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Pastoring Shouldn’t Be This Hard (And 4 Ways to Make It Easier)

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Weary Pilgrim 200c Pastoring Shouldn’t Be This Hard (And 4 Ways to Make It Easier)Being a pastor is the fourth hardest job in America.

That’s been the common wisdom floating around the internet for a couple years now.

It may be true.

But it shouldn’t be true.

It certainly doesn’t need to be true.

I think it’s time to stop making it true.

There are two reasons people believe that statement to be true.

1. Pastoring is hard work. No doubt about it.

2. The person who is credited with making that assessment was a highly respected writer and author on leadership. He should know, right?

 

How Hard Is It?

Here’s the full list of the four hardest jobs in America, from a piece by Philip Wagner at ChurchLeaders.com. This is the post most others have grabbed this quote from:

Peter Drucker, the late leadership guru, said that the four hardest jobs in America (and not necessarily in order, he added) are:

  • The President of the United States
  • A university president
  • A CEO of a hospital
  • A pastor

 

In most articles I’ve read on this, the author usually goes on to cite further stats about the abysmal dropout and burnout rates among pastors, and understandably so.

Maybe it’s just me, but in too many of the articles I’ve read on this, there seems to be an underlying masochistic pleasure that pastors take in it. At times it feels as if we’re saying “See! I told you! My job is hard! This is why I’m burned out, stressed and overworked. Now, you may pity me.”

Pastoring a church is certainly hard work. And Drucker’s assessment may be right. But it shouldn’t be right. In recent years, after suffering through my own mostly self-inflicted pastoral grief, I’ve come to this conclusion:

If pastoring truly is the fourth hardest job in America, then we’re not doing it right.

 

It Shouldn’t Be This Hard

Take a look in the Bible. The New Testament writers never sugar-coated the challenges of ministry, but even in Paul’s list of hardships he endured for the sake of the gospel, he chided himself, saying “I am out of my mind to talk like this.”

And that’s a man who was under Roman persecution! If a pastor in modern-day America feels we’re under pressure equivalent to the Apostle Paul, a lot of it has to be self-inflicted.

Pastoring shouldn’t be as hard as we make it.

With that in mind, I’ve assembled a short list that has helped me make the task of pastoring less burdensome and far more joyful.

 

1. Stop Being a Martyr

Many of us work ridiculous hours in ministry, and not always because we need to, or even because others expect it of us. Many of us just have this desperate need to be everyone’s hero. Much of the reason our task is harder than it should be is that we’re doing a lot of jobs we shouldn’t be doing.

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The Main Thing I Wish I Knew Before I Became a Pastor

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target 200c The Main Thing I Wish I Knew Before I Became a Pastor“They didn’t tell me this in bible school.”

How many times has every Small Church pastor said that under our breath while dreading the upcoming deacon meeting, trying to take our first weekend off in years, or doing random repairs on the church building?

Thom Rainer surveyed a bunch of pastors on that question, without regard to church size, then published the results in a great post, entitled “Ten Things Pastors Wish They Knew Before They Became Pastors.”

At the end of the post, Rainer asked if there was a response any of his readers might add to the list.

As you might have guessed, I have one I would definitely add.

But before we get to that, here’s the list Rainer posted. They’re the top ten responses by frequency, not necessarily importance:

  1. I wish someone had taught me basic leadership skills
  2. I needed to know a lot more about personal financial issues
  3. I wish I had been given advice on how to deal with power groups and power people in the church
  4. Don’t give up your time in prayer and the Word
  5. I wish someone had told me I needed some business training
  6. Someone should have told me that there are mean people in the church
  7. Show me how to help my kids grow up like normal kids
  8. I wish I had been told to continue to date my wife
  9. Someone needed to tell me about the expectation of being omnipresent
  10. I really needed help knowing how to minister to dying people

 

That’s a good list. When you compare the realities of ministry to what’s typically taught in bible schools and seminaries, it makes a lot of sense. I hope our pastoral educators are paying attention to it.

Now here’s my addition to the list.

 

A Reality We Don’t Want to Acknowledge

At the risk of repeating myself from previous posts…

I wish someone had told me I was likely to pastor a Small Church for at least some of my ministry – and how to do it well.

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Dear Pastor, Please Put Us To Work. Love, Your Congregation

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dear pastor Dear Pastor, Please Put Us To Work. Love, Your CongregationSmall Church members don’t start out wanting to be passive, anonymous, consumer Christians. We (pastors) help to make them that way.

That’s the kick-in-the-butt takeaway I got from a comment that was written on this website last week in response to my post “What If We Made Disciples and Left Church Growth to God?”

The comment was written by Brian Kern, and it’s the meat of today’s post. Brian was a long-time member of my congregation, until a few months ago, when he and a few others left to start a new church, with our church’s full blessing and support. He’s also a very bright, kind and insightful guy, as you’ll see from what he wrote.

By the way, his comment was initiated entirely by him – it was not suggested by me at all. I’ve re-posted it here with his permission.

Brian’s experience in my church and others, is that Small Church pastors, while we often complain about lack of involvement from church members, may be encouraging passivity by the way we do – or don’t do – ministry. At the very least, we often fail to take some very simple steps to implement strategies that would inspire, encourage and activate more disciples.

The missing ingredient? Mentoring.

Brian’s comment deserves a wide hearing among Small Church pastors, so I’m pulling it from the comment section so we can all take a good look at it – and ourselves.

 

My experience (I’m not a pastor) has been that a great many of us in the congregation spend far too much time getting fed (nourishment) and quite frankly, I think we allow ourselves to get way too fat before we begin giving back through discipleship.

I’m sure there’s a multitude of reasons why, my own being a quite misunderstood notion that I had to know every passage inside and out to be qualified to disciple/ minister to others. That “fear” stopped me in my tracks for a long time. Zeno’s Paradox of Motion is alive and working in so many of us in the pews.

To be brutally honest, I think we could use a little “biblical kick in the backside” (encouragement, if that makes you more comfortable) in the form of some one-on-one conversation from our pastors when we stay in a continual state of being fed.

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A Bunch of Small Church Pastors Walk Into a Conference…

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NCN talk 200c A Bunch of Small Church Pastors Walk Into a Conference…Small Church pastors are unique, wonderful, passionate and gifted people.

Last week I spent three days at a ministers’ conference where I had the great privilege to meet a whole bunch of them. The conference wasn’t just for Small Church pastors, but there were a lot of us in attendance. It was my first conference as a speaker and bookseller, and my first chance to meet ministers face-to-face after they’d read The Grasshopper Myth.

I’m sure I’ll get used to it after some time has passed, but for now it’s a little weird to have someone walk up to me with a look of recognition on their face, only to find out they don’t know me, but they know a lot about me because they’ve read my book. They start talking like they’re continuing a previous conversation with an old friend – which is nice – but I’m trying to play catch-up by asking about their life and ministry. It’s fun, but it’s weird.

As I reflect on this great week, there are six Small Church realities that stick out for me.

 

1. Small Churches are Filled with Great Stories

Small Church pastors are storytellers. So many of them were either grinning widely or choking back tears (or both) as they told me about families being mended, people committing their lives to Jesus, congregations that reach their communities and so much more.

If I’d gone to this conference with the popular preconception that Small Churches are struggling, weak and sick, that idea was blown out of the water by dozens of enthusiastic, passionately told stories of life transformation.

 

2. Small Church Pastors Love What They Do

I know Small Churches have big struggles – and I heard some of those stories and prayed with pastors about them. But struggles weren’t the main thing pastors wanted to talk about. They couldn’t wait to share the joy they feel about their beautiful communities, churches and the ministries they get to do.

These pastors feel honored to be called by God to a ministry that allows them to get to know their congregations by name. They’re investing in lives, one-on-one.

Situations that many would consider a burden, these ministers celebrate joyfully. For example, one pastor leads a church of 30 in a town of 320. Another has two Sunday services in a 30 x 40 foot garage to jam their congregation of 80 in for worship.

But, in spite of all that…

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The Church that Cares for Kids (Video Interview)

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Epperson Interview square 200c The Church that Cares for Kids (Video Interview)Dan Epperson isn’t about to let his church’s small size limit its impact. Instead, he and his church are doing what they can to reach their small community.

Dan is the lead pastor at King’s View Assembly of God in the mountain community of Ione, California, where they’ve become known as “The Church that Cares for Kids”. But that’s not the only outward-reaching ministry he and the church do.

Rather than me telling you Dan’s story, I thought it would be best to let him tell you. So I sat down with Dan in, of all places, the coffee shop of a megachurch where we’d gathered for a minister’s conference in Sacramento, California. I was there to teach some sessions on The Grasshopper Myth, and Dan was an attending minister. (Thank you, NCN Assemblies of God for inviting me, and Capital Christian Center for hosting a great conference.)

If you click on the photo of Dan and me, you’ll be magically transported to my YouTube channel to watch the interview. It runs just under 5 minutes.

The “gated community” Dan lovingly refers to, where half the population of Ione lives, is known by the state of California as Mule Creek State Prison.

Here’s the link for Rural Compassion, the ministry Dan talks about working with for a backpack giveaway.

 

So what do you think? Does this give you any ideas about how to reach your community?

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They Just Don’t Get It: When Big Church Solutions Meet Small Church Realities

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big chair200c They Just Don’t Get It: When Big Church Solutions Meet Small Church Realities“They just don’t get it.”

How many times have I said that while shaking my head after reading articles, blogposts and books about church leadership? I could write a book.

Oh, right…

I know I’m not alone in this. If you’re a Small Church pastor, you’ve had the same experience on many occasions.

The articles and books I’m referring to are written with good intentions, and the ideas in them aren’t wrong. I even plan to use one of the books I read recently (Andy Stanley’s “Deep & Wide”) in an upcoming follow-up post entitled, 5 More Principles Small Churches Can Learn from Megachurches.

But even in a good book like Stanley’s, I spend a lot of time shaking my head, thinking…

They just don’t get it.

 

Big Church Solutions

For example, here’s a short list of some of church ministry ideas I’ve read in just the last few weeks. These were all presented as either must-do, or very important to do.

  • Volunteer training
  • Regular staff vision meetings
  • One day a week for sermon prep
  • Age-appropriate, well-lit children’s facilities
  • Uncluttered meeting rooms, cleared of stacked chairs and unecessary furniture
  • Video announcements
  • Parking lot attendants with uniforms
  • Professional signage
  • Coordinated start/end times for adult/kids’ services
  • Not putting people in a ministry unless they’re gifted for it

I don’t disagree with any of those ideas. They all make sense.

But in all the material I’ve read in the past month, and most of what I’ve read for the past 30 years, none of those suggestions was tempered with a recognition of Small Church realities and alternative solutions. These writers (most of them, megachurch pastors) don’t seem to get that most churches, while they’d love to implement those ideas, simply don’t have the time, money or other resources to pull them off.

When it come to Small Church realities…

They. Just. Don’t. Get. It.

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What If We Made Disciples and Left Church Growth to God?

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priority 200c What If We Made Disciples and Left Church Growth to God?Imagine all the time, money and resources that have gone into teaching church growth in the last 40 years or so.

I know it will sound naïve to many people, but has anyone thought about what the world would look like today if all that effort had been invested exclusively in church health instead?

Is it possible that if the church had prioritized health, not as a means to growth, but as an end in itself, we would be in a greater position to represent the Gospel to the world?

We’re often told that one of the reasons so many churches remain small is lack of faith. But I wonder… could it be that the reverse is true? Might our obsession with bigger and bigger churches be rooted in a greater lack of faith?

Have we been afraid that God might not do his part (building his church) if we’d simply be faithful to do our part (making disciples)? Is it possible that the glut of church growth books, seminars and classes in the last few decades been our attempt to “help God out”?

If you’re new to NewSmallChurch.com, I need to restate that I’m not against big churches. I’m just wondering out loud if all our church growth strategies, instead of producing more big churches, have diverted our limited resources away from what should be our main priority – making disciples who produce healthy churches, no matter what size they are.

 

Health Isn’t Easy

And no, this is not me naively thinking “just preach the Word and the seats will be filled”. First, I’ve been in ministry long enough to know that a healthy church takes a lot more than good preaching. And second, I’m not saying health will bring bigger numbers to individual congregations.

What I’m saying is that we need to prioritize discipleship and church health. And I wonder if we might be able to do that better if we put all our energy there instead of worrying about how big the church is.

Healthy churches are hard work. At minimum, a pastor has to:

  • Manage, if not master a wide variety of skills
  • Keep them coordinated within a small margin or error
  • All at the same time
  • Over a long period of time
  • With volunteer labor

Many pastors are asked to do all that and more, often as a second job, sometimes with no permanent facility. And even if they manage all that, they’re still considered a failure by many people if the church doesn’t also hit certain benchmarks for consistent numerical growth.

It’s a burden few people can bear. No wonder the burnout rate for pastors is so high.

 

What If…

What if we’d spent at least some of our time in the past few decades preparing ministry students for the likelihood that they’ll be pastoring a Small Church for some, if not most of their ministries?

What if we’d taught them how to pastor those Small Churches well, instead of pushing them to make the church bigger?

What if all the money that’s been lost in failed building projects and big events had gone into local church outreach and quality ministry?

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Only In a Small Church: When Stories Beat Stats

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This entry is part 8 of 8 in the seriesOnly In a Small Church

stories stats graph photo 200c Only In a Small Church: When Stories Beat StatsWhen did all the preachers become statistics junkies?

I can’t remember the last church leadership book or seminar that didn’t emphasize the value of setting goals for your church, then using some kind of metric to determine whether-or-not we are succeeding at reaching them.

I understand the need to assess our progress. If we don’t know how we’re doing and why, we’ll make the same mistakes over and over.

But, as I’ve referred to in a previous post, there is an inherent danger in trying to measure a church’s value by using numbers. The things of greatest value are often immeasurable.

Yet it still stands to reason that we need to regularly assess a church’s health and spiritual growth. Are people growing in their faith? Are they practicing spiritual disciplines? Are they sharing their faith? Is the church helping them do all of those things better?

 

Statistics? Or Stories?

There are two ways to gather the information we need. Personal conversations and surveys. When we take surveys we get statistics. When we have conversations we hear stories.

Statistics and stories. They each give us very different kinds of information.

In recent years, it’s been typical to elevate the value of stats, while devaluing the role of stories. Stats are more accurate, we’re told. And that’s true – in certain circumstances.

Talk to any statistical analyst (you know, the one who lives down the block from you) and ask them how the value of statistics changes depending on the number of people surveyed (the sample size), and here’s what you’ll find.

When the sample size is large, statistics are accurate and valuable. When the sample size is small, statistics can be very inaccurate and misleading.

Take a look at my makeshift chart at the head of this post. It’s a visual snapshot of this reality. As a church grows larger, statistics matter more and stories can be misleading. When a church is smaller, stories matter more and statistics can be misleading.

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If Numbers Are Not Important, Then Why Are They So Important? (A Poignant Guest Post)

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How much It Hurts 200cjpg If Numbers Are Not Important, Then Why Are They So Important? (A Poignant Guest Post)The evidence keeps piling up. Mondays can be very hard on Small Church pastors.

This past Monday, I received one of the most truthful, passionately written expressions of pastoral pain that I’ve ever read. It was written by the wife of a Small Church pastor in the comment section following one of my most widely read posts “The 11th Reason Pastors Quit Too Soon”.

I have reposted her comment here, with the author’s permission. She edited it slightly for this post, to remove personal notes she didn’t want included.

Her original comment has been deleted to allow her to keep her anonymity.

 

If Numbers Are Not Important, Then Why Are They So Important? 
an Anonymous Guest Post

This article (The 11th Reason Pastors Quit Too Soon), which I’ve read before, has hit home this weekend.

My husband, small church pastor for 13 years (this is our first church) just yesterday said, “Sometimes I wonder if I should just give up.”

It’s so hard sometimes. It’s like you take one step forward and two steps back.

We know that numbers don’t translate success. But some numbers ARE important. So it’s like the enemy says, “Yeah, you say numbers aren’t important…but let’s see if you can pay the mortgage this month.”

It amazes me how so many positive spiritually healthy things can be happening in a church and yet it struggle to exist.

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One Reason Our Church Stays Small: The Slow Spiritual Simmer

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Good neighbors 200c One Reason Our Church Stays Small: The Slow Spiritual SimmerThere aren’t a lot of first-time conversions in our congregation. At least not among adults.

What we have instead, are de-churched people becoming re-churched. And it usually takes a while.

After all, people become de-churched for a reason. So they often need some time to let things simmer in their spirits in order for trust to be re-established and faith to take root.

Here’s how it usually happens. A person is raised in a home in which they’re dragged to church by their parents, only to be bored to tears every week. When they leave for college, they leave the church, too. A few years go by and they find themselves single or married with kids. One day their 5-year-old tugs on their sleeve and says “My friend at school says they go to church. What’s church?”

The parent gasps in horror as they realize the gap that’s been in their family’s life. But they’re not sure what to do. After all, they still like what they know about Jesus, and they’d apprreciate a good worship experience at a good church, but they don’t want to subject their kids to what they had to endure.

 

The Good Neighbor Connection

Then they remember that a friend of theirs, maybe a neighbor or a co-worker, seems to love the church they go to. It hasn’t turned their friend into a weirdo, so they ask them about it. It seems OK, so they check out our website. That passes the not-too-geeky litmus test as well.

On the following Sunday, they nervously pack their kids in the car, hoping they’re not underdressed. When they meet their friend in the parking lot and see that they’re dressed casually also, they relax a little and head in to the church building together, still nervous and skeptical, but hopeful too.

It’s small, but vibrant. Friendly, but not smothering. The music is new, but not in your face. The preaching is casual, biblical and practical. And they can sip on a cup of free coffee while they listen.

On the drive home the kids are talking excitedly about the fun they had, the friend from school they played with, and the new friends they made. When the kids can’t stop singing the new songs they learned and want to come back next week, the parents decide to give it another shot.

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A Sincere Heart Trumps a Spectacular Ministry

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watering shadow 200c A Sincere Heart Trumps a Spectacular Ministry“Your responsibility is not to have a spectacular ministry, but to have a sincere heart.”

No, that quote isn’t from The Grasshopper Myth. It’s not even from another Small Church writer or pastor.

It’s the key quote from a great talk given by Jud Wilhite to over 3,500 ministers at the Catalyst conference in Irvine California, earlier this month. It may not have been the message most of the assembled ministers were expecting to hear, but Wilhite’s talk, and that quote especially, may have summed up the mood and message of the two-day conference as much as anything else that was said.

From my perspective, it’s a hopeful sign that we may be returning to an atmosphere of health and humility that many feel has often been missing from conferences like this.

 

Sincere is Better than Spectacular

Since mentioning my time at Catalyst in a recent post, several people have asked me if the conference was really as much about church health and universal spiritual principles as I claimed it was, rather than church growth and spectacle.

My answer? Yes. And Wilhite’s talk was Exhibit A.

Wilhite is a pastor in Las Vegas and is a regular speaker and former host at these conferences. He took his talk from the following bible passage.

It is because we know this solemn fear of the Lord that we work so hard to persuade others. God knows we are sincere, and I hope you know this, too. Are we trying to pat ourselves on the back again? No, we are giving you a reason to be proud of us, so you can answer those who brag about having a spectacular ministry rather than having a sincere heart before God. – 2 Corinthians 5:11-12 NLT (emphasis mine – and Wilhite’s)

Bragging about having a spectacular ministry happened in the New Testament? So it isn’t new? It didn’t start with those big, bad megachurches in America? It happened before TV preachers? How is this possible?

Yes, it’s as old as the first century church. Apparently things weren’t as pristine in the church of Paul’s day as the “let’s do it how they did it in the first century church” crowd would have us believe.

It’s almost as if human nature hasn’t changed at all in the last 2,000 years. Weird, right?

.

Sometimes Sincerity Excludes the Spectacular

Here’s another quote:

“Sometimes, because we’re faithful to God, it will mean that we will not have a spectacular ministry.” (emphasis his)

Wow, that’s gutsy. Wilhite’s point, which he demonstrated with some touching illustrations, was similar to one I made recently, that sometimes when we choose for simple faithfulness, it closes the door on a ministry that we, or those around us would consider spectacular. Sometimes faithfulness will lead to smaller numbers, rather than larger ones.

But it’s not our responsibility to be spectacular (or large), it’s our responsibility to be faithful and let God take care of the rest.

 

Sincerity is What We’ll Remember

Or how about this one:

“When you die, no one will care how big your church was, only how faithful you were, and the people who love you.”

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Big? Or Healthy? If You HAD to Choose…

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King and Queen 200c Big? Or Healthy? If You HAD to Choose…Church health and church growth are not mutually exclusive.

There are plenty of large, healthy churches that do both – and way too many unhealthy small ones that do neither.

But one doesn’t necessarily lead to the other.

Not all healthy churches grow big. And not all big churches are healthy.

In more than 30 years of pastoral ministry, I’ve discovered that there are times when I have to make church growth choices or church health choices, but I can’t always have both.

Here are some ways that might occur:

  • I have the money to buy a church growth book, or a spiritual growth book, but not both. Which one gets my hard-earned cash?
  • I have the time to attend only one conference this year – do I attend the church growth conference or the prayer retreat?
  • The bi-vocational pastor has only two weeks of vacation. Does he spend it camping with his family, or at a pastor’s conference?

 

No One Can Walk Through Two Doors at Once

When we decide for one option, it often closes the door for the other. That’s not always the case. It’s not usually the case. But it is sometimes the case. That’s just life.

Yes, we serve an almighty God with unlimited resources, time and energy. But I’m not him. I can’t always do “both and…”. Sometimes I have to choose one or the other.

So, I sometimes have to ask myself this question:

On those occasions when they are mutually exclusive, and I have to choose for health or for growth, which will I choose?

I’ve decided I’ll always choose for church health.

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My 100th Post!

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yes 100 200c My 100th Post!This is my 100th blogpost. 100 posts in 154 days.

That’s two blogposts every three days. Or just under 5 a week.

It’s time to slow down. Just a little.

NewSmallChurch.com officially started on November 19, 2012. All but three of the 100 posts in those 154 days were written by me (thank you, Craig Forrest, Dave Jacobs & Dixie Phillips for your contributions). Half a dozen were republished from the pages of The Grasshopper Myth, but the rest were original content for this website.

In looking back on all that writing, I’ve come across some other numbers you might find interesting. I’ll lay a few of them out for you, then let you know about how my posting schedule will be changing from now on.

I know we’re not about numbers here, but since none of this happens face-to-face, numbers are a stronger reflection of what’s happening on a website than they are in a local church. In a small way, they’re a picture of the community we’re building here.

 

NewSmallChurch.com by the Numbers

19,550 – Total pageviews.

1,100+ – Copies of The Grasshopper Myth sold so far.

663 – The highest number of views in a single day.

598 – Views for my most-read blogpost so far, “Small Churches Are the Next Big Thing – With One Condition”.

454 – Reader comments. If I get 6 comments on this post, that’ll be 5 comments per post. Thank you so much for your engagement in this process. You are what makes this work!

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Between Substance & Style: Innovation Happens in the Middle

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catalyst 200c Between Substance & Style: Innovation Happens in the MiddleInnovation may not be what we’ve been told.

It isn’t about being the coolest kid in the room. That’s just style. And it doesn’t come from tearing down the things that matter. That’s our substance.

Innovation happens in the space between style and substance.

I’ve spent the last two days at Catalyst West Coast. It was a huge, elaborate, mind-numbingly excessive upload of the best, brightest and newest ideas, methods and thinking currently happening in the evangelical church in America.

As anyone who’s read The Grasshopper Myth knows, this wasn’t my first time at Catalyst. In fact, this was my fourth, so I went in knowing what to expect.

It didn’t disappoint.

In future posts, I’ll probably talk about many of the things I learned in the last two days, but for now there are three things that this year’s conference reaffirmed for me. They relate to the issues of style, substance and innovation. And they are very encouraging.

 

Substance: We Have a Lot In Common

It’s great to see that events like Catalyst emphasize what we agree on, not what separates us. Thousands of ministers from various denominations and all sizes of congregations talked about some very big issues (and had some great fun too), but there was never a question that we were there for the same reasons:

  • We love Jesus
  • We love our churches
  • We love what we do, and feel very grateful to be able to do it
  • We revere the Bible as God’s Word
  • We want to reach our communities for Jesus
  • We want other churches to succeed, not just our own
  • We want to use the best possible means to do what Jesus has called us to do

Don’t listen to the voices on the fringe that want to tear fellow ministers and churches down. If the leaders I spent the last two days with are an example of where the church is heading, we’re gonna be OK.

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Small Churches Are a Big Deal (A Review of “The Grasshopper Myth”)

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SGN book title 200c Small Churches Are a Big Deal (A Review of The Grasshopper Myth)

Last month, Dixie Phillips, from “SGN Scoops” magazine, interviewed Karl Vaters about the origins of The Grasshopper Myth and NewSmallChurch.com.

That interview, and Phillips’ review of the book, were combined into an article entitled “Small Churches Are a Big Deal”, which was printed on pages 25-26 of the April 2013 edition of SGN Scoops. 

Today’s post is a reprint of that review/interview. You can read the original article at SGNScoops.com.

If you’re a fan of Southern Gospel music, you’ll want to subscribe to SGNScoops.com. It’s always free.

Small Churches Are a Big Deal

by Dixie Phillips

SGN Cover 200c Small Churches Are a Big Deal (A Review of The Grasshopper Myth)A seasoned saint once said, “God never looks at the size of the work, but at the love the leader pours into the work.”

Karl Vaters would agree with that statement. In fact, he’s written a book about his more than 30 years’ experience in small church pastoral ministry. Vaters searched for a book dealing with the unique challenges and joys of pastoring a small church, especially a book celebrating the value of small churches, without making the leaders feel they were inadequate and settling for less, but he never found one.

He read the usual pastoral help books and went to the numerous leadership seminars and conferences, almost all of which informed him how to grow his church. Afterwards, he returned home hyped-up and attempted to implement the new church growth ideas he had learned, but always plummeted into severe discouragement when the “formulas” for church growth didn’t work at his small church.

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Only In a Small Church: You May Not Need a Mission Statement

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This entry is part 7 of 8 in the seriesOnly In a Small Church

large words on a sign 200c Only In a Small Church: You May Not Need a Mission StatementI know it’s practically heresy to propose this. But your church may not need a mission statement.

In the 1990s and 2010s, there may have been no more widely accepted rule in church growth circles than the idea that every church needs a mission statement.

It was taught in seminars and written in books. I remember at least one parachurch ministry that conducted a survey about it. They called churches and asked two questions to whoever picked up the phone 1. “Does your church have a written statement?’ and if so, 2. “What is your mission statement?”

The result from these surveys reinforced what everyone expected. Bigger, growing churches have mission statements that people remember and receptionists can recite. Smaller, struggling churches don’t have a mission statement. Most don’t have receptionists. Many didn’t even answer the phone. (More on that in a later post).

The conclusion everyone drew from the survey was that a memorable mission statement was an essential key to church growth. And a lack of one was why some churches didn’t grow. So everyone scrambled to craft a mission statement.

But no one was clear on exactly what that meant or why it might make a difference. There was even a big debate over the difference between a mission statement, vision statement, purpose statement and slogan. Just to be sure, some churches wrote all four.

 

The Value of Mission Statements

In the early 1990s, the church I currently pastor spent over two years working on a mission statement. It turned out to be a good exercise for us, since it was one element in a process of a formerly sick and dying church figuring out who we were and what God was calling us to do.

In case you’re interested, we came up with a nine word statement: Exploring, Living & Sharing the Truth of God’s Word.

We still use it. For instance, our newcomer’s orientation is called our Exploring Class, and our community service days are called Share Days.

New Small Church has one, too, and it truly does guide everything we do here. I believe a clear mission statement is a vital necessity for ministries such as this, since the average website visitor will give us less than 2 seconds before they decide whether to move on or stick around.

So I’m not against mission statements. But if I were starting a church, or church turnaround today, I wouldn’t worry so much about it.

I have breaking news on the mission statement front.

Your church may not need a mission statement.

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27 Advantages of Putting an Expiration Date on New Ministries

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This entry is part 6 of 6 in the seriesTurnaround Ideas

egg 200c 27 Advantages of Putting an Expiration Date on New MinistriesIt’s been over a decade since our church started a ministry that failed.

Are we that brilliant? No. We just don’t start new ministries any more. We try experiments, instead.

If I were to start the turnaround process in a church again, this is the #1 rule I would follow from Day 1 – outside of scriptural principles, that is.

Put an expiration date on every new idea.

The principles in God’s Word are perfect, timeless and never need to be changed. Everything else is up for grabs.

This is the final post in Turnaround Week at NewSmallChurch.com. More turnaround ideas will come soon.

I’ve never had a perfect ministry idea in my life. I don’t ever expect to. Even my best ones run out of steam after a while. Many of the ideas I think are great, end up being stinkers pretty quickly. (No, I’m not going to give you any examples.)

So, instead of launching a new idea as “the way we’re going to do ministry from now on”, we tell people “Hey, we have this fun, new idea we’re going to try until the end of the summer!” Or December, or until Easter…

Then, at the end of the summer, if it doesn’t work, it stops happening, just like we announced it would. No failure, no problem. If it does work, we keep doing it. Maybe we extend it for another three or six months at first. If it keeps working, it just stays on.

(I have to give credit for this to Gary Garcia, my youth pastor for 20+ years and counting. He suggested going “summer casual” more than a dozen years ago, and I haven’t had to wear a tie since.)

Experimentation is one of the advantages a Small Church has. In a larger church, the congregation expects a level of excellence in every ministry from the moment it’s launched. In a Small Church, people can live with a longer learning curve.

Putting expiration dates on ministries has several advantages. Here are a few. Feel free to add your ideas in the comments, below.

 

The Advantages of Using Ministry Expiration Dates

1. If the idea is a non-starter, you don’t have to live with it for long.

2. Failures aren’t failures any more. They’re just experiments that reached their expiration date.

3. Extending an experiment that works is easier than killing a permanent ministry that doesn’t.

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Expanding the Sweet Spot for a Healthy Church Turnaround

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This entry is part 5 of 6 in the seriesTurnaround Ideas

Heart Venn 200c Expanding the Sweet Spot for a Healthy Church TurnaroundKnowing God’s will for your life is not enough. When you’re a pastor, your responsibilities are bigger than that.

There are three participants in any healthy church. The pastor, the congregation and God. Knowing and coordinating the zone where their hearts intersect is the most important task a pastor can do. And it’s critical to understand and do well if you want a successful church turnaround.

This is especially important in a Small Church. The larger the church, the more likely the heart of the congregation will be an extension of the pastor, usually expressed in a mission or vision statement that was crafted by the pastor or leadership team. But in a Small Church, the congregation has a personality and a will of its own based on their history and their relationships. Ignore it at your peril.

Trying to turn a church from unhealthy to healthy without all three in full cooperation, will lead to frustration, failure and heartache.

But when the hearts of all three match up just right, there’s nothing like it.

In the above Venn diagram, I’ve used hearts instead of the usual circles to illustrate how health and success happen in a church turnaround, and where we can miss it.

This is the third post in Turnaround Week at NewSmallChurch.com.

As you can see, there’s a place where all three hearts intersect.

But there are also portions of God’s heart that neither the pastor or the church have caught up to yet. There always will be. And there are portions of the church’s and the pastor’s heart that aren’t in line with God’s heart or with each other. Each of these overlapping zones (numbers 2 – 4) has unique dangers.

Let’s take a quick overview.

 

1. The Sweet Spot: God, the Church & the Pastor’s Hearts Meet

This is the goal we all ought to be aiming for. The spot where the pastor is working within his gifting, the congregation is being strengthened and utilized, and God’s will is being done.

But let’s not be naïve about it. We will seldom have more than a tenuous and shifting grasp on this. And it needs to be constantly monitored, prayed over and never taken for granted.

But it can be found, expanded and utilized to bring glory to God and to reach the people he has called us to minister to.

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The 4 Most Overlooked Truths About Leading a Turnaround Church

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This entry is part 4 of 6 in the seriesTurnaround Ideas

turnaround 200c The 4 Most Overlooked Truths About Leading a Turnaround ChurchIt’s one of the toughest tasks in pastoral ministry. Leading an existing church through a turnaround from unhealthy to healthy.

But it’s even harder when we’re trying to do so without understanding some basic principles needed for a successful turnaround to take place.

Here are four common, fundamental principles that are regularly ignored or unknown by pastors trying to turn a church around.

This is the second post in Turnaround Week at NewSmallChurch.com. The continuation of our ongoing series of posts on Turnaround Ideas for healthy Small Churches.

 

1. When a church gets turned around it will be heading in a different direction

Why do we use the word “turnaround” if we don’t want anything to change?

Many pastors say “I want to help turn this church around”, when what they really mean is “I want this church to get bigger.” Those are two different goals. If you want a bigger church, there are plenty of resources that will give you those principles, but know this…

Bigger is not a turnaround. It’s just more.

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3 Surprising Misunderstandings About Church Turnarounds

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This entry is part 3 of 6 in the seriesTurnaround Ideas

turnaround 200c 3 Surprising Misunderstandings About Church TurnaroundsWhy do you want your church to turn around?

There are a lot of good reasons to do so. Among them, you might want to see your church move from:

  • Unhealthy to healthy
  • Inward-obsessed to outward-focused
  • Stuck in the past to excited about the future
  • Unloving to loving
  • Uninviting to inviting
  • Legalistic to joyous
  • Shallow to deep
  • Passive to active
  • Struggling to vibrant
  • Hurting to life-giving

But there are some misunderstandings on this subject. What one pastor means by “turnaround” might be completely different from what another pastor means.

This post begins Turnaround Week at NewSmallChurch.com. It continues our ongoing series of posts on Turnaround Ideas for healthy Small Churches.

Today’s post is designed to set the record straight on what I mean when I talk about turnaround, so you don’t waste any of your time trying to implement principles that really aren’t what you’re looking for.

Specifically, there are three things I am not talking about when I talk church turnaround.

 

Turnaround Does NOT Mean… 

1. Bigger

If you’re looking for ways to make your church bigger, this post is not for you. In fact, almost nothing I write will be helpful to you.

It’s not that a numerically growing church is wrong. It’s great – especially when it’s also kingdom growth. It’s just not what I do. I tried to grow my church, and failed at it. So I won’t pretend I can help you do it. You won’t find church growth strategies here.

If church growth is what you mean when you say church turnaround, try a Google search for “church growth”. You’ll find tons of great resources.

On the other hand, don’t be fooled into thinking that your church has turned around just because it’s growing. They aren’t necessarily the same thing.

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