Big juggernauts or tacking ships

There’s a bit of a circular loop bumbling around my head about the optimal size for church bodies.

With a 100 people:

you can usually form all the core components of church life, have project ministries to your neighbourhoods, have enough finance to support one or two paid staff and have sufficient equipment and skilled personnel for bands, children’s work and preaching.

With 400+ people:

the resources gathered can do significantly more, meetings have a different feel, multiple projects can be established, maintained and (crucially) passed on to another continuing the work.  There’s finance for more paid staff (including administrative) and the reach of the church can be a great deal further than the more local 100.

With 1000+:

places to gather are very constrictive and relationally connected groups are needed to create oneness.  Communication and participation can become almost solely front led, or led by department heads but the ability to launch something, staff it, resource it and deliver it becomes easily attainable. Undoubtedly the reach is further than with 100 people, is it more or less than 10x? I don’t know.  When a church body approaches 1% to 2% of a geographic location’s population the church voice can start to be heard (along side it’s actions) and the ability to shape policy and highlight social change becomes dramatically easier.

Here’s the questions:

A church body aspiring to be 100 will rarely reach bigger than 100.  - Is that such a bad thing if the contribution on the ground is effective, localised and well regarded?  - Should a key metric of effectiveness ALWAYS be numerical growth?  Is it more likely that we can build many churches of 100 or so, and that we need to work more strategically together to accomplish more, rather than building mega churches?

Moving from 100 – 400 (via the inevitable 200) is a challenge.. the processes and communication methods that can work with 100, don’t work as successfully with 200, and worse with 400. Email discussions become a nightmare with more than 3 people in them, and planning meetings (and meetings in general) seem to need to increase to get anything done.   Does relationship suffer in this process? Does the output from church life become projectised rather than loving?  is there a propensity to carry more passengers than activists?  Are the 100+ leaders the same as 400+ leaders?

Foundationally, should our church communities have bigger numbers in mind than the next numerical growth target?  for instance, is it ludicrous to act like a church of 1000 when you only have 60 people? Does there need to be consensus in the minds of leadership teams and department heads that we’re going for numerical growth, and what that growth looks like?  How do we ensure that economics are geared around how we serve, not maintaining buildings or other assets?  How does vision change as size increases?

Nehemiah, Organised builders and got building underway

I’m preparing for leading congregational singing and looking at the text for this week,  where we’re preaching through Nehemiah and looking towards moving from our current building to a new facility in the town.  I’ve struggled to get excited about Nehemiah 3 which is essentially a list of names of people who rebuilt parts of Jerusalem’s walls and finding songs that mesh even harder to find than normal!

I turned to Mark Driscoll’s series on Nehemiah for some inspiration. http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/nehemiah/leading-and-laboring#play  These are the notes I took as I listened to him preach on this chapter.

1. Leaders keep names of people they are leading to pray for them.  These were ordinary people building the walls, and were honoured by God when he listed them in the bible.
2. The size of the project determines the size and function of the organisation to tackle the project. As an organisation grows, it complexifies.
   • Initially when an organisation is small, the pastor tends to do all and know all.
   • Then when there are two or three together, a little of the load is shared, but still pretty much everyone does everything
   • Get a little bigger and complexity starts to increase, it’s a bit more like a basket ball team, where there’s a single coach, and a play maker and a solid team with some guys on the bench
   • Bigger still and gets more like a American Football team where there’s specialisms and parts of the team don’t even know or serve together, you have offence and defence, and different coaches. They don’t all play at the same time and have different skills and tasks.
3. Nehemiah can’t build the walls all by himself, it requires the help of everyone to do their part.
   • He broke the task down and allocated to smaller groups, who were unified in theology, purpose & relationally.
   • Teams were built on pre-existing relationships. (family, friendships, co-workers)
   • The bigger an organisation gets, the more important it is that there is trust.
     1. The task cannot be accomplished if people can’t be trusted to fulfil their part
     2. Trust the people you’re building with to do their part as you do yours
     3. Important to keep faithful to the vision, and not side snipe and become divisive.
   • Teams specialised on each section of the wall. Generalists are great when things are small, but when the tasks are larger, we need to use specialists who will be more effective at supporting the work.  (Consider the difference between your GP and a specialist at a hospital, where there are departments and consultants.)
     1. We need to change our focus on where we go to with issues – we can’t all run to the pastor when there are hundreds of us.
     2. Clearly identify who is doing what, and who the goto guys are
   • Have to focus on Air War and Ground War.
     1. Air war: communication to the masses (Chapter 2, preached to them)
     1. Necessary for explaining vision, correcting theology, setting the pace
     2. Some of us have only been affected by the air war. We listen to what is said, attend meetings but are not plugged in.  They’re identified with us, but not engaged in our task.
     2. Ground War: Training, leadership developments, community groups/relationships. biblical counselling. (Chapter 3, work connected to the vision takes place, to make the difference!)
        1. Those who are engaged in the ground war are:
           1. financially contributing
           2. engaged in service
           3. in a community group/relationship with others
           4. understands the vision and the part they play in achieving it.
4. Nehemiah worked ON the organisation not IN it
   • Nehemiah didn’t build a section of the wall himself
   • He stayed attentive to what was going on in each group and how the work was progressing.
   • He looked for old stones. (140 year old stones, were re-used)
5. God lists by name a list of people.  Because he loves people and loves to father them
   • God could have rebuilt the wall himself (he made the heavens and the earth didn’t he?)
   • We capture something of God’s heart when we work with him,
   • We can share in his joy of what is accomplished.
6. Everything we do is ‘ministry’, even if we’re not paid for it, if we do it as ‘unto the Lord’
   • Jesus worked for 30 years in relative obscurity before his 3 year public ministry. During that time he was still Holy, still serving God.
   • Whatever it is we’re doing, it’s all sacred if it’s done unto the Lord.
     1. Some say, I wish God would use me. whatever you’re doing, if it’s unto the Lord,  HE IS!.
     2. some of the guys mentioned in Chapter 3, are mentioned for ‘picking up rocks’ and putting them in the wall.
7. The nobles refused to work – don’t look to lead if you don’t serve.
   • Some people worked from Home.
     1. They worked outside their house
     2. Your house is an extension of your church facility
   • Minister as a family.
     1. Recognise gifts as they grow
     2. lead by example
8. Some work is less desirable than others.
   • The dung gate.., someone volunteered. lets humble ourselves to get the work done.
9. Old stones (older Godly people) have life, wisdom and experience of God working
   • Model godly behaviour, support new growth.
10. With 38 teams of people the wall got built.

So what is my response to this?  How will I lead now?

I’m looking for songs that encourage us to:

• Understand the ‘right now’ vision He has for us
• Get our hands dirty and serve
• See that God loves us and works with us
• Be the new creations that God has made us

Celebrate:

• We’re working with God to his plans
• That we have a place in his purposes
• The family (natural, church and spiritual)

Lord I thank you that from a list of names torn from a journal entry in Nehemiah, we can see that you are a God of order and of purpose. I thank you that you choose to use ordinary people just like us to humbly serve you and fulfil your purposes.  I appreciate that you call different people to different tasks, some specialist, some general but all are necessary to get the job done.  I thank you for my family, and the maturity and gifting I see in them as we serve you together. I pray for my leaders that they will continue to grow in humble stature and skills and continue the transition from doing all IN the church to working ON the church, establishing healthy growing teams where growth can be accelerated as we work together to build your church.