Making Your Church Better
“Making Your Church Better” — I’ve come to realize that this is a touchy subject for a lot of church or missions leaders.
There are many reasons for this touchiness, but two issues are very apparent as I interact with these suddenly threatened pastors, missionaries, elders, and staff members:
“Better” triggers shame and defensiveness. Better asserts that the status quo is imperfect and can be improved. Isn’t this true of any project, organization or endeavor? No true leader should be satisfied with the way things are. Better is the pathway to sustaining success and growth. Better isn’t a personal attack. Better is simply a profession, one that requires more than an opinion, but the courage to believe it’s both necessary and possible.
“Make” triggers panic and control because it means it’s up to us. We’re already too busy, overwhelmed, and drowning with demands on our time. Leaders intuitively know that the one who will make things better is them. The jarring truth is that if leaders don’t engage in the process of making things better, it won’t happen. They’ve settled for the status quo.
I view this as a significant problem with Christian leaders.
I’ve talked with staff members who feared speaking honestly to their Lead Pastor. Reading between the lines, I realized that both of these ideas—better and make—are difficult for most church cultures to embrace. Leaders viewing authority and submission as control words rather than love words, pushed others to fit in, fall in line, and not to seek improvement. Power-driven leaders love passivity in their followers. They encourage it and some demand it.
Churches and missions stuck in their mediocrity don’t enjoy dissatisfaction and don’t want to invest the energy necessary to upgrade operations or re-envision goals and objectives. And so the power structure solidifies a culture of settling for what is and discouraging dreams of what could be.
Church history challenges any settle-for-what-is mindset.
From the birth of the church in Acts, every step forward involved those visionary leaders who responded to the Spirit’s urging to make things better for the cause of Christ.
Leaders need to understand that it’s only our action that is going to make things better. Dead or dying churches won’t make themselves better. Toxic leadership teams won’t make themselves better. Ineffective missions strategies won’t make themselves better.
Until a courageous leader steps in with the confidence only the Spirit gives, better will not just happen.
I believe we leaders always have the opportunity to announce our vision, propose change, and do the hard work of making things better.
Here’s the hard truth about your stewardship as an under-shepherd of the Great Shepherd: It won’t get better until you trust the Lord enough to risk doing what He’s asking you to do to make it better.