Church leaders might talk about Sabbath, but how many practice it? At a recent meeting of 100 faith leaders, only three raised their hands when asked if they faithfully took a day of rest. Looking around, the convenor said quietly, “I learned how to kill myself for profit in business. How can I ever learn about God’s rest if my faith leaders don’t model it?”

Resisting workaholism isn’t just about self-care—it’s about living into God’s design for flourishing. Here are four practical ways to find the work/rest rhythm God created us for:

1. Teach and talk about Sabbath.

Our society is obsessed with work. It’s the “god” that provides meaning, purpose, and identity to many. But we are called to a different pattern—one of purposeful work and intentional rest.

• Teach about Sabbath through sermon series and Bible studies. Focus on the gift of rest woven into the rhythm of creation (Genesis 2:1-3) or Jesus’ invitation to his disciples to come rest after a period of intense ministry (Mark 6:31). Teach about the time Elijah felt burned out and fled, only to encounter God’s invitation to eat, sleep, and meet him on Mt. Horeb (1 Kings 19:1-18). Or how God helped the Israelites learn to rest through the gift of double manna the day before the Sabbath (Exodus 16:22-30).
• Talk about Sabbath and rest in everyday conversations. Normalize asking one another how well you’ve been honoring rest. Ask your pastor when their Sabbath day is and what they did. Spread the word so others in the church can work together to help them honor it. Provide encouragement and gentle accountability. Share stories of refreshment and rest (not just work and service) in conversation, newsletters, and other church publications.

2. Model rest.

If leaders don’t model rest, how can they expect others to believe it matters? In the story of creation (Genesis 1-2:3), God models the life-giving vitality of work and rest in balance. Church leaders can and should teach the same way, with their example.

• Establish clear boundaries between work and rest. Ask staff to avoid checking email or work platforms like Slack or Teams after hours, on weekends, and especially on Sabbaths. Use scheduling tools to send messages at reasonable times. Sending emails late at night or early in the morning can unintentionally create an expectation that others do the same. Some pastors and leaders even add notes in their signature lines like “Friday is my day of rest. I will return emails when I am in the office on Monday.”
• If you rest on a day other than Sundays, as church leaders must, find ways to ensure the congregation knows what day program staff and pastors will be resting. Some churches choose to set Sunday-Thursday office hours to help facilitate and model rest. On the day of rest, leaders can set an example by not coming into work or answering emails. Avoid scheduling meetings or events on that day, too, unless it is an emergency.

3. Move meetings to one night a week.

One church I served had a meeting almost every night of the week. It was exhausting for staff and laity alike! Meetings can be vital, but so is time spent at the park, with friends, or enjoying a quiet evening at home. To honor both work and rest, streamline your meeting schedule:

• Consolidate all meetings into one night of the week. You might provide a simple meal and open with a reflection or prayer. You could end the meeting with a short service activity like making sandwiches for the unhoused, sorting at your food pantry, or writing notes for those hospitalized or home bound.
• Simplify your structure by combining committees or boards that frequently overlap. This reduces redundancy and fosters collaboration. Many churches report that having a “Simplified” Board structure has freed up hours of time and made administration more effective.
• For smaller congregations, consider a monthly leadership night where all key groups meet sequentially. This approach frees other evenings for rest and relationships. A midweek gathering that integrates meetings, Bible study, food, and even service opportunities can create a sense of community while respecting the need for rest.

4. Allow laity to shine.

We’re the body of Christ (1 Corinthians 12:27), so why do some leaders act as if everything depends on just one body part? Every member has gifts to offer. When leaders rest, it creates space for others to step into their callings and bring their gifts forward.

• Pastors, invite laity to shadow you during hospital visits, outreach events, food pantries, and Bible studies. Not only will you be getting to know your people but equipping them for ministry. Then, when you are sick, on vacation, or just taking a day of rest, the ministry will continue!
• Laity, identify “ministry buddies” or co-leaders to work with and gather a team. Jesus sent people out in twos (Luke 10:1). We work best when we have a partner (Ecclesiastes 4:9-10), and it ensures the ministry will continue even if a key leader has to step back.
• All, regularly invite laypeople to speak, lead, teach, and serve in ways that showcase their unique talents. Trust God to work through the entire body of Christ. Empower others to step forward by inviting them along. The result is a healthier, more vibrant community where everyone flourishes, and rest doesn’t shutter vital ministry.

Resisting workaholism requires intentionality and courage, but it’s worth the effort. By teaching and modeling God’s rhythm of work and rest, consolidating schedules, and empowering others, we create space for ourselves and our communities to experience the life-giving rest God desires for all of us. Start small, but start today.

Related Resources

• Improve Your Time Management and Enhance Your Ministry featuring Nicole Reilley — Watch the Leading Ideas Talks podcast video | Listen to the podcast audio version | Read the in-depth interview
• From Weary to Wholehearted: Overcoming Ministry Burnout featuring Callie Swanlund — Watch the Leading Ideas Talks podcast video | Listen to the podcast audio version | Read the in-depth interview
• Build Resilience. Reduce Burnout. by Diane Owen
• 4 Practices to Help Prevent Clergy Burnout by Matt Bloom and Kim Bloom

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No one likes rules, but without them, life descends into chaos. No one likes to be told what to do either, but without submission to authority, we experience confusion and misalignment. A better approach to the necessity of authority is mutual voluntary submission, the essence of a great team. Either way, great leaders must also learn to follow, even if it sometimes feels like an inconvenience, or possibly slows us down.

Let’s be honest; wherever leaders are growing an organization, and people have strong opinions about subjective issues, conflict will arise and slow the organization down. Policies get written to align the team and help solve those problems. The truth is that we need policies. Staff policies, finance policies, security policies, and the list goes on. We may not like policies, but we need these guidelines, fences, and boundaries that not only help us move together as an aligned team but protect us from wasting time, effort, and energy.

The best organizational policies help make life and leadership better and make subjective issues clear. They also save time from repeating the same conversation over and over, and they reflect common sense. Ultimately, a good policy serves the team; the team does not serve the policy. Good policies should not slow you down, except perhaps momentarily, they actually help you run faster because they streamline decision-making.

Three big mistakes churches tend to make when it comes to policy:

Mistake No. 1: Making a policy as a substitute for leadership

Lead by influence, not by policy. Policies are meant to aid your organizational effectiveness. These “rules” must help the organization make progress and move forward toward the vision. Policies are meant to aid your organizational effectiveness. These “rules” must help the organization make progress and move forward toward the vision.

Leadership is required to establish the culture, reinforce behaviors, and inspire good attitudes, not policies. Don’t solve problems by writing polices. It’s not wise to write a policy when an honest conversation will take care of the situation. More often than not, an undesirable behavior can be handled much more effectively by having a tough conversation with grace and love. When you attempt to solve problems through policies, you erode your leadership.

Mistake No. 2: Ignoring the policies you made

Never write a policy that you don’t intend to enforce. If the policy isn’t helpful enough to hold people accountable, then don’t write it. The quickest way to erode a good and helpful policy is to write it and then act as if it doesn’t exist. Take your time to think it through, get feedback, test it out, and when it’s ready, don’t apologize for it.

If the policy is good for one, it’s good for all. We all love exceptions—I know I do. My human tendency is to read some policies and think, “This doesn’t mean me” … and move on. But that’s not good leadership. It’s true that not every policy affects me, or maybe you, as much as others do, but that’s not the same thing as dismissing it. We must always respect and support the policies that we write.

Mistake No. 3: Writing policies on stone tablets

Policies should be living and breathing documents.

If a church policy served you well five years ago, but is no longer relevant, then dump it. At 12Stone Church, we have grown large enough that we need to have more policies than we want. Over time some can become out of date, so it takes constant work to keep them fresh, relevant, and helpful to the team.

Write your policies in teams with wide input. The best policies are not written in a vacuum. Someone may serve as a point person to see it through to completion, but it’s smart to form small teams that gather insight and input from many. I’m not suggesting that committees should make decisions, but it’s wise to get a level of buy-in from the key leaders before you put the policy in place.

This article was shared on danreiland.com and is shared here with permission.

Related Resources

• Keeping Our Sacred Trust Ethics Training Courses from the Lewis Center and Wesley Pathways for Ministry
• 10 Policies Your Church Should Consider by Ken Sloane
• 7 Policies Every Church Needs for Trust and Transparency by Bonnie Ives Marden

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How can preachers overcome writers block? In this episode, William Willimon shares insights for pastors preaching during Holy Week. He discusses his book Changing My Mind, reflecting on how his views on preaching have evolved over five decades of ministry. Willimon shares insights into his sermon-writing process and underscores the necessity of listening—to God, scripture, and people—and encourages preachers to find their voice by learning from others while staying faithful to the gospel.

Listen on Apple Podcasts | YouTube Music | Spotify

Watch on YouTube

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A surprising encounter with the divine

It was very early in the morning when Mary Magdalene, Joanna, Mary, and the other women came to the tomb to anoint Jesus’ body. They did not expect what they found. The stone was rolled away. Jesus’ body was not there. They were frightened as they found two divine messengers in gleaming white clothing who asked, “Why do you look for the living among the dead? He isn’t here but has been raised. Don’t you remember he told you that he must be handed over to sinners, be crucified, and on the third day rise again” (Luke 24:5-7). And with that we are told the women remembered the words of Jesus. They went and told the disciples and others who were gathered, but they did not respond shouting, “Christ is Risen!”

The apostles’ doubt

Luke’s gospel tells us that the apostles thought what the women had to say in the first ever Easter Sermon was nonsense, an idle tale. The first Easter sermon is reduced to nothing, nonsense. The apostles don’t believe it.

Peter runs to the tomb, sees it is empty other than the linen cloth, and he goes home wondering what happened. Having seen for himself, he still does not believe. He seems convinced that Jesus died, death has won. The women, on the other hand, remembered what Jesus told them. The women knew that resurrection was not a matter of nonsense, but of joyful faith. They understood that through the resurrection God was creating new ways of being in this world.

Trust the mystery of the empty tomb.

There is pain and suffering in the world today, just as there was when Jesus experienced the pain of the crucifixion. If the resurrection matters to us, then we know that even amid suffering, pain, and loss, we must trust in the mystery of the empty tomb. We must trust in the resurrection of Jesus, and we must look for signs of resurrection in the world around us

Even in the midst of suffering, pain, and loss, God is at work in our broken and hurting world. As those who follow in the footsteps of Jesus, we are called to be agents of change, healing, and good news.

Resurrection matters. Without it we would not gather for worship to proclaim “Christ is Risen!” Resurrection matters because in the midst of the empty tomb and the mystery of the resurrection, God overcomes the finality of death. God does something new. God brings forth new life.

The joy of proclaiming “Christ is Risen” in word and deed

Easter is not only a day, but a season for proclaiming “Christ is Risen” and joyfully singing alleluia. But there’s more to celebrating the resurrection than praying, singing, and joyfully proclaiming “Christ is Risen!” Mary and the other women who went to the tomb with her that morning understood this. They did not keep the matter of the resurrection to themselves. They went and shared the news with others. Now some thought what they were sharing was garbage, but we know that what they were sharing was not only life-changing, but world changing.

Our task at Easter is not simply to celebrate, but also to share. To proclaim that we believe resurrection matters. To share with others the impact our faith makes in our own lives and to help others to know in their heads and in their hearts that the resurrection matters. It matters not only for a season, but every day of our lives.

We are called to live our lives after the example of Jesus who preached, taught, healed, and loved, bringing people from the margins of society to the center.

May we proclaim, “Christ is Risen!” not only in the words we speak, but in the way we treat one another so that those we encounter may experience God’s transforming love through us. May we be open to resurrection not only in the world around us, but also in ourselves. So that God’s mysterious, powerful, and transformational work continues to make a difference in our broken and hurting world. Christ is Risen! Christ is Risen Indeed!

Related Resources

• Resurrection as Call to Action by Ann A. Michel
• Should You Add Another Easter Worship Service? by Lovett Weems
• How a Creative Justice-Oriented Stations of the Cross Called a Community to Action by Jessica Anschutz

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The post Resurrection Matters: Living Out the Power of Resurrection Every Day first appeared on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

The post Resurrection Matters: Living Out the Power of Resurrection Every Day appeared first on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

This article was originally published on April 18, 2018.

I have championed the value of urgency for over 25 years. It began when I read John Kotter’s seminal work, Leading Change (Harvard Business Press, 2012), and realized that to reach their full potential churches and ministries need to “create urgency”—the first step in Kotter’s eight-step change model. Urgency can sweep away complacency and get the organization moving again.

But there’s a problem with this concept. “Urgency” is often heard as a negative word. People don’t line up to have more urgency injected into their lives. A leader that uses the term too often might be pulled aside and encouraged to tone it down. That’s why leaders need to create positive urgency.

In its negative forms, urgency highlights downward trends and predicts the death of the church or ministry if these patterns are not reversed. While this may be accurate, and it may even generate an initial burst of energy, it can also produce blame, denial, and hand-wringing. Positive urgency doesn’t ignore these trends, but it focuses more on the opportunities that will be missed if change doesn’t occur.

Positive urgency …

• Runs toward desired outcomes, not away from unwanted ones.
• Emphasizes hope and opportunity more than doom and gloom.
• Sees a community that can be reached, not the members who have left.
• Highlights the potential of new outward-facing programs rather than the struggles of those that need to be canceled.

Positive urgency is not the same as dreaming. The latter often lacks specifics and a time line. Dreams tend to talk about “someday in the future” and can be disconnected from reality. Positive urgency is more concrete and is “now.”

In reality, we need both positive and negative urgency, as seen in Isaiah’s vision. The scene is frightening enough that the prophet’s first urgent reaction is, “Woe to me! … I am ruined!” But the positive experience of having his sin taken away prepares him to say, “Here am I. Send me!” (Isaiah 6:5-8, NIV)

Max Depree said, “The first job of a leader is to define reality.” If your tendency in “defining reality” emphasizes the negatives, you may need to be positively urgent.

This article originally appeared as a post on mikebonem.com. Used by permission.

Related Resources

• Lead Positively by Lovett H. Weems, Jr.
• Ten Leadership Lessons from Nehemiah by Lovett H. Weems, Jr.
• Discovering God’s Future for Your Church, a Lewis Center video tool kit resource

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The post Positively Urgent first appeared on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

The post Positively Urgent appeared first on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

Must Jesus bear the cross alone and all the world go free?
No, there’s a cross for everyone, and there’s a cross for me. 
— Thomas Shepherd

If you’re like me, Holy Week often brings to mind only Palm Sunday, Maundy Thursday, and perhaps a Good Friday or Tenebrae service. However, Holy Week is a significant journey that encourages us to explore the events leading up to Jesus’ death and resurrection. If you only attend Palm Sunday to receive your palms and shout “Hosanna,” and then return on Easter Sunday, you miss out on a profound spiritual experience that unfolds throughout the entire week. 

To truly commemorate and remember the events leading up to Jesus’s death this year, I invite clergy and laity to go deeper in their reflection and engagement with Holy Week.  

Create a daily devotion for each day of Holy Week. 

Last year, I invited clergy from various churches to lead a morning conference call devotional at 8 am. Each person was allotted 8-10 minutes for a daily devotional, which included a closing prayer. A midday devotion on your preferred social media platform or a podcast might work better for your context. Whatever you choose will invite your congregation to journey to the cross with Christ and one another. Consider the following scriptures for personal or congregational daily devotions. 

• Holy Monday and Holy Tuesday are days for reflection on the teachings and miracles of Jesus. On Holy Monday, focus on the story of Jesus cursing the fig tree (Matthew 21:18-22; Mark 11:12-14) and cleansing the temple (Matthew 21:12-17; Mark 11:15-19; Luke 19:45-48).  

• Holy Tuesday focuses on Jesus’ prediction of his death and the question of his authority posed by religious leaders (Matthew 21:23-24:51; Mark 11:27-13:37; Luke 20:1-21:36).  

• Holy Wednesday is a day of somber reflection on the themes of betrayal and forgiveness (Matthew 26:14-16; Mark 14:10-11; Luke 22:3-6).  

• Holy Thursday commemorates Jesus’ Last Supper with his disciples, where he instituted the sacrament of Holy Communion. It is also the day when Jesus washed the disciples’ feet, demonstrating servanthood and humility (1 Corinthians 11:23-26, John 13:1-17, 31b-3).  

• Good Friday marks the crucifixion and death of Jesus, a solemn day of reflection (John 18:1-19:42).   

Share the journey. 

Holy Week is not meant to be observed in isolation. It is a communal experience that draws believers together as they walk the path of Christ’s passion, death, and resurrection. Coming together for shared reflection, prayer, and fellowship fosters a sense of unity and strengthens the spiritual bonds within a community. 

One simple yet meaningful way to cultivate this togetherness is by organizing midday lunches or evening soup gatherings paired with Scripture reflection. These informal settings encourage open discussions, shared insights, and deepened relationships among participants. As believers reflect on Jesus’ journey to the cross, they also journey alongside one another, providing support, encouragement, and accountability in faith. 

Attend an Easter Vigil.  

“The Easter Vigil is a unique Holy experience. It led me to experience the pure holiness of the Resurrection and allowed me to see it in a more meaningful manner than before. I’ve felt different inside about the resurrection after each vigil.” — Omega Taylor

Another addition to your Holy Week offerings that is not as common across denominations is the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. What is the Easter Vigil? 

“During the Great Three Days, from sunset Holy Thursday to sunset Easter Day, we celebrate the saving events of Jesus Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection. In the development of Christian worship, each event came to be remembered on a separate day. In the earliest centuries, however, these events were celebrated as a unity in an extraordinary single liturgy that began Saturday night and continued until the dawn of Easter Day. It was known as the great Paschal (Easter) Vigil. Preceded by a fast day, it was the most holy and joyful night of the entire Christian year, for it proclaimed and celebrated the whole of salvation history and Christ’s saving work. It is the most appropriate time for baptisms; persons baptized symbolically die and rise with Christ (Romans 6:3 –11). It has also come to be seen as a most appropriate time for congregational reaffirmation of the Baptismal Covenant. The Easter (Paschal) Vigil has both historic and symbolic roots in the Jewish Passover. That is why so many images are from the Old Testament and why so many analogies are experienced in Christ. In this service we experience the passage from slavery to freedom, from sin to salvation, from death to life.” (United Methodist Church. The United Methodist Book of Worship. Nashville: United Methodist Publishing House, 1992). 

If you’re part of a cluster relationship or cooperative parish with surrounding churches, consider partnering with another local church to host an Easter Vigil or attend an Easter Vigil at a nearby church. If you add the Easter Vigil as part of your Holy Week offerings, you will most likely find it spiritually nourishing and walk away with a deeper connection to the meaning of the power of the resurrection. 

“I enjoy the Easter Vigil. It helps me make the actual resurrection feel more significant.” — Bill Wooden

As we approach Holy Week, prepare to embark on a transformative journey alongside Christ by exploring the depths of His love and sacrifice. Whether through morning devotions, midday reflections, or communal gatherings, let us come together as a community to reflect, pray, and grow in our spiritual journey. Embrace the chance to discover the richness of this sacred time, allowing the lessons of humility, compassion, and forgiveness to resonate in our lives. Must Jesus bear the cross alone? 

Related Resources

• Easter Vigil Brings the Story of Salvation to a City in Need by Kate Payton 
• Resurrection as a Call to Action by Ann A. Michel 
• How a Creative, Justice-Oriented Stations of the Cross Called a Community to Action by Jessica L. Anschutz

The post Embrace the Fullness of Holy Week first appeared on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

The post Embrace the Fullness of Holy Week appeared first on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

In any revitalization setting, leadership must constantly evaluate the works of the church and how it impacts the community. From time to time, these evaluation periods will lead to the evolution of a ministry by either adapting to new circumstances or closing the program altogether. Recently, my church board chose to close a ministry to adjust the space to an expanded use of another ministry.

This decision did not come lightly, but after months of evaluation, long conversations with stakeholders, and an eye to where the community would be five years from now as our neighborhood is changing. Ministry is not about keeping a ministry for ministry’s sake but serving the current and future needs of the community, and sometimes that means letting go of something loved to see the value in the next season of ministry in the church’s life.

Here are three ways you can lead well when a ministry closes.

1. Share compassion with all who are affected.

Change is not easy, and it’s painful when it affects an area that a person has poured themselves into. As a leader, you must allow emotions, good or bad, to be shared. Allow for compassionate directness to take place where you share why a decision was brought about, allowing for complete transparency. For me, after the announcement of the closing ministry, there was a vicious backlash from a small group of passionate members and nonmembers who supported keeping the ministry open. I received telephone calls, emails, and personal visits from people who voiced their displeasure at the closing.

A non-church member and a passionate advocate as a volunteer and helper in the closing ministry visited me in the office. She gave me a passage of Scripture on love. I thanked her and promised to read it, but I was working on a funeral message and would review it later. She then handed me a little plastic Jesus and I thanked her again. As she turned away, she turned back and said, “Because you need Jesus! As you do not have the love of Jesus in your heart.” And she walked out.

In a moment of shock, I said, “Well, praise God.” Sometimes ministry is like this lady who shared her emotions through guerilla warfare, where she came in and out to shame me. However, she had a right to share her feelings. Let me encourage you to allow God to guide you as you move forward by sharing compassion even when you do not want to. The actions of each person speak to where they are in Christ, not where you stand. Compassion is not a dictate but a lifestyle of heart holiness that is transformed through a deeper walk with God. When the enemy gets angry, move to peace. Allow grief to be shared, but also share the truth of why the ministry had to close and the next steps that will follow.

2. Spirit-led decisions will not free you from the demands or the disgruntled.

Major decisions should not be made flippantly but through data-driven decision-making that reviews raw data and the length of time to where God has moved and whether the team believes that God will move in the future. Data-driven decision-making takes the emotion out of decision-making and focuses on what the numbers say about whether the ministry is effective.

When a decision is made, it must be shared clearly and transparently about how the decision was brought forth. I shared discussion points, financial data, numerical data and the process of what happened in a board room with those who earnestly sought the answer of why this happened. While not sharing names, I shared votes and thought processes in real-time as best I remember them. Why? Because church members deserve transparency in leadership and practices.

However, even being transparent does not persuade everyone from their thoughts and feelings about the process. As a leader, you will have to choose to be led either by the spirit or by self. Sometimes, that means allowing the negative to come and ignoring the gossip because you stand on the truth. While it might be hard, your role is to heal the church, not keep dividing it by arguing one side or the other.

When the disgruntled assaults come, choose peace. Stand as a peacemaker with Christ, explain even 50 times the same reasons to show that you are Spirit-led, will not back down, and pray that healing can come. It is not easy to weather assaults from church members, but in leadership, sometimes it is lonely at the top. Even as the verbal assaults came, people left, and some even withheld their tithes against God and the church as punishment to me; but I trusted God. Trust the Lord that if he leads you to a decision, he will lead you through the decision-making process.

3. Serve with excellence until the end.

As the end comes near, there is a temptation to give up because the ministry will close anyway. But the reality is that you are called not to serve a ministry but the Lord. The Lord wants you to finish the race to the end, not give up because things did not work out as you had hoped. As you lead your people through a disappointment, focus not on the closing but on serving in new ways through the Lord. God has an incredible plan for the local church, but its people are giving up too easily, disappointed by life, and failing to live the calling out. I cannot urge you enough to dig down deep and focus on the main thing: the Lord.

As the end draws near, what an opportunity to remember what God has done through the ministry and reflect on the past while projecting a bright future for the church. Ministry is ever-changing; closing one ministry and opening another has been a fluid cycle of the church. Do not take it personally, but rely on a personal relationship with Jesus, who will guide the church to the next thing he wants the church to focus on. We are focused on expanding a sister ministry to reach more people physically and spiritually with the gospel of Christ. While we faced an ending, we also saw just on the horizon a new beginning, and, well, that is exciting.

Remember this: God’s plans for the local church or even a person’s ministry are far more than a program but a partnership with him and the surrounding community.

This article was originally shared on October 9, 2024, by Outreach.com and is shared here with permission.

Related Resources

• Unclutter Your Church by Dottie Escobedo-Frank
• Why Congregations Sometimes Change by Dan Hotchkiss
• Saying “Yes” to Clear Purpose Can Require Saying “No” to Long-Cherished Ministries by Jaye Johnson

The post 3 Ways to Lead Well When a Ministry Closes first appeared on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

The post 3 Ways to Lead Well When a Ministry Closes appeared first on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

Ann Michel: In 2021, you wrote a very popular book on building thriving rural congregations. Now, you have a second book, The Gift of Small: Embracing Your Church’s Vocation. Why are you so interested in, even passionate about, smaller congregations?

Allen Stanton: I care a lot about small churches as a person who’s been formed in them. So much of my own spiritual journey has been in small congregations. My own understanding of vocation developed in small churches. I currently attend a small membership church, and I see how it impacts my family. But I also think as our society shifts, as religion and the way that people engage with religion changes, small churches are going to become the norm for how people engage. They’re already the largest number of churches out there. Sometimes we have the idea that small churches are all failing or that they’re bad. But I think they’re doing good work. So, a large part of my passion comes from a desire lift up what small churches are already doing for the Kingdom of God.

Ann Michel: Why do you think the contributions of smaller churches are so often overlooked?

Allen Stanton: I think our theological imagination is a bit misguided. We often think about success only in terms of growth. That ties into how we think about success in other areas of life. In my daily life, I worry about things like the size of my paycheck. There is a cultural proclivity to believe that being bigger is better, and it has seeped into our understanding of what it means to be a successful church. We see this in all sorts of ways. For example, at an Annual Conference gathering, when churches are highlighted for doing meaningful ministry, it is often based on how many programs they have or the amount of money they’re able to spend on programs. The church has bought into the idea that bigger is better, that growth is good, and to borrow a phrase from Jim Collins, “If you’re not growing, you’re dying.” In that, the small church is often overlooked.

Ann Michel: In your book, you discuss the inherent relationality of small churches and how leadership in small congregations needs to be relational leadership. Can you explain your understanding of relational leadership?

Allen Stanton: When I was starting out as a pastor, there was a particular layperson who did so much. She was running the youth group, printing and folding the bulletins, cleaning the church. It seemed like she was in charge of everything that really happened in the church. One day we had a debate about the worship service. I wanted the worship service to be an hour long. But she believed people wouldn’t care if it went longer. It became a tense conversation. I remember reaching out to a mentor who asked me, “What else is happening in her life?” Well, her father had just died, and the church was the place where she had some stability and control at a time when everything in her life was spiraling out of control. I think the small church is really one of the few places where people can come and be themselves and bring all these things to bear. So, a lot of times, relational leadership is just remembering that you’re talking to another human being.

Also, small churches are different organizationally. There are a lot of studies indicating that people engage in small organizations differently than they engage in large organizations. In a large organization, volunteers engage in particular programs. Here in Memphis, for example, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital sponsors a marathon each year. They have tons of volunteers who come out the day of the run. But they probably won’t serve again until the next marathon rolls around. But in smaller organizations people show up because they are part of making sure that organization stays afloat. They have a vested interest in what happens in that organization. They engage because it is their community where they can be themselves, make friends, and develop deep relationships. When we lead a small church, we’re not leading a hierarchy. We are leading people who exist with a strong relational network.

Ann Michel: What are some of the common pitfalls for incoming clergy when they enter into the life of a smaller congregation?

Allen Stanton: Sometimes people come into a small church and assume it’s a little version of a big church, and that the pastor is going to make a decision and somebody else, perhaps a staff person, is going to carry out the pastor’s directive. But that’s not what happens in a small membership church, largely because you’re not going to have a staff. You need to understand that you’re not in a hierarchical organization and that decisions are going to be made relationally. When a lot of people step into a smaller church, they haven’t figured out how to capitalize on that.

Also, many people assume that small churches can’t change. But small churches can and do change pretty rapidly. In fact, I think they’re quite nimble. For example, in a small church, if you are short a liturgist or a lay reader on Sunday morning, chances are you can find someone else to fill in at the last minute. In my church, we don’t ever have a sure schedule of who passes the offering plates. You just get “volun-told” about five minutes before the service. Because people are committed to the church, they make these pivots all the time.

Ann Michel: You say small churches can change in part because they are so flat, and decisions can be made in a more organic way.

Allen Stanton: Yes. But it has to be done in a smart way that reflects an understanding of the emotional capacity of the congregation. I tell a story in my book of a pastor wanting to replace a decaying, leaking baptismal font. There were people in the church who opposed what seemed like a necessary change. It’s easy to think it’s just because they resist change. But really people were saying, “My grandmother was baptized in that font. My mother was baptized in that font. My daughter was baptized in that font. I was baptized in that font. You’re not going to throw away four or five generations of the history of our faith.” But if you approach the change in a relational way and say, “We need to change this, but how do we preserve that memory?” You’d be really surprised by what can happen.

Ann Michel: You also dispute the assumption that all small churches are aging or dying churches. What do you see in terms of the age dynamics in smaller churches?

Allen Stanton: First, I think it’s important to remember that churches of every size are aging, except for a handful of really large churches. It’s not just small membership churches. Small membership churches are not immune from that decline. In some places, the average age of their members might be a little bit higher than in other places, but that’s normal because the population in their surrounding community is probably also a little bit older. We also have a picture in our heads of small congregations full of people on death’s doorstep. And that’s not true. They’re actually quite diverse in their age and lifespans. Even in a church where a plurality of the people are over 55 or 60, being 55 or 60 in today’s world is very different than being 55 and 60 in the 1930s. You still have a lot of life left at 55 or 60 or 65. So, those can be really active congregations. With people living longer you have a lot of opportunities for intergenerational relationships that might not happen in a larger church where children are just shipped off to a children’s program.

Ann Michel: You have a particular understanding of how faith is formed in smaller communities, in ways that are different than in larger churches. Can you describe what you observe?

Allen Stanton: Churches are places where we learn the habits of what it means to be a Christian. Alistair McIntyre talks about this in terms of our narratives, traditions, and practices. In the small membership church, there are lots of places to practice those things—to remember our narrative and how it ties into what we’re doing, how that tradition ties into the story of who we are, and how all of that points to what we’re supposed to be doing as disciples. Because people engage in small membership churches differently, faith formation isn’t typically happening in programs. But a finance committee meeting becomes a wonderful place to think about what it means to be a Christian embarking on some sort of financial decision. Do we put money in a large bank, or do we put it in this smaller credit union that gives really great loans to people in our community? Small churches have the opportunity to make almost every interaction, whether it’s a finance committee meeting or a trustee meeting, a conversation about what it means to be a Christian making these choices.

Ann Michel: I really appreciate the idea that the work of people who shepherd and steward the church can be spiritually formative because I think there’s a common assumption that committee work isn’t part of Christian formation. You emphasize the sense of belonging in a small church. But the intimacy and familiarity that are strengths of small churches can also make it very difficult for new people to break in. How can smaller congregations make themselves more penetrable and attractive to newcomers?

Allen Stanton: That’s a really great question and I wish I had a great answer for it. I must admit that I hate visiting churches because I never know what I’m going to get. I walk into some small churches and immediately sense that I am not part of the community, and I never will be. I walk into other churches, and I’m overwhelmed by how much attention I get. I think it is helpful to think of the process of engaging a new person as an invitation. And invitations are always two-way. The people in the church have to extend an invitation to whomever new is joining them and ask, “Do you want to be part of us?” And that’s not something that needs to happen the first second they walk in, but as you get to know each other. The newcomer has to come to a place where they say, “Yes. I want to make myself vulnerable and be adopted into this family and commit to this community.” Sometimes we try to make that the very first interaction. But when my family moved to Memphis about a year ago, it took us a long time to find the church we wanted to go to. So, I think you extend that invitation to people as they get comfortable, without overwhelming them. You don’t want to walk in and be told, “Congratulations. You’re now the liturgist for next Sunday.”

Ann Michel: I hear a lot of people say they are either pounced on or ignored when they attend a new church.

Allen Stanton: I find that both of those ways of engaging newcomers are born out of a sense of fear within the congregation. Churches that ignore newcomers are saying, “Well, we’re already on the downward glide. We don’t want anyone else. This is who we are and in 20 years we’ll be dead anyway.” And then the other extreme is, “Oh, thank God! Somebody showed up. We never expected somebody to show up.” And so, they overwhelm you. But churches that are comfortable in who they are usually are the more welcoming. They’re not going to overwhelm you, but they are glad for you to join with them.

Ann Michel: I know that small churches aren’t monoliths. There are lots of different stripes and varieties. What are some of the differences you observe among smaller churches based on their location, denominational heritage, or ethnic identity?

Allen Stanton: From an organizational perspective, churches of less than 100, whether they’re urban or suburban or rural, are going to behave in some of the same ways. But rural churches often have an additional fear of decline because they fear that their surrounding communities are declining as well. So, when I work with rural churches, it’s important to try to understand what’s happening in their community, whether those narratives of decline are true or not, and then how that impacts their congregation. With urban churches, it’s often the opposite where their church has experienced some sort of decline over the last 20 or 30 years. When you go from a church of 400 to a church of 60 it’s a different conversation. With these congregations I see an effort to strip away all the things they thought they were to discern their current vocation. And then suburban churches are often in between. Sometimes these churches are saying, “We thought we would hit it big. There’s a growing population and we thought we would be the next megachurch.” But that didn’t happen. And so, for them it’s getting to a place of understanding what their current mission really is. And sometimes, like rural or urban churches, they have undergone some sort of demographic shift. So, they’re all a little bit different. But once you get beyond the question of “Who are we?” and embrace the notion of being a small church, then I think the behavior starts to match up.

Ann Michel: There are so many churches today that were once large or mid-sized churches that find themselves small because of declining worship attendance. What advice would you give to churches that are growing smaller when that’s not their history or identity?

Allen Stanton: I would say just to embrace their new vocation. What is the vocation of a small membership church? It really is to form disciples. Large churches often do that well, but they do it in very different ways. The question for a smaller church is how can we do this well given our current reality? I don’t want to say they should give up the aspiration of being a larger church, but right now, that’s not really the most important thing. You can grieve it. You can hope that more people will start coming to your church. But it really is about being faithful in the place where God has put you.

Ann Michel: So many of the so-called best practices for church leadership and revitalization emanate from larger churches. Often this advice doesn’t really fit a smaller church’s situation. I wanted to flip the script on that and ask what lessons larger churches can learn from smaller churches?

Allen Stanton: There’s a reason why we romanticize small membership churches in a Hallmark-movie way. It’s not because all small churches are like Hallmark movies, but so many beautiful things happen through the relationships of a small church. Many smaller churches excel in developing a formational community where people learn what it means to be a community of Jesus follower. And if I could just offer one bit of wisdom from the small church to larger churches, it would be to remember that at its core, the Christian community is one of relational discipleship. We are invited to a common table and that is a very vulnerable place to sit. The small church has done that well for a very long time. And we can learn from them how to do it.

The Gift of Small: Embracing Your Church’s Vocation (Fortress Press, 2024) by Allen T. Stanton. The book is available through the publisher, Cokesbury, and Amazon.

Related Resources

• Building Thriving Rural Congregations featuring Allen Stanton — Watch the Leading Ideas Talks podcast video | Listen to the podcast audio version | Read the in-depth interview
• 5 Ways Forward for Very Small Congregations by Lovett H. Weems Jr.
• Fresh Hope for Rural Churches by Jennie Birkholz

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The post The Gift of Small: An In-depth Interview with Allen Stanton first appeared on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

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Child security is one of the most important discipleship issues in the church. We must create robust security measures in our churches, making our campuses internally safe for children, so they can grow to spiritual maturity and become equipped to confront the dangers of evil in the world.

Millions of people volunteer in church children’s ministries every week. Most care deeply about children and wouldn’t hesitate to make great personal sacrifices to protect them. When your church has a proper system of protection, you mitigate the risks and help your leaders discern when personal failures occur that must be addressed.

1. Never be alone with a child who is not your own.

You might never do anything to harm a child, but a lot of things can go wrong when you are alone with a child who is not your own. Always seek help when anything questionable arises. “I don’t want to bother anyone with this issue” is not an excuse. Yes, most of the time you can handle a problem with a child without involving others. But churches and volunteers must always be prepared for those instances that happen some of the time. It is better to have a fast and firm policy that ministry leaders, staff members, and volunteers are never to be alone with a child than to have a system in which people are making situational decisions about whether or when it’s okay. The best policy is to require that at least two people always be present with a child.

2. Background checks for everyone, every year

Though background screening will only catch those who have been caught before, it is still a critical part of any good safety plan. If you loosen this standard, you create an environment that may attract people who desire to harm a child. Your church becomes an easier target. Background checks are less about catching someone and more about deterring the wrong people from your ministry. The best practice is to renew the screening annually for anyone who serves in any capacity around children, even if only for a short time (such as a week-long Vacation Bible School). All background checks should also be cross-referenced with the national sex offender database.

3. Establish a six-month rule for all volunteers.

Potential volunteers should demonstrate a faithful pattern of commitment to the church for at least six months before serving in the children’s ministry. And not just six months of church attendance, but six months or more of becoming known with others in the congregation. No matter how much your children’s ministry might need volunteers, do not give a new church member immediate access to minors. The purpose of this rule is to prevent potential predators—who typically prefer quick access to their victims—from targeting your church. Many predators will not wait for extended periods and will move on to other places where access is easier and more immediate.

4. One-on-one conversations with every potential volunteer

Before serving with children, each volunteer should have an informal interview with a trusted leader or staff member. The purpose of these conversations is to look for any red flags or potential concerns. People who are dedicated to child safety will not push back on this step. Good volunteers will be glad the church has a vigorous system of safety and will gladly adhere to this guideline.

5. Simple, and non-negotiable, check-in and check-out procedures

A common but effective process involves printing two matching tags at check-in. One tag sticks on a child’s back between the shoulders (so they can’t tear it off). The other tag goes with the parent who checks the child in. No one can pick up the child without the matching tag. This system not only protects children from random strangers but also from the more common problem of an unauthorized person whom the child knows.

6. One-foot-in, one-foot-out bathroom supervision

Every child will likely need a bathroom break at some point on Sunday. Your system should account for the movement of children through the halls and into the bathroom. No adult should ever be alone with a child in a bathroom. If possible, dedicate specific bathrooms on your campus for children only. Keep these bathroom doors open at all times. Require adults who accompany children to the bathroom to stand at the threshold of the door with one foot inside the bathroom and the other foot outside the bathroom. This way, volunteers can easily speak to the child in the bathroom while maintaining visibility to others.

7. Use floaters and management-by-walking-around.

The more levels of accountability you have, the better. One way to add a layer of security is to empower a floater to walk between classrooms and down the halls. The floater’s presence provides accountability, and his or her responsibilities includes observing activities, checking on teachers, listening to problems, reporting issues, and providing appropriate solutions to volunteer questions.

8. Install safety mechanisms such as cameras and signs.

What are the observable environmental safety issues on your church campus? Is a certain room or stairwell too dark? Do you need alarms or buzzers on doors to alert teachers when they are opened? Do you have clear signage for those who need to exit the building? With the availability of inexpensive cameras, almost every church can afford to install a monitoring system in key areas. People will feel safer when they see these visible safety improvements, and you will also deter potential harm.

9. Practice ongoing training.

Every children’s ministry volunteer should receive additional training throughout the year. Information you might cover in these training sessions includes playground safety, first aid tips, trauma-informed care, fire and emergency evacuation routes, allergic reaction prevention measures, classroom management, bullying prevention, and hygiene helps. Church leaders should conduct an annual audit of the church’s safety systems. Invite someone outside your ministry to poke holes in your processes and use the feedback to shore up any weak areas. Regular evaluation ensures a safer church environment.

10. Put all important policies in writing.

Many churches fail in their safety efforts not because of a lack of concern, but because of a lack of consistency. Formalize and publish your policies, distribute them to volunteers, and review them regularly. Top church leaders should guide this process. A culture of safety will never develop if loose standards exist, and expectations are not made explicit. When an incident occurs, your church should have a template for documenting what happened. Consider distributing a one-page checklist that contains instructions for “Who should I contact if. . .?” Keep the checklist updated and let your volunteers know you expect them to use it when needed.

The primary objective of children’s ministry is to equip children to be ready for a challenging world in which spiritual warfare is quite real. Should church be fun for kids? Yes, absolutely! But safety and discipleship are the greater goals. As a church leader, you are responsible for keeping children physically, emotionally, and spiritually safe in the church. A safe environment is one in which children can be prepared to face the inevitable battles in an unsafe world.

This material was shared by churchanswers.com and is adapted from Make My Church Safe: A Guide to the Best Practices to Protect Children and Secure Your Congregation from Harm by Sam Rainer (Tyndale, 2024). It is used with permission and available at Tyndale, Cokesbury, and Amazon.

Related Resources

• Keeping Our Sacred Trust Ethics Training Courses
• 10 Policies Your Church Should Consider by Ken Sloane
• 50 Ways to Strengthen Ministry with Children, a free Lewis Center resource
• Creating a Safe Space for Holy Work with Children by Tanya Campen

The post Ten Non-Negotiable Rules for Child Safety in Churches first appeared on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

The post Ten Non-Negotiable Rules for Child Safety in Churches appeared first on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

Do you lead a small church? In this episode Allen Stanton shares how small congregations can be surprisingly nimble in the face of change and effective in spiritual formation because of their inherently relational nature.

Listen on Apple Podcasts | YouTube Music | Spotify

Watch on YouTube

The post “The Gift of Small” featuring Allen Stanton first appeared on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

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This article was originally published on April 4, 2023.

In many churches, Christmas, Easter, and Mother’s Day are the three times of year when a significant number of people who don’t normally attend weekly services are present. And churches typically are well prepared for visitors during these special times. But what if we didn’t reserve our hospitality A-game just for these special days? What if the special efforts planned for Easter became the standard for hospitality each and every Sunday?

Let me share four ways the hospitality efforts of the Easter season can be a launching pad to a more welcoming presence throughout the year.

1. Give extra attention to church appearance.

Almost every congregation gives extra attention at Easter to make sure their church looks special. The church is clean, shiny, and beautifully adorned with flowers. Once Easter is over, we too often fall back into bad habits. And the next time we think about making the church look really nice is Advent.

But what if keeping the church clean and attractive was a year-round priority? What if the church looked its best every time a visitor came? We adorn our churches with signs of resurrection at Easter and with decorations and displays. What if we paid similar attention to telling the gospel story throughout the year with appropriate art and décor to match the season?

2. Display a warm, welcoming spirit.

Typically, when visitors attend an Easter service, they are greeted with a welcoming, joyful spirit. People are in a festive holiday mood, and it shows in how they interact with visitors. But if a visitor returns a few weeks later, that welcoming, joyful spirit usually has been replaced by a half-hearted smile and scant recognition of the visitor’s presence.

Holidays are festive times. And that’s great! But we need to maintain that warm, welcoming spirit throughout the year. If we don’t sustain this welcoming presence, it signals to visitors that our Easter welcome was just a phony front. Christian tradition maintains that every Sunday is “a little Easter.” We need to sustain the enthusiasm and joy of our holidays so that weekly visitors experience the same welcoming spirit they encounter on special days.

3. Keep the message accessible.

Many pastors put a lot of time into the Easter message. The goal is to share the gospel in a way that connects with those not as familiar with church but also impacts those who come weekly. This is a tough task! Once Easter is over, many pastors utter a big sigh of relief. They feel they can return to business as usual, which means only having to connect with those regularly in the pews. It’s much easier to preach to the choir!

But preaching what is essentially an inside message on a weekly basis makes our worship inaccessible and unwelcoming. You never know when a visitor might show up. The sermon is not the sole factor determining if they will return, but an insider message makes it less likely. Pastors need to prepare each Sunday’s message as if it were Easter, addressing multiple audiences and finding ways to include those we hope will show up.

4. Follow up consistently.

Many congregations put extra effort into Easter visitor follow-up. Some even buy special cards for connecting with others during Lent and on Easter. But once Easter is over, too many fall back into a pattern of follow-up that is haphazard at best. A visitor who returns after Easter may not receive any sort of acknowledgement or welcome from the congregation.

Congregations need a system in place to follow up with visitors consistently throughout the year like, for example, having something that is sent to every first-time visitor and something different for second-time visitors. The key is to make sure you have that system in place and not just follow up after Easter.

Most of us look forward to the Easter season. And we do a great job of getting prepared for those who do not normally come. But let’s not put all our eggs in this one basket! Instead, make your efforts at Easter the launching pad for more intentional hospitality throughout the year.

This material is adapted from 4 Ways to Make Christmas Eve Hospitality the Pattern for the Year published December 4, 2019.

Related Resources

• Be the Welcoming Church, a Lewis Center video tool kit resource
• The Tully Principle of 52 Equal Sundays by Lovett H. Weems Jr.
• Why Limit the Celebration of Easter to Just One Sunday by David W. Manner
• 50 Ways to Welcome New People, a free resource from the Lewis Center

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Watch the interview video, listen to the interview, or continue reading.

Douglas Powe: Adelle Banks is a reporter for Religion News Service and co-author with Daniel Yang and Warren Bird of Becoming a Future-Ready Church. Share with us briefly how the three of you collaborated to write this project, and why the theme of a future-ready church.

Adelle Banks: The way we got together has to do with the whole theme of being future-ready. Warren Bird went to a conference of Exponential, a nonprofit that focuses on helping churches multiply and determine what’s next for their futures. While there, he attended a session by Daniel Yang, who was talking about shaping factors for the church in 2050. Warren heard Daniel say that there are many, many churches that are working to maintain a church model that’s shaped more like the 1950s, when they really need to be focusing on what they’re going to be like as we get closer to 2050. A light bulb went off for Warren, “Oh, that’s a really good book idea!” And so that’s the thing that people need to think about related to churches: are we closer to 1950 or 2050? So, the title refers to thinking more about the future and less about the past ways of being church.

The subtitle, “Eight Shifts to Encourage and Empower the Next Generation of Leaders,” reflects our desire to encourage people who are ministry leaders today, to work with those who are younger than them, people who are of different generations, so that they’re open to the ideas that they might have as the church moves forward. One of the biblical foundations of that idea is from 1 Samuel 17, where King Saul’s armor wasn’t right for the Bible’s young David, and he used new tools (in this case a sling) to overcome the giant Goliath. We use that as an example of why people need to start thinking about working with different generations to head towards the future.

Warren and I ended up at the same academic conference, and we knew that we were each going to be there, and being the reporter I am I said, “Oh, I’ve got some questions for you.” And Warren said, “Well, I’ve got a big question for you!” I had no idea that he had this idea about a book; and they wanted to have a reporter’s perspective who could write stories about the different shifts by talking to churches that exemplified it. And the rest is history.

Douglas Powe: It’s interesting how it came together, and I love the biblical imagery. That’s a powerful text that illuminates what you all are trying to pull off in the book. I want to jump into chapter two, where you all are talking about this shift from attendance to attachment. What does this shift mean for more traditional congregations, who are really membership focused?

Adelle Banks: When we talk about the shift from attendance to attachment, we realize that membership is something that’s harder to get your arms around these days, and relationships is more the focus that people should have. And so, we talk about a dated question being “How do we grow our membership?” and “How do we grow our attendance?” to the better question of “How do we help more people develop healthy, spiritual relationships in their complex lives?”

And so, membership is like Costco, where you have a subscription, and you’re asking people which one you’re a member of and where it’s located. And more recently, religious affiliation is much more nuanced than that. It’s more complicated for a variety of reasons, and so the focus should be more on a sense of belonging and being a place that people can have that sense of spiritual belonging as they identify who they really are. And it’s the charge of clergy to be able to say, “We’re relevant,” including to younger people, “We’re listening to you.” We realize that people need to think about a different way of approaching people coming into their churches. Making sure that they are being welcoming in lots of different ways, using the right language, and being careful to not act like it’s shameful that somebody hasn’t been in church for a while, but instead just welcome people. Be open to them.

I was listening to WHUR, the local radio station, talking about Howard University’s chapel service over the weekend. I heard the announcement that casual attire is welcome. And that’s another example of saying to people, “Come as you are. We welcome you; we want you to feel like you belong” and not have these strictures about what you should be wearing.

I interviewed a scholar named Jason Shelton for a story about his book about the contemporary Black church. And what he said may refer to all kinds of churches, but I asked him about the issue of younger people being interested in coming into a church building. And he said, a lot of it is just thinking about not having some of the same traditions, the clergy person wearing a robe, even calling the clergy person Reverend instead of by their first name, which might be an adjustment for some people. But for younger people, that’s not a big adjustment. It would probably make them feel more welcome. So those kinds of things, including having a different attitude as you’re trying to help people feel like they belong is important.

Douglas Powe: I appreciate that. I think Diana Butler Bass is the one who really uses this language and really helped all of us to think differently about this idea of belonging. The challenge is some of what you were getting to in the examples of how we get, not just church leadership (and particularly the pastor) to buy into it, but how do we get the community to really take ownership of this sense of belonging, and to really think about hospitality or welcoming in that way. So, how do we foster a better sense of belonging in the community?

Adelle Banks: One of the churches I talked to, Life.Church, said that they wanted to help people who are attending an affiliate with the church to be contributors as opposed to consumers. So, they’re not just going in and sitting and saying, “What am I going to get out of this?” It’s more, “Well, what can I do? Because I feel moved to do something now that I have this spiritual interest and involvement.” They used to have a rule where every year people signed the covenant and said, “I’m going to do this, that, and the other thing.” And now they’ve decided to have people figure out where they are themselves, what they need to do most spiritually to move to the next level. And it could be evangelism, serving in the community, or donating. And they figure that out, so that their sense of belonging fits what works for them.

Douglas Powe: You all also talk about the importance of redefining family, which I see is connected to belonging. Because churches often use this language of “We’re looking for ‘family,’–we’re looking for family.” But what you all highlight is that we’re still defining family in a traditional way; and we’re not fostering belonging. So, how do we redefine “family”? And then, how do we make the connections with the way you’re redefining it? How do we get the community to live that out?

Adelle Banks: Yeah, that’s an important question. We suggest that churches need to find ways to welcome a variety of people, not necessarily just the “nuclear” or “traditional” family, but the wide variety that’s out there. And that includes single adults, single parents, childless couples, and people who are in different kinds of circumstances. It might be interracial families, or they may have adopted kids, or have foster kids, or kids with mental health challenges. So, all those people need to be included in a church family, if churches really want to be intentional, open, and welcoming. There’s a graphic in our book in the chapter that relates to this topic that reflects how things have changed as far as the conditions of American family life. It showed a decline in those who might be considered married with children from 1960 to 2020. It was a very, very serious decline. And then, there was an increase of single people in that period, and a particular increase of single parents with children from 2010 to 2020, especially.

And so, that bears out the need for there to be more attention to a wide range of folks. And for example, I interviewed Carl Johnson, who’s the pastor of Faith City Church in St. Paul, Minnesota. The church meets for worship on Sundays, as many do, but in that same space, they have a grocery store which serves the people in the community. So, this is another sense of belonging, not just for worship, but for meeting the needs of people who are food insecure. They have discounted groceries, and people can get eggs and cereal and that sort of thing. But the church itself also includes single moms, single dads, multiracial families, and when this worship service concludes, they make a point of pausing, so that those who want to can spend a little bit more time with each other while the children may be in a separate area. And the pastor points out that this is a chance for people to have a conversation with an adult for 10 minutes, which they may not be able to do very often. So, they think ahead to some of the “felt needs.”

Douglas Powe: That’s interesting. Does the church see the grocery store as something that becomes a place of connection for individuals? And then, because they are connecting at the grocery store, what flows out of that is this organic way of coming to church, instead of inviting people to worship, Bible study, or something of this nature. It sounds like what they’re trying to do is build organic community in a different way; where these individuals, who, as you redefine family, would naturally come together anyway.

Adelle Banks: I think that Carl Johnson uses the phrase “points of entry,” and he thinks that a church shouldn’t just have a front door to come in on a Sunday but have other ways that people may have their needs met and be more interested in being part of the church itself. And so, one of them is the grocery store. He talked about how the store gave a sense of dignity to the people who needed the food. It wasn’t just that they were giving them food. It was that they were giving them a choice. So instead of it being a food pantry or a soup kitchen, where maybe there’s one or two or three items, people have the choice of what they want. He described how a young single parent would be there with their child and the child would reach up and want to get a box of cereal. And the mother would not have to say you got to put it back because it was something that she could afford. And so even that was a sense of helping people really belong in a different way. And the people who work in the store, the volunteers are told to introduce themselves, make sure people know each other’s names. So, it’s not just a transaction, but there’s more of a connection.

So, all that fits together. When I interviewed Carl Johnson for the book, he had the words “family member” in big letters on his t-shirt while I was talking to him. And that’s what that church really believes. And it’s not just for worship or for groceries, but even for helping people. I noticed on Facebook, they said “one of our families” or “a family member needs help with”—I think it was an appliance for the household. And he had connections that helped this person get an appliance at a discounted rate and get the installation for lower price. And that was yet another example of continuing this notion of family.

Douglas Powe: Great example. I have been in many churches in my life, and in every single one of those churches, they will tell you that “We are the friendliest church that you have ever visited.” I have never had a church tell me that, “we don’t like people, and we wish you wouldn’t come.” They all say, “We’re really friendly.” What you all correctly point out is that hospitality must go deeper than friendliness. And that’s a real struggle for congregations; because for whatever reason, congregations really stop and say, “Well, we’re friendly. So, we’re doing exactly what we’re supposed to do.” I think this is really a huge point that congregations must rethink hospitality because just being friendly is not going to be enough if you really want to be a future ready church. So, can you share a little bit about how you all came to your thinking of hospitality and what you mean by rethinking it?

Adelle Banks: One of the things we point out is that some churches think that just being hospitable means having your usher welcome them in or offering a cup of coffee after worship. But that’s not enough for genuine unity that makes people stick around long enough to develop community. I interviewed Rosario “Roz” Picardo, who is co-pastor of Mosaic Church, a United Methodist Church in Beaver Creek, Ohio, and he had lots of different examples of how his church has tried to be hospitable in unique ways. For instance, for the election in 2020, his church hosted a communion service in downtown Dayton, not right where they were but in a different place, as a way of bringing people together regardless of who they voted for. And that’s an example of that church’s slogan of “Being Better Together.” It’s a multi-ethnic church. They’ve had multi-ethnic conferences to bear out that slogan, had experts come in and lead something called “Be the Bridge,” which is another way of having multi-ethnic conversations. And Roz Picardo noted that people may get angry with each other sometimes when they hear certain things, when people say certain things that may offend somebody, but they try to work through those words and emotions, so that people are seen, heard, and better understand each other.

He also pointed out a very interesting idea from another United Methodist minister, Chip Reed of Garfield Memorial Church in Cleveland. He taught Roz about the 70-30 rule, which is that 70% of what we say and do, you’re going to love in a church environment, and vice versa. And Picardo mentioned that that’s what he’s seen; that the people, one person’s 30% is somebody else’s 70%. And he used the example of how his church has all these different kinds of services. There’s traditional, recovery, Spanish, acoustic. And so, for him, traditional isn’t his favorite one, but it’s part of his preaching rotation. Sometimes he must do it, and he does. It’s an example of how you may not always like every little thing about the worship experience or the way your church does other things. But that doesn’t mean that the overall picture isn’t one where you can belong.

Doug Powe: That really is good, and we’ve talked to him before. So, he certainly has a powerful witness. I’m going to shift again and pick up on this theme of social justice. You all do a good job pointing out that younger generations are more social justice focused. A lot of this has to do with the community engagement that is a part of what they do even in school, a part of their curriculum. But that we in the church must be social justice minded without reacting to every issue that occurs. I think that balance that you all bring to this lens is important.

Adelle Banks: We note that it’s important for church leaders to understand their congregants and their community. And then they can pick and choose what issues are most important for them to address because they can’t address everything. We think that church leaders all do well to take the time to understand the perspectives among their church memberships before they go out and make a public statement, even before they go on to social media and say whatever it is they think they might want to say. They need to process the internal postures that their church members have, and so that they know what external stance to take so that they don’t create more tension than might already be there.

In the book, I wrote about Midtown Church in Sacramento, and how they address homelessness. It is very evident right outside the doors of this church that this is a challenge in downtown Sacramento, as well as in other parts of the state. And they partner with other congregations now that they realize that it is a big issue. And they have sought to help these unhoused neighbors. They do sack lunches, which is something you know lots of churches do, and they bring them to the different communities of people who are unhoused. But Susan Gammas, one of the co-lead senior pastors, told me that they also collect laundry in partnership with these other congregations, wash it for the folks, and return it to them. This blew me away because I’ve certainly heard of people giving people food, and I’ve even heard of a church doing a shower ministry where people can get a shower that need it. But the notion of going to that extent and helping people in partnership with other churches to have clean clothes again struck me as an example of them really understanding, researching, and learning what the needs were.

This church also helped an elementary school that was in a lower socioeconomic level within the community. The school wasn’t going to be able to go on field trips due to a lack of financial resources, and the church paid for the transportation and whatever else the costs were so that they could go. They also have helped stock the teacher’s lounge with snacks and things that teachers might need to help them keep going, in addition to helping their own people in their church. They have gift cards on hand in case their own church members might need help with paying for groceries. But all of that is an example of how this church learned what the needs were both inside and outside of its church and worked towards trying to help people and knowing what to and what not to speak up about.

Another thing I will mention is that the book has chapter endings with something called “one degree of change.” It’s an idea that even if you make a little change, it can make a difference for the long run. So, we have these lists of questions or statements from each chapter for people to think about and hopefully discuss with other people of different generations. One of them for that notion is thinking about whether the church of the future should be the people and the place that the community runs to for advocacy and support when instability happens. People need to think about, “Well, what does that mean? And how would we do that in the future?” So, that’s another example from the book as resource to help people think about this difficult topic.

Douglas Powe: Yeah, and I appreciate mentioning the one degree of change, but also the connection you made between social justice and hospitality; particularly, with the laundry, so that you could greet those individuals and be friendly to them, but hospitality is cleaning their clothes for them. So, that’s a great example of the difference between those two.

One of the things that I really love is the way you all talked about technology. In chapter eight, on page 149, you said, “Embracing technology, not by valuing its convenience, but by pioneering spaces for Christ to be worshiped and proclaimed.” Thinking about technology in that way really opens us up to discipleship and not merely using it just for the sake of convenience. Can you share a little bit more about where you’ve seen this happening, and for those congregations that aren’t there yet, how they can think about getting closer or moving in that direction?

Adelle Banks: We recommend that a shift from Christians tapping technology solely for sermons or updates about church happenings is something that needs to happen. So, they need to maybe focus more on digital technologies that are shaping the sense of identity, and where even the primary location for experiencing spiritual outreach is within community digitally. We suggest that thinking about, “Well, how do we do more in person church? How do we do that better?” isn’t necessarily the answer anymore. It may be more, “How can we help people have a spiritual life that involves the growing digital world?”

We include a graphic in that chapter that shows how few churches are offering digital ministry beyond worship. 73% offer worship both online and in person, but just 24%, a quarter of churches, offer adult religious education both in person and online. Way-less do other things, like fellowship opportunities or children’s religious education. That’s another suggestion in our one degree of change: to try to figure out what way to identify some groups that are potential believers who are difficult to engage in person but might be open to virtual experiences that the church might create.

Douglas Powe: Adelle, I really enjoyed the conversation, but we must bring it to a close. Sp, why we should focus on vitality and not numbers? And of course, the difficulty, particularly for mainline congregations, is that they’re experiencing decline. Many of them are experiencing budget issues, so it’s hard not to focus on numbers, but I think you’re 100% right. How do you help congregations focus on vitality?

Adelle Banks: A lot of people maybe look over their shoulder if they’re at an in-person worship service and worry about how many people are in front or behind them. And that’s playing a numbers game, when some of the best ways of doing church is through smaller groups. There are all kinds of ways to do smaller groups. I interviewed one church called “The Church Project,” that is a mega-micro model; and they have a very large gathering, but they also have lots of house churches that include lay people taking on pastoral roles within a smaller group. There’s a great deal of a sense of belonging when people have these smaller groups, which is a part of what can be vital.

I interviewed a digital church called Imagine Church where people from all over the country meet and hardly, if ever, meet in person. They have come up with ways to pause the sermon and have people talk about what that means in their own context related to whatever scripture reading they’re having that day. And they also still connect via chat and other ways over the week, so that it’s not like they meet on a weekend day, for instance. And so, part of what is vital is that people have connections with each other. And it may be a smaller group than it was years ago when they met in a large church. They may still meet in a large church also, but there’s this real benefit of relishing the time together where you really get to know each other, have a sense of belonging, because you’re in a small group that’s part of the larger church.

Douglas Powe: Adelle, thank you so much, and thank all of you for this wonderful text: Becoming a Future-Ready Church. I recommend it highly for those who are really thinking about the future of the church and the ministries they’re doing. It is a helpful text.

Adelle Banks: We really appreciate your support of the book. Thank you so much for having me.

Related Resources

• Normalizing Next featuring Olu Brown — Watch the Leading Ideas Talks podcast video | Listen to the podcast audio version | Read the in-depth interview
• Moving Established Congregations through Change by Tom Berlin
• Is Nostalgia Sabotaging Your Church’s Future by Matt Miofsky

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One of the greatest gifts God gave Moses was his father-in-law, Jethro. The priest of Midian, Jethro had “heard all that God had done for Moses and for his people” (Exod. 18:1) in delivering them from slavery in Egypt. As a seasoned priest, Jethro understood the pressures that ministry often places on those called to shepherd God’s people.

In the early days of Moses’ calling, Jethro observed that his son-in-law’s approach to leadership would likely cause him and the people to burn out. Moses had created a system in which the people came to him for everything, and he decided on all matters, large and small. In response, Jethro advised Moses that “what you are doing is not good. You will surely wear yourself out, both you and these people with you. For the task is too heavy for you; you cannot do it alone” (Exod. 18:17,18).

Pastoral leadership often mirrors that of Moses—rarely good and often ineffective. Church members assume that the pastor will be fully involved in ministry at all levels. That includes leading and planning worship, preaching, conducting Bible studies, counseling married couples, baptizing new believers, and managing church finances and facilities, to name just a few. Moreover, the pastor is also expected to maintain a healthy marriage and be above reproach in leading his or her family, according to 1 Timothy 3:5. Unfortunately, it causes too much ministry, as Jethro warned Moses, to revolve around the sole personality of the leader.

Shared leadership

However, the demands of ministry require a shared leadership approach that leverages the gifts and talents of all parishioners. Shared leadership is about engaging teams and sharing the responsibility of leadership with others to maximize the success of the organization. Furthermore, shared leadership embraces the idea that leadership is a role and not a position assigned to one person. Journalist and part-time pastor G. Jeffrey MacDonald advocates the need for such a leadership model. “When congregations transition to part-time ministry, their success depends largely on mobilizing laypeople to share the mantle of pastoral responsibility… That involves tapping latent gifts that laypeople haven’t had the chance to use but will flourish more fully when they do.”

Jethro’s counsel to Moses included creating a shared leadership model and a team-based approach to caring for the concerns of the people. For example, Jethro advised Moses to choose trustworthy and honorable individuals and set them over thousands, hundreds, fifties, and tens. It would allow Moses to deal with only the most important matters while the people themselves could manage more minor issues.

A lack of such organizational structure can lead members to completely bypass com­munication channels and go directly to the pastor when problems arise. In Small on Purpose, Lewis Parks laments the absence of order in small churches and its impact on purposefulness. “You can tell when a small church is in trouble as an organization … policies and regulations are casually ignored, channels of communication are skewed, [and] the work is conspicuously unevenly distributed.”

The experience of Moses suggests five purposeful leadership practices that pastors should follow.

1. Understand that leadership is not a solo performance.

Leadership is an ensemble of gifts and talents that work in concert with each other. In his first letter to the believers at Corinth, the Apostle Paul observes that while the church is one body, it has many parts (1 Cor. 12:12). Moreover, God has given the church such spiritual gifts as helps, teaching, and administration.

2. Create environments that will unleash human potential and creativity.

If gifts are truly to accomplish their purpose, leaders must be willing to put their egos and insecurities aside for the good of the church. Israel’s first king, Saul, was an insecure leader who employed threats of violence and even consulted a witch in a last-ditch effort to hold onto power.

3. Trust the team that God has provided and delegate authority when necessary.

Jesus put a great deal of confidence in his disciples, even though he was often disappointed by their level of faith. Nonetheless, he delegated responsibility to the disciples, which helped them grow and ultimately lead the movement he created. Proverbs 27:17 states that “iron sharpens iron, and one person sharpens the wits of another.”

4. Be receptive to feedback and willing to adapt ministries to meet the needs of the congregation.

To this end, pastors need to demonstrate more humility when plans do not come together as anticipated.

5. Leaders must attend to their own emotional, physical, and mental well-being.

According to a study by the Barna Group, only one in three pastors is considered healthy in terms of well-being. When Moses struck the rock in frustration, it precluded him from not being able to lead the people into the Promised Land (Numbers 20). To paraphrase the words of the Apostle Paul, pastors must discipline themselves so that they will not become disqualified from the eternal prize they preach about (1 Cor. 9:27).

Leading the church can be challenging but very rewarding at the same time. Congregational dynamics will allow pastors to build authentic relationships with members and foster communities of care. Shared leadership unlocks the potential of others that is often hiding in plain sight. Ultimately, when pastors have time to rest and renew themselves, they will then build strong and thriving congregations that can impact the community and the Kingdom.

This article first appeared in the July 2024 issue of Ministry,® International Journal for Pastors, MinistryMagazine.org. Used by permission.

Related Resources

• 5 Leadership Insights from Jethro by Doug Powe
• It Takes Teamwork by Kevass J. Harding
• Leading Like Moses: 4 Ways to Know What to Delegate by Micah Fries and Jeremy Maxfield
• More Church Leaders | Stronger Church Leaders, a Lewis Center video tool kit resource

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I tell the staff at my church and our leadership: “It’s okay for you to come to me with a problem, but only if you have a solution in mind.” The solution that we ultimately pick may not be the one you suggest. But if people feel free just to come with problems (such as the roof is leaking or our children’s ministry coordinator is really messed up), people begin to think negatively. However, when you are intentional about insisting and acculturating people to always bring a solution, you begin to change from negative thinking to more positive thinking. It creates a whole different environment in which to work and participate in church life.

A little back story. I went into the ministry when I was in high school under the great old missionary, E. Stanley Jones. He was in his early eighties when I went to work for him, so he could say this and get away with it: “You know my wife doesn’t mind if occasionally I glance at an attractive young lady as long as I continue to gaze at her. The problem,” Brother Stanley said, “is when I get my glances and my gazes turned around!”

That is the cultural truth of the church. As church professionals and leaders, we are always dealing with problems, because problems abound. But we are called to just glance at the problems of our ministry and to gaze at the promise and possibilities in Jesus Christ. What happens is, as clergy and key leaders, we can begin to get our glances and our gazes turned around. We begin only to glance at the promise and possibilities and to gaze at all the problems. When glancing at problems consumes leaders, morale spirals downward and soon wonderful church leaders become fatigued. Some even begin to look for a way out of leadership instead of looking for ways through problems.

What do key leaders and pastors do? They solve problems. Your members go to meeting after meeting during which you discuss problem after problem. If you’re not conscious about it, we begin to focus on the problems and rarely lift up the promise of Jesus Christ to our people.

It is so important to get our glances and our gazes in the right order. Hear me clearly. I’m not suggesting we pretend we don’t have problems, nor am I suggesting we not deal with the problems head on. I suggest that we keep the glances and gazes in a productive order. To summarize this principle: One way to begin to shift the culture of your church to become more positive is to invoke the principle of, “If you bring a problem, bring a solution as well.” The solution you bring may not be the one decided upon, but it gets staff members and church members thinking about solutions more than problems.

From Church Culture: How to Assess It, Shift It, and Shape It (Abingdon Press, 2024) by Jim Osier and Yvette Thibodeaux. Used by permission. The book is available through the publisher, Cokesbury, and Amazon.

Related Resources

• Positively Urgent by Mike Bonem
• 3 Leadership Shifts for the Current Reality by Olu Brown
• 5 Steps for Putting Good Ideas into Action by Jim Hoffman

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What shifts are needed for congregations to be future-ready? Adelle Banks reflects on the evolving nature of church hospitality, social justice, technology, and vitality. She highlights innovative approaches that foster belonging, authentic community, and discipleship in a rapidly changing world.

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I hate disappointing people. Every time I say the word “No,” someone isn’t happy with my answer. Yet, the reality is there are good reasons for a leader to use the word. It is not the dirty word many leaders have made it to be.

There are so many requests on a leader’s time. I’m using examples here of ones I receive frequently.

“Can you officiate a wedding—this weekend?”

“Will you write a guest post for my blog?”

“Can we have lunch/dinner this week?”

“Will you mentor me?”

“Can I have an hour of your time—today?”

And many more similar questions.

They are all legitimate questions. Usually there is nothing wrong with any of them as questions. And many times, I say yes to questions such as this. Many times. But sometimes I don’t say yes. I say no. And I personally think it’s one secret to my success in ministry and leadership.

This is to explain why. I’d love for some of my friends who know they can’t seem to say no to be inspired, encouraged, and challenged to use the word more. In leadership, even though it is an unpopular word, it may be one of the most valuable words we use. The fact is I get far more requests for my time than I could ever accommodate. Ever. There’s only one of me. One is not enough for the number of requests I receive. So, I had no choice but to learn the power of saying no. Believe me, I’m still learning. Sometimes I do better than other times. It requires discipline. Learning the power of the word no also means taking the heat at times from the ones who disagree with my answer.

I’ve learned, however, that my failure to say no costs me far more than developing a discipline to not always say yes.

1. Your Family

We once had our then 87-year-old pastor emeritus talk to our staff. He has since passed away but served at the church 25 years before he retired. While there he admitted the way ministry is done has changed over the years, but one thing he wish he had known then and would encourages all of us still in ministry to do is to “protect the family.” He also said, looking back, it might have been more important than anything else he did in ministry. Golden wisdom!

2. Your Work

You can’t do everything and do everything well. You may think you can—and others may think you should, but you can’t. Expectations, whether personal or placed upon us, do not dictate ability. Your efficiency depends on your ability to prioritize.

In fact, you’ll likely burnout if you try. Great leaders learn to specialize in what only they can do. That’s not always possible, and there are exceptions which arise every week that we didn’t see coming, but as much as possible, this should be our goal. When you say yes to everything, you’re causing your team to sacrifice your best energies where it’s needed most.

3. Your Health

How effective are you from a hospital bed? Think I’m being overly dramatic? Research the impact of stress on the body. Talk to your doctor about it. Developing a discipline of being able to say no when needed protects your personal health and well-being. It’s not just organizationally critical. It’s often life critical.

Saying no to another appointment, so you can say yes to an hour in the gym, may actually give you a few more productive years to add value to the world.

4. Your Future

You’ll flame out if you try to do too much. Leadership is a marathon. Sometimes we have to sprint, but until we learn to balance our pace, we will never really accomplish all we could. The power of no provides fuel for longevity and continuance.

It’s a vision critical word. If you don’t start saying no to some things there may come a day when you crash hard enough that you have to say no to everything—and it may not be by choice.

5. Your Integrity

When you always say yes, you eventually put yourself in a position of being necessary for everything to succeed—if nothing more than in the expectations in people’s minds. The organization becomes built around you. “Yes, I’ll be there.” “Yes, I can do that.” In time, you become the center—the necessary ingredient in all things that matter.

That is a dangerous place for most of us to handle. Talk about a power position. If not careful, we can become prideful, arrogant, and boastful—thinking that the organization can’t exist without us. (Think about that when the organization is the church). Here’s reality: It can.

6. Your Example

People will follow the leader. If you never say no, your team will begin to think it’s not a culturally approved answer. They’ll suffer from all the things you’ll suffer from for always saying yes.

And, believe me, a leader who learns and practices the power of no becomes a huge blessing to the people they lead—and their families.

7. Your Soul

This really is the bottom line. Leader, you have my heart. I love leaders. And I know if you try to do everything—if you never say no—eventually you’ll injure your soul. You can’t do it all.

Someone reading this right now knows they are overwhelmed. You are in over your head. You’ve allowed people to hold you to very unrealistic expectations—or you did it to yourself—and it’s injured your soul. You need a break. It all started because you couldn’t say no. You never valued the power of the word. The Proverb is profound (and true) “Above all else guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.” Do it! Protect your soul!

Now, please understand, this post is not an excuse for doing what we need to do as pastors and leaders. Sometimes the answer has to be yes. We should let our yes be yes and our no be no. Therefore, knowing how to choose the right word, at the right time, is part of maturing. Yet, it may be one of the most valuable things we can do to protect the integrity and longevity of our leadership is to learn the power of the word no.

This article originally appeared on RonEdmondson.com and is reposted here by permission.

Related Resources

• Improve Your Time Management and Enhance Your Ministry featuring Nicole Reilley — Watch the Leading Ideas Talks podcast video | Listen to the podcast audio version | Read the in-depth interview
• Doing Planning Differently by Olu Brown
• Stewarding the Gift of God’s Time by David Gray
• More Church Leaders | Stronger Church Leaders, a Lewis Center video tool kit resource

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This article was originally published on February 24, 2016.

The Easter Vigil service is all about remembering and reliving our story of salvation. Usually we do this within the confines of a sanctuary. But last year, the multi-site church I serve in Northwest Washington, DC, partnered with other churches to conduct an Easter Vigil in multiple locations. We came together to proclaim a story our whole city desperately needs.

The betrayal, abandonment, violence, and death that Christ experienced on Good Friday are present-day realities for too many people in our midst.Given the racial and socio-economic geography of DC, some of our group members found themselves in parts of the city they had never been to before. If we are to pray and work for new life for all of God’s people, we must know first-hand the Good Fridays they experience.

So our Easter Vigil service was designed to lead us through places of need in our city, places we usually avoid or don’t even know about. The service explored the themes of creation, liberation, abundance, hope, and baptism, each in a specific location where death and the hope of resurrection are tangibly present.

• Creation. We started at our community food garden — standing barefoot in the dirt — to remember God’s creating work.
• Liberation. We went to a church located on a known prostitution track of our city. Standing in a parking lot littered with condoms, we read the Exodus story. One of their pastors spoke of the realities of sex and human trafficking. We prayed for all of these who are enslaved.
• Abundance. Reading the prophecy of the consummation of all creation in Isaiah 55, we joined a partner church in their table fellowship open to all housed and unhoused neighbors. The food came from our Campus Kitchen Project that reclaims food from area grocery stores and restaurants that would otherwise be thrown away. We prayed that the word God has given through us, and provided in food we have grown, is not wasted and does not return to God empty.
• Hope. Reading Ezekiel’s passage of dry bones, we stood next to the trash trap in a water way in a local park. It was the place where police had searched for the body of an eight-year-old girl abducted the previous year from the city’s shelter for homeless families.
• Baptism. We closed our vigil remembering our baptism along the Anacostia River — a riverbed so contaminated that brown bullhead catfish have developed cancer from simply touching the riverbed. We read Romans 6:3–11, remembering African American churches in our community who were once able to baptize new believers in the river. We remembered our baptisms and prayed for a cleansing of our sins and of the river, that it might once again be a sign of life.

This Easter Vigil allowed our church to connect with our city and face our Good Fridays head-on. We prayed with heart, soul, mind, and strength for God to bring a resurrection morning. And when it came, we were reminded of the hope that is ours. We serve a living God who brought forth life from death and continues to make the impossible possible. This is our prayer, and our work, for our city — for all those still in need of a resurrection dawn.

Related Resources:

• • Putting Ourselves in the Places Where Life Happens by Keith Anderson
  • Taking Church to the Community by Ann A, Michel
  • Drive-Thru Ashes by Mack Strange
  • 50 Ways to Take Church to the Community, a free Lewis Center resource
  • Taking Church to the Community, a Lewis Center video tool kit resource

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Watch the interview video, listen to the interview, or continue reading.

 Jessica Anschutz: Callie, give our listeners a little bit of background on your book From Weary to Wholehearted: A Restorative Resource for Overcoming Clergy Burnout. What inspired you to write it? 

Callie Swanlund: Some of it comes from an autobiographical place of finding ups and downs in my own ministry and finding myself moving from different full time parish leadership positions to beginning to grow my own ministry, where I companion people, often church leaders lay and ordained, in what I call finding your spark, helping people find their greater purpose and meaning. It’s a topic I’ve wanted to write about for a while. I was waiting for the Holy Spirit to be clear with me, and she was clear with me that it was time to write my book—I sat down and wrote a different proposal on a different project for a different publisher. And while I was working on that, my current publisher of From Weary to Wholehearted reached out and said, “Would you like to write a resource for us for weary faith leaders?” They’d clearly done their homework on me. Cause I was like, “Yes, that’s something I care deeply about.” It was just one of those things that you couldn’t ignore. I was like, this book is already written. It’s already on my heart and I would be glad to write it.  

Jessica Anschutz: Congratulations and thank you for writing such a helpful resource. Now, I know your focus is clergy, but you reference lay ministry professionals and people who have experienced burnout in other professions. How do you hope the book will bring restoration to anyone who is experiencing burnout?  

Callie Swanlund: Clergy burnout is such a hot topic right now in the media and other places that my publisher wanted to make sure that we highlighted clergy burnout, but I was clear from the beginning that this was for ministry burnout and beyond. All the little ladies at my church who have read it who are not in active ministry of any sort have said, “Oh, there’s wisdom in there for me too.” And I said, “Oh, good! I hope so!” At the very base level I want people to read this and say, “I recognize part of myself and I’m hearing that others are experiencing something I’ve experienced.” We are in such a state of isolation and loneliness, that sometimes we forget that plenty of others are on parallel journeys, if not the same journey as us. And so, even if someone has zero capacity to implement even the most accessible of tools that I introduce in the book, if they get through the introduction and say, “Oh, I feel less alone.” People write to me after they finished the introduction and they say, “I’m in tears. I know I’m in the right place.” Of course I’d like them to dig deeper too, but the first step is having a name for what you’re experiencing and knowing that other people understand it.  

Jessica Anschutz: Let’s talk about that a little bit, how would people know if they are experiencing burnout?  

Callie Swanlund: So, there are a few reactions when someone hears the topic of my book. A lot of people sort cover their eyes like, “You’re not talking to me, are you? How’d you know that I’m burnt out?” Or some people just pass it by quickly and they say, “I’m not burnt out.” And I think, “Lovely. I hope that’s true. First, I hope that is true. And second, I still think there’s something to reading a resource that helps us prevent burnout.” So even if you’re not in it now, how do you continue this good path? 

Sometimes the people who are in burnout already know. They might be the one who is resisting getting up and going to their job in the mornings, not finding joy or purpose or meaning where they once did. A lot of my client base grew in 2020 when a couple of things happened. One of those was that pandemic ministry, nursing, teaching, or any of those vocations didn’t feel the same as before. And people said, “Wait. Is this what I signed up for? Is this even making a difference?”  

And then we had we had a big racial reckoning in the United States with the murder of George Floyd. I honestly think that had as much of an impact as the pandemic itself on people saying, “Am I doing something that actually makes a difference?” So, I think a lot of people are asking themselves those questions still five years later, “Are we are we doing something that uses our gifts and makes a difference in the world?” Some of those questions can be an indicator of burnout. Feeling like we have more drains than fills. I learned this from my friend, Jenn Giles Kemper, who does Sacred Ordinary Days. It’s an exercise where you can go through your calendar and write a D or a F next to everything that is scheduled in your week, a drain or a fill. If you identify your week as having more drains than fills, you’re either probably already in burnout or are on your way. Our week in balance should have more things that give us life, than suck our soul.  

I sometimes use burnout interchangeably with the word “overwhelm.” Burnout is specific to our job and overwhelm can be the same set of feelings but in various areas of life. When we’re in a state of overwhelm, we’re immobilized. We are not able to come up with a good or healthy solution. So, if you recognize that you’re thinking “I know something needs to change and I have no idea what it is.” That’s probably an indicator that you’re in a state of overwhelm and/or burnout. And honestly one of the antidotes is to not decide in that moment. That’s hard because people want to push through and people around you might say, “What do you need? What do you need?” And you might say, “I don’t know.” And what you need is to step aside, whether that’s for a day, a week, or a month, I don’t know because I don’t know the acuteness of one’s burnout. But it does require you to step aside before making the next decision. I’ve watched so many people, especially in ministry, have their judicatory leader say “Let’s get you on leave. Let’s get you some time off. Let’s get you one, two, three months away.”  

Jessica Anschutz: Let’s stay with clergy for a minute. How and why is clergy burnout different from that of other professionals?  

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Callie Swanlund: There are a lot of things that do overlap, especially for people who are in outward-facing professions and service professions like medical, therapists, teachers, etc. Clergy by nature have an around-the-clock, on-call job, which is not the case for all professionals. For those who are parish-based clergy, one of their primary communities is their workplace. So, for a lot of people of faith, their faith community is a pillar of strength for them and a source for their social interactions and things like that. Clergy have their foot in that world as leader in that world, but they don’t get to reap the benefits fully because there are boundaries and power dynamics to take into consideration. And so, while their congregants often want to take care of them, there’s this illusion that they don’t want to see their clergy leader as “weak.” So, we hold ourselves to a certain standard and try to make sense of the world in real time for ourselves and for a whole bunch of other people, too.  

When a news flash comes across about a school shooting or warring countries or whatever it might be, we’re almost not able to sit with our own feelings before we think “How do I make sense of this for others, because others are going to be looking to me for some comforts, for some meaning making.” It’s exhausting. It’s a lot. If you are someone with a spouse or kids—or even if you’re not—I feel like your social life is somehow scrutinized and on display. And so having this place where you can bring your family as part of your vocation and career also feels a bit like a fishbowl to have all of that on display. It’s just such a unique vocation.  

Jessica Anschutz: It is. There are wonderful aspects of it and then (as you’ve highlighted), challenges as well. In the book, you introduce a five element SPARK practice to address burnout or weariness. I don’t want you to give away all the secrets of the book, but I would like for you to introduce those five practices and give a brief description or example of each in hopes that it will interest people in studying them more in depth and buying the book.  

Callie Swanlund: Finding your spark is already deeply important to me and my ministry. I talk about your spark as that little divine light within you. Some of us have a flourishing tended spark and some of us have something that’s been built on wet wood and is really burning out. I looked at the work of psychologists, the Nagoski sisters who wrote the book Burnout, Brené Brown in whose work I’m trained, and scientists and other wisdom bearers like our indigenous siblings. I put together five components that would make a holistic approach to moving from weary to wholehearted.  

The S in spark is Soma, which means body. In the Greek New Testament, it appears 144 times. Some of those times refer to celestial bodies like the sun and moon and star, which connects our body to God’s greater creation. In my somatic practices, I remind people that our body is already with us. It’s the thing we sometimes think about last, but it’s with us right away. So, if we find ourselves spiraling, we can do a breath practice or practice putting our feet on the ground for some grounding. So, I give lots of things that are already with us all the time that require no extra space or tools.  

P is preparation. I call this the least sexy spark of these because some people are like, “Ugh, I don’t want to prepare,” especially an Enneagram seven. They’re like, “I got this. I can jump right in.” I tend to think of our Jewish siblings who don’t just arrive on Saturday and say, “Oh, it’s a day off. It’s my Sabbath day.” There are entire TikTok accounts devoted to people preparing their meals during the week to be able to rest fully on Saturday. Whereas soma is the bodily part of this practice, preparation is the mental part. It includes intention setting and claiming mindfulness to be present in the moment.  

A is the anchor at the center that stands for making space for awe. Dacher Keltner wrote a book on awe from scientists’ and psychologists’ perspective, which tell us what people of faith have known for a very long time. That feeling small in the face of something bigger, feeling connected to something beyond us and sometimes even beyond our understanding, is very good for our health and wellbeing. It lowers our heart rate. It helps us want to be connected to others. And it even releases the love hormone oxytocin. If you think about how negative emotions start to take over if we’re ranting, and someone else joins in the ranting, and then we up the ranting, and we all have a negativity session, the same thing can happen with positive emotions. Awe begets awe. The more we recognize and name awe, the more likely we are to experience it and to slow down enough to see the little ladybug crawling across the ground.  

The fourth spoke, R, is for retreat. I chose that instead of rest because retreat goes to an even deeper level than rest. Retreat means time set apart, as a noun or as a verb, it means to pull away. We often think that a retreat needs to be something far away or expensive or time consuming. While I would love for everyone to take a four-day retreat somewhere, we need to start in small increments. Retreat can happen in 15 minutes. It can even happen in five minutes. I was on a work trip to lead a retreat, and I rented a Jeep. I’ve always thought maybe I would be a Jeep girl and so I tested this theory. I talked them into renting me a Jeep Wrangler, took off the roof panels, and drove down the road with the wind blowing in my hair. And I thought, “You know what? I think I just turned a car rental into a retreat.” I had an hour on the way to my destination to have time set apart that was holy and sacred. So, retreat is deeply important.  

And the last one is kinship, K. Kinship is that connection we have with others. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about this in Braiding Sweetgrass. She’s an indigenous writer and botanist. Another indigenous writer and theologian Kaitlin Curtice writes about it in Living Resistance, and she calls kinship the invisible string that connects my heart to your heart. It’s not just about human-to-human connection. Our kinship is also about all of God’s creation, the earth as well.  

If you go through S-P-A-R-K, soma is body, preparation is mind, awe is spirit, retreat is time set apart, and kinship is time in connection with others. I use these principles when I’m planning my own personal retreat. I use them to assess the balance of my week. Am I engaging in these things? And when one is missing, it’s an invitation for me to say, “Why is that missing?” And is that something I can incorporate into my week.  

Jessica Anschutz: So, building on that a little bit, if folks think, “Oh my goodness, I’m not doing one or more of these.” How might you advise them to get started?  

Callie Swanlund: Really honestly the things that are already available to us. When I lead retreats, I often talk about pocket practices. So, I’m going give you a couple of examples that you could do right away. When I’m working with my clients, I often teach them somatic practices. Things that often regulate us, bring down our heart rate, and our blood pressure, and can connect us to the divine within us.  

You can soothe yourself with a small gesture. So, I might put my hand on my heart while I’m listening to someone. And that other person doesn’t even notice because I’m not putting my hands up in the air, but it might indicate to me, you are safe here.  

If you can’t bring yourself to read the book, you don’t have enough time, you feel overwhelmed even by that idea, or implementing practices feels like too much, I’m going to give you the retreat on-ramp. Everyone needs retreat. Plenty of people haven’t been on retreat in years—or ever. And so, I talk about the retreat on-ramp. I want you to take out your calendar and look at the next week and find one hour to claim retreat, to claim time set apart. Could be going and sitting at the water’s edge, taking yourself on a walk in the woods, or locking yourself in a room while your kids [safely]take a bath. Having some sort of retreat. We could all find one hour in the next week. And while we’re looking at our calendar, look and see what is one half day that you can clear in the next month. And then what is one day or overnight that you can clear in the next six to 12 months. I think a lot of us really need retreat right now, and if I tell someone to find a two-day block in the next month, a lot of people are going to tell me that’s impossible. So, I tell them what is possible and that is starting with the smallest increment. If you want to make it even smaller, what’s 15 minutes today, what’s an hour in the next week, what’s a half day in the next month, what’s a two-day period in the next year. In so doing and taking that time set apart, you can begin to think about the other practices.  

You don’t even have to give lots of thought. All you must do is follow your soul cravings. We all have cravings. When I was pregnant, I learned that my cravings were things that indicated what my body needed more of. I wanted a ton of ground beef tacos when I was pregnant with my second. I realized that my body was really needing a lot of iron. When we have a soul craving, when we see someone’s picture on Instagram of the Bahamas and we have this ping of longing or jealousy, I think it’s telling us something. It may be telling us that we need to go to the Bahamas, but more often what’s the takeaway? It might be that we need time off, a vacation, to be near water—things that are more accessible than getting on a plane and heading to the Bahamas. So, when you’re on retreat, that 15 minutes or that hour or that half day even, what do you wish you had more of? “I wish I had more time. I wish I had enough time to drive to the ocean today.” Or what are you being fulfilled by? “I haven’t sat and listened to an album from end to end in months.” Pay attention to those things and then start to find ways to incorporate them one little practice at a time. Don’t start with the whole umbrella. Start with one practice and let that lead to another.  

Jessica Anschutz: I appreciate looking at this in an incremental way. As we wrap up our time together, I invite you to think about the laity who are supporting their pastors and other church leaders who are experiencing burnout. How can those who are surrounding the people in leadership be supportive or attentive to those who are feeling weary?  

Callie Swanlund: I’m so glad you asked. A lot of the clergy I talked to as I was prepping for the writing of this book said, “I am so weary because of the systemic pieces like oppression, sexism, patriarchy, heterosexism, racism, etc.” I touch on that in the book, but I also say that’s not on those who are weary to solve. Those are some bigger issues. While we’re weary, we can’t solve the oppressive forces that are over us. And so, it takes a community to notice where some change needs to take place and to have some deeper conversations about expectations of clergy. Simple things like asking, “Are you planning to use your vacation and retreat time this year?”  

Make space for those things and be part of the solution when you bring up a problem. Often the head pastor, head of staff, rector, whichever denomination you’re coming from—that lead clergy person, is hearing lots and lots and lots of feedback and some of it is negative by nature. So, if someone comes up and says, “The sound system in here is awful” or “I can’t read how the small the print is in the bulletin” or whatever it might be, those things stack up. They might just be small, but they stack up. If you are presenting a problem, are you also willing to present a solution? Come alongside the person you’re presenting that to and say “I’m willing to come in the office and help reformat the bulletins or edit them each week” or whatever it might be. Recognizing the humanity that we all share. Clergy are no more divine than any other human. We don’t have a secret red phone that we pick up and talk to God in some special way. While we are leaders and often interpreters between God and God’s faithful people, remember that your clergy are people too, and that they are likely struggling just as you are struggling, and just give some compassion and grace with that. Let them know that you’re grateful for them, that they’re appreciated. Those are things that go a long way. I often have my clients keep a drawer or a folder on their email of positive notes to remember on the days when things feel negative and hard. There are many ways that you can support.  

Your clergy person might not open up to you. Even if you are very well meaning and you go in and you say, “I’m here to listen,” there are sometimes structures in place. So don’t take that personally but tell them that you hope that they will find a supportive person to talk to or give them a certificate for a massage or something like that.  

Jessica Anschutz: Thank you so much, Callie, for taking the time to talk with me today and for pouring your heart into From Weary to Wholehearted and for sharing it in hopes that folks who are experiencing that weariness or burnout may begin to take steps to being more wholehearted. So, thank you.  

Callie Swanlund: Absolutely. Thank you. Thank you for this invitation and for doing this work to also help clergy know that they’re not alone.  

From Weary to Wholehearted: A Restorative Resource for Overcoming Clergy Burnout by Callie Swanlund (Church Publishing, 2024). This book is available from the publisher, Cokesbury, and Amazon.

Related Resources

• How to Know When You Need to Ask for Help by Jessica Anschutz
• What Excuse Do You Have for Not Delegating More? By Mike Bonem
• 3 Questions to Preserve Energy and Passion in Ministry by Heather Bradley and Miriam Bamberger

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The post From Weary to Wholehearted: Overcoming Ministry Burnout—An In-depth Interview with Callie Swanlund first appeared on Lewis Center for Church Leadership.

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As older members pass away and younger generations engage less frequently or give at lower levels, it becomes imperative for churches to adopt new stewardship strategies. By embracing digital technology and online donations, broadening our giving base, engaging our communities, optimizing our buildings and properties, and rethinking staff roles, we can effectively navigate these challenges.

1. Embrace digital technology and online donations.

Integrating digital technology into our stewardship practices is no longer optional; it is essential. Younger generations live and interact in a digital world; to connect with them effectively, we must meet them where they are.

Online donations. Implementing online giving platforms allows for convenient and accessible donations. These platforms can be integrated into church websites, mobile apps, or text-to-give services, enabling congregants to give from anywhere at any time. Recurring donation options can help stabilize church finances by providing a consistent and predictable flow of funds. Many churches resist the fees incurred in electronic giving, but the value of consistent giving far outweighs the cost. When I started in ministry four decades ago, we purchased offering envelope sets for every member household. We mailed many of them to people’s homes. No one complained about that cost, even though many of those envelope sets were never used. The difference with electronic giving is you pay only when someone gives!

Digital communication. Use social media and digital communication tools to enhance engagement with the congregation. Regular updates, inspirational messages, and transparent financial reports shared via social media can build community and trust. Personalized email newsletters and thank-you messages to donors can foster a deeper connection and encourage continued support.

2. Broaden the giving base and engage the community.

Expanding the giving base and deepening community engagement are critical steps in ensuring the sustainability of our churches.

Community engagement. Churches should be active and visible in their communities. Organizing and participating in local events, offering support services, and collaborating with other organizations can raise the church’s profile and attract new members. When people see the church as a positive force in the community, they are more likely to support it both in attendance and finances.

3. Make stewardship a year-round strategy, not a seasonal concern.

The days of confining stewardship to a two or three-week timespan in the fall are behind us. We need to do more!

Inclusive stewardship education. Ongoing stewardship education is crucial. Teaching the importance of giving as a spiritual practice helps congregants understand its significance beyond mere obligation. Incorporating stewardship topics into sermons, workshops, and small-group discussions can reinforce this message and motivate members to contribute meaningfully.

Youth and young adult involvement. Engaging younger members is vital for the church’s future. Creating programs and opportunities that resonate with their interests and values can help integrate them into the church’s life. Involving them in leadership roles and decision-making processes can instill a sense of ownership and responsibility, encouraging them to support the church financially.

Numbers and narratives. Go beyond reporting on numbers and budgets. Provide stories of how your members’ giving makes an impact. Use newsletters, bulletins, and —especially—quarterly and end-of-year giving communications to highlight those stories and to thank donors for making a difference.

4. Use buildings and property more effectively and efficiently.

Church buildings and properties are valuable assets that can be leveraged to support the church’s mission and financial health.

Multipurpose use. Consider how church facilities could serve multiple purposes. Opening up spaces for community events, educational programs, or even co-working spaces can generate additional revenue streams. Partnering with local nonprofits or small businesses to use church spaces during the week can be mutually beneficial. Are there needs for parking in your community that your congregation could meet when that space is not needed for church activities?

Energy efficiency. Investing in energy-efficient upgrades can significantly reduce operating costs. Simple changes like installing LED lighting, optimizing heating and cooling systems, and improving insulation can lead to substantial savings. Exploring renewable energy options like solar panels can also be cost-effective and environmentally friendly.

Property development. Consider development opportunities if your church has surplus land or underused property. Projects like affordable housing or community gardens can address local needs while providing financial benefits to the church.

5. Evaluate staff roles.

In light of financial constraints, it may be necessary to reconsider how staff roles are structured within the church. Sometimes, churches that were larger in the past but declined in membership and attendance are staffed like they are still large churches.

Combining and reducing paid staff positions. Combining staff roles or reducing the number of paid staff positions can help alleviate financial pressure. This does not necessarily mean reducing the quality of ministry but optimizing resources.

Engaging gifted laity. Often, talented and passionate members within the congregation are eager to serve. By identifying and empowering these individuals, we can involve them more deeply in the ministry and mission of the church. This approach reduces staffing costs and fosters a greater sense of community and ownership of the church’s mission among the laity.

Rightsizing stewardship in our local churches is a multifaceted challenge that requires creativity, commitment, and a willingness to adapt. By embracing digital technology, broadening our giving base, engaging our communities, optimizing our buildings and properties, and reevaluating staff roles, we can create sustainable and vibrant faith communities. These strategies address our financial challenges and reinforce our mission to serve God and our neighbors.

As leaders, we are responsible for guiding our congregations through these changes with faith and vision. Let us approach this task with a spirit of hope and determination, confident that we can build a stronger future for our churches by working together.

This article was originally published by Discipleship Ministries. Used by permission.

Related Resources

• How Do Your Church’s Post-Pandemic Finances Compare with Other Churches? by Lovett H. Weems Jr.
• 7 Strategies to Engage New Givers by Ann A. Michel
• The Promise of Digital Giving by Ann A. Michel

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Driving down the street the other day, I saw a group of people passing out food in front of their church. The volunteers wore matching shirts as they passed packages to a long line of cars. I smiled as I continued my journey; I love it when churches reach out to their communities. The challenge is that we do a lot of outreaches with little impact.

There are three potential problems with church outreach.

1. Some outreach efforts are designed to market the church. Marketing is a one-way conversation with the community. While appreciative of the efforts, residents see the activity as an attempt to get more members to attend church. The signs promote the church, the stickers advertise the church’s name, and the concomitant Gen X videographer reinforces the marketing agenda.

2. Church outreach efforts may not meet the community’s real needs. It is the ultimate mistake to assume a need in a community without doing your homework. Outreach efforts lasting eight hours once a month will never meet a community’s more pressing needs and issues, such as helping single parents, working with the homeless, addressing human trafficking, hunger, and the concerns of seniors.

3. Churches may unintentionally model that faith is only for personal and spiritual development and doesn’t apply to social issues. Churches have incredible resources: a weekly communication system, shared values, educated leaders, discretionary income, and facilities, and yet these resources are focused internally and not externally, leaving members unaware of how to apply their faith to have a social impact.

I call traditional outreach efforts fast food outreach. It’s time to rethink outreach. After years of working in communities nationwide, I have developed the Listen, Look, and Lead model, which provides a practical framework for churches to build new relationships with their communities.

Here is a snapshot of the three critical components of the Listen, Look, Lead model.

Listen

Pastors and congregants are trained to talk but not listen. Imagine the wealth of insight and relationships that could be developed if churches regularly listened to various sectors within a community (including businesses, homeowners, renters, schools, and faith communities). Church leaders should meet in person with people from a variety of sectors in the community to build relationships and learn about them and their community. Two important points for building relationships: First, follow the 80/20 rule—listen 80% of the time and ask questions and talk 20%. Second, be Switzerland—stay neutral on hot-button issues (politics, racial justice, sexuality, gender, income inequality, etc.). This is important to build relationships with a variety of people.

Look

The model outlines seven roles that churches can play in the community while building relationships and capacity: (forgive my alliteration) place, projects, partnerships, people-to-people, provider, policies, and pastor as broker. Finding the correct role determines how the church will respond to needs, issues, and opportunities—role determines relationship. For example, if you decide to be a provider of services, ask if the church can write grants and provide the strong financial systems and staff to offer services. I have seen small and large churches take on this role and be very successful.

Lead

A fundamental mistake church leaders make is assuming that because they are leaders in a congregation that they are leaders in the community. The good news is that the servant leadership approach used in many churches is applicable in a community if you avoid critical pitfalls. First, focus on serving others. Whatever project is developed in the community should not benefit the church; it must help another group. Secondly, bridges should be built across different community sectors, including businesses, homeowners, renters, schools, and faith communities. A person with extensive relationships throughout a community becomes an important leader.

I wonder what would happen if church planters focused first on the external community before starting services. What would happen if small and large congregations stopped their outreach efforts and started to engage their communities by listening, looking and leading?

Related Resources

• 50 Ways to Take Church to the Community, a free Lewis Center resource
• 4 Key Characteristics of Missional Congregations by Doug Powe
• Organizing a Missional Community by Doug Powe and Henry H. Knight III

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