Identity Crisis in the Church: When Ministry Growth Becomes a Problem
Today I want to talk about vision and unity in ministry. I want to examine what I believe to be a root cause of ministry stagnation and failure, as well as suggest an alternative approach to ministry that I think will work better. Today's short novel (I know, these tend to run a little long) was prompted by some reading I did at work today. I work for a healthcare software company, and part of my initial training involves learning a great deal about the healthcare industry. Today was about quality improvement, and my reading referenced a management system called the Model of Improvement, which was developed in the early 20th century. This system centers on incremental change and testing, with a focus on scale-ability. Now, hopefully you haven't nodded off already, because I promise that this is coming back around to something more related to what I usually talk about. You see, I saw in this model some things that the church and other ministries can do to improve the way that they seek to reach the world for Jesus. Let's start with what I've seen that sometimes goes on and goes wrong in ministry....
Many ministries have great motivation, and they start out with great plans and purposes to change their community or to reach the youth of America, for example, and they see a niche that they can fill to do this, and they start working. Things go well for a while, and people respond to their ministry and outreach positively, and more people want to join in the effort. What happens? Often, this organization tries to spread out, to do the same thing in other places, and it sometimes doesn't work. Perhaps there isn't as pressing a need for that type of ministry there, or there aren't enough leaders who know what's going on and what the vision is. Perhaps people just get tired and stop volunteering - the reasons are nearly endless, but even these aren't fully responsible for the stagnation of a ministry. I think that one of the main reasons ministries fail to expand or even sustain their original scope is because we don't create ministries with scale in mind. We just say, "well, we see a need for this, so we're going to do <fill in the blank> to reach <fill in the blank>". The problem is that a task isn't always scale-able. That task might not be needed or useful elsewhere. To put it differently, you can't define a movement based on tasks or jobs, because those aren't universal.
Popular business philosopher Simon Sinek recently gave several TED talks and wrote a book called Start with Why. The focus of this book is on something called the Golden Circle, which is a model that illustrates that any movement must be solely founded on a "why", a purpose and reason for existence. The "how" this is accomplished and the specific "what" goes on as part of that must tie back to the "why", but they can't supersede the "why" as the foundation of the organization or movement's operation. Many movements focus on "how" or "what", and because of this they can't scale to other areas or cultures. They might be wonderfully effective in their local region, but their great heart for service and ministry, their success, and their principles won't be able to spread and impact other areas if the identity of their movement is based on a specific task.
Sometimes this creeps up on groups. They start out with a purpose, but over time their responsibilities and tasks narrow until they do things one way, and this, if left unchecked, creates a new group identity over the course of time, based on the job, not the vision.
Hopefully everyone is beginning to see where this is going. If our goal as the church is supposed to be to glorify God, to give Jesus the reward of His suffering and the desire of His heart, which is the nations of the earth as His inheritance, then we have to design our movements with scale in mind. We have to have many people doing different things, but for the same reason, with a mindset of flexibility and adaptation as circumstances change. If we don't, we end up like the church today, a series of fragmented, independent groups and movements who aren't able to work together because they've come to identify themselves by their job, not by why they do their job. It is Biblically clear that there will be different responsibilities and tasks done by different groups of people in the church (Paul talking about hands and eyes in 1 Cor. 12, some disciples being selected for ministry to the widows and orphans while others evangelized, etc.), but what we have to focus on the most is not trying to meet every need right away, but rather ensure that as a ministry grows and begins to take on new tasks and meet new needs, we are careful to instill the same group identity, focused on accomplishing the same purpose, into each partition of the group. We're not defined by what we do as Christians, we're defined by who we do it for - Jesus. Every group could be successful completing their work, but if we're not doing what we do for the same reason, we won't be able to expand further, to adapt to changes in culture, circumstance, obstacles, etc. without creating entirely different ministries, which is like starting over. It halts the progress and creates competition and confusion.
The reason that so many new ministries try to "reinvent the wheel" is that they focus on a need that isn't being met. Maybe they're a part of a group that gets too task oriented, and so they form to fill in the "gaps". Can you really form an organization around the vision of compensating for (or even complementing) another ministry? What happens when that ministry starts doing what you're doing? What happens if that ministry falls apart completely? What I'm about to suggest as a solution to this problem is admittedly crazy. It's unrealistic and slightly ridiculous and not humanly feasible.
What if no "ministries" existed? What if we didn't separate ourselves anymore based on task or purpose, and just had the body of Christ, doing all that Jesus calls us to do, united behind the purpose of giving Jesus the glory and the bride He desires? Because if we look at it, the fact that we form distinct ministries is partly to blame. As faulty human beings, once we fragment based on job responsibility and identify as separate groups with separate tasks, we're bound to corrupt our motivation and become task oriented. What I talked about previously with unified vision and scale-ability sounds great in principle, but if I'm being honest it's not an entirely realistic expectation...yet. American Christendom just isn't ready to unify around Jesus' heart completely, and to be willing to be flexible with what we do. We're not convinced yet that what we do doesn't matter so much in comparison to who we're doing it for and why.
What needs to happen before ministries can re-center themselves on purpose, before we're back to building ministries that are scale-able and able to have nationwide and worldwide impact, is that we have to allow God to revamp our Christian culture. We have a lot of growing pains ahead of us, as well as a lot of joy, and that's what I'll talk about in my next post, what this culture looks like and what it will take to get there.
Many ministries have great motivation, and they start out with great plans and purposes to change their community or to reach the youth of America, for example, and they see a niche that they can fill to do this, and they start working. Things go well for a while, and people respond to their ministry and outreach positively, and more people want to join in the effort. What happens? Often, this organization tries to spread out, to do the same thing in other places, and it sometimes doesn't work. Perhaps there isn't as pressing a need for that type of ministry there, or there aren't enough leaders who know what's going on and what the vision is. Perhaps people just get tired and stop volunteering - the reasons are nearly endless, but even these aren't fully responsible for the stagnation of a ministry. I think that one of the main reasons ministries fail to expand or even sustain their original scope is because we don't create ministries with scale in mind. We just say, "well, we see a need for this, so we're going to do <fill in the blank> to reach <fill in the blank>". The problem is that a task isn't always scale-able. That task might not be needed or useful elsewhere. To put it differently, you can't define a movement based on tasks or jobs, because those aren't universal.
Popular business philosopher Simon Sinek recently gave several TED talks and wrote a book called Start with Why. The focus of this book is on something called the Golden Circle, which is a model that illustrates that any movement must be solely founded on a "why", a purpose and reason for existence. The "how" this is accomplished and the specific "what" goes on as part of that must tie back to the "why", but they can't supersede the "why" as the foundation of the organization or movement's operation. Many movements focus on "how" or "what", and because of this they can't scale to other areas or cultures. They might be wonderfully effective in their local region, but their great heart for service and ministry, their success, and their principles won't be able to spread and impact other areas if the identity of their movement is based on a specific task.
Sometimes this creeps up on groups. They start out with a purpose, but over time their responsibilities and tasks narrow until they do things one way, and this, if left unchecked, creates a new group identity over the course of time, based on the job, not the vision.
Hopefully everyone is beginning to see where this is going. If our goal as the church is supposed to be to glorify God, to give Jesus the reward of His suffering and the desire of His heart, which is the nations of the earth as His inheritance, then we have to design our movements with scale in mind. We have to have many people doing different things, but for the same reason, with a mindset of flexibility and adaptation as circumstances change. If we don't, we end up like the church today, a series of fragmented, independent groups and movements who aren't able to work together because they've come to identify themselves by their job, not by why they do their job. It is Biblically clear that there will be different responsibilities and tasks done by different groups of people in the church (Paul talking about hands and eyes in 1 Cor. 12, some disciples being selected for ministry to the widows and orphans while others evangelized, etc.), but what we have to focus on the most is not trying to meet every need right away, but rather ensure that as a ministry grows and begins to take on new tasks and meet new needs, we are careful to instill the same group identity, focused on accomplishing the same purpose, into each partition of the group. We're not defined by what we do as Christians, we're defined by who we do it for - Jesus. Every group could be successful completing their work, but if we're not doing what we do for the same reason, we won't be able to expand further, to adapt to changes in culture, circumstance, obstacles, etc. without creating entirely different ministries, which is like starting over. It halts the progress and creates competition and confusion.
The reason that so many new ministries try to "reinvent the wheel" is that they focus on a need that isn't being met. Maybe they're a part of a group that gets too task oriented, and so they form to fill in the "gaps". Can you really form an organization around the vision of compensating for (or even complementing) another ministry? What happens when that ministry starts doing what you're doing? What happens if that ministry falls apart completely? What I'm about to suggest as a solution to this problem is admittedly crazy. It's unrealistic and slightly ridiculous and not humanly feasible.
What if no "ministries" existed? What if we didn't separate ourselves anymore based on task or purpose, and just had the body of Christ, doing all that Jesus calls us to do, united behind the purpose of giving Jesus the glory and the bride He desires? Because if we look at it, the fact that we form distinct ministries is partly to blame. As faulty human beings, once we fragment based on job responsibility and identify as separate groups with separate tasks, we're bound to corrupt our motivation and become task oriented. What I talked about previously with unified vision and scale-ability sounds great in principle, but if I'm being honest it's not an entirely realistic expectation...yet. American Christendom just isn't ready to unify around Jesus' heart completely, and to be willing to be flexible with what we do. We're not convinced yet that what we do doesn't matter so much in comparison to who we're doing it for and why.
What needs to happen before ministries can re-center themselves on purpose, before we're back to building ministries that are scale-able and able to have nationwide and worldwide impact, is that we have to allow God to revamp our Christian culture. We have a lot of growing pains ahead of us, as well as a lot of joy, and that's what I'll talk about in my next post, what this culture looks like and what it will take to get there.
-Ron
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