Barnabas File

The National Congregation Study from Duke University reported that 50 percent of churchgoers in the United States attend 10 percent of congregations.  These are churches that average 350 and up regular participants on a Sunday. This size congregation, whether 351 or 10,000 plus, is usually referred to as the corporate or corporation size church.  Certainly, there is a great deal of diversity in leadership when considering this great a size range, but once a church passes 350 in Sunday morning attendance the expectations of the pastor and the competencies required to lead effectively change in several important ways. Although some may react negatively to the designation, the pastor of this type church is usually seen as the chief executive officer.  Even more importantly, the person is this position becomes a symbol for of the congregation and its face to the community.  Theodore Johnson says that this church is seeking “a leader with mythic qualities.” ...

We all know pastors who are wonderful friends, good in pastoral care, and effective preachers, but they are not good team leaders.  Maybe you are one.  These individuals find themselves in a church of 150 to 350 in attendance and find that “they are not in Kansas anymore.”  They are now in a church that has so much going on that they cannot keep up with it all.  What has worked for them before does not work now. What has changed? When a church passes the 150 mark in Sunday worship attendance, programs and ministries have multiplied.  The pastor can no longer be the coordinator of everything but must depend on others to take the lead in specific areas. This requires a different leadership style. Some consultants refer to this as the program-sized church.  I would welcome another title because I believe that this term fails to describe all that a church this size does.  Such a church is not just running programs, it is developing people, growi...

When a church moves from a worship attendance of less than fifty into the 50 to 150 range, a different style of pastoral leadership is required.  Perhaps another way to approach this is that if a church wants to transition to this next level of participation, the pastor must be able to fulfill a different type of role.  This may well be one of those “chicken and egg” quandaries.  Which comes first? One may object to “the pastor-centered church” as the descriptor for this size congregation, but the fact is that the pastor is the nexus—the coordinator, the linchpin, the network node—through which everything flows. This is not an ego thing on the part of the pastor, but something that the members expect.  They want someone who will be the administrator of a growing church. Although the pastor continues to perform the “priestly functions” of office (marrying, baptizing, and burying), he or she is expected to be more proficient in communicating the Word of God....

When I was in seminary, I had the opportunity to pastor a small church in the hill country of Texas.   The first floor of the building was the church; the second floor was the Masonic Lodge.   There was only one deacon and he was in his eighties.   None of the other men in the church could be elected as deacon because they were divorced or had married a divorced woman.   They were kind and generous people who were used to having a seminary student as their pastor.   They expected him to be there for a couple of years and then to move on.   They were basically a big extended family who often had problems assimilating newcomers.  They loved me, but they knew I was not there to stay. Many ministers pastor this type of church while in seminary.  It is a part time charge and gives a beginning pastor a place to “learn the ropes.”  This is the size church that many bivocational pastors serve and find it the place where they can do their most ...

A couple of months ago, I wrote a blog on the challenge that a pastor faces in transitioning to leadership in a larger congregation.   This promoted a response from a pastor friend in another state.   I share his comments with his permission: “I tried to pastor a large church with a medium-sized church style.  It just about killed me.  I resigned before I did them serious damage.  They still love me, but it was extremely painful to face my ineffectiveness when I had done well in other churches.  I was a picture of ‘The Peter Principle’ of so long ago, i.e., promoted one too many times.  However, I was at an age that I didn't feel like I had the time or energy to change as dramatically as I needed to change, so I returned to the kind of church where my gifts best fit, and left the larger situations to those gifted for them.  I guess I will spend the rest of my life wondering if I should have tried harder to press my growing edge.” Chang...

In a recent blog, I commented on the diversity among the speakers at the recent Willow Creek Association’s Global Leadership Summit.  Some might dismiss this intentional effort to include women, blacks, Hispanics, and internationals as affirmative action or “quota” programming.  I see this more as an attempt to address an oversight and move toward a change is practice and attitude. Bill Hybels, pastor of Willow Creek Community Church, has explained that church leadership suddenly realized one day how homogenous they were and how heterogeneous the Church was meant to be.  They began to intentionally seek out African-Americans and members of other races to become part of their lay leadership, their worship teams, and their staff.  They not only wanted to be more inconclusive but they wanted to visibly communicate their desire to be more inclusive. Here again, you might criticize this approach, but there is a management axiom which applies here:  “What...

The two-day Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit was inspiring and informative as usual.   In addition to those attending on the South Barrington campus, about 70,000 participated by satellite feed in hundreds of local sites across the nation.   The conference is videoed and will be repackaged and used to reach about 160,000 leaders around the world in the next year. Some things about the Summit have remained unchanged over the years.  There is a strong evangelical spirit; Hybels and his team leave no question that every person would be better off knowing Jesus as personal Lord and Savior.  Worship is always spirited and well-done, but it has evolved over the years (more about that below).  There is a strong commitment to learn about leadership not only from church leaders but from those in the business, not-for-profit, and educational sectors.  Cutting-edge technology is important as well, and the Willow Creek Association has learned how to use all...

The best presentation of the first day of the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit was the last message of the day by Craig Groeschel, pastor of LifeChurch.tv (yes, that is the name of the church) in Edmond, Oklahoma.  He addressed the need for intergenerational cooperation in leadership development.  His comments were both inspiring and practical. Groeschel pointed out that if generations are going to work together and learn from each other, it must be intentional.   He suggested three ways to do this. Create on-going feedback loops so that various generations can talk to and listen to each other.  He uses listening groups made up of older and younger congregants to give him feedback on his messages. Create specific mentoring moments. This is not only older to younger mentoring, but also includes reverse mentoring where an older leader can learn from a young leader. Create opportunities for significant leadership development.  Don’t just delega...

Pastor Bill Hybels serves as host and speaker. God willing, I will spend the next two days attending the Willow Creek Global Leadership Summit at a satellite location in our state.  The purpose of the Summit is stated as:  “T he Global Leadership Summit exists to transform Christian leaders around the world with an annual injection of vision, skill development, and inspiration for the sake of the local church.” I have lost track of how many of these I have attended—one on site in South Barrington, Illinois, and the rest at various satellite locations.  Some may wonder why I bother to attend a meeting put on by a megachurch located in an upscale suburb.  Although I may disagree with some of the presenters from time to time, the Willow Creek Association consistently enlists some of the most interesting and knowledgeable communicators of the day to present  practical ideas about leadership.  The speakers are drawn from churches, universities, consult...

Social media and the Internet are easy targets.   Hardly a day passes that someone fails to blame a societal evil on digital media.   Sometimes the criticism is understandable, but we must always remember that these things are only tools.   If we let our tools control us, we would give us driving automobiles because they can cause deaths.   Yes, they can, but only when used inappropriately. The digital revolution can be a blessing and, in fact, provides churches with resources that they could not even dream of a decade ago.  This delivery system strengthens the work of institutions and organizations that seek to serve the churches in a post-denominational age.  These ministries provide services that churches might one time have received from their denominations or judicatories.  Let me mention four of these (Disclaimer:  I have some association with all of these organizations, but this does not negate their contributions!) First, denomi...

I appreciate the work on movements that my friend StephenCurrie has allowed me to share in recent blogs.  He ends his comments on the nature of “Gospel movements” with these conclusions: “God invites human effort, and God does work through leaders and churches that care about restoration and reform.  But it is God who provides the source of movement energy through the Holy Spirit.  So we must pray fervently.  We must sow the Gospel widely and faithfully without the baggage of nuanced theological dogma or complex church practices that are more cultural than they are biblical.  Then, when the Holy Spirit stirs to generate a Gospel movement, Gospel seeds can germinate seemingly spontaneously in unexpected places.  And we can be in the right place at the right time to be part of something big that only God can do.” I got the question again last week:  “What do you think the future of CBF is?”  We have at least gotten beyond the other ques...

Stephen Currie continues his comments about movements. Movements are spontaneously sparked on the periphery.   Human effort is not a good predictor of where Gospel movements will happen because it is the work of the Holy Spirit.  Movements do not arise out of central planning of church leaders, so we cannot work harder or smarter to generate Gospel movements. Movements are spiritual, and arise when the seeds of the Gospel are widely sown.  This is how the center of New Testament missions shifted from Jerusalem to Antioch.  A few men began preaching the Gospel to Gentiles, and they received it gladly.  For a Jewish sect that was inconsequential in the wider Roman world, we realize that Antioch was very much on the periphery, and far away from the activity and control of church leaders in Jerusalem.  Antioch emerged spontaneously, and that is happening today in places like India and China. Movements must be easily reproducible . Movem...