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.

Reimagining ministry teams?

Teams matter.  We are made for community, even those of us who are introverts need others.  This is even more true in ministry and yet I often hear that ministry is lonely.  We need others around us to encourage us, stop us becoming prideful, help us see our weaknesses, and remind us of our strengths.  A team helps us balance our pessimism and optimism, our tendency towards either 'can do' positivity or 'can't do' negativity.  Bible Study, prayer, singing, weeping, grieving, rejoicing are all improved when shared with others.

If you are in a ministry team thank God for his goodness to you.  Yes, it brings its challenges but those challenges are preferable to the isolation of the lone pastor.  In the UK the average size of a church is small, which means most can only afford 1 full time member of staff.  In an ideal world elders would function as a team, and I'm grateful that in many cases I have seen they do.  However, often elders meetings are infrequent, monthly or less, because lay elders are busy at work and at home as well as leading in church.  Being a pastor can be a lonely place to be.

It is a privilege, absolutely.  To be set aside and paid to study the word of God and pray is an amazing privilege that I am immensely grateful for.  Yet I wonder if being a lone pastor creates a number of problems in ministry.  I wonder if the loneliness of the position magnifies inherent dangers in ministry; pride or lack of confidence, laziness or work-aholism, isolationism or exhibitionism.  I wonder if it leads us to pull up the draw bridge and not live a life that is open to or examined by anyone else.  I wonder if it reinforces a tendency to be oversensitive to criticism, overly introspective or develop a Messiah complex.

Not everyone is in a position to be able to have a staff team at Church.  God willing at Grace we are looking to build one as we look for 3 ministry trainees who will have a chance to be heavily involved in the life of the church with everything from admin to preaching, from teaching toddlers to pastoral care.  We're also looking for a part time outreach and communities worker.  Why?  Because we have way more opportunities for the gospel than we can effectively make use of at the moment.  Also because we see the need to train people up especially to work in non-student, non-city contexts.  But also because I recognise the need for a team to leaven out my weaknesses and lead in ways I cannot and because it will do me good.

But not everyone is in that position - let me say it is not because we are well off but because of the sacrificial financial commitment of a few individuals who see a need and want to invest in the kingdom.  But regardless of whether we are in a team or not we need to build connections and begin to think about teams and networks of ministers especially for those who minister alone in their churches.  I've been to a few monthly fraternal meetings and they were great as far as they go.  But I wonder if we ought to be pushing ourselves to go deeper.  Why not have a small group of pastors who meet weekly or fortnightly?  Why not mix up what you do depending on need?  Maybe you want to submit 2 or 3 pastoral or church polity questions before you gather to chat through and seek each others wisdom on - not to be controversial but so that you are thinking through issues before they come up in your setting?  Or maybe you want to help one another preach better and so you'll bring an outline for a few weeks time and work on it together?  Perhaps you'll just come and share where you feel burdened or are rejoicing in ministry at the moment?  Always we want to pray together.

Yes I know the problem is always the diary.  We are busy, busy, busy.  I get it, I really do.  But what if committing to this made everything else easier and less burdensome?  And for those of us in teams, what about inviting someone who isn't in that privileged position to come and share ours?  Not just to sit in and observe but to reshape it so they are fully included and benefit?