The following presentation (with a few edits) was given at the 2020 Best Practices for Ministry Conference in Phoenix, AZ under the title, “Smelling Salts for Leadership.” Beginning this week, I will publish one Smelling Salt per week to help jolt us awake and begin thinking more clearly about how we go about Jesus’ work of mission, discipleship and multiplication.
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Your congregation is perfectly calibrated for the results you’re currently getting in mission, discipleship and multiplication. There is your way for your results, but then there’s Jesus’ way for Jesus’ results. We need a healthy whiff of leadership smelling salts so we can wake up, clearly see what we are doing to ourselves, and change it.
The purpose of smelling salts is to jolt a person awake. Likewise, the purpose of this presentation, “Smelling Salts for Leadership,” is to jolt congregational leaders awake. The purpose is not to make leaders feel bad about mission and discipleship effectiveness, but to wake us up so we can see clearly what we are doing and begin changing what needs to be changed.
Smelling Salt #1
In the U.S., we are witnessing the final collapse of programmatic Christianity.
This is good news because Christianity is fundamentally a redemptive lifestyle to be lived for the sake of others not a program to attend for the sake of self.
Programmatic Christianity is expensive, exhausting and unsustainable. It relies on money, professionals, buildings, P.R., and a lot of volunteer energy to keep the programmatic machine running. Unfortunately, the result of all that energy and investment is “passive church-goers” who attend a program rather than “active Christ-followers” who change their neighborhoods.
Of course, Christian programming can support Christian living. The temptation for church-goers, however, is to substitute the programs for the living.
Likewise, Word and sacraments are a means for empowering such a daily lifestyle not a substitute for such a lifestyle.
If church-goers are the same as they were one year ago (in terms of experience, skill, confidence, fruitfulness and stories about following Jesus in daily life), it is for one reason: they haven’t been following Jesus yet. They have been worshipping Him, studying Him and discussing Him… but not yet following Him.
Programmatic Christianity has inadvertently produced church-goers who approach Christianity like a hobby rather than as an active, redemptive lifestyle for changing the world.
The main goal of programmatic Christianity has become gathering people at the church; whereas the main goal of biblical Christianity is discipling people to spread the Church.
Likewise, we have institutionalized the practice of members delegating to others what God gave them to do. Thus, after decades of participating in our programs, we have produced passive, inexperienced, fearful scholars rather than proactive, trained, confident imitators of Jesus who bless the community.
Questions to Prompt Action:
Do you and your congregation simply study what Jesus says to do in the gospels or do you do what Jesus says to do in the gospels? (Matthew 7:24 encourages discipleship over scholarship)
What would it take to re-disciple people to engage Christianity as a force for redemption and restoration in the community rather than simply a service to attend on Sunday?
Smelling Salt #2 will be published next week.
For help answering the above questions (or others like them) AND plotting a course for re-discipling your congregation, contact Greg Finke at 281-844-7644 or finkeonthemove@aol.com.