Your church may need a new pastor

Several years ago while pastoring Hebron Baptist Church I became very frustrated at our lack of growth.  The problem was not that we were not growing numerically; we weren't growing at all.  We were flat, stuck, and many in our congregation were content with that state.  It was at that time that I read George Barna's book Turnaround Churches: How to Overcome Barriers to Growth and Bring New Life to an Established Church.  I wasn't too far into the book when I read Barna's claim that one of the first things a church needs to turn around is new leadership. This was before I had read John Maxwell's Law of the Lid in The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You that says that everything rises and falls on leadership, but I knew in my heart that Barna was right.  Our church needed a new leader if it was going to move forward.  I spent the next several days in thought and prayer.  Two or three weeks later I shared my thoughts with our congregation and told them I believed our church needed a new pastor.  From the look on their faces some of them felt I was about to resign, but then I told them that I wanted to become that new pastor.  That became the first time I re-invented my ministry and my preaching while at that church.

It's not easy to become a new leader.  That may be why so many pastors do not stay at one church longer than they do.  They know how to pastor one way, and if and when that way stops working they have nothing.  They assume this is a sign they are to leave and seek a new place of ministry.  That, of course, is the easy solution as they are not forced to look at what they are doing and determine what needs to be changed.

What does need to be changed?  I suppose that will vary with the pastor and the church he or she serves, but I can tell you what I changed.  First, I changed my messages.  One Sunday I realized that many of my messages had become rather negative in their tone.  I was sitting at my desk reviewing the list of my sermons over the past few months when I was challenged by their negativity.  I am not normally a negative person, but the content of my sermons were negative and somewhat angry.  People are beat up six days a week by life; they don't need to be beat up when they come to church on Sunday, but that is what I was doing.  The next Sunday I apologized to the congregation for that negativity.  I told them God had shown me that week that I could say anything I needed to say from a positive perspective or a negative one, and from that time forward, with His help, I intended for my messages to be positive.  I would still call sin a sin when needed, but I would never do so without also offering grace and forgiveness.

My leadership style also changed.  I began to take more risks as a leader, and I feel like I became a little more bold.  I did not want to be a dictator or be overbearing, but I did want to be more intentional as a leader.  I began to cast vision for the church and set goals for myself and the church.  In January each year I would preach a message on what I felt God was leading our church to do in the coming months, and I tried to keep that vision before the congregation.  Believing that people tend to rise to challenges I tried to set the bar a little higher each year, and it was exciting to see our congregation often surpass that bar.  I think a key word in this paragraph is intentional.  It's so easy to drift along hoping something good happens, and this is what many Christian leaders do.  It's what I often did.  It's like we're just waiting to see what God will do.  I found out God becomes much more active when I become more intentional about doing what I am supposed to do!

I also tried to be more patient.  I am the first to admit that patience is not one of my strengths.  I think microwaves take too long, but I was learning that most good things that happen in a church do not happen as quickly as we might like.  I tried very hard to take a long-term view of my ministry in that church and accept that some things would take longer than I wanted.

These are just three of the things that needed to change in me if I wanted to be a new pastor.  None of these changes occurred overnight, and none of them were easy.  Gandhi once said, "Be the change you want to see in the world."  Why should I expect my church to change if I wasn't willing to change?  As our congregation began to see me become a new pastor many of them also decided to change, and as we changed together good things began to happen in our church.  Does your church need a new pastor to turn things around?  Could you be that pastor?