Two Thoughts on Church Planters and Pastoral Responsibility
In studying church planters over the past decade, I’ve discovered two keys to explosive growth:
- the pastor is fixated on evangelism. Pastor, if you want your plant to grow then in the early stages of your plant you must set the example and do one-to-one evangelism. You also have to spend more time out in the public than with your flock.
- and the pastor is healthy enough to hand-off ministry responsibilities to others the moment a person with leadership potential emerges. Effective leaders know that they can grow the church only so far. If they want their plant to outgrow their ability to grow it, they have to empower others to share their faith with their networks.
Recently the Lilly Foundation did a study titled “New Church Development in the 21st century.” It was a study of over 700 church plants in seven denominations. They compared the habits of highly effective planters to those who were far less effective. Their findings backed up my two observations. You can read about the study in Extraordinary Leaders in Extraordinary Times.
Not long ago wrote an article about the secret to growing a small church or new church plant that got picked up and circulated through Rasnet. It seems as if my article stirred quite a controversy as well as some personal rationalization for failure. One such response was:
“I can’t help but believe that thousands of faithful pastors of small struggling church reading this article have just dropped into depression or into feelings of failure. I know many churches with evangelistic pastors and yet the churches continue to remain small (and the reverse is also true; church growth in spite of the pastor’s efforts……
It appears this article suggest the lack of church growth is the pastor’s fault, and the converse would also be true, if the church grows it is due to the pastor’s effort… which is something great to talk about a pastor’s conferences.
Kent and Barbara Hughe’s book , Liberating Your Ministry From Success Syndrome redefines success as faithfulness, serving, loving, believing, praying, holiness, and attitude (it’s a great read).
I believe direct evangelism grows churches, but to make it all about the pastor’s evangelistic activity seems short-sighted. I believe that church growth is more than adding numbers to the roll or notches on a belt; it is about the people of God, on mission with God, making disciple for God, in order to make a difference in the life of the world and the kingdom.”
Here is my response:
I guess you would have to define faithfulness. I define it as sharing one’s faith so the Kingdom can be expanded. One isn’t held accountable to how people respond, but one is help accountable to both the Great Commission and Commandment. Faithfulness is far more than how one conducts one’s life.
The study doesn’t make it all about the pastor. The hand-off of ministry also includes one-on-one evangelism. However, if the pastor isn’t concerned about evangelism then the church usually doesn’t grow, so there is a direct correlation between what a pastor does and how the church grows.
Remember, this study was about church plants. Churches simply don’t grow if the pastor doesn’t do most of the work in the early days.
I’m also not prone to allowing anyone off the hook when it comes to our Lord’s last will and testament -”Go and make disciples” and “be my witnesses.”
Bill Easum”
Now, I wish to add more. The last thing we need are more books like the one from the Hughes that define faithfulness in such a way as to remove all responsibility for the mess in which we find the U.S. Church. The last thing I want to do is liberate any Christian from the success syndrome, much less the pastor. We’re in a mess my friends. We have enough mediocrity in the church today. We have enough churches closing for lack of leadership. I’m fed up with pastors who are willing to spend their entire ministry changing spiritual diapers and caring for every spiritual hangnail that comes along. We’ve had enough failure. It’s time we took responsibility and led the Church home.
I want to commend all of those faithful pastors who labor each day to bring someone into the Kingdom and grow them forward. And I want to give a swift kick in the butt to those pastors who are content with spending all of their time baby sitting self-centered church members. Shame on you. God expects so much more from us.