3. Never enough time.
When it comes to complacency in the church, there is the veneer of activity and busyness, but it is seldom strategic. Yet the facade of meaningful activity becomes the means by which to excuse what could, and should, be done.
More often than not, your 40 or more hours per week are spent doing what you enjoy, and what gives you the most strokes, but not necessarily what advances the church most strategically.
But, since time is being filled, it is easy to dismiss using it in other ways. You tell yourself there simply isn’t enough of it. Then you keep spending it the way you always have, and being where you’ve always been.
Which, if you are living in a culture of complacency, is perfectly fine.
4. No longer teachable.
Another sign of complacency in the church is when you resist being “pushed” or “challenged.” In fact, you denounce such pushes or challenges, usually in the name of some superior sounding reason tied to trivial theology or denominational distinctive.
Even worse is when you reject new ideas based on your supposed “experience” or “knowledge” as a seasoned leader.
Translation? Pride.
I’m not saying you don’t go to conferences or read books—you could be a book/conference “junkie”—this is about openness to rethinking where you are and how you’ve done things. And even more, once you get a viable new approach or idea, having the tenacity to try it.
Too often, there seems to be an undertone implying that trying something new is an admission of being “wrong” in the past. So you don’t implement anything substantively new, and cling to the old ways to protect ego.
