Is Your Church a Moses-Driven Organization?

Additional reading and discussion questions for the article printed in the winter 2008 issue of EFCA Today

Engagement

When your church members are engaged in personal ministry, the benefits are many-fold. Not only are they more satisfied overall, but surveys show that they are 10 times more likely to have invited someone to church in the past month.* They also give three times as much to the church’s work as do the actively disengaged (e.g., churchgoers who have simply “tuned out”).

Finally, engaged Christians spend a median of 2½ hours per week volunteering in their communities. (That’s in addition to volunteering in their churches.) By comparison, those who are not engaged spend a median of about one hour a week, while for the actively disengaged, the median number of hours volunteered is zero.

A major reason why empowering leadership isn’t a priority is that we’ve created a church system that works, step-by-step, against it:

• Bob and Sally are welcomed, not to address their own needs, but to address the institutional needs of the church.
• Bob and Sally are nurtured, not to discover their own gifts and calling, but to understand and contribute to the organization.
• Bob and Sally are encouraged, not to probe the boundaries of creativity, but to accept the friendly consensus of the group.
• Bob and Sally are trained, not to do ministry, but to raise money and manage an institution that will pay and supervise somebody else to do ministry.
• Bob and Sally are devoted, not to reaching people, but to keeping people; their priority is not to care for the world, but to take care of each other.

Discussion questions:

Do we see a connection at our church between engaged/disengaged and patterns of giving, of ministry outside the church, of extending invitations to others?

What might be a first step toward encouraging greater engagement—something we can implement even this month?

Step one: Start with yourself.

Personal reflection: If I look first at myself as a leader, what do I see of the qualities mentioned by author Jim Fann in the article “Is Your Church a Moses-Driven Organization?”:

• personal ambition and a hunger for approval
• confidence (often impatience) that “nobody else can do it as well as I can”
• the difficulty of recruiting, organizing and mobilizing others
• the frustrating reality that the time and energy spent in training people often doesn’t pay off

Discussion questions:

Where can we start, as a leadership team, to hold each other accountable in areas where our ugly sinfulness is affecting our church family?

How true is this quote from C.S. Lewis, from Mere Christianity:

“The real problem of the Christian life comes where people do not usually look for it. It comes the very moment you wake up each morning. All your wishes and hopes for the day rush at you like wild animals. And the first job each morning consists simply in shoving them all back; in listening to that other voice, taking that other point of view, letting that other larger, stronger, quieter life come flowing in. And so on, all day.”

Also, consider these candid comments from one leader:

“I’m hesitant to tell you this because I’m really ashamed of it. Lest I sound too altruistic, let me admit that ‘sharing the glory’ has caused me some ego problems. At a point in my ministry I found myself becoming depressed. The ministry had never been healthier, but I resented even that. I realized that the real issue was a basic sin problem. I thought I had settled the shared-ministry question long ago. Yet all of a sudden I felt this tremendous need to be visibly appreciated.

“Those feelings are behind me for now. I know that who gets the credit isn’t the point. The only thing that matters is the working of the Body. Yet the experience stands as a vivid reminder of an important truth: A leader in a shared ministry has a price to pay. ‘Unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds’ (John 12:24).”

What are some struggles or concerns I have as I consider “giving away” ministry?

Step two: In doing what you do best, help others do what they do best too.

In Growing an Engaged Church, Albert Winseman reports that engaged Christians respond more positively to the following two statements than those who are not engaged or who are actively disengaged:

• In my congregation, I regularly have the opportunity to do what I do best.
• The mission/purpose of my congregation makes me feel my contribution is important.

Discussion questions:

How do we as leaders respond to these statements?

How do we think the majority of people in our church would respond?

Step three: Create reinforcing systems.

Review this (expanded) chart from the EFCA Today article:

Discussion questions:

How have we structured our church, according to each of the above statements?

Empowering leaders are able to say yes to each of the following statements. Are we a church that empowers its leaders?

• Ministry belongs to the people; it doesn’t belong to church leaders, the pastor or the staff.
• Everyone who attends this church is being guided into meaningful (to them) personal ministry.
• The church’s structure aids productive ministry, it doesn’t hinder it; structure regularly changes to facilitate ministry impact.
• Most of the ministry is actually accomplished by the people in the church.
• People are involved in accordance with their spiritual gifts and maturity.
• Church policies allow for quick decision-making; policy exceptions are common and noncontroversial if they facilitate ministry impact.