Leadership Reflections

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” Ambrose Redmoon

Over the last few weeks of travel, I visited 26 CCCC member charities across the country and asked how things are going.  There is no doubt that the economy has affected many charities, but the most notable observation I had from these visits was the lack of fear displayed by ministry leaders.  We are all human after all, and fear is a natural emotion that strikes everyone, even Paul (1 Cor 2:3 and 2 Cor 7:5).  Now, I’m sure that if leaders do have fear they try very hard not to display it, but I didn’t get a whiff of anything even approaching fear.  Many of these ministries have been affected by falling donations, grants and  earned income, and some have had to trim back their programs and reduce their staffing levels.  These ministry leaders have had to make tough decisions!  The topic of this post is how Christian leaders should handle fear.

Before going further, you should know the good news from a recent CCCC survey of 635 Canadian Christian charities.  In the current economy, 32% have had an increase in donations and 25% are unchanged from the same five month period a year ago.  A little more than half of the rest have had a decrease of less than 10%.

While fear is a natural emotion, it is important that it be mastered.  When Moses continually rebuts God’s call because of fear, we discover that finally ”the anger of the LORD burned against Moses” (Exo 4:14).  God expects us to deal with fear.  Moses did, and at the end of his life he was able to say with confidence to his people, “The LORD himself goes before you and will be with you; he will never leave you nor forsake you.  Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged” (Deut 31:8).

My daughter taught me something about mastering fear.  It was really hard to watch.  She was riding an ex-racehorse, and the horse was speeding up as he went over every jump.  After the first jump her feet were out of the stirrups, she hung on as she went over the second jump, but as he continued to speed up and round the far end of the arena, she slowly and inexorably began to slide off the horse.  As the horse rounded the other end she was flung right into the wall.  I heard the crack as her helmet hit the wood and I was out of my seat.  But she got up right away and started to walk back to the horse, who was now standing still.  After a few minutes of recovering from a bad shake-up, she was back in the saddle again.  She had to face her fear and get back on the horse!  Sometimes as leaders we get thrown by something and land on our keisters (that’s a technical, anatomical term!).  Like my daughter, somehow we have to get up, face our fear, and get back in the saddle.  But how?

Challenging circumstances that cause fear can grow gradually over time or crash into your world quite suddenly, but either way Dan Allender says in his book Leading with a Limp that such crises ”force leaders to make a choice — either to risk and suffer with courage or to crumble under the weight of fear and threatening circumstances.”  He points out that every crisis has both an external and an internal dimension.  The circumstances are external, but “every crisis has the effect of revealing something about the leader’s character and inner life.”

Courage is the internal resource we draw upon in the face of fear.  Oswald Sanders defines courage in his book Spiritual Leadership as that which enables us to “encounter difficulty or danger without fear or discouragement.”  Where does courage come from?  I think it comes from remembering your call, your mission, your past experience of God and your present relationship with God.

Your Call

Reggie McNeal, in A Work of Heart: Understanding How God Shapes Spiritual Leaders, says you should be driven by your call, not your fear.  Fear can manifest itself in many ways, including discouragement and self-doubt.  I was crushed by both for a time and I came through okay by remembering the specific call of God on my life (I talked about how I was called in the post Discerning Your Call).  I am determined that I will not allow any person or any thing to keep me from what God has called me to.  One of the authors I’ve referred to mentions David’s sense of personal destiny (related to God’s call) as a source for his courage during his kingship. Assuming that you and your board still agree that you are called to leadership, nothing should be allowed to frighten or discourage you away from that call.  Whatever the circumstances, God wants you where you are, and that is enough for me.  Perhaps there are things you can learn from adversity to further develop yourself, but don’t let anything stifle your call.

Your Mission

When circumstances threaten your organization, fear should drive you back to your ministry’s mission.  I experienced some fear once as I considered various threats in a SWOT analysis, until I brought to mind that we are working diligently on the portion of God’s mission that he has assigned to CCCC.  If we stay true to this mission, we are doing the Lord’s work and the Lord will look after his own.  (This is why I have reservations about traditional strategic planning as detailed in another post; strategic planning has its place, but keep it in its place!)

Rather than dreaming up ways to respond to the external environment that would be only peripheral to our mission, I erased the fear of threat by focusing on the mission given to CCCC by God.  Don’t let fear distract you from your mission!  As long as we faithfully perform our work to accomplish God’s purpose for us, we will survive.

Some of the people I visited over the last few weeks took their reduced resources as a sign to re-evaluate their ministries in light of their mission and strip away some of the good things they were doing that were not central to their mission.  When you have lots of money it is easy to add programs, but are they the best use of your resources?  Scarcity forces us to revisit our mission and our priorities, and make choices. I believe our ministry’s mission is protected by God, but not necessarily the means we have chosen to fulfill it.  I am committed to our mission, not our means.  The leaders I spoke with all believe that as a result of the pruning they have done, they are well-positioned to proceed effectively with their mission.

Your Past Experience of God

Read again how David got the courage to face Goliath.  When the whole army of Israel trembled and fled in fear, David went out alone to do battle against him.  Where did his courage come from?

David said to Saul, “Your servant has been keeping his father’s sheep.  When a lion or a bear came and carried off a sheep from the flock, I went after it, struck it and rescued the sheep from its mouth.  When it turned on me, I seized it by its hair, struck it and killed it.  Your servant has killed both the lion and the bear; this uncircumcised Philistine will be like one of them, because he has defied the armies of the living God.  The LORD who delivered me from the paw of the lion and the paw of the bear will deliver me from the hand of this Philistine” (1 Sam 17:34-37).

I know what God has already done in and through me, just as you know the same about yourself, and those memories give all of us a rational basis upon which to take heart and be courageous.  Reflect on your experience of God over a lifetime and you will undoubtedly find places where he was training you for leadership.  Those lessons become a rich resource from which to draw courage when you need it.  The principle of God working in us in small things to prepare us for big things is an important lesson from the Parable of the Talents.

Your Present Relationship with God

We discover in John 20:19 that the doors of the place where the disciples were staying were shut tight because they were afraid of the Jews, yet in Acts 4:8-13 we see Peter and John confidently testifying to the leaders of the Jews.  What was the difference?  They were now full of the Holy Spirit, and we know from 2 Tim 1:7 that he gives us a spirit of power and not timidity.  Fifty-seven times in Scripture we are told “Do not fear” and seventeen times “Be strong and courageous!”

Keep your relationship with God vital and fresh.  Remember that Isaiah spoke prophetically to God saying that “You will keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you” (Isaiah 26:3).  Psalm 118:6 affirms that “the Lord is for me; I will not fear” and of course Paul gave us that great builder of courage, “I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Rom 8:38).  Nothing can prevent you from fulfilling God’s purpose except what you allow to come between you and God.

Benediction

Ambrose Redmoon, who gave us that great quote at the top, was a New Age beatnik who lived the last thirty years of his life as a paraplegic due to a car accident.  He must have learned a lot about courage by living so long with his adversity, but whatever his source of courage was, it pales to the source of our courage.  We have a divine call and mission, coupled with our experience of God and relationship with him.  When God calls us into his service to fulfill his mission, he strengthens and equips us to fulfill his purpose for us and our ministries.  So,

May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen. Hebrews 13:20-21

My hero-in-the-faith, John Richardson, was called to ministry in 1959 at the age of 47.  This wasn’t quite a mid-life career change since today he is a very healthy 97 year-old, but it was close to mid-life.  (CCCC members will remember John as the banquet speaker at the 2007 conference.)  John was a senior manager at a textile company and could see that the industry had nowhere to go but to decline.  While quietly looking for another management job, he was asked by the pastor of London Gospel Temple to come and help him at the church.  John had no plans at all to enter ministry.  He had no Bible college education or any other experience that would qualify him to be a pastor other than he was a man on fire for God.  A call to ministry was really out of the blue for him.  But when he considered his options, John discerned that God was indeed calling him to leave secular employment and enter full-time pastoral ministry.  He prepared his family for a change in lifestyle, resigned from the textile company, and moved to London, Ontario.  Pastor John served in several churches over the next twenty years, but never sought a church in his career; all his pastorates were offered to him.  I met John in 1981 when I joined the last church that asked him to come and help.  He retired while at that church and he still attends every week to this day.  This gifted pastor discerned his call to ministry based on love for God, personal circumstances and opportunity. 

This will be a long post.  It has taken a lot of time to write it and I don’t want to break it up into two posts because it is one big thought.  So please be patient as I think you’ll find it helpful.  There are learning points below, but the story of my call precedes them in order to demonstrate that your call doesn’t have to be just like someone else’s and so that I can refer to my story in the learning points. 

My call to ministry was not like John’s.  I knew from my preteen years, I think almost to the time I was saved, that somehow God was going to use me some day to serve his church.  I don’t know why I thought that, I just did.  I continued to have that thought many times over the years, but I had no idea how one serves the whole church.  A church or a denomination, I understood, but the broader church?  I thought it quite presumptuous to even think about it!  Who am I?  So I just went on with my life.  But on May 25th 2001, I asked God a question, ”Why have you given me so much vision for my church, for my clients, for everyone around me and nothing for me?”  The answer was so clear that I pulled over to the side of the road in shock.  I knew instantly that God had given me a call and the call was still valid this many years later!  I went home and told my wife I was going to go to seminary to prepare for whatever God had in mind for me.  She instantly agreed without reservation (now that’s confirmation!).  I met with trusted people from my church who supported my sense of call to ministry.  (Thank you Marshall, Jim, Ray, Laurie and Walt.)  Two weeks later I was enrolled at Tyndale Seminary and two weeks after that I started my first two courses during the summer term.  

I was not then aware of a call to CCCC, I was just being obedient in taking the next step in preparation to serve God.  When my wife and senior pastor saw the job ad for the executive director of CCCC, they both recommended that I apply.  God orchestrated events in a marvelous way during the next six months.  The key for me was a one-week spiritual retreat that was part of my MDiv program.  The issue I brought to the retreat was whether I should pastor a church or lead CCCC, which had been offered to me subject to one more interview.  I thought one was a test for the other!  The spiritual director said something life-changing and liberating.  “Why do you think God has only one perfect plan for you?  Don’t you think in his graciousness God may give you two opportunities, equally pleasing to him, and then take delight in watching you make your choice?”  He suggested a prayerful walk in the woods during which I realized that neither ministry option was more spiritual than the other, they just fulfilled different purposes in God’s plan.  I came home and conferred with Marshall Eizenga, then associate pastor at my church, who had watched my spiritual formation for fifteen years by that time.  He confirmed the appropriateness of CCCC for me.  So my call was discerned based on a clear call to prepare for something (I didn’t know what) coupled with opportunity and guidance from several people that all aligned with a long-standing feeling I had as to God’s plan for my future.  The other half of the equation is that the CCCC board independently discerned that I was called to lead this great ministry.  My denominational advisor also agreed it was a good use of my gifts.  We were in agreement and God’s call was confirmed in community.

As I travel for CCCC and visit our members, I always ask people how they got into the ministry that they are now in.  And every time, I get treated to a unique story of how God worked in someone’s life.  I’ve never heard the same story twice, and since God works in different ways with different people, I don’t believe there is a formula for discerning your call.  What we learn from those who have gone before us is: 1) to be open to God working through us in unexpected ways; and 2) that we discern his leadership by engaging in Christian spiritual practices and spiritual reflection.  So here are some observations you may find helpful. 

• God’s thoughts are not our thoughts and his ways are not our ways (Isa 55:8).  You cannot plan your way into a call from God.  If you are asking God to bless your plans, you are probably not going to live out your highest and best purpose that God has in mind for you.  At one point while at seminary, I thought God had forgotten me, so I helped him by getting some job interviews with Christian ministries.  At one interview, the Holy Spirit clearly indicated to me “This is not what this is all about.  Withdraw all your applications!”  My plans were frustrating God’s plans.  His direction was to stop planning, sit back, and watch what he would do.  I would do nothing but respond to what others initiated.  It reminded me of the truism “Let go and let God.”  Experiencing God is a great book that says God never asks people to dream up what they should do for him.  You can’t call yourself.  You are called.  Are you asking God to bless your plans, or are you seeking God’s plans?      
• What if God seems to be silent about your call?  Whenever there is silence, the standard advice is to check for sin first and deal with that.  And if sin is not the issue, then keep doing the last thing God told you to do before the silence and wait for him to initiate change.  And lastly, if you’ve never felt you had a personal call, perhaps the general call that all believers have is your only call (in which case, see the next bullet point).  While at seminary I had no understanding of what kind of ministry God was leading me into.  God seemed quite quiet.  All I knew was that I was done with secular work.   I also didn’t know how I could finish the degree as a full-time student with no income.  Yet in spite of all the things I did not know, I did know with certainty that God wanted me in that MDiv program and that is what I hung on to.  I said to myself many times, “But this one thing I know…”  It was the last call that I had from God that gave me the fortitude to persevere and push through some tough circumstances.  
• There are different kinds of call.  A corporate call is shared by all believers while an individual call is for one person alone.  Os Guiness says the ordinary (or corporate) call is to a life response to “Follow me!”  A special (or individual) call is a clear communication from God to a task.  Some people have no sense of individual call, in which case they live their lives following the call they share with all other Christians, believing that God will use them ad hoc as they live their lives.  They are fully living a called life by doing so.  I don’t know that we can say everyone needs an individual call.  I do question Guiness’s definition of the individual call as a call to a task.  I prefer to think that God calls us to a particular part of his mission.  I feel called to the mission of equipping God’s church, more particularly the leadership of churches and Christian agencies.  I am currently fulfilling that call through my role at CCCC because the board and I both feel that this role, with me in it, serves both my personal mission and CCCC’s organizational mission.  If my time at CCCC ends, I am sure I would still feel called to serve the church but God would be leading me to another means of doing so.  In my opinion, discerning your call usually means discerning two things: 1) what mission you are called to; and 2) with whom you are called to do it. 
• Sometimes we are in circumstances that we don’t understand.  At one point I was really, really mad at God because I was doing everything for him and he was doing nothing for me.  I came home late one night on a real spiritual high from a three day retreat of silence and solitude to discover I had received a fax from someone whom I had forgiven in my heart for some really bad behaviour a few years before.  The person came to mind during the retreat and I wrote out a script about how I would tell the person of my forgiveness.  So when I read the fax and saw the same bad behaviour all over again, I lost it with God.  I composed my own imprecatory psalms that night!!!  But God was big enough to bear my complaint and revealed to me that these circumstances were building character, to help me become the person he needed.  Had I truly forgiven the person in my heart?  This was something of a test.  Far from doing nothing for me, God was actively working to make me more useful to him.  When you don’t understand your circumstances, ask God to show you his perspective on your circumstances and follow through on what you learn.  If circumstances do not support what you feel called to do, then it might not be the right time, so continue doing what you are already doing. 
• Os Guiness, in his book The Call: Finding And Fulfilling The Central Purpose Of Your Life, says that you should do what you are.  He believes that God’s call is normally in line with the gifts that you already have.  “Normally” is an important concession, because God might call you to something outside of your abilities and interests, and give you the passion, grace and gifts needed once you start work.  I’ve heard many stories where this has happened and people are doing things they never thought they would have the slightest interest or skill to do.  Much of my life has been fighting against who God made me to be, in particular a voracious reader and researcher.  We tend to devalue the things that come easiest to us and admire in others what we find difficult to do ourselves.  There are many reasons why I feel my role at CCCC suits God’s call on my life, but one of the unexpected benefits is that it also allows me to use the talents and interests that come easiest to me and that I had devalued: my love for reading, researching, thinking, reflecting and writing.  Does God give gifts to support a call or does he call according to the gifts he has already given?  I suspect the answer is both, but normally you already have what you need.  Perhaps it just needs developing.
• Sometimes when people feel called to a mission they mistakenly think they are also called to create or lead an organization that pursues that mission.  For example, someone might feel a call to full-time evangelism, but it is a very different thing to be called to be an evangelist than to be called to lead an evangelism ministry.  And it is quite a different thing to be called to lead an existing organization and to be called to create a new one from scratch.  An evangelist and an executive director have two very different sets of skills and gifts.  It also takes vastly different skills and gifts to build on what someone else has founded than to be a ministry entrepreneur.  Paul recognized these distinctions (1 Cor 3:6).  So, are you called to do the work itself or to lead an organization that enables others to do the work?
• In The Soul of Ministry: Forming Leaders For God’s People, Ray Anderson says, that in deciding what ministry to do or how to make decisions, don’t be guided by the past but by Gods eschatological preference.  In the midst of the now and the not yet, the Holy Spirit is guiding us to be the church Christ wants when he returns, not a copy of the one he left.  Therefore, you should expect that your call will contribute to the church moving forward in some way (or at least the particular segment of it that you will lead).  Being oriented to the future will help stimulate creativity while discerning your call.  Gary Harbaugh echoes Anderson’s future-orientation.  He wrote in Pastor as Person that pastors are called by God to lead God’s people into the future. This involves choices about change that must include risk. Don’t follow your instincts, he says, follow your faith.  You aren’t called to maintain a church but to lead it forward within the context of our culture and society.  What attracted me to CCCC was the realization that it already had a great ministry, but there was a lot of room to expand its work.  At one interview, the board said my mandate is to explore to the edges the full mandate of CCCC.  This is a ministry that is not resting on its laurels but seeking God’s direction as it strives to fulfill its mission.  Perfect!  I can, with God’s help, lead CCCC into that future.
• It is crucial that other Christians who are close to you are part of the discernment process.  You might get away with missing out on one of the above points, but this one is critical.  The corroboration of your call by other mature believers is central to correctly discerning God’s call to ministry.  We serve, even if in different ministries, as fellow-workers.  We bless each other through the laying on of hands, prayers of dedication and so on.  We work in community, not as lone rangers.  Some people think they are called to ministry leadership, but if no one else supports that understanding, you must seriously question whether you have properly heard from God.  I tested my call with my wife, my pastor, my prayer partners, some mature Christian friends and a few others.  Along the way I had guidance from my professors at Tyndale that was invaluable.  There is wisdom in receiving advice from counselors (Prov 13:10). 

So, assuming God is calling you to some particular part of his mission, he will do it in some way that is likely to be unique to you.  You’ll have the delight of seeing God give you your own story of how you were called.  But these tips should help you be ready for the call when it comes.  May God bless you richly with a satisfying life of service, whatever your call.

Would you like to share the circumstances of your call?  I’d like to hear it.

“We had been around for seven years and had reached our capacity organizationally.  We either had to stop, cancel half our programs, compromise in some way or hire fundraising staff so we could raise more money so we could hire more staff.  Or, we could look for someone bigger who could do all that and let me play to my strengths.”  Darian Kovacs, founder of CampusFire, speaking at the 2008 CCCC Conference

Darian is a high energy, ministry entrepreneur.  He built his organization from scratch to one that had its programs in over 1,200 schools across Canada – all with 3 staff.  He faced the question that every entrepreneur faces at some point:  Do I stay independent or should I find an organization that will take my idea to the next level?

Darian realized that his only viable option to grow and further fulfill his mission was to join somebody bigger.  The solution ended up being to connect with an organization, City in Focus, that can do all the administration, and bring in a new leader, Jason Ballard, to take the ministry to the next level.  Darian is now with a software company developing tools for charities to use.  With the proper infrastructure, Jason can now concentrate on what God has called him to do, instead of having to look after all the organizational needs.

Darian’s story provides a good illustration of why you might want to associate with a larger ministry.  And sometimes, to fit in with a larger organization you first have to go it alone and prove the viability of the ministry. 

So when you have an idea for a new ministry, what factors might influence your choice about going it alone or joining another ministry right at the start? 

One factor is theological and another is discerning your call.  I’m going to write about discerning your call in the next post, so here we’ll just consider the theological factor.  (I’ll also write another time about how a church or agency can decide whether to create its own new program or work through someone else.)

A fundamental characteristic of the people of God is our life in community.  Missiologist George W. Peters once said that “Christianity is basically a religion of relationships.”  The theological priority is to be in community with other believers.  It seems reasonable therefore that we should first ask, “Who can I do this ministry with?”  The bias would be towards working with a ministry that already exists rather than starting a new one.

The importance of being in community was made clear in an attitude survey I conducted for my doctoral thesis on church-agency relations (which I am now converting to a book).  Almost 400 pastors completed an attitude survey about parachurch ministries and they revealed a strong undercurrent of suspicion about why people start their own ministries.  One pastor captured the feelings of this group with a very simple judgment about agencies: “Most of them are scamps!”  Pastors claimed that:

• There is sin in the lives of agency founders, including arrogance, greed, pride, selfishness and laziness;
• Agency leaders refuse to be team-players and want to avoid accountability;
• Agency staff circumvent “the system” by sidestepping a theological degree;
• Agency staff have personal agendas and see agency work as an easy job and a get-rich-quick scheme;
• Agency staff are arrogant, narcissistic lone rangers with high egos; and
• Agencies attract people who are angry with the church.

So check your motivations for going the independent route.  Do any of the above complaints prick your conscience?  If so, think again.  Assuming you decide to to create a new ministry with a clear conscience, my research also shows how to overcome these negative attitudes and have excellent relations with pastors.  It really can be done!

Your options for working with others include working with your church, your denomination or with a Christian agency.  Which to approach will depend on what the new ministry idea is, how broadly you have to reach to get the necessary financial and human resources, and perhaps the geographical scope of your ministry.  Creating your own independent ministry could be a suitable choice if:

• There is agreement that you are called and gifted but, for resource reasons or differences in priorities, your church or denomination is not able or willing to support the ministry; or
• The ministry will have to draw from the wider church beyond your denomination to get enough gifted people to do the work; or
• One of the purposes of the ministry includes fostering Christian unity by having Christians from different denominations work together in one organization;
  and
• There is no existing agency willing to take on the proposed ministry.

If you are already independent, you could remain independent and work cooperatively with another ministry or you could merge with them and become part of a larger organization.

Either way, the way forward is to look for existing ministries that are already doing something close to what you want to do and see if there are any good fits.  If working with another organization is not a fit (and you have agreement from others that your logic is sound), then you can proceed to start a new Christian agency in good spirit.

If I told you that we were going to visit a church called The Chapel on Fir Hill, what would you expect?  Well, I did visit this church (about 1990) and when I arrived at the church, I was shocked to say the least!  This ‘chapel’ turned out to be a 209,000 s.f. building and there were 5,000 people in the church the day that I visited it. At the time, I was suspicious of large churches and thought small to mid-sized churches were best.  This church gave me a whole new appreciation for the value of very large ministries.  Here’s why.

The Chapel served more meals in a week than any restaurant in Akron.  They had a feeding program for everyone it seemed.  They had an entire three storey WING just for youth ministry.  They didn’t have a singles group; they had singles groups for single and widowed, single and divorced, single and looking, and single and happy to be single.  They didn’t just have a support group for people dealing with issues.  They had support groups for cancer (three different kinds of cancer, as I recall), for grief, for broken families and on and on.  And the library!  They had a very large, impressive library, but then in an adjacent room were all the resources a pastor could ever want, including a rare book collection with at least one first edition of a 200 or 300 year old commentary.  It was AMAZING.

Regional churches such as this one are large enough that they can specialize and provide programs that few smaller churches could possibly provide.  (In 2003, 74% of all Canadian evangelical churches had fewer than 150 attendees.)  The large concentration of people enabled the church to move beyond providing basic services to offering very specific, targetted services that met specialized needs.  It is, in fact, a resource to all the churches in Akron.  And that is an advantage to being big.  I never again felt that large churches were out of place.  Large churches and agencies help the church fulfill its mission in ways that smaller organizations can’t.  Large and small churches both have their places.

Very few Christian ministries in Canada are large.  In my last post I gave some statistics showing how small most Canadian ministries are.  Based on the 22,000 T3010’s for Christian ministries that we have in our database at CCCC, here are some stats for the larger ministries:

• Only 1,179 ministries (6%) report more than $1 million in total revenue, and only 96 (0.6%) have more than $10 million
  • As a matter of interest, about half of the ministries with more than $1 million are members of CCCC (and all but 14 of the ones over $10 million are members)*
• Only 6.5% report ten or more employees, and only 317 (1.4%) report having more than 30
  • I’m highly suspicious of this number because a huge number of charities leave the line for employees blank.  Do they have no employees or are they not filling the form out correctly?  Nevertheless, the stats are what they are

Here are some of the advantages that large ministries provide to the mission of God and some of the responsibilities that go with their size.  It is possible that some smaller ministries may have some of these benefits too, but it is not likely that very many would.

• A small ministry works hard just to run its programs, but then it also has to fundraise, do all the administration and look after the myriad of other things that have to happen to make the ministry work.  (This is one reason why the CCCC exists – to help charities of all sizes with these supporting functions so they can concentrate more on their core missions!)  A larger ministry not only has the staff to do all of that, but it can also have staff who work on the ministry rather than in the ministry.  I got that idea from a secular business writer, Michael Gerber, who wrote The E-myth Revisited – required reading for any entrepreneur, including ministry entrepreneurs.  I’m not completely sold on everything he writes in the book, but I do think he’s got a gem of an idea as it applies to organizational leadership!  Larger ministries can have people with the time to think deeply about their mission and become thought-leaders in their fields.  In a ministry that overlaps with the secular sphere’s interests (such as relief work), they can speak out and be respected in the public sphere.
• Larger ministries have the capacity and infrastructure to take on a leadership role in much larger projects than most ministries could handle.  In overseas development work, for example, their ability to handle large, comprehensive projects that cover a region and not just a neighbourhood gives them credibility that may open doors to leverage Christian donations with government funding.  Rather than dealing with fifty small organizations, government funding agencies can deal with one or two large ones.
• Not only do large ministries have the people to handle larger projects, they also have the ability to raise significantly more funds than a small ministry can, and therefore can respond to more complex, expensive opportunities than a small ministry can.  There are a number of very large inner-city missions across Canada that I’ve toured that have developed some very exciting and comprehensive programs, but they required millions of dollars to implement them.
• While large ministries undoubtedly have more management overhead, good management results in more efficient operations.  And since there are more programs to allocate the overhead to, a large ministry is likely more efficient than a number of small ministries each running just a few programs, especially when one evaluates outcomes rather than simply outputs.
• Beneficiaries benefit from large ministries too.  Looking again at a large inner-city mission, it can provide its beneficiaries with a complete solution, such as a shelter combined with training for job skills and addiction counselling.
• With size comes responsibility (Luke 12:38).  Their size makes large ministries a highly visible witness to the world of Christian love and compassion at work.  This may be a side of Christianity that many people aren’t aware of, and these ministries may be the only Christian witness these people encounter.  Large ministries should make sure their Christian identity is known.
• A corollary of the last point is that since they do have such high public visibility, they will be seen by the public as representative of Christian ministries.  This means that all the more care must be taken by large ministries to protect the reputation of our faith.  If their practices are unbecoming a Christian ministry, all Christian ministries are discredited to a degree because of our shared identification with Jesus Christ.  So for this reason alone, even if there were no biblical basis for accountability to the body of Christ (which there is), they are accountable to us (and, of course, to the Lord himself!).
• Christian agencies provide a means for people to work together across denominational boundaries.  They provide “neutral territory” based on a common belief in the essentials of the Christian faith.  They are therefore a powerful witness to the unity of the people of God.  The large ministries, which are more likely to have a broad cross-section of the church represented among their staff and volunteers, should be sure to add to their primary mission a secondary mission of demonstrating the unity that can be achieved while respecting the diversity of denominational distinctives.  At every opportunity, I tell reporters and others that the CCCC membership reflects a broad cross-section of our faith and not just a few particular denominations.

So both large and small ministries have something to contribute to the work of the church.  This begs the question, if I have an idea for a new ministry, should I start my own or try to get an existing ministry to take it on?  I’ll address that in the next post.

* I revised these stats after looking at the actual list produced by the database.  There were, in fact, a number of non-Christian charities included in the stats as originally published in this post.

My wife’s family was a bluegrass gospel band and classical music was not part of their repertoire.  So when I bought tickets for us to see Die Fledermaus, a comic opera by Johann Strauss (in English), she told me this would be her first experience of a live, professional orchestra.  To whet her appetite, I played a record (yes, this was 1983) with the Overture over and over again during the weeks leading up to the event.  I think this is the most beautiful overture ever written!  Right up there with the most romantic overture ever written – Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet (part 1 and part 2).  The strings just make your heart soar! “Sigh!” And, of course, the most exciting overture is Tchaikovsky’s 1812 (part 1 and part 2 – complete with pyrotechnics)!  There, I’ve just given you about a forty-five minute, very delightful concert.  But I digress.

I remember that as the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony orchestra took their seats in the pit my wife expressed surprise at how small it was (about thirty people I think, a lot fewer than the number in the You Tube performance I linked to above).  She imagined that unmic’d orchestras must have a lot more people to get the rich sound that was on the record.  And then, only a few bars into the overture, she whispered in amazement “That sounds just like the record!!!”  Yes, a small group of people produced a very large sound.  In fact, they sounded just like a ‘real’ orchestra!

It’s amazing what a small group can do that is out of all proportion to their size.  Think about the dozen apostles.  About Paul and his missionary team.  A small group can change the world!  One of my staff members said that at CCCC, “we are a small team doing big things.”  I love that thought!

The dream of many small ministries, while often not stated, is to become a big ministry.  At CCCC, we have close to 10% of all Christian ministries as members, and I don’t see why it shouldn’t be 100%!  Thinking like this, though, focuses your attention on how small you are now.  And then you run the risk of wondering if you are really accomplishing anything as a small ministry.  This angst could become an impediment to your current success.  I’d like to say a few encouraging words to the smaller ministries of Canada (next post I’ll say something to the larger ministries).  What I’m going to say could apply to larger ministries too, but they have to work a lot harder than smaller ministries to get these advantages.

The fact is that Christian ministries in Canada are very small.  Based on the 22,000 T3010’s for Christian ministries that we have in our database at CCCC (and assuming they are correctly filled out):

• 80% have less than $300,000 in total revenue, and about half have less than $100,000
• 80% have 4 or fewer employees, and about half have exactly one staff member
  • 105 report no employees at all (just volunteers)
  • 16% say they have two employees
  • 93.5% have 9 or fewer paid staff

Given our small size, here are some things to remember:

• God delights in working through the unlikely, which means he likes to work with the small group that the world might not pay attention to.  In Deut. 7:7-8 Moses says to Israel, “The LORD did not set his love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you….”  God did not take the larger nations of Egypt, Assyria or Babylon as his people; he took a people and made them his people, not because of their might, their size or their importance in the world, but just because he loved them.  You don’t have to be big for God to work through you.  Work at your ministry with all you’ve got, knowing that God works through underdogs like a young shepherd boy, a group of country-bumpkin Galileans (at least according to the priests of Jerusalem), and a timid young pastor named Timothy.
• God likes to work in ways that make it clear it is him who is the source of success, not humans.  The best example of this is in Judges 7, where the LORD says to Gideon, “The people who are with you are too many for me to give Midian into their hands, for Israel would become boastful, saying, ‘My own power has delivered me.’”  The group of 22,000 men gets whittled down to 300, an appropriately small number to prove that they are fighting under the power of God and not under their own strength.  Although a small ministry, and maybe because you are a small ministry, God may use you to demonstrate his activity in our world.  When the job is so big that you can’t do it, then you know that your accomplishments are God’s.  So work hard, knowing that God is working beside you and around you in ways you may not even know, but be assured he will accomplish his purposes for calling you into ministry.
• Being a small ministry, you are much more likely to think carefully about which programs and services to continue offering.  You can’t afford to carry anything forward just because it’s part of your routine.  You can’t throw money or people at your opportunities, since you don’t have the capacity to do that, so you must choose carefully how to use the precious resources you have, pruning old programs to make way for new programs.  By always focussing on the best use of your limited resources, you will likely have a very effective and efficient ministry.
• You are more likely to find creative ways to stretch your influence, by partnering with others or drawing on volunteers, because you have to.  My first boss, Richard Adair, believed the secret to success as a small entrepreneur is to ride the coat-tails of a larger company.  They do the heavy work of acquiring the customer, for example, and you simply provide the add-on to the sale.  As a small ministry, your calling might be to serve specialized, small niches that the larger organizations have missed while focussing on the more general and broader needs.  You might be a specialty add-on to the services provided by larger organizations.
• Small ministries don’t have the resources to develop a bureaucracy, so it is easier to have a creative entrepreneurial environment.  Small ministries can be the ’skunk works’ of Christian ministry, the testing ground for new ideas.  Encourage innovation.
• As a small organization, you will probably be able to respond quicker to issues or changes in the environment.  You can be fast on your feet and quick to exploit new opportunities.  Create an organizational culture that supports change.
• In a flat organization, you can communicate easier with your staff than a large organization can, and you can also involve them in decisions and planning that they might not experience in a large ministry.  Staff will likely have greater variety in their work because the jobs have to be broader in scope to make up for the limited number of employees.  In addition, you will likely empower your team more and delegate more to them (out of necessity), thus giving you an advantage in hiring people because they will be able to use more of their talents and have more influence over their work than elsewhere.
• The environment of a small ministry is very motivational in and of itself for your team members because all of them are very close to the ministry’s results and they can see the fruit of their labour for themselves.  There is nothing like appreciative feedback to spur you on.  It is astonishing how many compliments the CCCC gets, and I make sure that all the staff share the compliments with the team so that we can all be encouraged by them.

As with any ministry, don’t measure your success in terms of growth or size, but in terms of how well you are fulfilling your mission.  God created your ministry to assist with his mission, so progressively fulfilling the specific part of his mission that you are called to serve is the way you should assess your success.

Finally, when you feel you are small and struggling along by yourself, remember God’s promise that is so important that it appears not once, but four times in scripture (Deut 31:6, 31:8, Josh 1:5 and Heb 13:5): “Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”

May God richly bless your ministry!