What pastor hasn’t read about megachurches and wished for similar results!

Which executive director hasn’t read about the latest celebrated leader and had their heart burn to “go and do likewise”?

Why, even I am tempted! While I was thinking about this post, someone told me about a successful strategy some ministry leader wrote about, and my first inclination was to get the book and find out how I could do it too!

When you sincerely pursue God’s call, stories about what has worked well elsewhere are very attractive because they show us a way forward. They may be God’s provision for our success.

And yet, success stories can become obstacles to us and to God when time spent listening to the Spirit is replaced by time spent studying other people and what they did. In this case, God has a hard time getting our attention.

Biblical Imitation

As Christians, we look first to see what the Bible has to say about imitation. There are some instructive situations

• Moses parted the Red Sea and Joshua parted the Jordan river, but Joshua did not imitate Moses. As Joshua 3:7-13 makes clear, he obeyed God, who told him exactly what he was supposed to do.
• Jesus twice told the disciples to go out on a mission trip and to “Take nothing for the journey—no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, no extra shirt” (Luke 9:3 and 10:4). Yet later he told them to go out again and this time said, “But now if you have a purse, take it, and also a bag; and if you don’t have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one” (Luke 22:36). Just because they had the same instructions for the first two trips didn’t mean they had a pattern to follow for their ministry.
• Any study of biblical healings will show that there is no rhyme or reason to how people are healed. In each case, God decides sovereignly how to heal and this prevents us from developing a formula to manipulate God for our purposes.

Off the top of my head, I can’t think of a positive example in the Bible where someone said “Let’s do what so-and-so did” in terms of strategy. It seems to be discouraged because God wants us to follow him. And yet books abound today with formulaic prayer strategies and so forth. The clearest example of discouraging people from copying others is when Jesus tells Peter that one day he will be a martyr (John 21). Peter asks Jesus about John’s future, and Jesus replies “If I want him to remain until I come, what is that to you? You follow Me!” (John 21:22). So even though copying others can be okay, we’d better be careful before we start blindly following someone else.

To reap the positive and avoid the negative of copying successful leaders, ask the question: When should we copy, and when should we not?

Copycat Leadership Is Okay When We…

Imitate Godly Character

Therefore I urge you to imitate me. 1 Cor 4:16

Paul wrote that we should imitate him, but he didn’t mean that we should all become evangelists, apostles, or itinerant ministers. He meant that we should imitate his Christian character. Paul imitates Christ (1 Cor 11:1, see also Phil 3:17), which is why the Corinthians should imitate him. The goal is for everyone to imitate God (Eph 5:1).

One of the best parts of my job is meeting ministry leaders. I deliver seminars across Canaa, and I always drop in to meet CCCC members in the area. I’ve met several people who just exuded the Spirit of Christ in a very special way. In their presence I felt like I was in the presence of Christ. They radiated the peace of God to me. Each time this happens, I pray “Please God, can I be like this leader?” (Which is to say, “God, please make me more like your Son.”) These leaders inspire me to be more godly. Imitate that!

Imitate Godly Thinking

After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them. Acts 16:10

Paul and his team planned to revisit all their church plants and then plant new churches further into Asia. But God had other plans for Paul. There was nothing wrong with evangelizing Asia, it just wasn’t what God wanted Paul to do. According to tradition, God sent another apostle, Thomas, to evangelize Asia. Thomas did not copy Paul’s decision to go to Europe. If he copied anything, he copied Paul’s decision process and listened to God for his own instructions.

I love to hear ministry leaders explain why they made the decisions they did. Over and over I hear stories of people

• seeking God’s leadership
• taking a step of faith after careful discernment
• reflecting on God’s character and how that intersects with their possible choices
• coming back to their mission or call

Paul’s decision to enter Europe doesn’t make me want to leave Canada and go to Europe, but it does inspire me to be attentive to the Spirit’s direction and to instantly obey. Paul listened to God. Imitate that!

Copycat Leadership May Be Okay If…

We Understand Why It Worked for the Others

Strategies may work well in some circumstances and flop in others. Make sure you understand the real reasons for their success. Story tellers tell the story they want you to hear. Messy facts may be overlooked and there are just too many details to tell everything.

Did their success depend on:

• certain types of personalities? (If so, is it ‘you’?)
• particular relationships? (Did they have access to people who gave crucial help?)
• external or internal environmental conditions? (Such as a felt need, high trust in leadership, or unity?)

Ask:

• How replicable is their experience into our situation?

We Understand What Would Have to Change and What Would be Changed

Programs and strategies require care and feeding.

• You may need different administrative systems or other infrastructure.
• You may have to prepare people for significant change, such as a congregation reaching out to a new demographic. Are people ready for youth, the poor, or the immigrant who are different from what they are used to?
• What unintended side effects might crop up? One church changed its youth program to attract kids who’d never been in church before, but kids who had grown up in the church felt lost in the change.
• It’s easy to start something new and a lot more difficult to keep it going once the initial enthusiasm and novelty wears offs. Will you find enough people who will shift their volunteer commitment from whatever they’ve been doing to the new activity?

Ask:

• What are the full demands and effects of this new thing on our organization and people?

It Fits with Our Identity

Unless you are willing to change your corporate identity, whatever you copy must fit perfectly with your values, culture, and public image. This is why major new initiatives sometimes spin off into new organizations. The policies, processes, and culture of established organizations often kill new initiatives when they are too different. If it isn’t a perfect fit with the existing organization, the new initiative is doomed before it starts.

Ask:

• Is this new initiative really ‘us’ or should we start a new ministry for it?

It Fits with Our Theory of Change

Whether you know it or not, you have a theory of change. It is the basis for every decision about strategies, programs and priorities. A theory of change explains why things are the way they are and what must change to make it better. Why don’t people know Christ? They’ve never heard of him? They refuse to submit to a higher authority? They don’t have a Bible in their mother tongue? They have family or cultural influences that prevent them from choosing Christ? If you are designing an evangelism program, you need a theory of change to explain how you will overcome these barriers.

If you have never articulated your theory of change, then you risk misunderstanding or overlooking the real reason why the program works.  You might think a Sunday School program is successful because of its focus or content, and miss that the real reason is the deep relationships that have been built between people. Did they just happen? Or was relationship building something the leaders worked on apart from the actual program itself?

If you want to copy a program, if it aligns with your theory of change you have a good rationale for doing it. If it doesn’t align, then examine how the program makes change happen. If you agree with the change mechanism, then update your theory of change. If you don’t agree with it, then don’t do it.

Ask:

• Does the theory of change implied by this new initiative fit our theory of change?

Copycat Leadership Is NOT Okay When We…

Steal Ideas from Others

Many ministries want others to benefit from their experience and creativity, so they share their success stories for others to use. In this case, feel free to consider using their ideas.

Also, if something is widely being done but you happen to see it first at a particular ministry, feel free to use it because that is in the public realm.

But if they have invested time and money to develop something new for themselves, don’t copy it without their explicit permission. They’ve done the hard development work for their benefit. If you just copy it, I would consider that as theft. Well, theft is a strong word. Maybe plagiarism is more apropos. The point is, come up with your own good ideas!

Ask:

• Is this something they invested in by developing it themselves? If so, have they given me permission to copy it?

Follow the ‘Latest Thing’ Rather than Follow God

If you find yourself constantly looking for the latest thing and jumping on board:

• Make sure you are not just lurching from one new program to another out of desperation. If you are desperate, you have bigger problems to deal with.
• Check that you are not suffering from ‘flavour of the month’ syndrome. There should be a sense of continuity and building upon previous work in your ministry. If staff and volunteers are thinking “Oh, here we go again!”, you have a leadership problem.
• Stop and ask yourself how much of God’s leadership you have personally experienced recently. Maybe you unwittingly found a substitute for God or you haven’t been able to discern God. Either way, you can be sure that God is directing you at all times, so sharpen your spiritual discernment skills and devote some time to using them.
• Reflect on the level of confidence you have in your own leadership. Copying others is a way of avoiding making your own creative decisions. Maybe you just need to be more daring to follow God and do what he has asked you to do. Sometimes that means copying others and sometimes that means forging your own path.

Ask:

• Did I seek God first?

Shift Focus from Mission to Technique

A danger in looking for strategies and techniques to copy is that your focus can easily shift from “What needs to happen to accomplish our mission?” to “What will bring in the money we need” or “What will fill the pews?” When this happens, you have surrendered strategic leadership of your ministry to someone else who doesn’t even know your ministry exists.

You also can easily shift your focus from mission results to program activity.

You can justify the new focus on the basis that more money, more people, and more activity will help you fulfill your mission. But the natural result of doing that is that success becomes defined in terms of money, people or activity rather than mission results. A focus on activity gives the illusion of working on mission, but is it accomplishing mission?

We need to know how to raise money, recruit people and run programs, but always as a means to an end and not the end themselves. Stay focused on your mission.

Ask:

• How does this help us fulfill our mission?

Allow Someone Else to Do Our Thinking for Us

By copying others you run the risk of allowing others to do your hard thinking for you. If that is the case, then that is pure intellectual laziness! The trouble is, they are thinking about their ministries and their circumstances, not yours. They are consumed with God’s purpose for their ministry, not yours.

As a leader you must immerse yourself in the issues related to your mission. Only then will you get deep insights and creative ideas. If that deep thinking leads you to look for a particular type of program or technique to use, then use it knowing you have strong reasons for copying it, as opposed to desperately grabbing at straws because you can’t think of anything yourself.

Ask:

• Am I personally an expert on our mission?

Copying Has Its Place…

There are lots of transferable ideas and programs out there and many can be very useful to your ministry. Just be sure that they are a good fit, that you have been ethical in acquiring them, and that you are not allowing others to supplant God’s role as your true leader. Do your spiritual due diligence before copying.

The post Copycat Leadership: When Should Leaders Imitate Other Leaders? appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

A successful small church might be an oxymoron to some, but I (and I’m sure many others) believe that small churches can be called a success when the church is committed to its mission, its people are growing spiritually and are active in their faith, and it is able to sustain itself financially.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that most of the small churches I visited are in pretty good shape. They can’t compete with the programs and extras that come with larger churches, but in spite of their struggles most are finding ways to be successful, vibrant, and healthy. Others, however, are fighting to stay alive, at least partly due to their choices.

I’ve sprinkled pictures throughout this post of some of the delightful people I met.

The Positive Lessons

Be a True Community

Whether you are a church or a Christian agency, a strong, healthy community is the backbone of a strong, healthy organization. A community reinforces values and ideals, and shares the work that needs to be done. People learn to work or live together and how to apply their faith to their relationships. A healthy community will persevere when individuals might be tempted to give up. Whether a church or a workplace, community is always good.

This is where small churches can excel. Rather than bemoaning what they lack, successful small churches have accepted their size and made the most of it by building strong communities. If they remain open to newcomers, the church has a bright future.

I met several church leadership teams, and was impressed with their obviously close, intimate community and convivial fellowship. The deacons, elders, pastors and lay leaders seemed to really know and care for each other. Even when meeting with a pastor alone, I heard stories of how supportive and helpful their boards are. Given that we at CCCC often hear of the problems of church boards, this was quite refreshing to me.

Larger churches and ministries have to work much harder to develop a true community, but it is worth the work because this is the only way to model what life and relationships look like in the kingdom of God. Many successful large churches rely heavily on small groups so people can develop deep relationships and have a place where it matters that they came.

Gary Portnoy’s theme song for Cheers includes the words, “Be glad, there’s one place in the world where everybody knows your name and they’re always glad you came.” He wrote that about a bar! How much better that those words be said about a church or Christian ministry! Christianity is a faith centred on relationships, so make relationship building a core part of your strategy.

Reflect Deeply on Mission

As long as a ministry is vigorously working on its mission, it has a reason for being and should see God’s support. If its focus shifts from its mission to anything else, especially self-preservation but also running its programs for the sake of the programs, it has lost its reason for being, and possibly God’s support.

Many people said their congregation reflected deeply on its mission and thought about how to be faithful to it given their circumstances. They were willing to explore the mission and let it guide the church rather than relying primarily on a church growth model.

One inner-city church, formerly “bursting at the seams,” has no parking and no programs. They’ve gone back to the mission and decided they will not be program driven. Instead they will love each other and be a big family for each other, and if someone feels called by God to do something, they are encouraged to go do it.

Until a year ago, the youngest person in this 80-member congregation was about 60. Then some younger people started coming. As I left the church, a prayer meeting was about to start and several young adults walked in.

Successful small churches put mission before methods, allowing the Spirit to do fresh work. They are mission minded, not program directed.

All ministries would do well to ensure that programs don’t wind up taking supremacy over mission. Programs serve the mission.

Small churches have been forced by circumstances to ask the question, “Why should we continue to exist?” By answering that question, they know why they exist, and they keep it front and centre. Mission rules! In larger ministries, ask yourselves “How often do we intentionally discuss our mission, our theory of change, and design our programs with those thoughts in mind?”

Take a Risk

Every organization, every ministry, has a natural life cycle, but unlike the human life cycle, you can start the organizational life cycle over again. But it always involves taking risks. Think back to when your ministry was founded. Surely there were some risks taken. People stepped out in faith. They experimented with new methods. You need to keep taking risks like your founders did.

One church had declined from 400 to 65 people, and the average age had risen quite high. The board brought in a pastor with a young family to start the process of reaching a younger demographic. But now they’ve done something even riskier. With no young adults in the church, they’ve hired a young adults pastor! There’s vision! There’s faith!

Another church, with the approval of its denomination, hired a young man as pastor who has no denominational credentials as yet and who has never been pastor of a church. As his first church, he is helping them reach a younger demographic and they are helping him complete his education and credentialing. It appears to be a successful arrangement as the fruit is evident in his sermons and in new people attending the church.

As any organization grows, it tends to lose its entrepreneurial edge that was the source of its growth. The focus inevitably shifts from risk to safety – protecting what has been gained. But while protection is important, if it drives out all risk and kills the willingness to try something new, it has sucked the life out of the organization.

Small churches are taking risks because the risk of organizational death is almost certain if they don’t. In that sense, they have little to lose. But by trying something new, they have hope and they are giving the Spirit something to work with. And they are demonstrating faith based on a careful discernment of what God would have them do.

One person I met is taking more risks at a personal level too. She has a heart for evangelism and is on fire for God! On her own, she has started a Bible study in a nearby retirement home. She reminded me of the importance of encouraging all church members to go out into their own communities and find ways to be the church there. That should be the natural consequence of a church discipling its members – they go out and they do personal ministry wherever God has placed them.

Larger or older ministries must work hard to avoid the fossilization that naturally accompanies growth and aging. Organizational youth and vitality can be recovered if a ministry is willing to risk suffering some form of loss by taking on something new. If your ministry wants to retain its vitality and continue to adapt to a changing world, take a few risks!

The Cautionary Lessons

Resistance to Change

There were some small churches that did not give me much hope for their future because, although they wanted to grow and attract younger people, they were determined to do it without changing anything. I’m reluctant to give details, but one congregation literally had what (in my opinion) was their solution staring them in the face and they refused to consider it because it would have involved a change in worship style.

As I’ve discussed in a previous post, if the leaders who created our organizations years ago were to come back today to start them again, would they start something that looks like the one they started so long ago? Not likely. They would of course take their entrepreneurial creativity and create something that would be successful today. Yet some people are so fixed on preserving what worked fifty years ago that they are actually working against the vision of their ministry’s founder. If your founder were around today, he or she would likely be changing things to suit today’s world. So you should feel free to do the same.

Resignation and Passivity

The other choice that I saw made in the small churches that are declining is a choice I’m sure they did not intentionally make. They just fell into it. Some of the board members lamented that their children and grandchildren don’t attend church anymore. And they never asked the question why, but told me that’s just the way things are today. Others felt there was nothing they could do, so there was nothing to try. Defeatism kills!

I don’t believe it is ever God’s desire to see a church close, and yet it happens. I understand why it happens, but should it happen? Would it happen if we proactively looked for alternative ways to be the church? If we believe in the church then we must shake off the lethargy that dulls us into passive acceptance of dwindling prospects. Wake up! Wake up and be the church and people will be attracted!

My prayer is not that every church will be a large church, but that every church will be a successful church.

And Just to Confound Us All…

For those who think that great leadership is the key to growth, I visited a church in Montreal that used to be 250 people and had declined to 55, which is when the pastor resigned. Since then, they have had only supply pastors, and the congregation is now averaging 75-85 per Sunday and steadily growing! They’d still like to find a pastor, but somehow the urgency is not quite so keenly felt.

May God richly bless your ministries!

The post Strategic Choices & Organizational Life or Death appeared first on CCCC Blogs.

As I was driven to the school, the streets became alleyways that soon twisted and turned through a pretty depressing part of the city.

…and got narrower!

This area is poverty-stricken and it is quite emotionally moving to see it first-hand. You realize that this is their life each and every day, and it is likely a picture of every day that remains in their lives, unless something happens. Perhaps, say, a miracle.

As we drove, I saw children converging into our alley, pouring in from all the side alleys and streets. They were dressed in a smart school uniform of dark blue pants/skirts and light blue shirts. Each child had a good haircut, and there were plenty of different hairstyles in evidence. These children were all clean, neat and tidy, in a stunning contrast to the drab grayness of rags, dirt and dullness that surrounded them. As they walk through the alleyway each day, the school kids are truly a beacon of hope to a community that has no hope. Someone is taking good care of these kids! And someone has a vision for how to change their lives.

I couldn’t help but contrast the love and care that these children are experiencing with the crass commercialization of babies that I saw in both Bangkok and Kolkata. Missionaries who have lived in these cities for some time told me that mothers rent their babies by the hour to women who pose as mothers and grandmothers. They drug the babies into a stupor and then go begging on the streets. The missionaries say most beggars are controlled by the local ‘mafia’ and they see very little of what they raise. The baby, of course, sees nothing at all. These babies just lie limpid in the arms of their exploiters. My Indian guide at Agra said that babies there are rented for about 40 rupees per hour.

The children coming to AG Church School live on the edges of the Kolkata garbage dump. They are the poorest of the poor. And they have been given a chance to change their future due to the love of many Christians who will probably never meet them. The AG Church in Kolkata (Assemblies of God) has a vision for them, and they run the school. The Pentecostal Assemblies of Canada has a vision for them too. And they are funding programs at the school and other programs being developed that will operate from the school property.

But who had the vision for buying the property and building the school itself? Who indeed!

The project to buy the property (an old tannery) and convert it to a school cost $3 million. That was just to get the elementary school going. It will cost a lot more than that to finish the school, and other funders are needed for that. You would think that the ministry that raised the money and the major donors would be listed on the dedication plaque by the front door, but you would look there in vain. No one is mentioned at all. The couple who raised the money wrote what is on the plaque, and insisted that they not be mentioned on it.

I’m told it is no secret who raised the money. It was a very public appeal, and this couple was front and centre of the fundraising effort. So the who is public knowledge. But to take no credit for it! What a great spirit of service! It reminded me of Child Evangelism Fellowship Ontario, an organization that runs summer camps under a local church’s name rather than their own. Athletes In Action does the same with at least some of their soccer camps. This is the true spirit of Christian service. It is not about working for credit, but working to advance the mission of the church.

I’ve wrestled with whether or not to reveal who this couple is. They don’t want the congratulations or credit for raising the money. They want the focus to be on the kids and the goodness of God who provided for them. But I think that when ministry leaders do something well, there is no harm in pointing it out. After all, when things go badly, that will be pointed out. Fair’s fair.

So I give a public thank you to Reynold and Kathy Mainse who had the vision to invest in this property and who worked hard to raise the funds for it. They gave control of the property to AG Church with the only provision being that it always be used for charitable purposes either by the church or by whoever they sell it to later on. (That’s good – a textbook implementation of Canada Revenue Agency’s policy for foreign capital projects!) The Mainses have no say or involvement in what happens to the school. Their work is done, although I’m told that either Crossroads or 100 Huntley Street continues to provide some operational funding.

What are the results of this school’s three years of operation? Plenty. The kids are encouraged to dream about what they want to be when they grow up. They are learning too. But there is a huge multiplier factor at work here. The parents of these children have seen what their children can be. I’m told the parents are very proud of their kids and the futures that have opened up for them. They are taking very good care of their children and doing everything they can to support the school’s work at home.

This has caused a ripple effect throughout the garbage dump community, as people for the first time in their lives start to take care of themselves, as they start to have hope that life will not always be the same, and as these Hindus realize that fate does not rule their lives. The Christian teaching that these children receive at school goes back home with them, and people start hearing about a God who cares about their plight, who has heard their complaints, and who loves them so much that he is bringing a miracle of change into their lives through his followers, people like those who responded to the Maines’s appeals, the Christians of AG Church who support the work of the school, the PAOC members across Canada who continue to send money, and many more beyond. Each one followed God, and God led them to these children.

This is something for all ministry leaders to think about. The senior-most leader of a ministry often receives most of the public accolades because, for many people, they personify the ministry. While such affirmations are great encouragements, it is unhealthy to feed off them, to need them and crave for more of them. Deliberately taking a back seat, either personally or as a ministry, is a healthy way to keep humble in spirit and realize that you and your ministry are just one part of the comprehensive work of the people of God. Remember, even if there were no public affirmation, your motivation and encouragement to continue ultimately comes from knowing you are doing the work of God as he called you to do it.

Such dedication by many people to the mission of God resulted in seeds being planted that will change the future of each child attending this school, probably their families as well, and maybe even the entire community that lives by the garbage dump.

A miracle is at hand!

See, I am doing a new thing!
Now it springs up; do you not perceive it?
I am making a way in the wilderness
and streams in the wasteland.
Isaiah 43:19

The post “We followed Jesus, and he led us to you” appeared first on CCCC Blogs.