John Maxwell and the law of the rubber band

Anyone who has followed my writings know how much John Maxwell has influenced my thinking about leadership.  Out of all his books The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You remains my favorite and The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth: Live Them and Reach Your Potential is right behind it.  Both are must reads for anyone called to be a leader of any organization including ministry related roles.  In the second book one of the laws of growth is called The Law of the Rubber Band.

This law teaches that a rubber band is only useful when it is stretched.  A pile of rubber bands laying on a desk is just that: a pile with very little value.  But, when a rubber band is stretched it is capable of doing many worthwhile things.  There is an important application here at both the personal and the organizational level.

Most of us, myself included, enjoy the status quo.  Since we already know how to do whatever it is we've been doing for some time we enjoy continuing to do that.  To do something different would stretch us out of our comfort zones, and most people don't find that especially enjoyable.  However, it is when we are stretched that we become more valuable.

There have been so many times in my life when I've allowed myself to be stretched.  As a factory worker the only thing I had to worry about was showing up to work on time and doing what I was told.  When I felt God calling me into the ministry I found myself stretched.  Suddenly, I was working in the factory and serving a small church as their bivocational pastor.  I had no pastoral experience and no education beyond high school.  Believe me when I say there were many times I felt stretched way beyond my comfort zone.  Later I decided to earn a college degree and became a college student in addition to my work and church roles.  Now I'm stretched even further.  After twenty years of pastoral ministry I'm quite comfortable in that role when I felt God calling me to a new role serving in our judicatory.  I knew how to pastor; I didn't know if I could do this new work, but I also knew God had called so I accepted it.  Stretched again.  Later, I decided to pursue a master's degree and then a doctorate.  Talk about being stretched outside my comfort zone!  Over and over again God has challenged me to stretch, and it was always to prepare me to become more useful to His kingdom.

Our churches are no different.  Many of our churches are still doing ministry today as they did fifty years ago.  They are comfortable in doing what they have always done even if it's not as effective today as it once was.  Until these churches are willing to be stretched into new ways of thinking about ministry and doing things that are not comfortable at first they are unlikely to ever regain their usefulness to the Kingdom.  They will continue to decline until they are finally only a memory in a few people's minds and a name on a long-ago abandoned church building.

Stretching always involves change, and many churches associate change with risk.  I've come to believe that refusing to change is actually riskier than change.  Everything in today's culture becomes obsolete much sooner than ever before, and that includes the systems and processes found in organizations.  The good news for churches is that we do not have to change our message, in fact we must not change that, we only have to find new ways to get that message out.  We have to find new ways to connect with those outside the church.  We have to find new ways to proclaim the only message that offers hope to hurting people.  But, doing any of these will stretch us and force us to change the way we go about ministry.  Like rubber bands, churches that are willing to be stretched will be useful.