Leading an existing church from unhealthy to healthy is one of the hardest tasks a pastor will ever be called to do.
It’s even harder without understanding some basic principles needed for a successful turnaround.
Here are four common realities that often go unknown or ignored:
1. A turnaround church will be heading in a different direction
Why do we use the word “turnaround” if we don’t want anything to change?
Don’t say you want a turnaround if you just want to get bigger. Those are different goals.
Numerical increase can give us a false positive. If nothing has changed but the size of the church, no turnaround has happened.
Sadly, we’ve seen too many recent examples of big churches built on faulty foundations that hadn’t made the necessary steps toward the kind of health needed for long-term effectiveness.
2. A turnaround is more than a rebrand
For a real turnaround, everything outside the core biblical principles needs to be up for grabs.
Singing Chris Tomlin songs to guitar and drums, instead of Charles Wesley hymns to organ and piano is not a turnaround.
Turnaround happens in the middle ground of attitudes, methods, and systems. It’s deeper than a new church logo, but it should re-affirm, rather than challenge eternal biblical principles.
3. A turnaround usually starts with subtraction, not addition
The first step in our church’s turnaround was to strip our events and programs back to almost nothing.
It’s easier to see your real needs when you have less clutter. Plus, you can put your time, and energy into doing a few things better.
But be very careful here. We didn’t just start chopping things off randomly. That’s dangerous.
Instead, we won the long-term battle of attrition. We removed events and activities one-by-one, and only when it was obvious to (almost) everyone that they were no longer working. It was like a company reducing its staff by not replacing retirees, instead of by layoffs.
After we retired an event or an idea (usually taking a moment to celebrate and honor what it had been), we didn’t rush to replace it. In some cases, we never replaced it. Less was more.
We didn’t add anything that wasn’t better and more sustainable.
For more on how to do this, check out The Closet Rule: De-Clutter Your Church for More Effective Ministry.
4. A turnaround church needs a turned-around pastor
Often, the first turnaround that has to take place is in the heart of the pastor. If your primary goal is to pastor a bigger church, take a serious heart check. No great church ever resulted from trying to build a bigger one. Many have grown healthy and big at the same time, but only when health was the goal and growth was the byproduct.
To check your real motivation, ask yourself this: if you had to choose between pastoring a healthy small church or pastoring an unhealthy big church, what would you do?
There are a lot of healthy and unhealthy churches of all sizes. Growth is not inevitable, even after the church has made a healthy turnaround. Health cannot be seen merely as a means to an end. It is the means and the end.
That attitude starts with servanthood and humility rather than our superior leadership skills.
(Photo by David Brossard | Flickr)
