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“We need more discipline and structure in our decision-making. Without it, we’ll never accomplish anything.”
“We’re a church, not a business. We need to rely on God. We can’t operate like the corporate world.”
Have you ever been on one side or the other of this argument or the other? Or perhaps in the middle? The tensions and emotions are present in most churches in America today. The proliferation of conferences and the frequent application of corporate “best practices” to church life leaves church leaders struggling to make sense of it all.
One frequently cited best practice is “getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus,” which comes from Good to Great by Jim Collins. He explains that if the right people are on board, they will define the future direction of the organization. But when someone is wrong for the organization, whether due to lack of ability or personality clashes, hanging onto them can drag the entire enterprise down. Collins concludes that leaders should focus on senior staff as a top priority.
When I first read Good to Great, my job was in the marketplace, but I was also consulting with churches on pastoral leadership issues. I knew the tendency of many churches to make excuses rather than confront underperforming staff. I remember thinking, “Wouldn’t the church be much more effective for the Kingdom if we got the wrong people off the bus?”
Little did I know that within a year I would join a church staff and gain first-hand opportunities to test this and other business principles as a church leader. Little did I appreciate some of the differences and challenges that I would encounter.
Around the same time, I read another book, Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire by Jim Cymbala. It’s hard to get whiplash from reading a book, but that’s how it felt as I pored over the powerful story of Brooklyn Tabernacle. The whiplash did not come from the congregation’s success, but from the simple, faith-filled approach that Cymbala described. He seemed to run counter to the leadership methods of corporate America, saying things like, “We don’t need technicians and church programmers; we need God. He is not looking for smart people, because he’s the smart one. All he wants are people simple enough to trust him.”
I wished that I could ignore Cymbala, but as I turned the last page of Fresh Wind, Fresh Fire, I was forced to face a powerful question. What does it mean to be an effective, biblical leader in a local congregation? I needed to take a fresh look at leadership in the local church.
Since then, I’ve met many others who wrestle with this issue.
Blurred leadership lines
During a recent vision check, my optometrist was concerned that even after correction; my vision in one eye was not 20-20. I was concerned as well. Not just because this could indicate an underlying problem (which, fortunately, was not the case), but because I wanted to see clearly.
Church leaders strive for clarity as well, but things often seem blurry when we put on business-derived leadership lenses. For example, business leaders know that they must think of the different constituencies that relate to their companies: customers, employees, and owners/shareholders. By making a high-quality product at a reasonable price, customers will be satisfied and sales will increase. The morale of the workforce is an important factor in making these products efficiently, so leaders seek to encourage and motivate employees through financial and non-financial means. And the shareholders who have invested their money in the company expect their investment to yield a good return.
Applying constituency thinking to a church will cause your head to spin. In business, the three groups are mostly separate and distinct. But in a church, a single person or family can be customer, employee, AND shareholder. Change the terms to members, volunteers, and contributors, and the overlap becomes obvious. When requests come from various constituencies, knowing how to respond gets complicated. Pastors often feel unable to say “no” because the person making the request represents multiple, influential constituencies.
There’s more blurriness in ministry, such as whether to focus on those currently in our church or those we have not yet reached. The priorities and emphases that fit one group may not fit the other. Of course, businesses must try to attract new customers while retaining existing ones. But in the corporate world, a cost-benefit analysis determines whether the expected profits justify entering a new market.
In the church, the “bottom line” is life transformation, which defies simple cost-benefit analysis. We wonder whether it’s better to see one new convert or five believers who grow significantly in their faith. Or whether the dollar spent on children’s programming produces more fruit than one spent on youth ministry. So we wrestle with priorities and resource allocation, trying to make the right choices as we pursue a goal that is sometimes vague and elusive.
Do business principles help, or merely confuse these issues? My next article will explore one specific application of this question: strategic planning.
Read part 2 of this series: Is “strategic planning” spiritual?
Photo source: istock
 | Mike Bonem is an author, consultant, speaker, church leader, businessperson, husband and father. He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a breadth of experience in ministry and business, including 11 years as an executive pastor, consulting with Fortune 100 companies, and leading a start-up business. This article was first published on MikeBonem.com. Used with permission. Learn More » |
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