Ministry 101 - Dead Churches (2)

Why would I begin writing about things I have learned in ministry by writing about dead churches? It's crazy and no one wants to read about that. That is exactly why I'm writing about it. In my years as a ministry consultant, I encountered too many dead and dying churches that no one either realized were in that state, or didn't care. I care. God cares! We should care!

I love church planting. New churches are great. I've had the privilege to be used by God to help start a few churches. I'll write about that later, but new churches are a lot more fun and exciting than dead or dying churches. They are filled with new life. So why shouldn't we let dead or dying churches go and simply start a new church in its place? Sometimes we need to! However, as any church planter will tell you, starting a new church is extremely difficult, and few make it. It makes sense to make every effort to resurrect a dead or dying church instead of starting a new one. But just like church planting isn't for the faint of heart, either is resurrecting churches. So how is it done? Here are a few steps:

1. Pray

2. Pray

3. Pray. I really mean it. The first three steps are to spend a significant amount of time in fervent, concentrated prayer. This isn't just shooting up a "God help this church" prayer, it is spending hours, days, weeks, on your knees, in tears, pleading with God for His direction and power to accomplish His purpose in that place.

4. Cast vision. Every church and everyone in it must understand, and support, the vision that God has given the church. The church exists to fulfill the great commission (make disciples) and the great commandment (love one another). Colossians 1:28 summarizes this in saying that we are to present everyone complete in Christ. The problem with dead and dying churches is that they have forgotten and ceased fulfilling at least one of these two mandates.

5. Love one-another. Often, the beginning of the end starts with disunity and dysfunction. Infighting and dissension kill the ability of a church to reach the lost. It instantly turns the focus inward from outward. While some d&d (dead and dying) churches love each other, most don't! This is the painful part. Sometimes you have to let people go to get healthy. The easy answer is to fire the pastor, but often it is a handful of people (about 5) that are causing the problems. These people may not even be in official leadership roles, but it is clear that they have a great deal of influence over the church.

6. Be strong, for the Lord your God is with you! It takes strength to confront people. It takes conviction to ask someone to leave the church because they are causing dissension, but sometimes it must be done.

7. Love one-another. I'm talking about Biblical love, not an "us four and no more" love. That is selfish love. True love is given to others. Jesus used the parable of the "Good Samaritan" to show how we need to show love beyond those we want to love.

8. Seek out lost people. People in d&d churches don't know or associate with non-believers. They feel that they need to focus on their growth and faith and non-believers pull them away from God. This is plain disobedience to Jesus' command to make disciples (MT 28:18-20). This is disobedience that needs to be confronted. There is great joy in seeing people come to Christ. If you aren't joyful when this happens, you need some spiritual renewal yourself!

9. Find purpose. Every church has a larger, universal purpose, and a specific individual purpose. Each church must prayerfully discover what unique role God has called it to fulfill in its community.

10. If you want to be alive, live like it! In the body, new cells replaced d&d cells. In the church the same should happen. There should be a fresh look, fresh messages, fresh music. I'm saying you have to spend a ton of money, in fact, you don't necessarily have to spend any money at all. It may simply be an attitude change that brings smiles. Get rid of the look and stench of death! Jesus is alive, live like it!

Most people know these things. They aren't new. They aren't profound beyond the fact that they are Biblical and churches should already be incorporating them. The issue is that many churches aren't doing them! Lazy people or weak leaders can paralyze a church. Growing churches require action. If you won't act, stop fooling yourself and get out, seek Christ to fill you, and energize you before re-entering the battlefield.

Leadership

During my life I have had the opportunity to be in nearly every position and play nearly every role in the church and in business. Here's a few key things that I have learned:

1 Keep it simple! The more complex you make structures, the less likely people are to be willing to support them. Entwined in this is clear and constant communication.

2 Keep lines of authority and responsibility clear. People need to know the chain of command.

3 Hire well! Hire people for skill, experience, creativity, and potential, not for their education, connections, or who they worked for.

4 Clearly define roles. People need to know the expectations, and limits. In this, provide opportunity to grow. What is their path forward to move up?

5 Provide autonomy. Turn people loose (as much as possible) to accomplish their tasks that fulfill the expectations. Don't micromanage it limits trust.

6 Provide authority. Give people as much authority as their position will allow, even a bit more than you are comfortable with (within reason). If they live up to the trust, give them more, you can always pull back if they aren't ready or able to handle it.

7 Hold them accountable. If someone meets expectation, praise them and encourage them. If they aren't measuring up, let them know, provide opportunity for growth, then cut them loose if they still can't get it done.

8 Inspire creativity. Challenge them to accomplish more than they think they are able. There is a fine line between being challenged and being overburdened so be careful here.

9 Serve the people who serve you! Jesus provided this example over and over, we should do the same. What can you do to show them that they are valuable to you better than serving them? More pay and bonuses are nice in any job, but people want to feel needed and appreciated more than anything else. On that note, pay them better than they expect, and be on the upper end of the scale rather than the lower end. That shows value too.

10 Cast vision and reiterate purpose often. Constantly remind people of the vision and purpose for doing what they do. Keep it in front of them. You must also show them that you are striving to accomplish the vision and fulfill the purpose as well.

I hope that these insights are helpful.

We All Need Mentors!

It couldn't have come at a better time in my life. I got a call from one of my mentors who was coming into town. We got to spend last night and most of today with Dennis and Joy, two of the most cherished people in my life besides my immediate family.

Dennis and I have talked through a great many things together. He taught me about pastoral care and hospital visitation. I got to see him endure victoriously the battle with cancer. I was witness many times as he lovingly cared for hurting people (sometimes it was me).

Dennis and I had a brief opportunity to serve in ministry together and enjoyed every minute of it. We wrote small group materials together and we such a great team working through passages.

God knew that I needed to spend time with Dennis, and brought him to me. We were able to talk through some really tough stuff that I have been struggling with. As always, he helped me see things from a different perspective and helped me to figure out the right questions that I need to be asking God.

I think that we all need mentors in life. Believers who are more mature than we are. We need people who have been in the battle of life and faith longer than we have. I am so thankful for people like Jim, Ben, Marty, Glen, and Dennis. These are men who God has used to teach me and to lead me not only in ministry, but in life. Praise God for mentors! I pray that one day I will be listed on someone else's list of those who impacted their life as these have impacted mine.

Teamwork Works!

Praise God it's Easter! For me today, it means more than it ever has before. I am not talking about the resurrection of Christ. There is no way to ever quantify the meaning of this day in spiritual terms. The reason it meant so much is that it ended what was perhaps the most difficult week I have had in twenty years of ministry. So many tough things happened this week that I would get a writer's cramp detailing them all. Each time something happened, I could only think that Easter would soon be here. It was a goal, and it was a survival strategy. I knew that if I could hold it together until Sunday, everthing would be alright.

Now I know I could get all theological and spiritual and say that yes, I know I had the same strength from God available to me each day and each moment this week, and trust me when I say that I prayed a lot and truly relied on God's strength to carry me. I looked forward to Easter precisely because I knew that I could call on God's power each and every moment. What Jesus did on Easter provided the opportunity to rely on Him. I looked forward to Easter as I do every year because it's a day to focus an entire day on what God has done for us.

So, today, was a special day. It means God carried me through the week. I thought often through the week of the line from something I saw that T.D. Jakes did. In it, he says, "It's Friday (the day filled with horrible events culminating in the crucifixion of Jesus), but Sunday's comin.'"

So why is this titled "Teamwork Works"? It is because God used teamwork to carry me through the week. Every time something happened this week, people stepped-up, stepped-in, and stepped-out in action. This week for me was a powerful testimony of God's body, the church, at work. I saw it exemplified in our amazing staff over and over. I saw it in volunteers who went far beyond expectation. I saw it in strangers in the body of Christ (who aren't really strangers, I just didn't know them before), who took care of things and offered kind words of encouragement at just the right times.

Humanly speaking, I was overwhelmed this week. In Mark's blog he said it best that in one situation this week that he and I shared, we had nothing to offer. We could only mourn with a hurting family. The week was like that seemingly every day. By the time I went to bed last night (early), I was so physically, emotionally, and spiritually exhausted I could barely function, and I knew that Sunday with three services and tear down it would be just as exhausting. But, it would be Easter, and I can accomplish anything through Christ who strengthens me! I tried to take a nap this afternoon, but I couldn't sleep. It was a combination of being too tired and excited.

I was excited because today was everything that I had hoped it would be. The services were off the hook! Greg's message was great, the sound was great, the videos were great, the worship was great, everything looked and worked great, and the results? After the 10:00 service alone (which was standing room only), we handed out 9 Fresh Start packets! That's changed lives! That's why Easter matters! After all the tough stuff this week, today just flat out ROCKED!

Here's my tak-a-ways from the weekend:
1. Teamwork works! I need to trust and rely on the various teams around me more fully. This is huge for me because I am a "just do it and get it done because I know what I want" type of Guy. That is so foolish! This week showed me so clearly that if I simply let go and trust, things work out so much better.

2. Some weeks are like that! This week was so tough. It contained some things that no one including pastors should ever have to take part in. While it included frustrations, I never wanted to give up, I was truly able to focus on the prize, which for me was celebrating Easter.

3. We need to carry each other's burdens. Especially in marriage. This week was tough for me, and it showed in Paige. Paige went through some tough things, and they impacted me. We were able to be strength for each other. Fortunately, it wasn't just us, there were others who carried our burdens and strengthened us so that we could overcome the trials of the week.

4. God is awesome! I already knew that, but I love it when He shows me that again. It isn't fourth in priority because it's actually in all of the above.

Vision

Vision - It's easy to have, but not so easy to pass on to others! The Bible says that without vision, the people parish. I love the title of a book I read in college that says, "If you don't know where you're going, you'll end up someplace else."

Getting others to grasp and embrace the vision God has given you is the essential part of leadership. It is also the most difficult part of leadership I believe.

I have realized that I need to do a better job in this area. I know where I want my ministry teams to go, but they don't. I can't lead them if I don't bring them with me! It's so true that if you say you are a leader, but turn around and find that no one is following, than you're not really a leader.

To focus more on this, I'm planning to begin doing these things this year.

1. Meet with my teams once per quarter to hear from them, and share vision.
2. I am also planning an update note of some type every month.
3. I will also pray more for the teams in this area.
4. Continue to pray for God to continually update and clarify the vision He has given me.
5. Re-read some great leadership books I have, and read a couple of new ones. Some are actually secular business management books, but they are right on when it comes to leadership in general and easily applicable to leadership in the church. I'll blog on them as I read them.