At the heart of the decline of the American church is a devastating failure of leadership. Attendance fades, influence dwindles, obedience wanes—all under the watchful eye of the American pastorate.
Leadership failure does not have to continue, however. The errors that have led to our current condition can be identified and corrected.
This article will review five of the most significant leadership failures of American pastors.
Leadership Failures of American Pastors
Failure 1: Never changing anything (significant).
It is astonishing how many men hold the office of pastor but never implement a single substantive change. Many think of leadership as having a title (being called "pastor") or standing in the pulpit every Sunday to preach.
But this is not biblical leadership at all.
The essence of pastoral leadership is found in Titus 1:5. There, Paul tells Titus he had sent him to Crete to "set in order the things that are lacking."
The word for "set in order" is epidiorthoo, which comes from two Greek words, epi and orthos. Epi means "to position" and orthos means "straight, not crooked" (we get "orthodontics" from this word, the act of straightening teeth).
This means a central work of pastors is to "position things straight" or "make straight that which is now crooked" in their churches. Fixing things, then, is not an optional part of the job; it is the job.
We must stop thinking that only minor things are wrong in our churches and see things more as J.I. Packer suggested, that, in the Lord's eyes, nothing is right. Learn more about Packer's excellent book on change leadership at Amazon.
Paul then identifies what is to be made straight, the things that are "lacking." The underlying Greek word used here is leipo, meaning "to lag, be inferior, or to fail." Whatever things we find in our churches that are lagging, inferior, or failing, then, we are to fix.
But how do we know what falls into these categories? We must compare what we see going on in our churches to a standard of some type. That standard is the Bible... which leads us to our second leadership failure.
Failure 2: Leading based on a worldly standard.
You will not find a single man of God who will say he leads based on anything but the word of God (if you do, run). But when you compare their actual leadership to what we find in the New Testament, you quickly realize the Bible is secondary for the majority of pastors.
Without realizing it, most pastors use a combination of religious traditions, human wisdom, and business success to guide their leadership. Let me briefly define each of these.
Religious traditions: Things they've heard the Bible says but have never investigated themselves to be sure it actually does. Examples include assuming a church should be run by a single pastor, that deacons are leaders, or that a board of elders should be made up of influential people in the church.
Human wisdom: Things that make sense, seem logical, or come from life experience. Examples would be voting to make church decisions, placing women in leadership roles, or using the "slow and steady" or "give a little, get a little" approaches to change (see failure 3 and 4).
Business success: Things that work well in the marketplace. Many books have been written by pastors espousing the wisdom of successful business leaders. Examples include John Maxwell's leadership philosophy or Jim Collin's approach to organizational excellence.[1]
The problem with each of these is that they seldom line up with the Bible and are, in fact, often contrary to it. Christian leaders must gauge every decision, every policy, and every strategy on the actual teachings of the Bible, not what tradition, human wisdom, or business success suggest, no matter how wise they might sound.
Failure 3: Using the "slow and steady" approach to change.
Many pastors believe the best way to get a church from point A to point B is to make changes a little bit at a time over an extended period. While this strategy sounds wise, it fails on two counts.
First, the Bible does not allow it when the people are in total rebellion, as they are today.[2] God never gives his people the option to make slow and steady changes when they are sinning against him. He always demands change now.
When God sent Jeremiah to rebellious Judah during the Old Covenant, would he have been satisfied with one minor change at a time? And when he said, "Today, if you will hear His voice: 'Do not harden your hearts, as in the rebellion'" (Ps. 95:11), did he mean the only change he required on that day was a small, incremental change?
And when Jesus came on the scene, did he present his gospel as a little-here, little-there opportunity? "Hey, if you believe in me, you can keep most of your sin. Just repent of something small each day. All good." No, again. He demanded the people change right then, right there (Matt. 16:24, Mark 1:15). He, like the prophets before him, declared the Word and said, "Obey...now."
The second problem with this strategy is that it doesn't actually work. This is the great irony of this thinking. It sounds so wise, and in many areas of life, it is. But when you are dealing with fleshly, hard-hearted, self-centered people (which is most of the people in the church), you will get resistance to every change you suggest, no matter how small it is.
Trying to implement change slowly, therefore, only draws out the pain of implementing it and provides the enemy with more opportunities to derail it.
Failure 4: Using the "give a little, get a little" approach to change.
This failure is similar to 3 above. Here, in order to get one change implemented, the leader compromises on something else. The pastor wants to reduce the items on which the church votes, so, when he is resisted on that proposition, he offers to let a woman continue to teach a coed Sunday school class.
As before, the problem is twofold. First, the Bible does not allow a compromise. God's commands are what they are, and we cannot negotiate one form of obedience by allowing a separate form of disobedience to continue.
Second, it won't work in the long run. What we must realize is that those who resist change in the church don't want a slice of the pie—they want the whole thing. Therefore, giving in to them does not pacify them; it only gives them a greater foothold from which to fight you in the future.
Remember, they didn't just want to defeat one of Jesus's teachings; they were hell-bent on defeating them all. And they will do the same to you.
Failure 5: Allowing decisions to be influenced by what will happen to their job.
Many men would like to implement the changes needed in their churches, but they are afraid if they do they might lose their jobs. This is a legitimate concern because pastors who buck the status quo often end up on the street.
But this is no excuse for not doing what you know to be right. Every man in the Bible who resisted the wickedness among the people was rejected, shunned, and persecuted. Jesus Christ himself was tortured and executed.
One of the reasons this is such an issue is that men rely on the church for their income. When the people you are trying to correct control your livelihood, it is much more difficult to say what you need to say and do what you need to do.
To overcome this, pastors must develop a secular career that will support them and their families.[3] This will not only provide better for them overall, but it will also take away one of Satan's tools used to prevent them from speaking out.
Summary
Leadership failure has led the American church to the brink of collapse. But those failures can be overcome. Use the points in this article to improve your leadership. Even if the church at large does not respond, you can, and God will reward that response by using you to make a lasting difference in your church.
OTHER RESOURCES:
*Please use these in your preaching and teaching ministry.
Saving the Traditional Southern Baptist Church: The Biblical Solution to the Crisis of Dying SBC Churches. By Wes Moore. Amazon.
Saving the American Church: 21 Keys to Reviving the Dying American Church. By Wes Moore. Amazon.
A Passion for Faithfulness: Wisdom from the Book of Nehemiah, 1995, by J.I. Packer. Amazon.
NOTES:
[1] Thom Rainer on the inspiration for his book Breakout Churches: "The power of seeking to be great rather than good became clear when I read Jim Collins’ book Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t..." With the encouragement of my publisher I elected to write a book on churches, modeled on the Good to Great framework.”
(From Breakout Churches, 2005, pages 15-16.)
Ed Stetzer and Mike Dodson on where a supposedly great church leader received his leadership influence: "Seneca explained that leadership expert John Maxwell was a key influence in his life. He stated, 'The Twenty-One Irrefutable Laws of Leadership helped mold me into the leader I am today.'" (From Comeback Churches: How 300 Churches Turned Around and Yours Can, Too, 2007, 37.)
[2] The rebellion of American Christians is really not debatable. They refuse to evangelize, refuse to do mercy work, practice the wickedness of the world, strengthen the hand of evildoers, organize their churches in an unbiblical fashion, abuse one another, abuse their leaders, refuse to stand for the truth, and compromise every doctrine in the Bible, among many other sins.
[3] In many ways, full-time ministry has become an idol for American preachers. They will sacrifice nearly anything to be in ministry as a full-time occupation. They will put their families in poverty and rely on government assistance to pay their bills, buy their food, and provide their family's medical care. All of this so they can have a cushy job as a preacher.
God is destroying this idol as we speak. More and more churches have absolutely no way to support a pastor full time, so more men are having to look outside of the ministry for their income, which they should have been doing all along. While the Lord is pleased when we sacrifice for his kingdom, putting our families in abject poverty so we can "give our full time to the Lord" is a sacrifice based more on our own desires than the Lord's.