Lately, a lot of "so called" experts believe the church is in decline. I don't.
As a result, there are plenty of conferences offering their latest and greatest pitch to stop the church's decline. Each year we're invited to hear "celebrity" pastors share God's plan for the church and how we ought to adopt it and be large and successful like them. Frankly, I'm surprised that there hasn't been a venue to really address how and why churches grow.
Many pastors and church leaders make their annual pilgrimage to Catalyst, Saddleback Church, Willowcreek Association's Leadership Summit, North Point's Drive Conference, Greater St. Steven FGBC, The Potter's House, etc. and come away excited and delusional with unrealistic expectations. Ed Stetzer calls it ministry pornography.
According to Ed Stetzer:
"Ministry pornography is an unrealistic expectation of an experience you're never going to have, which distracts you from the real thing.
God used these churches and their pastors for a specific time and in a specific place. Unfortunately, that experience is rarely duplicated. If you were to take the aforementioned churches and transplant them in other areas, the results would be drastically different.
Can you imagine Bill Hybels, Rick Warren or Andy Stanley leading an inner-city urban church? Or can you see Bishop T.D. Jakes screaming, "Get Ready ... Get Ready ... Get, Get, Ready" at Saddleback or North Point Church? Simply put, God rarely does the same thing twice.
Ministry pornography is an unrealistic expectation of an experience you're never going to have (Tweet this).
Here are some suggestions on how to break your addiction to ministry pornography:
- Confess your addiction to ministry pornography and repent!
- Try not to attend any conferences for one year.
- Get alone with your Bible, pen and paper and discover God's purpose for the church (read Matt. 22-37-40, 28:19-20; the entire book of Acts).
- Get a demographic breakdown of your community (U.S. Census Bureau or your local Chamber of Commerce).
- After discovering the purpose of the church, write down how your church plans to reach that community (this is the hard part). Make sure it's less than a paragraph because people don't like to read long statements.
- Preach/teach a series on God's vision for the church and how you plan to fulfill it.
- Reorganize your church's leaders, staff, volunteers and structure (in that order).
- Evaluate and tweak your plan/strategy.
Be unique—God rarely does the same thing twice (Tweet this).
As for the church, our best days are not behind us; they're right now and ahead of us. So, what's your next step? I'd love to hear it!
The Rev. Clarence E. Stowers Jr. succeeded his father, Dr. Clarence Stowers Sr., as the pastor of the historic Mars Hill Baptist Church of Chicago in 1999. Mars Hill has experienced phenomenal ministry growth under his visionary pastoral leadership since then. Follow Rev. Stowers' blog, The Urban Pastor or check out Mars Hill's website.
For the original article, visit cestowers.com.
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