Confronting things that never occurred to us before

Few people in churches enjoy change. I once read that a woman upset over some changes that occurred in her church approached her pastor and said, “Reverend, if God were alive today, He would turn over in His grave at the changes in this church!”  While I doubt this actually happened, it does reflect the attitude of some within the church regarding change.

What makes change even more difficult today is the speed at which change is happening and the types of changes that are required. In his insightful book Positively Irritating John Ritner writes, "In The Age of the Unthinkable, Joshua Cooper Ramo explains that we are now in an age of discontinuous and nonlinear social change that is moving at a staggering speed. We have departed from the idea that 'our world can be reduced to simple models [and] that the real dynamics of the world make prediction nearly impossible and demand a different way of thinking.' He argues that when we experience cultural stability, it is merely 'a passing phase, as a pause in a system of incredible - and unmappable - dynamism.' In fact, he suggests, 'much of what we have to confront will be things that have never occurred to us before.'"

Ritner points to the Covid-19 pandemic as a good example of this. All of a sudden, churches could not gather for worship, and pastors became televangelists overnight. Either churches took their worship services online, or those services did not happen. Many churches, especially smaller ones, had never given any consideration to airing their services online. In fact, many of them didn't have an online presence of any kind.

Such rapid changes occurring in our world today require a different way of thinking for church leaders. The old models of pastoral ministry still being taught in many seminaries simply will not suffice. Today's pastors must think more like entrepreneurs. Dave Ramsey coined a term for the title of his book Entreleadership. An entreleader is a person who combines both entrepreneurial thinking and sound leadership practices as he or she leads their team. Entrepreneurs are bold risk takers when facing new challenges; leaders are people who do not let their ambitions and enthusiasm run away with them. When one combines these two qualities they are prepared to face the new challenges that present themselves.

However, as many a pastor will point out, the congregation must allow the pastor to be an entreleader. I've seen many congregations want to micromanage everything the pastor does. They hold him or her accountable for results, but they do not give him or her the freedom to lead. It's like telling the pastor to push down on the gas pedal while they are standing on the brake and then complaining the car isn't going anywhere.

I've been a Baptist my entire ministry. Baptists are congregationalists. In other words, the congregation makes the major decisions of the church. This is often done in a monthly business meeting after committees have discussed a particular issue, sometimes for months before presenting their recommendations to the congregation. By then, the need to respond quickly to new challenges or opportunities have long since passed. 

I will make a bold proposal, at least in the eyes of some readers. Do away with your monthly business meetings and trust the leaders in the church to make the right decisions. If you have selected a pastor because you believe he or she has been called by God to be the pastor of your church why can you not trust him or her to provide the leadership necessary? If you have selected lay leaders to lead your church why can you not trust them to work with the pastor to provide that leadership? You will find no place in the Scriptures where any decision was made by a church business meeting. You will find where decisions were made by the apostles and leaders of the churches that they then passed on to the churches. Let me be very blunt...if you do not trust your pastor and lay leaders to provide leadership, you have the wrong people in those positions or there is something wrong with you.

Change is not going to slow down. In fact, I believe it will continue to increase. Pastors today face challenges I never had to face in my pastoral ministry, and this will continue. Churches ten years from now, if the Lord tarries, will face even greater challenges, and pastors and congregations need to be equipped to be ready to face those challenges if we are to successfully impact our communities for the Kingdom of God.