Things Satan likes about the church

1. When we keep everyone programmed up in church so they don't bother their friends or community with the gospel.
2. When we have so many boards and committees that it takes forever to get anything done or decided.
3. When we hire people to do ministry so that others don't get trained or released into meaningful ministry
4. When we preach self help sermons that don't go to the heart of the Gospel
5. When we water down the text to make it non-offensive
6. When we focus on programming and numbers rather than Gospel impact
7. When we spend so much on our facilities that we don't have much left over for mission outreach
8. When we teach people how to be a good evangelicals rather than focus on real transformation of their hearts, thinking, priorities and relationships
9. When we get wrapped up in conflict so that we are distracted from our real mission
10. When we have no clearly defined mission so everyone is comfortable and no one is seriously pushing into Satan's territory
11. When we convince lay people that they are not really qualified to do real ministry by our professionalization of ministry
12. When we confuse bringing people to church for bringing people to Jesus
13. Our church growth methodology of simply outperforming other local churches so that we grow by transfer not evangelism leaving Satan's territory relatively unscathed
14. Our ineffective boards that make for ineffective ministry

Growing your ministry by developing new relationships

It is counter intuitive but a key way to grow your ministry is to focus on relationships outside of your ministry and normal relational circle. Relationships are the door openers to all kinds of opportunities, help, counsel and ideas. The wider our circle of relationships the richer our lives and leadership.

The reason it is sometimes counter intuitive is that we often feel like we don't have time to develop a wide set of relationships given the busyness of our lives and the demands of leading our own ministry. However, relationships are leverage for growth in our own lives and consequently growth in our own ministries. 

As a ministry leader, I intentionally take the time to develop relationships with other leaders. In doing so I am blessed by:

• Learning new things from new people
• Meeting a new circle of leaders who other leaders know
• Finding synergies where we can work together
• Gaining advocates or counsel when I need them
• Finding solutions for common issues
• Meeting people I can serve in various ways
• Enjoying the fellowship of individuals who have similar values and goals

Every new relationship widens my own world and the world of others. I am enriched and hopefully I enrich others. In fact, who I am today is directly connected to the number of people who have enriched my life and leadership. I owe many people many thanks and I would not be where I am today without those relationships.

Over the years I have grown a considerable library. Those books are my friends and I love to commune with them. But more significant is the group of friends that I have grown who in various ways contribute to my life and ministry and to whom I can contribute. It is a world wide group and each one is important to me.

Never underestimate the value of taking the time to develop relationships outside of your normal circle and from other ministries. You never know how those connections will enrich you, allow you to enrich them, open doors, provide counsel and or simply allow you or them to be connectors with others in ways that build God's kingdom. For those who say, "I don't have time," my response is that it is some of the best time you will invest.

A failure of nerve

Leaders are periodically faced with issues or situations that they know in their gut ought to be addressed because they are threats to the success of the ministry. It is amazing how often, however, that they choose not to act on what they know, somehow hoping that the situation will right itself and continue on as if the threat did not exist.


It is simply a failure of nerve and it is a leadership failure.


Ministry and church boards are guilty and leaders at all levels are guilty of this when they know there is a threat to the organization but fail to address it. And it happens far more often than we would like to admit.


Boards and leaders have a great capacity to gloss over, ignore, put off, or explain away threats because they do not have the willingness and courage to name what is and figure out how to deal with it. In fact, most crises when they occur do so because there is a history of not dealing with an issue long before it damaged the ministry. The crisis is not really a surprise and was probably inevitable because the factors leading up to it were know but not dealt with along the way. Someone did not want to face hard facts.


Why do boards and leaders ignore issues that later on often become a crisis? They simply lack the nerve to address what they know to be true. This is true of the mission leader who knows that if they do not make radical shifts in philosophy they will go into decline. 


It is true of church boards that don't deal with pastors who leave large numbers of bodies in their wake. It is true of ministries that don't deal with financial issues. It is true of ministries that are in organizational drift. There are many scenarios but the common element is that someone in leadership is not willing to deal with a threat that they know to be real. 


A failure of nerve is a leadership failure that often leads to organizational crisis that could and should have been avoided. The sad thing is that in not addressing a known issue, the leader(s) have set the organization up for great pain that will impact many people and derail the ministry's success for a long period of time if not permanently. 


Most ministry crisis can be traced back to current or prior leaders who chose not to address a known issue. The result is that someone else must now deal with an even greater issue and the mission of the organization has been compromised. Their choice to ignore what they knew to be true was the true cause of the crisis that eventually occurred. 


It takes courage to lead. What we do about issues we know should be addressed as leaders or boards has significant long term ramifications. Our inaction will most likely cause harm to the ministry in the long term, hurt people in the process, and cause a larger problem in the future. A failure of nerve is simply a failure of courage to address what we know to be true. It is a leadership failure!


Those who ignore known issues are just as guilty for a crisis as those who caused them. Both are part of the cause. Sometimes they are one and the same.

Unleashing our lay people and overcoming the dysfunction of professional ministry

I believe that one of the five dysfunctions of the church is that of professional ministry where we hire specialists to do the work of ministry rather than to equip others to do ministry. This professionalism is even more interesting in that the movement I am a part of (the EFCA) and sister denominations came out of lay led movements in the eighteen hundreds.


The free church movement came out of an environment in Europe where the state church (non free churches) had become liberal, were not preaching the Gospel and where parishioners were not encouraged to study scripture themselves. Because they were not being fed in church, many started to meet in homes to pray, worship and study scripture resulting in the pietistic movement which brought revival to a number of countries in Europe and with that revival the planting of non-state run churches (free churches) which then spilled over to the United States. It was Europeans out of the free church movement who planted the same kind of churches here in the eighteen and nineteen hundreds.


Fundamental to this movement was the belief that lay people who had not had formal theological education were qualified to teach, preach and lead the church. One did not have to be a "theologian" in the professional sense of the word or have had formal theological education. In fact, many of these lay leaders and pastors had a greater understanding of scripture and the Christian life than their "educated" counterparts. 


Today, however, it is very rare and often difficult for those in the EFCA and fellow free church movements to become ordained without a formal theological degree. The unwritten understanding is that you need to have a Bible school or seminary degree in order to pastor. And the ordination process is designed to enforce this.


As the leader of the EFCA international mission, ReachGlobal, I work in an environment that is much closer to the roots of our movement where it is informally trained leaders who lead and pastor churches internationally. Most of the world cannot afford the luxury of a formal theological education given the poverty of the majority world. That, however, does not keep them from growing churches that are often healthier from a Gospel perspective than many churches in the west with their formally educated clergy. 


I am not anti theological education. I have one of the best and it has informed all my work. What I do object to is the professionalization of ministry that requires a theological degree to be in full or part time ministry or to be ordained in many of our movements. Many large churches in the west are rejecting that paradigm, training their own leaders and releasing them to preach, teach and lead in their settings. 


In basically ruling out ordination for those not professionally trained we perpetuate the clergy/lay distinction and send the message that to really be effective in ministry one must have a theological education (read degree). It is a good thing this was not true in the early church. Or in the majority world. 


Rather than discourage lay people from leading, teaching and preaching we ought to encourage it. It would raise the level of biblical understanding in our churches and release new ministry personnel who are either part time (bi-vocational) or full time. And why would we not encourage these very people who are gifted to plant and pastor churches themselves regardless of whether they have a formal degree or not?


Further, why ordain only people who can give the definition of obscure theological terms rather than ordain those who know the bible, can explain it well and teach it diligently? Knowing what superlapsarianism and infralapsarianism means is far less important than simply knowing good biblical theology that comes from a knowledge of the bible and can be applied to everyday life. We ought to know the biblical terms. Why should one need to know the litany of theological terms dreamed up by two thousand years of theologians in order to be effective in ministry? Or for that matter, Greek and Hebrew in order to preach well? I have a hard time believing that those would be the standards that Jesus would have for those in ministry!


Why cannot we open real ministry up to those who are trained both formally and informally and encourage both to get into ministry either full or part time? The church might actually see significant growth in the United States if we again allowed it to be a movement of lay people, not just those who are professionally trained and can get through an ordination process that is designed to weed out those who are not. I wonder how many lay people were given gifts by Jesus to lead, teach and preach that we do not unleash in meaningful ways because they are lay and not professional clergy?

Increase collaboration and innovation by eliminating unnecessary silos

Recently I had a great day moderating a discussion with a ministry about how to increase collaboration and innovation. They had been a highly compartmentalized (think silos) ministry where it was almost impossible to cross departmental lines to work synergistically. 


The irony is that when one got the right people around the table ideas flowed quickly for a full day. And, individuals who had not been able to collaborate freely in the past actually had skills that complemented one another. They are in the process of removing the roadblocks that had kept them siloed and are very excited about the prospects.


In a world that ought to be flat it is unfortunate that there are still many organizations which do not encourage, or even mandate synergistic collaboration regardless of the department they reside in. There may well be good reasons for different departments but there is no good reason for a paradigm that prevents or does not encourage collaboration across those departmental lines.


Here is the rule. The more compartmentalized an organization is the less synergistic collaboration they will have and the less innovation they will experience. Neither are preferred outcomes.


This is especially important today in a day when financial resources are less available meaning that effeciencies are more critical. Those effeciencies are often found in finding ways to maximize the intellectual capital of the organization, regardless of where it resides.


Another factor is that departments and people get into ruts in their thinking. When you bring in new talent from the outside (another department) you bring in someone who can look at problems and options with new eyes. 


Innovation and solutions are always better when done with the best intellectual talent possible. But that means collaboration and every organization either affirms and encourages it or does not. Hint: when leaders model it, others often follow suit.

Running process

"We need to run a process" is a common phrase in our organization. Whether we are considering hiring, transitioning an individual to a new role, putting someone in leadership or believe that we need to transition an individual out of the organization, running a process is a non-negotiable part of the equation.

It is one thing to believe that you are making the right decision in any of these cases. It is another thing to know for sure, to understand the upsides and downsides, to know what training and coaching will be needed with a new hire or a transition, or in the case of helping someone transition out of the organization that we have done due process and have a plan for how to proceed. With new hires it is understanding the wiring and experience of the individual to ensure that they are placed in the right spot.

Many organizations do not pay enough attention to the process. Mainly because it is because it is time intensive and hard work. 

How well we run these processes is a measure of how much we value people in our organization. People matter. They are the most important asset we have. Proper process is what we owe our people because the consequences of how we deploy them impacts them directly as well as the organization.

Process is an investment in our people, our organization and mission. It is some of the most important work we do.

Is your heart restless?

The older I get the more restless I am. For something more, something deeper, something that will fill my soul. There is a reason for that restlessness.

God created men and women specifically to have a relationship with their creator. In fact, it says that in the cool of the evening God would physically stroll in the garden with Adam and Eve. He took great pleasure in their company. The popular view of God for many, including Christ followers is that we should be afraid of Him. Yet, the creation account would indicate that God delights in the fellowship of His created.

Remember that God is three in one: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. They, as One, experience perfect relational peace with one another. In the same way, God created Adam and Eve to experience that relational peace with Him. As the Father delights in fellowship with the Son and the Holy Spirit, so He delights in the fellowship of those He created. In fact, he created us for fellowship with Him. Until they disobeyed God and understood what sin was, Adam and Eve simply took it for granted that they could commune with Him. It was natural, unimpeded, and just as God created it to be.

Here is the mystery of God’s heart: That he would want to create us in order to have fellowship with us. In order to love us and be loved by us. He delights in our worship of Him and he delights in showing His love to us. It was to men and women that God gave the capacity through our souls to have a relationship with Him. Of the created order, only mankind has this great privilege! It is no mistake that Satan went for the juggler with Eve: he specifically tried to sever and destroy this relationship that they were made for with God. In doing so he went to the very core: the fellowship and relationship between the created and the creator.

We often think that we have an obligation to spend time with God. That somehow by doing so we gain God’s favor. Here is the truth: God delights in our presence with Him. It is hard to understand but He, complete as He is in Himself, loves to be in our presence. This is the lesson of Mary and Martha in the Gospels. Martha was full of doing (obligation) while Mary simply sat at the feet of Jesus to listen. Jesus said to Martha, “Mary has chosen what is better and it will not be taken away from her.”

It has been said that there is a hole in every human heart that only God can fill. It is why mankind seeks in all kinds of ways to discover the transcendent and relate to God even when looking in the wrong places. The reason for this is that our hearts were designed from the beginning for relationship with our creator. We were designed for Him! It is integral to being made in His image. That is why the longings of our hearts are never completely satisfied by anything else – or anyone else. As image bearers we are never complete until we are connected in heart relationship with the One who created us and the closer that relationship the more complete we become.