Is your church passive?

Bud Brown Nov. 30, 2018

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“Am I in the right place? This church isn’t anything like I expected. In fact, it’s almost the opposite!”

No, I wasn’t a church visitor.

I was in the midst of conducting a focus group for a new client church. Their warmth, energy and enthusiasm was a pleasant surprise. The pastor had primed me to expect something else.

Yes, it was a passive church. Not because they were lazy, aged and infirm or spiritually immature. The pastor’s failure to lead created the problem. The good news is the church was ready to get to it, if the pastor would learn to lead.
What is a passive church?

Lyle Schaller sketches passivity in Activating the Passive Church. He identifies a variety of root causes.

• “Hire it done” - Staff is paid to “do the work of ministry” rather than training the members to do it themselves.
• “Veto board” - The governing body acquires veto power over new initiatives.
• “Vision void” - A lack of unifying mission and vision creates a void that invites conflict over priorities.
• “Backward focus” - Plateaued churches look back on the good old days with growing fondness.
• “Mission drift” - Vigorous churches take on an ever-increasing number of initiatives, but never pare anything back, spreading resources so thin that the church loses its distinctiveness.
• “Disappointed dreams” - Frustration over failures dominates the thoughts and idle conversations of key members.
• “Long-tenured pastors” - Long-term pastors may fail to produce strong leadership teams that keep the church moving forward during the interim period.

I’d like to add two more causes: deficit focus and micromanagement. They result in debilitating discouragement, hopelessness and passivity.

Deficit focus

The first way to create passivity, pastor, is to avoid directing the church’s eyes to the future.

Churches that experience decline often become preoccupied with survival. They focus on what’s not working.

Morale plummets when decline impinges on church finances or results in postponement of major systems maintenance (e.g., HVAC, parking lots, roofs). Quiet desperation permeates the gatherings. Church guests pick up on this vibe and don’t return. Offerings suffer because a “help us keep the doors open” message doesn’t inspire sacrificial giving. Once productive programs “age out” but their effectiveness isn’t assessed and revision, replacement, or cancellation is never considered.

These churches redouble their efforts at what’s not working. They persevere for years—even decades—but gloom and pessimism set in. Leaders and members are bewildered. Most people come to the unspoken conclusion that anything they try will be futile. Learned helplessness settles in and the deathwatch begins.

Ephesians 4:12 outlines the pastor’s primary task. The gist of the job is to repair what’s broken, provide what’s missing, and prepare people for service. Passive churches are passive because they are missing a compelling vision. This lack allows deficit focus to settle in.

Micromanagement

A second way to create passivity, pastor, is to micromanage your people rather than releasing them to own ministry and do it their way. 

This was the major culprit and primary cause of passivity in the recent church consultation. The pastor’s seven-year tenure taught the people that nothing they did was good enough, so they simply quit trying. “We love pastor’s preaching. His messages always take us deep into God’s Word. But I’m tired of being micromanaged. He gives me a job to do but then he takes it back because I didn’t do it the way he would have done it. I’m tired of it so I quit offering to help.”

Let that sink in for a moment, pastor.

“I didn’t do it the way he would have done it… so I quit….”

A classic problem for those who manage rather than lead. It happens when you closely observe and control someone else’s work. If their work doesn’t measure up to standards, or if the finished product doesn’t meet expectations, you tell them to do it over again.

Often it is due to your failure to communicate. It’s on you, pastor, to make sure they understand what you want. If you’re leading from vague notions rather than clear vision, you either have to wait until you can give clear directions or until you’re willing to accept whatever they produce.

It is corrosive. It creates distrust. It undermines motivation to serve. It reveals a lack of freedom to exercise spiritual gifts in service to the church. It destroys initiative, passion and creativity. Worst of all, it condemns the church to a life of exile on the plateau, followed by the inevitable decline and—if it isn’t arrested—the death spiral into oblivion.

Photo source: istock 

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Bud Brown is an experienced ministry leader, writer and educator. He is co-founder of Turnaround Pastors and co-author of the ground-breaking Pastor Unique: Becoming A Turnaround Leader. He brings special expertise to change leadership in the local church, mentoring pastors to become revitalization leaders, training churches how to find and recruit the best talent, and training leadership teams how to achieve their shared goals. Learn More »

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