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June 15, 2004
I Just Want to Go to a “Normal” ChurchOur church is different. I’ve described as a church where a pastor (or other leader) would never be able to lead a Purpose Driven Life book study, for example. It doesn’t matter that churches, christians—even non-believers—are reading this book and taking a serious look at its truth claims. In fact, a Purpose Driven Life book study WAS done at our church. I think about 6 people participated. But that is just an example of what I’m trying to say. I’ve been thinking about this for a couple years and I’ve concluded that our church attracts people who are creative, innovative, and independent—more than the average, “normal” church. While these qualities are good and needed in many ways, there tends to come along with it, a lack of accountability. Everyone who has a good idea runs with it and tries to push it into existence. Most of the ideas do make it into existence, but barely. The result is there are a lot of good ideas being implemented half way being led by creative people who become burned out trying to get other people to subscribe to their point of view. Everyone is left with little energy to follow anyone else’s leading, including the pastor’s. A church full of leaders and no followers doesn’t make for a very effective church. Not that every church does this well, but I’m tired of trying to work within this system. I want to go to a church where people are excited about following their elected leader. With that comes energy, momentum, and effect. Posted by pablohart on June 15, 2004 09:25 AM |
I think part of problem is that a lot of "leaders" don't really know how to lead. Leading is tough. You've got to have a vision that inspires people so much that people want to follow it. You also have to be able to communicate the vision effectively. And You also have to be willing to sacrifice--get down and dirty if need be. In a church where many are gifted like yours, it seems like a big job of your leader is to know each person as well as he or she can and then put them to task on something that will fully utilize their gifts and talents. It's a tough racket.
I know for me, being a leader of small group, that all these things are tough to do. I have found the times where I just took action--trusting God to guide--regardless of whether or not everyone thought what I wanted to do was a good idea, were the times where God showed up and took us all into something we could never have fathomed. So, I guess being a leader means you take action to. But you never go alone, God is always leading the leader. It will be clear to everyone when God is not in some action.
Interesting thoughts. You've got what so many struggling churches (with no life) are desperately longing for but don't possess.
I think there are advantages to having a central leadership figure in a church and disadvantages. If you're doing church as usual, the strong leader is important. But I've often wondered if church was really meant to be comprised of many small groups or home churches, each of which belong to a larger body for accountability, support, training, etc. Personally, I'm burnt out with the big church and am desperate for a small group of creative people that I can grow with, be accountable to, and share ideas and truth with. "Normal church" just doesn't do anything for me—even ones that have a strong leadership figure.
The church that I've been a "member" of [or attended with varying levels of commitment] has a very strong leader as the pastor and has a very strong vision in which everyone rallies around... but the downside of that is that the church will gravitate towards being a programmatic/doing-oriented church and not a relational church. If it's true that programs don't save people, and that people do... then perhaps it'd be best to gather your creative types together and cultivate strong relationships with each other, with your neighbors and friends, and those outside "the fold".
Just a thought.
Interesting thoughts for sure. I'd be interested to know how you see your experience and frustrations in the light of the descriptions of small group fellowship recorded in John Eldredge's book "Waking the Dead."
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