A Cancer Waiting To Happen

Heads-up church leaders, especially Tim Stevens, you’ve got to listen to this. Pastor Andy Stanley (he's a PWP below to the right) offers a leadership podcast, a conversation designed and to help church leaders go further, faster (their words). I just listened to the latest conversation* where Andy talks about assumptions and emotional attachments church leaders inherently cultivate in running their ministries over time.

What happens in a church is this: when the leaders have all built and settled into their ministries, they fall in love with the way they do ministry - -whether it’s effective or not. And because of that emotional attachment, there will always be a reason why an ineffective program continues. The church won’t consider changing because (for example)…it will hurt someone’s feelings, or the older people don’t use computers, or she lives to deliver flowers, or he brought all his kids up through that program…you get the idea. These are all the types of comments that indicate a cancer growing in ministry.

Andy attributes emotionalized ministry work to long-term staff members getting settled in their love for the way they do their ministry; and he compares that emotional bond to the same kind of bond you might have with an old couch: it’s plain ugly, but you can’t get rid of it because of all the memories it holds, like, the new puppy that slept on it when he was sick; all the kids were raised with it, our first kiss was on that couch; and so on. A new person would walk up and say, “Let’s get rid of that ugly couch!” A long-term person would say, “We can’t get rid of that good ol’ couch!” The problem when ministry is the old couch is this: the tendency to become emotionally attached to your ministry is an inward emotional movement, it moves your focus to your self, your center of emotional need - -which might not be God’s need for His church.

Andy Stanley’s message calls for fresh new eyes, new ideas – ones that have no emotional attachment – that are focused on Gods vision for the church- he calls for courage to make effective changes in the church. He suggests this:

• Ask your leaders: if someone came into our church today that was qualified, convicted to help the church reach people for Christ, had no emotional attachment to any ministry or person, had a plan for change, what changes would they make in our church?
• Brainstorm with your leaders: list all the possible changes an outsider would make?
• Then ask your leaders: why don’t we make those changes?

If it’s possible for your staff to have the courage to let go of the emotion and comfort that develops over time, to drop a few ‘old couch’ programs and make effective Christ-centered changes, then do it. But if your staff cannot separate themselves from their (natural) attachments, I still say, it’s time to hire someone with new eyes.

This narrative is building– Praise God - the need for churches to REFORM and consider fresh management. I call for churches to consider hiring from the outside. Andy Stanley calls for churches to challenge themselves as an outsider would. The inward, only-hire-the-people-we-know-and-do-what-we-want narrative is a cancer waiting to happen.

I appreicate Tim Steven's point of view (of only hiring within) because he says it works for Granger, an amazing church that has transformed thousands of lives towards Christ. And he is this country's most innovative Executive Pastor. But I know that hiring-from-within-only is not now, and has not been successful for the vast majority of American churches - they don't know it, can't see it, and would never admit it.

*(Andy Stanley’s Leadership Podcast. Itunes. August 28, 2008.)