3. Pastors who do everything
For three years, I was the only staff member at our church.
Then we brought on two very part-time people, and I still ran nearly solo for four more years (seven in total) until we hired our first other full-time staff member.
There is a season in which the pastor does ‘everything.’ But that season will rarely get you past 200 people.
It got us to 300 people, but I almost burned out. And it’s completely unsustainable.
To get sustainably past 200-300 people, I had to:
Stop most pastoral visitation, except for a small circle of people within my care.
Restrict the number of weddings and funerals I did.
Pull myself off of almost every team in the church.
Stop leading Bible studies.
Stop doing much except communication, vision casting and leading leaders.
Who did all the other ministry? People. Some staff, but mainly volunteers.
Delegating and empowering people around a common mission, vision and strategy releases the ministry to people who are gifted, called and equipped to lead that ministry.
When you release ministry, it’s liberating for everyone. It’s the way the church is designed to run.
And remember this: Pastors who do everything eventually end up leading no one. While that may be a bit of an exaggeration, it’s a good wake up call.
4. No plans for anything bigger
Many leaders are currently leading the biggest church they’ve ever attended or been a part of, right now. So how do you plan for anything bigger when you haven’t experienced anything bigger?
That’s true if you’re part of a church of 100 people or 1,000.
Even when I led a church of six people, I had not actually led a church that was bigger than that (it was my first assignment as a student).
But just because you haven’t led more doesn’t mean you shouldn’t plan for more.
Here are some keys to crossing the 200, 400 and 800 barriers.
Plan today for what you want to be a part of tomorrow.
5. A selfish drift inward
This is actually an issue for a large number of churches, both church plants and existing churches.
Even when you start a church from scratch, it tends to be led, populated and funded by members.
And so it’s completely easy and natural to lose focus on the people you’re trying to reach.
And because self-centeredness is a natural pull for all of us (at least it is for me), unless we have a white-hot searing mission in front of us, church can quickly become about satisfying our needs, our wants, our preferences and our desires.
And that fuels a spiral in which congregational or organizational life can become about satisfying the competing preferences of members.
Some want it this way. Some want it that way. And people threaten to leave.
Let that go unchecked and soon you find yourself focused on the people you’re trying to keep, not the people you’re trying to reach.
The casualty in all of this? The very people you were hoping to reach.
The only way to check this that I know of is to prayerfully keep the unreached front and center in all your discussions and your actions.
In your off time (and maybe in your work hours), hang out with the people you’re trying to reach.
Invite them. Regularly.
Speak for them when they’re not in the room and you’re trying to make a decision.
Budget and staff with them in mind.
Plan every Sunday like it’s someone’s first Sunday, even if right now it might not be.
If you keep this front and center, you will resist the trap that so many churches and organizations fall into; the selfish drift inward.
These are some reasons I’ve noticed why some churches that start small stay small, despite intentions that would move them elsewhere.
What have you seen?
