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For years it has bothered me that, although the majority of churches in America have fewer than 300 people, most church leadership advice comes from pastors of huge churches. The assumption that bigger is better pervades the church leadership culture. What if that’s the wrong tack? Here are five reasons your church might be better off focusing on faithfulness instead of success… even if it that means it will Shrink.
1. Faithfulness, not success, is the goal of the church
The church’s job is not to grow, multiply, or expand. The church’s job is not to take back the culture for Jesus. The church’s job is not even to survive. The church’s job is to be the church—to be the faithful people of God who organize their common life together in such a way that they image God to all creation. Sadly, most American churches do not image God so much as they image American story of bigger, better, stronger, higher, and faster. The story of God is quite different. This story says the last will be first and the first will be last. Authentically Christian leadership does not embrace success as a worthy objective. Instead the Christian leader must embrace the way of descent, and the cruciform life of dying to self and others. The American way is up. The Jesus way is down.
2. A fixation on success creates anxiety and burnout
When a church chases ministry greatness, and makes growing attendance their primary metric for success, the most consistent outcome is not growth. The most consistent outcome is anxiety. CEO style church leadership may or may not produce growth, but it always produces a consuming anxiety in the lives of the members and leaders who constantly feel bad for not being bigger. All of that anxiety adds up over time. It usually falls to the pastor to try and keep the system healthy. The megachurch pastor is like the liver of an alcoholic body. The anxiety, pressure, and stress generated by the megachurch are not shared equally but are focused primarily on the pastor. Just one person cannot cleanse those types of systemic toxins, and eventually the pastors will burnout.
3. We are not in control of ministry outcomes
Who holds the future of the church? Is it God, or is it the visionary leader with a 5-year plan? Much of what passes for church leadership is akin to the professional athlete who takes performance-enhancing drugs. The megachurch is like a body on steroids, pumped full of leadership models, strategies, and techniques gleaned not from the gospel but from the world of business and the narrative of consumer capitalism.
To see the rest of the reasons, click here.
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