Shrink<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nGood. Yes, that\u2019s right. Before I explain that, an anecdote.<\/span>
\n<\/span><\/p>\nIn an interview I was asked what was the most encouraging sign in the church<\/em>\u00a0today, and what I told the one who asked surprised him. There are many encouraging signs, not least the zeal and passion of young Christians, the surging presence of women professors and administrators in seminaries, Christian colleges, and churches, the ever-growing scholarly contributions to life in the church \u2026 lots of encouraging signs.<\/p>\nBut the #1 encouraging sign to me is\u00a0the faithfulness of small church pastors<\/em>. The average church in the USA has about 75 in attendance, which means the average pastor has a small congregation. They keep on keeping on, they keep on serving, they keep on loving and learning and teaching and preaching and having coffee and marrying kids who move off to big city churches and burying good faithful folk.<\/p>\nEvery day. Under the radar. No fan fare.<\/p>\n
Which brings me to Tim Suttle\u2019s incredible book. When I read Tim Suttle\u2019s book on evangelical social gospel theology I saw a skinny jeans kind of guy but his new book,\u00a0Shrink,\u00a0<\/em>which I endorsed wholeheartedly, reveals a pastor who loves the church. I wish he had said more about this in his earlier book.<\/p>\nHe has a chapter that I want you to read \u2026 no, I want you to buy the book to read this chapter. It\u2019s called \u201cGreat is the Enemy of Good.\u201d He has a great story about Tyler Hamilton, tempted as many are in the professional cycling world. Enter Lance Armstrong, enter doping, enter temptation, enter a crisis in his integrity.<\/p>\n
\u201cGreat is not necessarily good. In fact, if we learn anything from\u00a0stories like Tyler Hamilton\u2019s and many of the others we\u2019ll explore here, it is this:\u00a0The enduring power of greatness is its ability to entice \u00a0human beings to trade the good for the great.<\/p>\n
Your conscience for a fortune.
\nYour honesty for a kingdom.
\nYour friendship for a championship.
\nYour integrity for a big church.
\nYour soul for a chance at ministry greatness.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not as far-fetched as you might think. Sometimes the promise of greatness is all it takes to destroy the good in us.\u201d (35)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This Great is Good mentality pervades the church through leadership guru Jim Collins who wrote\u00a0Good to Great<\/em>. Suttle asks, \u201cIs greatness the goal of church leadership? Is greatness good?\u201d He continues with this:<\/p>\n\u201cAuthentically Christian leadership begins and ends with a conversation about Jesus\u2019 vision of the kingdom of God, not with a strategy for success.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
This next line is brilliant:\u00a0 \u201cBest practices\u201d should be a minor side conversation in the world of Christian leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n
Suttle\u2019s thesis contradicts Collins\u2019s and the one that is shaping too much of church culture: Great is the enemy of Good. The aim is to be good, to be faithful, to be good and faithful and take what God gives.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost pastors serve in small churches. Most leadership advice comes from\u00a0megachurch pastors\u2014something is wrong with this picture.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I see no bitterness nor resentment of megachurch pastors or megachurches in Suttle; what I see is a plea that we see that greatness is not the goal but goodness and faithfulness are. There is, Suttle says, one true metric: faithfulness.<\/p>\n
The way of John the Baptist\u2014Suttle says he was Bono, Oprah and Billy Graham rolled up into one man on the shore\u2014who said I must decrease and he must increase. The way of John is the way of faithfulness\u2014do what God has called you to do. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.<\/p>\n
The difference is between pragmatism and faithfulness. Between what works and what is right.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m an unlikely person to write a book like this. I\u2019m not a world-class church leader. I serve a little ragamuffin church of a couple hundred people, twenty or thirty of whom are hard-core alcoholics and addicts who live on the streets, the rest of whom are middle-class suburbanites who struggle every day with what it means to pursue the Shrink way of life in the midst of this world dominated by the upwardly mobile. Most of what I know comes from failure, not success.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
John the Baptist is the way of Shrink<\/em>. The way of Jesus. The way of the cross.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scot McKnight and I noticed a point of resonance in our two most recent books, and thought it would be fun to interact with the other\u2019s work. Specifically, we are attempting to find points of reverberation around the topics of faithfulness, and the church. The following post is Scot\u2019s engagement with my latest book, Shrink. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1268,491,462,1132,297,639,5,296,615,6],"class_list":["post-4107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-a-fellowship-of-differents","tag-church","tag-ecclesiology","tag-faithfulness","tag-jesus-creed","tag-ministry","tag-paperback-theology","tag-scot-mcknight","tag-shrink","tag-tim-suttle"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>Scot McKnight and I noticed a point of resonance in our two most recent books, and thought it would be fun to interact with the other\u2019s work. Specifically, we are attempting to find points of reverberation around the topics of faithfulness, and the church. The following post is Scot\u2019s engagement with my latest book, Shrink<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n