don’t step down. We just have mass frustration and mass exodus!

So do you want to be a Mubarak or a Mandela?

 

 

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Deadly Diseases in Churches#2 — Silent Killers!

Posted in Church Leadership, tagged , on January 29, 2011| 1 Comment »

Sherrylee and I were just sitting with some friends in Nashville today talking about church. Our friends told us about a church in Georgia that had just expanded and doubled the size of their usable space. To encourage one of the church leaders, she commented, “Just think, with God’s help you will soon outgrow this new space as well!”  He replied, “Well, we don’t want to grow too fast! You know, you don’t want just anyone in your church.”

That’s a pretty good illustration to introduce a conversation about church diseases that are silent killers—those insidious ideas or actions that, if not reversed, will certainly lead to congregational death. Here’s my list. It’s probably just a good start, so please add to it through your comments!

Vision Deficiency

The church leader in the above conversation had pretty severe vision problems. First, he didn’t see the same people that God sees. He probably only saw people like himself–and probably only people who were already some kind of Christian. A church that is happy simply being a nice club for nice people suffers with very narrow tunnel vision, not seeing many at all of all those God loves! If this church does not get new eyes, it will die.

Then there are those church leaders that see as far ahead as the next contribution, or the next capital drive, or the next new minister. These leaders are so short-sighted that they only see what they can do and have no vision of all that lies beyond that God can do! When “we” get tired or external challenges reduce visibility to zero, then this church will become virtually blind and definitely endangered!

Leadership Deficiency

No one doubts that lack of leadership in a church will hasten its demise, but perhaps it is not the lack of leadership that is the biggest problem, but the wrong leaders that is the silent killer in dying churches.  God has promised to bless His church with the gift of leadership (Romans 12:8).

Unfortunately, instead of looking for those that God has given the gift to, we look for those who are recognized by the business world or by society as leaders. So churches suffer under a lack of spiritual leadership as well as an overabundance of “gentile” leadership—as the world leads. Such churches are much more ill than they often realize.

Generosity Deficiency

Love is meant to be given away. Mercy is meant to be given away. Blessings are meant to be given away. Grace is meant to be given away. Forgiveness is meant to be given away. Hope, kindness, encouragement are meant to be given away. Wealth is meant to be given away. Time, Energy, really Life itself is meant to be given away.

A church that hoards any of the above will suffer spiritual bloat! If it doesn’t love, nobody will even know that they are Christians. If they are not merciful,  if they are not forgiving, if they are not kind, if they are not full of grace, that church is dying a pitiful death!

A simple blood test will help you diagnose this illness: ask yourself, if Jesus had not emptied himself and poured out His blood, would I have any hope of Life?  If I don’t empty myself, if my church doesn’t empty itself, is it really imitating Jesus? And if we are not imitating Jesus, are we really alive?

Mission Deficiency

Let me suggest you ask your church leaders what the basic raison d’etre for your congregation is. Why should you not join the larger more successful church down the street?  What would the kingdom of God be missing if you closed your doors?  For that matter, what would your community miss?

Having no unique reason for existence steals the strength of a church—as well as its future!

Identity Deficiency

We are in a time of identity breakdown! Established churches are abandoning their denominational names, traditional churches are becoming untraditional, liturgical churches have brought in evangelical praise bands. Someday some scholar will show us that there is a correlation between a church knowing who they are and their ability to thrive and persevere!

We may have created a Jekyll and Hyde situation, i.e., a false dichotomy between that which we have always been and that which we believe we need to be in order to live  I fear that most of our identity crisis is the result of observing the world around us and trying to adapt to what we see out there!  If our mission is clear, if our theology is alive, then changes will happen, but they will happen from the inside out, not from the outside in!

Prayer Deficiency

If your church leaders meetings do not begin and end in prayer, then your church may suffer severe loss of vitality! If your ministers do not lead the church in prayer, your church is ill. Jesus taught us to pray, not because God needs our words in order to know our hearts, but because we need to pray. Not going to the throne of God is avoidance of the Great Physician.

The Doctor’s Advice

People hate doctors. Some even refuse to go, saying that doctors just make you sick!  Jesus spoke to a group like this once, saying, “It’s not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick” (Matthew 9:12)–but don’t miss the irony. His words were condemnation to those who rejected His offer to heal.

These are words of hope for churches/church leaders who recognize their illness and turn to the One who heals!  Jesus may be asking you as he did the Centurion in Matthew 8: Shall I come and heal you?

 

 

 

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