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Quit Trying To Fix Your Church’s Ministries – Until You Do This First
Church health is not about making our current ministries better, it’s about doing better ministry.
The Discipleship Mandate: Bring Mentoring Back
Small churches have a serious advantage when it comes to discipleship. If we’ll use the right tools.
Pastoring A Small Church Is Not A Penalty, It’s A Specialty
For years I bucked against the idea that I am a small church pastor. Instead of seeing it as my calling, my heart and my passion, I treated it like it was my penalty for not having the skills to be a big church pastor. So I consumed every church growth book and devoured all
Bigger Fixes Nothing (What Reality TV Taught Me About Healthy Churches)
When healthy small churches grow, they become healthy big churches. When unhealthy small churches grow, they become unhealthy big churches. So instead of telling struggling churches to get bigger, let’s help them become healthy.
The Three Undeniable Realities Of Pastoral Ministry
Since every pastor will lead a small church for at least some time in their ministry, shouldn’t we learn how to do it well?
7 Reasons to Stop Staring In Your Church’s Rear-View Mirror
What do all these quotes have in common?
“People have stopped singing in church. We need to use hymnbooks again.”
“No one wants solid bible teaching anymore.”
“People used to have respect for God’s house. Now they show up late with a coffee in their hand, like they just rolled out of bed.”
“The church started collapsing when we stopped holding Sunday evening evangelistic services.”
“Pastors in this day and age aren’t preachers, they’re entertainers.”
All those quotes have two things in common. Three, actually.
First, they were all said or written by fellow ministers recently.
Second, they’re all backwards-looking.
Third, none of them are true!
The False Idol of “The Way It Used To Be”
Sure, the church of today has problems. But that’s nothing new. The church has always had problems. Half the books in the New Testament were written to address problems in the first century church – a church we’re guilty of over-idealizing to the point of idolatry, sometimes.
It’s a myth that the church was ever an ideal place of pure worship and fellowship. Not in the first century. Not when we were kids.
It’s also a myth that the way to fix the problems in today’s church – both real and imagined – is to go back to the way we used to do things.
Of course we need to constantly re-establish our faith in Jesus, our teaching of the bible and our obedience to the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.
But none of those things are old or backwards-looking. They are the most forward-looking, paradigm-shifting, inertia-busting principles the world has ever known.
Every car needs a rear-view mirror. So does every church. But you can’t move forward by staring into it.
The past is gone. The future is coming – fast.
12 Reasons Not To Blame Others For Our Ministry Failures
I don’t blame anyone but myself for my failures in ministry.
Why are people so surprised by that?
In last month’s podcast with Carey Nieuwhof (click here to listen), I described our church’s history, including a short period where we had sudden growth, followed by even faster and deeper collapse.
Carey asked me if I had a handle on why the collapse happened, so I told him two of the mistakes I made that contributed to it. He was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t blame anyone (like the big church down the street) or anything (like changing demographics) for the problems, but took the responsibility upon myself.
To which I responded, “If you don’t own it, you can’t change it.” The interview went on and I thought no more about it.
But that little exchange and my short answer to it have received far more feedback (all positive, thankfully) than any other aspect of the interview.
Why?
I think it’s because we live in a blame culture. And that culture has invaded the church. In fact I know it has because I regularly hear pastors of Small Churches blame everyone from their denominations to other churches, to the corruption of the culture for their church’s lack of growth and/or health.
We must stop doing this. Here are 12 reasons. I’m sure there are more, so if you know of any, feel free to add them in the comment section.
1. If You Don’t Own It, You Can’t Change It
If someone else is to blame for my problems, I’ve given them control. If I’m to blame, I can do something about it.
2. Blaming Others Is Easy, But Unproductive
Let’s say it actually is the fault of someone else. What changes after we identify that? I can’t change someone else’s behavior, after all. I can only change me.
Like Henry Ford said, “Don’t find fault, find a remedy; anyone can complain.”
Movies In Church: Use Pop Culture, But Don’t Let It Use You
“With great power comes great responsibility.”
When I wrote my last post, Uh, Pastor… Being Right Is Not an Excuse to Be Mean, I ended it with those words from the Spider-Man comics.
It is perhaps the most famous quote from superhero comics and movies (thanks to Stan Lee and Peter Parker’s uncle Ben).
Because I used that quote, I was tempted to make it the title of my post and use a photo of Spider-Man to accompany it.
Here’s why I didn’t.
The Sign On the Front Door Matters
There’s an old, true saying in leadership circles:
What you win them with is what you win them to.
I didn’t choose to attract readers to my last post with a Spider-Man quote and photo because I wasn’t interested in attracting them to Spider-Man or superheroes.
When people were done reading that post, I wanted my readers to be thinking about how pastors need to be careful with our words, so that’s what I put in the title and accompanying photo.
In today’s post, I want you to walk away thinking about how we need to be careful about how we use words and images from popular culture, so I put that in the title. And I used a photo of a little dog in an ill-fitting Spider-Man suit because I think it illustrates the point of this post well – there are some ideas that might seem cute at the time, but they don’t fit like they should.
Provide an Alternative, Not More of the Same
I have no problem using references from pop culture to illustrate truth – I used a Spider-Man quote in my last post, after all. And I’ve made multiple references to pop culture in previous posts (including quoting Keith Richards, Reality TV shows and The Big Bang Theory sitcom, among others). But I’m beginning to tire of the tendency among pastors and Christian bloggers to link so much of our speaking and writing directly from the popular culture.
Uh, Pastor… Being Right Is Not an Excuse to Be Mean
Some pastors seem to delight in being hard and mean.
We’re in a spiritual battle! they’ll say.
Jesus used a whip and turned over tables! they’ll remind us.
OK. Yes, Jesus did that. Towards religious leaders.
But to the average person seeking help and truth? He was almost universally meek and gentle – a friend of sinners. So kind and nice that it got him in trouble at times.
Pastors have a lot of power in the church and in people’s lives. Many would argue that we often have more power than we should – and I would fully agree with that. But that is reality. A reality we need to take into account then we’re dealing with people.
In addition, there seems to be a group of pastors who are perpetually angry. They can quote chapter-and-verse for everyone else’s sins, but they’re not so good at remembering James 1:20 which reminds us that “…man’s anger does not bring about the righteous life that God desires.”
As pastors, we don’t even need to be angry for our words – even true words – to hurt people unnecessarily.
Here’s an example.
