It's not a competition but...

If you talk to most people who know me they will tell you that I am quite competitive.  Be it at board games, football, or a pizza eating competition with my teenage sons at a Pizza Hut buffet.  I guess most of us are competitive at something, be it competing against ourselves to beat that time, be fitter, read more books than last year, or competing against others at any or everything.

But our competitiveness is deeply damaging when it comes to ministry and I know because I've felt the need to compete.  'How big is your church now?' is the question that most people who have planted churches face most regularly in some form or another.  It is spectacularly unhelpful.  It sets up an us and them.  The successful versus unsuccessful.  It brings a weight of expectation which can become a burden.  It plays to all our competitive and comparative instincts and mitigates against partnership and gracious honesty and mutual care and prayer.  And it totally ignores the different socio-economic, planting strategies, team strengths, environmental factors, geographical and demographic quirks which have a huge influence on those things.

As I've mused on this issue it strikes me that our competitiveness creates its own problems.  It seems to me to be a clever ploy of Satan to keep us driven or proud or disappointed and disparate rather than united.  Here are a number of areas which are impacted by competitive ministry:

1. My kingdom focus not big kingdom focus
Read through Acts and look for competitive evangelism or church growth and you won't find it.  Instead theirs is a whole kingdom focus that frees resources, generously gives, and graciously and joyfully celebrates growth everywhere.  Yet too often we are focused on my church, my numbers, my mission field, comparing and contrasting it with others and then feeling either proud or crushed.  This simply shouldn't be.

2. Competition negates rejoicing
Too often we see ministry growth elsewhere as a threat or as highlighting deficiencies in ours.  That simply is not so.  And such thinking means we will not grow beyond being stunted spiritual pygmies.  It means the gospel has not really penetrated our hearts and is not likely to.  It also means we may take an unhealthy joy, though we'd never show it, in another ministries struggles.

3. Keeping our slice of the pie
There is only so much funding for ministry so if we are competitive we will jealously guard what funding we have access to; looking to ring fence and protect, or grow our revenue streams using a business model.  We will want to invest in our ministry, our church, gain funding for our initiatives, ignoring the fact that it may be at the expense of others.  The Biblical model seems to be a bit different.  Funding flows where the need is greatest not where the wealth is.  So initially most mission is funded by the Jerusalem church.  But when the Gentile churches are healthy and well established and there is a famine in Jerusalem they gentile churches generously send money back to Jerusalem.  They don't want to keep their slice of the pie, they don't hoard resources because they are concerned for the kingdom and their brothers and sisters and so they give.

4. Hoarding not providing
I've done a whole blog post on this but this is another area where competitiveness causes gospel blockage.  If we're competitive we will focus on growing our ministry and our staff team rather than on providing workers for the kingdom where ever they are needed.  Instead ought we to be training up leaders and preparing them for service in other parts of God's kingdom, rather than training up to hoard.  When was the last time your church trained up a leader you would love to have kept but deliberately sent on somewhere else to serve?

5. Competition creates isolation
Let me speak personally to pastors.  Many pastors are lonely.  Not in the sense of having no friends but in terms of creating expectations of themselves that are unhealthy and lead to isolation.  Admittedly some of those are caused by unhealthy church cultures, but increasingly I think that is a tiny minority.  Our competitiveness means we don't want to show the very people who could most help us our vulnerabilities be it because of the fragility of our ego, fear of how other pastors may judge me, or simply because of pride.  How many other pastors are you really honest with about how you are doing?  Not in terms of your church but in terms of our own personal walk with Jesus, our love for God, our pastoring of our families, our theological doubts?

There are lots more ways our competitiveness hinders our ministries.  I'm pretty sure than behind many pastoral burn-outs and moral crash and burns lies an unhealthy, gospel denying competitiveness.  I'm also sure it is behind much of the pastoral loneliness and isolation people feel.  Only in applying the gospel and fighting our sinful pride saturated competitiveness will we know the joy of gospel partnership, love and kingdom growth.  It's a battle that I am increasingly aware I must fight to avoid all those dangers listed above and many others.

Despising the ordinary

What could church do that would enable you to flourish spiritually?  That's the question we began with at Gospel Group last night as we studied Nehemiah 11-12.  It's a fascinating question isn't it because there are so many possible answers and so many of them are dictated by the trends in our society.  But it is a question worth thinking about not least for how it exposes our habit of despising the ordinary God instituted means of flourishing in our faith.  What could church do that would enable you to flourish in your faith?

In Nehemiah 11 and 12 the walls are rebuilt, the people have committed themselves to the covenant having repented of their sins.  And now they put structures in place in Jerusalem that will help them as God's people flourish in God's city.  Firstly 1 in 10 of the people from the surrounding villages and towns moves into the city.  We need others, something that is plainly obvious when you read the New Testament and pay any attention to the one another's.  They put leaders in place who will administer what needs to be administered, who will give direction and be the bridge between good intentions and actual action.  They put the priests in place to make the offerings and sacrifices which we know point to Jesus the great high priest who once for all offers himself for sin.  They recognise the Levites and put them in place, those who read, teach and apply God's word to the people.  They set people apart to be gatekeepers, to provide security from their enemies but also to facilitate purity by keeping Sabbath traders from other nations out.  And they recognise and put musicians in place who will lead the people in recognising, rejoicing in, and responding to the faithfulness and goodness of God.

In Nehemiah 12v44-47 we are told that the people ensure that these groups are provided for materially on an ongoing basis so they can keep on dedicating themselves to their given roles, so that God's people have the trellises (yes I know that's been used somewhere else) which facilitate spiritual flourishing.  Israel commit themselves to having structures and people in place that will enable them to flourish spiritually.  But it's worth noticing that these are the ordinary everyday things that God's people had done for centuries.  It is not a magic bullet, it doesn't guarantee spiritual flourishing (see chapter 13) but it does provide an opportunity for it to happen.

As you move into the New Testament we see similar structures put into place in the New Testament church.  Those who read, teach, and apply the bible to the people, those who guard them (see Acts 20 - elders watch over the flock), musicians to lead us in worship, leaders who help direct us as to where the rubber hits the road with a passage.  And yet because of the sheer ordinariness of it all we are tempted to despise such things, to take them for granted because of their everyday or every Sunday-ness.  Instead we ought to thank God for them and for providing them so that we have opportunity to spiritually flourish and we ought to dedicate ourselves to making the most of the opportunity they provide rather than looking off and wondering about or longing for the silver bullet that will provide instant flourishing.

What does it mean to grow as a church?

Its just been our third birthday as a church and it is a good time to reflect on what it means to grow, there are of course lots of different types of growth:

Numerical - this is the most obvious and though we know it isn't the best indicator the one we often look at first.

Spiritual - disciples of Jesus becoming more mature disciples of Jesus, fighting their sin and growing in putting God's word into practice and serving others.

Kingdom - Seeing people who were lost put their trust in Jesus as their Saviour and Lord, and seeing disciples made and grow who increasingly serve others both inside and outside of the church.

I think all three are intrinsically linked. As people grow spiritually it is attractive to their non-believing friends who want to understand more about what is changing their friend, this results in gospel opportunities and can result in kingdom growth as friends trust Jesus. This in turn leads to numerical growth. Growing disciples can also attract others who have left church to come back and see what is causing the difference. Fundamental to all genuine gospel growth is the teaching and application of the Bible to the lives of one another in a community of grace.

Church and the future

Last night we got to thinking about the future of the church. At what point does church begin to become uncomfortable? At what point does size impact upon your vision and values? Undeniably developing gospel relationships is only possible in groups of certain sizes, so what is too big and when do you start planning for the next thing?

I was reminded of the S-curve of Church growth, a diagram is below. Churches grow, but as they approach capacity growth levels off, before they eventually stagnate and then begin to decline. Arresting a declining church is much harder than redirecting a growing church. The red dotted line on the graph below indicates a point at about 80% at which growth starts to slow. The church is comfortable and begins to lose its evangelistic edge.

The challenge at about 80% capacity is to launch, change or challenge the church so that it can begin another growth spurt, so that it retains its evangelistic edge and the growth curve looks more like this:

That change, challenge or launch can look very different. It can mean moving to a bigger venue thus increasing capacity and giving space to invite non-believing friends, it could mean increasing the number of services in the same venue, or it may mean starting a new church somewhere else.

The challenge of Acts is to depend on God and be bold not comfortable with the great news of Jesus Christ.

What's our goal?

What is my goal as a pastor teacher? What is your goal as a home group leader or a Sunday school teacher, or whatever service you perform in the church? What about as a member of church as you come along? What is our goal as a church when we meet together?

What is Paul’s goal in Colossians 1? To “present everyone fully mature in Christ.” Paul isn’t just interested in converts, in numbers signing a pledge card or praying a prayer. He labours to present mature Christians.

How? (28) “We proclaim him, admonishing everyone and teaching everyone with all wisdom…” He teaches them about Jesus, and he corrects wrong thinking and clears muddled thinking – that’s what admonishing means. And it is not just for the keenies or those who love big books, or reading, it is for everyone, that word appears 3 times in the verse.

In contrast to the false teaches in Colossae from whom Paul borrows the language ‘perfect’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘mystery’ that he uses in this passage, there are no secrets, no initiations, no rituals as the false teachers said to maturity and fullness, there is the sufficient Jesus Christ.

That must be what we teach, it must be what we continue in. We need to have our wrong thinking about Jesus and what he does clarified, we need his wisdom on how to live. If as a church we ever stop teaching that please bring it to our attention and if we do not repent and change find somewhere that does teach it and labour there, because we will have lost the gospel and connection with Jesus Christ.

But this is about more than just teaching from the front, do you see Paul’s concern here he doesn’t want numbers he wants disciples. We, I, need to repent of this idea that a growing church is one where more people are coming, where we grow from 60 now to 80 or 100. A growing church is one where its members are being taught and being helped to understand more about Jesus Christ, where they are living out what it means to follow him.

Every member ministry means that you are engaged in that, both as those listening to teaching and as those teaching others. As a church mature Christians must be our goal.

What is a Healthy Church Member

There is a new book which has been published by Nine Marks publishing, it looks well worth reading, I'll certainly be trying to get my hands a copy or two. Click on the link to read a review of 'What is a healthy Church member' book review

The first chapter on expositional listening sounds worth the price of the book alone. We don't learn and grow by osmosis we need to learn to listen to preaching, test it, accept it and act on it.

The cork in the bottle

Paid workers are valuable for churches but they also pose a potential danger, in that they can become the cork in the bottle that stops growth from happening. For example if a church is about 80 members one church worker has only limited time and is probably at the threshold of his ability to care for the churches members. And actually is probably spending the vast majority of his time maintaining ministries and caring for the people he has been given. There will be little time to stand back evaluate, pray and plan.

So what is the answer to that problem? Is it to take on an extra member of staff. Well it may be, except that having more staff increases peoples expectations, it may lead people to expect twice as many visits, rather than freeing up time to plan and pray strategically. It may create expectations of multiplied ministries rather than more focused ones.

I wonder if the answer isn't seen in Paul's model of ministry. He always has a young apprentice with him who he is training up to eventually send elsewhere but alongside that he looks for leaders from among the churches. So he tells Titus to appoint men from the church as elders, it is the same model he and Barnabas used when returning after their first missionary journey.

The answer to the problems growth brings may not be more paid staff, it may be more teams working within a congregation. Maybe a pastoral visitation team, or a youth team, or whatever else. These are then overseen by the elders. It also has the added benefit of drawing peopel in from the fringe to be part of these teams.

It has the great benefit that it is growing leaders from within the church and growing disciples as it works.

A Barrier

One of the barriers to growth is that we automatically drift into a maintaining the status quo mentality. We don't mean to do it; we want to see people join the church and see those in the church mature in their faith, but we just like things the way they are. Why do we need to try it this way when it has always worked so well doing... The young tend to think this is a failing of the old, but actually its a failing of all of us - sometimes the young are most trenchant because they have always aspired to be in a certain group. We like what we like and we do not relish change. We like to feel comfortable and sometimes growth unsettles us and brings change with it.

Say you are in a church of about 40 people, you will know everybody by name and the church is built on those relationships. What happens when 10 new people join? It's great the growth we have prayed for is realised, but what if those ten have different ideas and ways of doing things? What about the changes in dynamics it brings, will I know everyone in the same way, will it alter existing relationships?

What about the additional pressure it puts on the church leaders meaning they spend less time with those who were there originally? All these are consequences of growth, and I am not saying growth is a bad thing, but that our attitudes can be a barrier to growth.

We need to be prepared to pray for and welcome growth both as a result of mission and maturity and the changes that it brings.

Barriers to growth

A Christian organisation used to have the twin goals of mission and maturity. It was so memorable that even now, ten years on, I can still tell you what its goals were and explain what it meant by them. They are thoroughly biblical goals for the individual believer but also for the church. We want to see people individually and collectively (I'm not sure you can do one without the other - we grow individually as we grow collectively) in their discipleship. As they do so they naturally live lives and speak words that are not just missionary, but missional (a life saturated with the breaking news about Jesus).

But what is it that stops this happening? I guess there are a number of things, but what about at an organisational level in the church?

In Acts we see the fledglingly church and it grows phenomenally in the early chapters. As a result of its growth it encounters the threats of external persecution, internal corruption (ch5) and in chapter 6, perhaps the most subtle, logistics. The result is grumbling as some of the widows complain about being overlooked in the distribution of food.

It is a logistical problem but it threatens to decimate the missional living of this new community, of God's new community. Why? Because it will stop the growth, it will blunt the gospel edge, it will distract the Apostle from prayer and preaching.

Do we face similar barriers? What are they?