Today's podcast is based on Karl Vater's blog post here from NewSmallChurch.com. We want to give Karl credit and encourage you to check out his website as there is a ton of encouragement there for you as a small church pastor/leader.
Me with my very good friends, twin bros Tim and Dave Mayo, on the front porch. It was their father, Dean Mayo, who had the vision to use this family property and home to encourage Christian workers and provide a place of renewal and fellowship for pastors. You'll need to listen to the podcast for these pictures to make sense!
It occurred to me (Jeff) that what was important in Karl's blog post, was the same thing that was crucial in making our pastor's retreat special and effective... relationships! Relationships are the glue that holds the church together. They are the active ingredient in any healthy and high quality local church. If people do not enjoy meaningful and significant relationships, then what size the church is doesn't matter at all.
Relationships are easy in the small church, there's not too many trappings to get in the way. No busy parking lots, crowded lobbies, or streams of people exiting the building after the service. In a smaller church, people can get to know others and be known by others. They can be missed when they're gone. They can also get to know the pastor, and even speak to him or to her every week. The very thing, smallness, that might bother you as a pastor, is the very thing that facilitates strong and healthy relationships, so go with it and use it to your advantage.
As a pastor/leader, build relationships on your staff or lay leadership team. Be intentional. In today's podcast, Jonny and I model for you, through our own interaction, what a good relationship looks like. It has taken us four years of intentionality and commitment, and a decision to really enjoy each other - for us to get to this level. We don't take each other too seriously, but we are very serious about serving God together. We have had a number of direct, blunt, and heart to heart talks since we started working on the same staff almost two years ago. Our previous friendship was helpful to our initially working together, but that soon ran out and we had to choose to be intentionally authentic with each other. The relationships that our church leaders model will affect the relationships your people experience with each other. We hope that you totally enjoy Episode 69! It was fun to create with each other and with Karl Vaters from NewSmallChurch.com. If you enjoy Karl on our podcast, you'll enjoy his book, The Grasshopper Myth, too! You can purchase it from the link to the right of this webpage, or by clicking on the picture below. I miss the voice of Paul Harvey on the radio, who would say, “Hello Americans, it’s Frrriiiiday.” That one voice went out over the airwaves for 70 years and literally created radio news and commentary. He was one of the most well-known radio men ever at the time of his death in February 2009. Voices are not influential only on radio, but also in the local church. I’ve heard this “seven people” stat for many years, and recently I read a post by Dr. Jim Meyer that said this: “Regardless of church size, when push comes to shove, most pastors leave a church because of a group of 7-10 individuals.” Having been a pastor for more than 25 years, I can attest to the accuracy of this statistic.
When I am really feeling discouraged and worn out, I intentionally list the people that I feel are working against what I am trying to accomplish in my church. Only once was there more than seven people! It’s usually just a handful of people who are critical, and the vast majority of people are doing just fine. Of course, the smaller your church is, the fewer critical people you need to feel you are being attacked. Wouldn’t it be great if we paid as much attention to the happy and/or quiet people as we do to the complaining and/or critical ones? Perspective, outlook, and attitude are all so important for us to control as we lead our 200church. Don’t allow yourself to fall under the influence of just a couple of naysayers. It’s important for you to stay focused on the big picture of what God is doing in your church through you. So, how about you? Are you discouraged today because you feel like a lot of people are against you? Take out a paper and pen and list them. That’s right, scribble down their names. Got more than seven? I doubt it. Now, frame that kind of reality, and allow yourself to feel the affirmation of all of the people in your church who are thankful for you and thrilled you are their pastor. That’s it, now you’re feeling a little better! Today a member was in my office and did something that was very uncharacteristic – she praised the Lord, our church, and my pastoral ministry! How unusual – people more often stop by to lodge a complaint or “concern.” This lady told me what my ministry in my 200church meant to her and to her family. How encouraging! If you feel like the walls are closing in around you, get out of your office, take a run or a drive, or just a walk, and feel the sunshine and smell the outdoors. God is bigger than you, your ministry, or the complaints of naysayers. They may even be right, and we need to discern that so that we can learn, but we should not allow complainers to muffle the call of God in our lives to pastor and shepherd God's people. It only takes 7 people to get you discouraged in your role as a pastor - don't let them! Stay confident, be hopeful, and expect God to work through you. Don't start counting those people until they number 8 - then you can get serious about finding the cause of the raucus! Next week we talk about the scourge of pornography and its effects on our communities, and even pastors! My (Jeff) first pastoral ministry position was in a small town called Factoryville. No, I didn’t misspell it – it was Factoryville. Don’t worry, the name grows on you. After a while it sounds as attractive as Hollywood. Well, okay, not really, but anyway… I took a church that had just lost a building to a fire, and a pastor to a larger full-time position. We met in a Borough Hall. (that’s pig Latin for “town hall” – no offense to pigs) My wife and I attended this church before I became the pastor and our ministry was to teach Children’s Church in the lower level. Do you feel me when I say “lower level”? Read dungeon. Really. Actually dungeon is generous. You could only get newlyweds addicted to ministry to serve in a space like that! Our days in the Borough Hall were numbered so we bought the old town library, which was a jail before that, I think back in the 1800’s or at least during Bonnie and Clyde. I think they were actually held there for a while in the 30’s. But we bought the building, and I got my friend, whose name I don’t remember now, to remodel it for us. What a hoot! What was I thinking? When we had finished the remodel, the first floor was the “auditorium” and when we set up all the chairs we had, and took up every space we could in the 25’x31’ room, we sat 50 people! I had my college president come and preach, we had 50 people that morning, and he wondered what we were going to do to make more room. Can I tell you? Back then, in 1988, we never imagined scheduling a second service. In that room, 50 people was packing out the house! It was an enormous crowd! Downstairs in the, get it, the, Sunday School room, a dozen people was a world record… for our Factoryville church. One Sunday night for our evening service I had two people show up, and one was a visitor. I welcomed them, and we had church. I even preached the message I had prepared. I never saw that visitor again, because in that context, three was definitely not a crowd! But he did stay until the end of the message. Shock makes people do strange things. For many churches, 100 people would be considered a very, very small group of people. For other churches, 100 would be a banner day. For still other churches 1,000 people would be a terrible Sunday. In every one of those churches, each person sits with one other person, or a few other people in a group, and they worship, whether there’s 50 or 5,000. Small is relative, large is relative. But JESUS is our common Lord, Savior, and Friend! No matter the size of your church, or the terrible or beautiful name of your town, your pastoral leadership and love for your people is paramount. Love the 5 or love the 5,000. Apples and oranges yes, but they are both fruit, and fruit is what Jesus told us to look for. He told us to make disciples of all ethnic groups, baptize them, and teach them to obey him. Whether we do that in a big group or small matters not a bit. This week on the 200churches Podcast Jonny and I welcome back Karl Vaters. Karl is the pastor of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Fountain Valley, CA, the founder of NewSmallChurch.com, and the author of The Grasshopper Myth - Big Churches, Small Churches, and the Small Thinking that Divides Us. Karl is a pitbull in defense of small churches and small church pastors. He is rabidly committed to the local church, as in the people and the pastor. Karl spent most of September away from his California church, ministering in Europe. Some people got a hold of his book, The Grasshopper Myth, and he went over and taught them that they can love their small churches – and he is going to tell us all about it! Karl knows that small is quite relative and inconsequential when it comes to Kingdom ministry. Jonny and I are looking forward to talking with him, and sharing that conversation with YOU! The 200churches Podcast is released on iTunes and Stitcher, and on our 200churches.com site every Wednesday at 12:01AM. Here is Karl's first conversation with us on the 200churches Podcast. Below: Karl preaching in Croatia. Begins at 36:00.Thankfully, there will be no need for a translator on episode 41 of the 200churches Podcast. Just us English speaking pastor types! Looking forward to Wednesday...
Well, this is an easy one, right?! Just make sure that at some point during your message, three armed police officers interrupt your service to arrest, handcuff, and lead away at least one person in the front row. That’s it, no more boredom! But alas, there is one reason why that can’t happen… no one sits in the front row! Okay, so let me suggest something else. The fear of the majority of pastors is that they will bore their people when they preach or teach God’s word. Why, it’s inevitable at some point. The guy in the third row is sound asleep, people check their watch, or their smartphone. Even you or I get bored once in a great while during a message. But there is hope.
I’ve been preaching and teaching for thirty years now, so let me share a few presuppositions, then a few ideas. Presupposition #1 – God changes hearts with his holy Word. The Holy Spirit of God uses his word, to do the work. He can use what we might think of as the most boring sermon or lesson. Presupposition #2 – We do not use presupposition #1 as an excuse to bore people. Presupposition #3 – The listener must have a pulse. What I mean by that is the listener must have at least an entry level intention and willingness to listen, hear, and be changed. If not, we could explode, and they would still yawn. Presupposition #4 – Boredom is as much in the mind of the listener as in the actions of the speaker. Presupposition #5 – Content should trump presentation style. Content is most important. Without it, the presentation style is meaningless. Presupposition #6 – Presentation style should deliver content, not overshadow or obscure it. Now, here are some ideas for how not to be boring. We will share more in our podcast on Wednesday, Episode 32 – Why You Should Explore Creative Communication Methods In Your 200church, and in our post on Friday. This is “Communication Week” at 200churches! Idea #1 – As the preacher, we MUST be close to God ourselves. Be close to Him through prayer, intimacy with Scripture, and personal heart devotion to our Father, our Savior, and our indwelling Holy Spirit. There is no shortcut to OUR intimacy with God – the source of power in preaching! Yeah, I know this one is not a "silver bullet" that is easy to do - but it's the truth and there is no substitute for it. Idea #2 – Be close to our people. Our love for them, and our knowledge of them, will be both our motivation and our direction in our preaching. We are not preaching or teaching a crowd every week, but our friends, the people we love. While I prepare my messages, I am thinking about the lady who just lost her husband, the student struggling with alcohol and parties, the man addicted to pornography, and the parents whose teenage son shot himself in the head in their family room... and died. Our relationship with our people certainly influences our messages. Idea #3 – Variety! We can change how we deliver the message. Stand, sit, speak, point, loudly, softly, onstage, off stage, video, handout, object lesson, story, list, challenge, action step, lectern, table, whiteboard, pulpit, no pulpit, images, art, music, interview, team preach, personal story, etc. etc. We must use creativity and variety. It is good for our people to wonder what might come next. Idea #4 – Let’s be ourselves, not someone else. You have likely heard it before – God doesn't want another Billy Graham or Francis Chan – he wants YOU. God created us to speak to our people, love our people, and teach our people. We can trust him that he has given us the personal, intellectual, and creative resources we need to get the message across. Let’s just be ourselves. Well, that’s a good start! Wednesday’s podcast will expand on this, get you thinking, and hopefully inspire you to seek that “next level” in your ability to communicate God’s wonderful word. What was the most creative thing you ever successfully pulled off in a sermon? Several years ago I read a book by Edwin Friedman titled A Failure of Nerve – Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix. This is a book on the subject of leadership, and how well a leader differentiates himself from those he or she leads. This book speaks to one of the single most destructive attitudes in leadership – the attitude that says, “I need to be liked and I need you to be happy, with me especially.” Local churches, 200churches for sure, find themselves with leaders who struggle in this area. Pastors want there to be unity and harmony in the church, at any cost. They do not want to rock the boat or anger anyone, to the end that they fail to move forward with any constructive plans or ideas. You should hear it from Edwin. I want to quote Friedman himself, in his own words: “In any type of institution whatsoever, when a self-directed, imaginative, energetic, or creative member is being consistently frustrated and sabotaged rather than encouraged and supported, what will turn out to be true one hundred percent of the time, regardless of whether the disrupters are supervisors, subordinates, or peers, is that the person at the very top of that institution is a peace-monger. By that I mean a highly anxious risk-avoider, someone who is more concerned with good feelings than with progress, someone whose life revolves around the axis of consensus, a “middler,” someone who is so incapable of taking well-defined stands that his “disability” seems to be genetic, someone who functions as if she had been filleted of her backbone, someone who treats conflict or anxiety like mustard gas—one whiff, on goes the emotional gas mask, and he flits. Such leaders are often “nice,” if not charming.” (Edwin Friedman - A Failure of Nerve, p.14 Emphasis mine)
I believe that churches are filled with pastors who are peace-mongers! They treat conflict as though it were toxic and actually are nice, and charming. But they get nothing done, and cede leadership to the loudest voice and most obnoxious personality. They are
Do you like to be liked? Need to be liked? At all costs? Is harmony and unity your highest values, even at the expense of the mission, or at the expense of truth? Are you indecisive, not wanting to make the call? Are you just too nice? Is your niceness eviscerating your leadership? Wednesday’s podcast, episode 28, is all about the positive virtues of conflict, and why you need conflict on your leadership team! You don’t want to miss this podcast. You need to embrace conflict and understand the good it will bring to your leadership team and your leadership. Friedman’s book would also be a great buy for you. It literally changed my view of pastoral leadership, and caused me to make some calls I had been putting off for years. I am so glad I did! When was the last time you punted instead of making the call and running the ball? When was the last time you got up the nerve and made the call – and what happened? Tell us in the comments section below. Finally, join us on Wednesday for episode 28 of the 200churches Podcast. Subscribe to us on iTunes at 200churches Podcast. This week we've been talking about the Sunday morning experience. As pastors and church leaders, we have a desire for our gatherings to be special and meaningful, full of impact and energy. But the reality never quite lives up to the fantasy for 200churches, and unfortunately many of us hold ourselves up to standards that truly are impossible based on our facilities, our congregations, and, realistically, our budgets. How much does a fog machine cost?! While Jeff (who wrote Monday's post) was away to visit his daughter, I was taking a group of students on a service trip to Des Moines. While there, we attended my old church which meets in a school, has a very different style of worship than our church, and reaches a very different demographic than our congregation.
And that's the point. Every church is culturally situated. Every congregation, every building or meeting place, every Sunday morning service (or Saturday night, or Friday afternoon, or whatever group meeting time you might have) exists in a particular time and place, and has the ability to reach particular people because of that situation. Jeff's daughter's church is different than ours, but both can be healthy and vibrant communities. Neither is better than the other, each is simply suited better for its environment. So when we set out to create an amazing Sunday morning experience, what model are we using? Are we just trying to import what we saw at the latest conference or live-stream of our favorite mega-church pastor, or are we preparing for Sunday mornings that connect with our people and our specific community? Your church is boring. Probably to the majority of the people in the world. But to the people that God has given you to guide, and the people in your surrounding community, your church can be exactly what they want and need. That looks different for all of us, but it's our responsibility as pastors and leaders to discover what our community needs. No matter what our service looks like, the three areas we talked about Wednesday are still indispensable:
Put these three principles at the center of your Sunday morning experience, and it will have an impact on people. Church isn't meant to be boring, at least not for the people who faithfully attend yours! This week, our podcast focused on creating an inviting atmosphere in our 200churches. We believe that an inviting atmosphere begins with the people who attend your church, and we outlined five steps that you can take at your own 200church that will get you started on cultivating a warm, welcoming environment wherever you are, and no matter the size of your budget. While we start with ourselves as people whose characters, personalities, and practices are what shape the atmosphere of our services, we should also pay close attention to the overall feel of our church facilities. Environments are important and we should take time to consider the message that we're sending to people as they walk in our doors. No matter where a church is located or how many people are attending, we should always be ready for visitors to walk into one of our services. As leaders, we're ultimately responsible for the experience that people have when they attend, and a large part of that experience is related to the environment of our church.
The longer you've been at your church, the more difficult it is to be an accurate barometer of its atmosphere. When I first came to work at the church where I now serve, I had so many ideas on how we could make a change here or there to impact the overall atmosphere in our facilities. As time has passed, however, I inevitably have lost some of my ability to recognize those areas. This happens to all of us, so here are some easy ways to get a feel for what your environment is currently like, and how to move forward.
It may sound trivial, but if our church environments are less than appealing, we reduce the likelihood of attracting and retaining new attenders. Not only that, but we're doing a disservice to the people who are currently attending our church by not working to ensure that the place where they come to worship is always inviting, welcoming, and friendly. Here are a few final questions to ask on environment:
If you had to give bad answers to any of the above questions, what can you do about it? Who is going to address these areas? Are there leaders or volunteers who are gifted and passionate in any of these areas, to whom you could delegate some tasks? You may not need to spend much, if any, money, just a little time and energy removing the old, and straightening, cleaning, polishing, and painting what's left! Before anyone comes to visit us, my wife and I spend some quality time picking up, cleaning up, and working to make sure that someone's visit to our home is as pleasant and enjoyable as possible. Whether it's students from our church or some friends we're having over for the first time, we know that environment is important. We understand that about our homes, but because of familiarity and shared ownership, we miss it at church. It's time we applied the same standards to our churches!
Have you ever been trampled by a sacred cow in your ministry? I remember in January of 1999 our church announced that the upcoming Sunday evening service would be cancelled to make room for a Super Bowl party. This party would be an outreach to invite friends – you know, you’ve all done it by now. The following Monday morning, a couple (who had been members for over 20 years) stopped by the church to inform us that they would no longer be attending and that they wanted their $3,200 offering check from the day before… back! Sacred cow? Evening service!
Another couple I visited asked if we were going to start singing more hymns on Sundays. I told them that we would likely sing less hymns over time. “Okay, thank you. We will begin going to another church then.” Sacred cow? Hymns! Another person left our church when I stopped wearing a coat and tie on Sunday mornings. Another sacred cow. Sacred cows can be buildings, church furniture, service times, platform arrangement, Bible versions, pastoral visits, and even dress codes. How can we as pastors of 200churches change these areas while avoiding stepping and slipping on those fresh, steaming cow patties in our churches? After slipping and sitting in too many of them, I have some ideas for properly killing a sacred cow. But first, consider these thoughts:
So, for those in the third category, here are a few questions you should ask:
As pastors of 200churches, our people should know how much we love and value them, but also that we are committed to killing sacred cows if they are in the way of us accomplishing our Jesus-mandated mission. For 200churches, the only thing more important than our people is our God-given purpose called the Great Commission. If a sacred cow is in the way, the most important question we can ask is: medium, or well done?!
One issue that faces all church leaders is determining the standard for how things should be at your church. We all face a reality in our churches that there are areas and ministries that are not operating in the way that they need to and the way that we would prefer. This could be as simple as having hideous curtains in the sanctuary to as serious as having the wrong people on your staff. In either of those scenarios, and every imaginable one in between, there is a disconnect between how things are and how things should be.
What we've realized is that one of the biggest hurdles between moving from how something is to how it should be is the dreaded phrase "it's not as bad as it used to be." This "not as bad as it used to be" mentality can show up in any area: is the person teaching Sunday School not getting the job done? At least they're not as bad as the last person used to be. Is there a room being used for storage now that could be used in better ways? At least what it's storing isn't as useless as what used to be in there.
The truth is, as long as something is "not as bad as it used to be" we're often content to leave it the way it is. If this is a hurdle you're struggling with right now, here are some questions to ask to help you move forward: 1. What is the mission and vision of our church? 2. How is the person/room/resource in question moving our church closer to our mission/vision? 3. How could this person/resource be used more effectively in moving our mission/vision forward? These can (and will) be tough questions, but they're questions that need to be asked in order to determine how something should be. If we set the standard for how things are at "not as bad as it used to be," eventually our churches will be "worse than they've ever been"! So what are some areas/people/ministries in your church that need to be re-evaluated? Where can you begin to move from "not as bad as it used to be" toward being mission and vision focused? |
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