In the 1970’s the work of Donald McGavran, Peter Wagner, Win Arn and others in the church growth movement, influenced most of us who were in church leadership. We went to numerous conferences and devoured church growth resources in order to apply the principles of church growth to our congregations. Carl George, Rick Warren and Bill Hybels have continued to influence us with their insights in reaching the unchurched. Their methodologies have been most helpful in many ways.

 However, Will Mancini in Church Unique, claims that we need to shift from methodology to identity. Methodology questions ask, “What can we do to reach more people?” Identity questions ask, “How do we reshape our self-understanding so that we can be like Christ in the world?”

 Mancini urges us to move away from an “attractional” mind-set to an “incarnational” one. Attractional means that the church’s basic strategy for reaching the unchurched revolves around getting people into the church building. In contrast, the incarnational approach focuses on living and sharing the gospel “where life happens.” A church’s language about the people it wants to reach quickly exposes an attractional or incarnational mind-set. Are they ‘prospects’ (a sales term), or the ‘lost’ (judgmental). Rather than referring to the unchurched as lost people perhaps we could see them as seekers, or just friends we want to share God’s love with. The difference in word choice may seem subtle, but it moves the idea of evangelizing from something we do – church-inspired and project-oriented – something we embody – personally inspired and life-oriented.

 Mancini also talks about Growth Idolatry, a preoccupation with numbers. “Growth idolatry is the unconscious belief, on the soul level, that things are not OK with me if my church is not growing.” This creates a performance trap, measured most easily by church attendance.

 The ever-present vision for campus expansion and larger buildings is the epitome of the attractional model. Growth idolatry strongly persuades us that kingdom growth must mean numerical growth of our local church. Gordon MacDonald posed the issue in this way: “I have wondered if our evangelical fervor to change the world is not driven in some part by the inability to change ourselves.”

 Mancini concludes: “The primary culprit of popular church growth methodology – the iniquity of church growth – is not the teaching in and of itself but the tendency to nurture growth idolatry in the pastor’s heart.”

Dallas Willard, in answer to a question of mine about performance reviews, said that the tendency for church Boards is to concentrate on the ABC’s of church life and to neglect the D. A = attendance, B=buildings, C=cash. These are easily quantified. D=discipleship. How do you quantify helping people to love God and their neighbor as themselves as they seek to follow Jesus? How do we define success in the church?

Ted Schroder

In the early eighties I participated in a church management course at the Babcock School of Management at Wake Forest University in Winston Salem, NC. It was a revolutionary course for me primarily because it introduced me to the personal computer and strategic planning. Since then I have led strategic planning workshops for the churches I have served. We have developed five year plans with objectives, goals, priorities and action steps. I have been the very model of the chief executive of the local congregation. In fact, a couple researching churches came to interview me in my previous congregation and described me in their book as “purposeful, self-confident, articulate – the complete executive”! I was in my early forties then and had much to learn about humility! Much, however, has been accomplished through this planning. Most management leaders of my age have turned to strategic planning as the way to grow their businesses, and have been keen to apply it to their churches. Some lay leaders see it as the answer to every kind of problem in their church. You can imagine my surprise then when I read in Will Mancini’s book, Church Unique, that “strategic planning is no longer the preferred tool for leading the church into the future. For many pastors and well-meaning lay leaders, it’s time to put down the shovel…. To state the limitations of the classic strategic plan in one sentence, it misses the human element.”

 Developing purpose statements, mission and vision statements with core values, objectives, goals and action steps assume that the more information will produce clearer direction, but Mancini claims that the opposite is true. He calls it the “fallacy of complexity.” Too much information shreds the big picture into so many small pieces that the vision is hopelessly lost. More information equals less clarity. He urges us to concentrate on the big picture expressed in one statement of no more than twenty-five words. We have to be ruthlessly clear about the one thing at which we can be the best on the world.

 Because the world is changing rapidly we cannot develop five year plans. Mancini call this the “fallacy of predictability.” Who would have thought a year ago what has happened to our world? Innovation expert Jim Carroll writes,

“Clearly you need different skills to take you into a future that is becoming far more complex, challenging and different by the minute. How can you keep operating the way you do – with the same culture, structures, rules and methodologies, when the rate of change that envelopes your organization is so dramatic and so darned fast? We live in an era of unprecedented and relentless change…Permanence has been torn asunder. We are in a time that demands a new agility and flexibility: and everyone must have the skill and insight to prepare for a future that is rushing at them faster than every before.”

 Mancini asks, “Is your church’s relationship to the future arthritic or adaptive?”

Ted Schroder

 At the Renovaré Conference in San Antonio last week I became acquainted with the work of Will Mancini, who led a workshop on church leadership I attended. After pastoring a church Will founded Auxano, a national consulting group that works with churches and ministries of all types around the country. Their mission is to navigate leaders through growth challenges with vision clarity. He is the author of Church Unique: How Missional Leaders Cast Vision, Capture Culture and Create Movement. 

Will Mancini highlights the importance of the unique culture of a congregation and its gifts to the community it serves. The vision of the church should recognize that culture and motivate the congregation to penetrate the outside community. He claims that reaching the surrounding community should be innate, driven by the church’s DNA rather than programming. 

His book does not offer conclusions based on surveys or analysis. He is skeptical on constructing goals based on surveys. The survey method can lead to developing a scorecard on what you are doing well and what you are not doing well. The usual conclusion is to work on your weaknesses. The problem with this is that if your primary focus is trying to enhance your limitations, you will end up worse than you started. You will be immensely more effective if your focus is on discovering and developing your strengths. 

So his concern is to ask what makes your church one of a kind. What is God’s unique thumbprint for your church? What is different about your church’s corporate grace and collective soul? What does your church do better than ten thousand others? 

He discusses what prevents church leaders from identifying their church’s unique thumbprint. He calls them “thinkholes.” He writes, “The reality is that most people don’t think; they only rearrange their prejudices. Real thinking can be disruptive to the status quo and requires a great deal of courage. Along the great race of leadership, thinkholes are the obstacles, barriers, and danger zones that keep us from thoughtful self-knowledge.” Here are some of them. 

The first thinkhole is ministry treadmill. The treadmill is set in motion when the busyness of ministry creates a progressively irreversible hurriedness in the leader’s life. The sheer immediacy of each next event or ministry demand prevents the leader from taking the time required for discerning the culture and defining the DNA of the church. 

The second thinkhole is the competency trap. As ministry leaders experience success over time, that very success can become a liability. The gold medals of yesterday’s accomplishments become the iron teeth around the leader’s ankle. 

The third thinkhole is the needs-based slippery slope where leaders are constantly trying to meet people’s needs and expectations within the church. The vision of the church is reduced to making people happy. In John 17:4 Jesus prayed, “I have brought you glory by completing all the work you gave me to do.” Jesus did not meet every need, he met all the needs he was created and called to meet. 

The fourth thinkhole is the cultural whirlpool. Each demographic group has its own identity and means of communication. Here at the Chapel we serve a group called the GLAMS: graying, leisured, affluent, married or single. Change is not easy for us. Mancini writes that one response to the cultural whirlpool is the StuckChurch. The changes around us outpace our energy and discipline for new learning. Rather than rolling up our sleeves to think about our culture, we just grow too tired for the task. What do we do to justify our position? We simply define our vision in terms of glorifying and propagating the past. 

The fifth thinkhole is the conference maze, where leaders rely solely on training events to instill direction and vision for their church. They end up trying to copy someone else’s model rather than believing in their own unique mission. One size does not fit all. 

The sixth thinkhole is the denominational rut. Lyle Schaller writes, “The differences between congregations are becoming greater with the passage of time. The safe assumption today is that no two are alike. Each congregation has its own culture. The local community setting has moved ahead of the denominational heritage as a factor in creating congregational culture.” Denominations try to replicate their characteristics with little appreciation for local uniqueness. They get stuck maintaining the structures of yesteryear. 

Ted Schroder

Tullian Tchividjian is the grandson of Billy Graham, who recently succeeded Dr James Kennedy as pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Fort Lauderdale. In his thirties, Tullian has brought new vigor to an aging congregation. His latest book is entitled Unfashionable: making a difference in the world by being different.

In an interview he describes the overarching thesis of his book.

“Christians make a difference in this world by being different from the world. They don’t make a difference by being the same. And over and over again in the book I borrow this line from sociologist Peter Berger where he said that the church is to live against the world for the sake of the world. And so there’s this tension that exists about being in the world, but not of the world. What I seek to do in the book is really tease out what does it mean to be in the world, but not of the world; what does it mean to live against the world for the sake of the world; what does it really look like for Christians to make a difference in the world by being different from the world? My goal is to really spell that out theologically, to spell it out practically. I talk about the fact that according to Jesus, Christianity is not cool. Jesus says some pretty remarkably unfashionable things…And so I try to tease out that tension so that the reader can understand what it really means to engage this world in an unfashionable way.”

He challenges the church to understand its true identity. “The church at the beginning of the twenty-first century faces an unparalleled identity crisis.” Its solution lies in “the church’s ability to recover a biblically defined understanding of who we are, where we come from, and where we’re headed. When we don’t have a clear sense of what makes us different, we lose our ability to make a difference.”

Our congregation is going through a re-evaluation of its mission in order to better serve our community. We have a sort of identity crisis because we have grown beyond the initial vision of the founding generation. We are much more diverse and have new wine straining at the old wineskins. If we are to acquire new wineskins to accommodate an expanded mission, we have to be certain of that mission before we shed the old wineskins. This re-evaluation can be scary to some but exhilarating to others. As long as we exercise patience and love with one another, we will find that the Spirit will be leading us to make a difference in our community.

In Acts 10 Peter was given a vision that he didn’t understand. Cornelius was also given a vision and directed to send for Peter to bring the Gospel to him and his friends. “Peter was wondering about the meaning of the vision…Peter was still thinking about the vision. The Spirit said to him…God has shown me…So, I came.” (Acts 10:17,19,29)

We may wonder sometimes about the vision God is revealing to us through our lives. We may not know where it will lead us but we need to be obedient to his leading. As I reflect upon this I ask myself: What is the Spirit revealing to me and saying to me in the events and circumstances of my life? Am I listening and open to the voice of the Spirit? I may be inwardly perplexed but I must not doubt that the Spirit is working, sending people to me, causing events to happen over which I have no control. I must respond without raising any objection and ask, ‘What can I do?’ If the Spirit is speaking (and the Spirit may be speaking more often than I think – the question is whether I am listening enough), I can listen and be obedient, and not resistant to the vision through whomever it comes, from the most unlikely of sources.

Ted Schroder