Many individuals, ministries and non-profits are facing a situation of restriction. It could come from many places, but the recession is the most obvious one. Budgets are less than they used to be. The staff is leaner. Ministries are cut. Friends are laid off. And all the while, the need in people’s lives increases. One church planter shared with me that in one week, four different sponsoring churches called him and had to stop their funding. These churches were led by some of his best friends and there was a lot of emotion. Nobody likes these situations. Nobody asks for them. But here we are. For some the restriction isn’t financial directly, but it is a lack of an adequate facility or maybe a past reputation your church has that you’re always trying to reinvent. Restriction comes from many places and we all face it.
We’ve been at ground zero of the recession in Las Vegas for over three years now, so we’ve learned a few things about restriction. The biggest shift for me was leading our staff and church to see restriction as an opportunity. There are amazing things that can happen in your life and your ministry that won’t happen outside of restriction. You can grow spiritually like never before. You can reach people with the love of Jesus in simple and profound ways. You can experience more focus in what God has called you to do. You can eliminate unnecessary programs. And, most importantly, you can see God work in a way that is miraculous because you really couldn’t have accomplished the task without the resources you had before anyway.
At Central, we’ve grown over 35% as a ministry since the recession started, but our overall budget in those three years has decreased. We thought we were lean before, now we’re beyond lean. We’re in a new paradigm of how to do ministry altogether. As my friend Mark Driscoll puts it, “Jud, you guys in Vegas are college broke.” In this season of restriction, our church is seeing people grow faster spiritually, and we’re watching new people come to faith in greater numbers than we ever have before. Both of these things are facilitated by the very restriction that frustrates us.
Here are a couple practical ways we learned to see restriction as opportunity.
1. Fight the Martyr Mentality
A martyr mentality focuses on what I don’t have rather than what I do. It is easy to look back on “the good ole’ days” and long for them or to compare ourselves to other ministries in frustration. We think… “We just don’t have the building they have or we can’t attract the talent they can or we just don’t have the money like they do. We aren’t in an affluent area like they are.”
It’s the martyr mentality. We did that for too long at Central. We walked around and thought, “We don’t have any money. It’s all falling apart. The world is ending. What are we going to do?” We finally had to shift beyond that and say, “No more.” No more comparing. No more wallowing and no more whining. We have all we need to impact our community in precisely the way God desires. When we stopped focusing on what we didn’t have and focused on what we did, it was remarkable. We did not have the resources to staff as full as we used to, but the opportunity in it was that unemployment was high so many people in our church had time.
We now have dozens of people who work full-time at Central as staff, but they don’t get paid. They are looking for work, but in the process they are using their gifts to give back. Our facility was looking pretty bad due to not spending resources for upkeep. But the opportunity was to involve hundreds of volunteers to keep up our campus. This kind of community ownership is a huge opportunity for churches facing restriction. You can get the ministry done, but you’ll have to rely more and more on others to do it.
2. Find the Yes
When you are in restriction, the answer to most new ideas and innovative programs is no. We start out saying, “Can we do this? No. How about that? No. There is no money. There isn’t enough space. There isn’t enough staff.” Pretty soon your team stops asking. They think it and then answer their own thought—NO. The next step is to stop thinking those thoughts all together. Now the team is completely in neutral.
We went through this cycle over the last three years. We had to eventually get everyone together and say, “The answer is yes. We aren’t starting with no anymore. Yes, we’re going to figure it out. Yes, we’re going to find a way. Yes, we’re not going to say no immediately. Yes, we’re going to explore it. Yes, we’re going to try and do it without money.”
Some of our best ideas came from finding the yes in restriction—from launching church campuses in prisons, to beginning an Online Campus with virtually no financial expense, to an extensive internship program for people considering ministry and to expanding our staff to include many full-time volunteers.
Over the last couple years, Acts 3:6 has meant more to me. Peter and John are walking and they come to a beggar outside the Temple. He looks at them expecting to get something. Peter said, Acts 3:6 (New Living Translation): But Peter said, “I don’t have any silver or gold for you. But I’ll give you what I have. In the name of Jesus Christ the Nazarene, get up and walk!” God is not calling you to give what you don’t have. Peter says, “I’ll give you what I have.” What we have is the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ, which is far more important than the coolest church band, lights or graphics. What we have is the power of the gospel that can transform people’s lives. Like Peter we say, I don’t have ________ , but I’ll give what I have, in the name of Jesus, rise up.
Stop looking around at what you lack and share what you have in the power and love of Jesus. You’ll find that restriction is God’s opportunity waiting to happen.
