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The Myth that going Backwards can take you Forward


Christian Leaders going back is not an option.



Do you as a Christian leader ever get annoyed? I know I do, I am human, if you ask anyone who knows me they will tell you that at times I am hard to get on with. But no one challenges my commitment to see Christian Leaders be the very best that they can be and for them to be successful. Dealing with people can be both exhilarating and frustrating but one thing that really frustrates me is when, leaders of churches decide to go backwards instead of forward. When they feel that going back to a particular way of doing things or going back to a particular program, that didn't work very well is in their mind, the only way forward.

One church and church leadership I know have done just this, gone backwards, not in size or commitment, but in the way they do things. I can't help thinking that the issue is not the church, or for that matter the leaders themselves, but in the way the world has changed, the way their community has changed, and the way the congregation has changed in the 15 years that this particular church has been going.

This church in short had a great program of building (people) a vibrant worship team and great preaching. It had several years of  consistent growth and then nothing, visitors to the church continued and commitments to Christ were seen but no growth. People came and people went, BUT NO GROWTH everything stopped. It didn't stop outright things were more subtle than that but it took eighteen months before leaders began to cotton to this fact. What was the problem? I think it stems around three areas;

Any unified vision and growth over a period of time can lead to a centralised focus. In other words people stop looking to ways they can reach others but concentrate on fulfilling the wishes of those in Church Leadership.

More specifically  there is the idea and concept that the people, congregants and leaders are there to support the ministry of the senior leader and also, more importantly, a lack on the part of the senior leadership team to trust the junior leaders in moving forward. For example in this case one of the issues is that the mid week programmes are not working as they should, rather than trust the mid week home group leaders to know what's best for their groups and trust them to pastorally care for them. The decision is to go back to and centralise all teaching and input for these groups. This didn't work the first time round, it won't work the second time round either.

The world has changed in the last ten years and challenges arise that no one was ever prepared or trained for. Challengers arise that cannot be solved through compromise or through win-win solutions or for that matter adding another staff member to the church team.

It is about recognising what those challengers are. Deciding what should stay and what should go, negotiating the loss that this brings and it is about leaders and people learning to change and go forward, not backwards.


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