Leading a Healthy Church Culture - Lesson 12

Well, I'd be interested in hearing your list. If the church truly embraced these seemingly simple principles from the life and teaching of Jesus, how would the church look different? How would our leadership be different? Maybe we could start with this group. Who's the spokesperson? You have one? 

STUDENT:  Well, we were saying there would be less burnout in the leadership because they would be following Jesus. 

So, you feel like burnout has a direct correlation with –

STUDENT: Machinery. So, if there's one person in charge of doing the oiling and the tightening of the gears. 

Okay, good. What one did you guys come up with? 

STUDENT:  There should be more emphasis on discipleship building, because if the leaders are following Christ, then you’re going to have more people focused towards that senior pastor as an actual person. 

STUDENT:  So, everybody is a leader in the priesthood sense. 

So, the priesthood sense would rise to the top; there'd be more emphasis on the priesthood sense. 

STUDENT:  And you wouldn't have the burnout then, because you've got folks sharing; you don't have one person whose shoulders it’s all on; everybody's got a responsibility. 

So, what's a second from this group, second point? 

STUDENT:  Well, as a visitor coming to this community and getting involved, it's a community that you'd get more connected to because people come and go from churches so easily -- they church shop and church hop -- and you would become so much more invested in a church where your involvement is valued, and you're developed and grown, and so people become much more sort of invested in that church culture because their input is valued so much. 

Okay, good. 

STUDENT:  And along the same line, fewer people would be leaving dissatisfied.

Fewer people would be leaving dissatisfied, do you think? It's interesting that there are many churches, particularly larger churches, that have been developed really on almost a consumer mentality, and if this shift were made, the evidence suggests, and we've seen this happen a number of times, that there often is a dip before you can get out of that spin simply because if people have been conditioned to have their, you know, coffee with caramel in it when they come in the morning (I'm not picking on coffee in the lobby), but, you know, I'm saying there's a consumer mentality that really exists in the church, and so the response may not be real positive at first, if that approach were taken, just a warning there. Another one from this group. Do you have another? 

STUDENT:  If you have genuine expression of gifts rather than just filling slots within the church leadership and body, there would be more of a genuine expression of what their gift truly is. It may be common that they take people with the business and the accountants and put them in the money area needs of the church, whereas they really may have some other outstanding gift that God wants to bring in with them, but they get shoved in the slot. 

I had that, in when I was a pastor, there was a guy that was treasurer of the church, and they didn't realize for a couple of years that he just absolutely hated it. He was an accountant guy at work, but he really had this passion to be an elder and to lead people. So, we went through this process, and he discovered his giftedness and his passion, and he's been serving in that capacity now for over 20 years and just loves it, so that's a great example. Another point from over here? 

STUDENT:  Certainly, piggybacking on to that, Rick, would be that every single person would be important, would be essential, and there would be no hierarchy; certainly, folks would have different functions, but every single person would come and feel valued, important, so that the result would be greater than the sum of the individual people. 

That's great, great thought. Other points? Have we covered them? Do you have others? 

STUDENT:  It would look really different from the culture around it. 

It would, wouldn't it? 

STUDENT:  Because if it really is that and you really do examine how it was in Jesus’ day, just how different.

The church could be the church. 

STUDENT:  One of the challenges I think we face today is we're dealing with not folks who are unchurched, but we're dealing with a whole culture of folks who've been damaged by religion, or they've gone to religion and not found anything different than the world in it, and so it's not attractive. You're not going to pull folks who can go play golf on Sunday morning; you're not going to pull them away from some other event that's much more pleasurable. So, you need to have something that's really better than what they’ve got. It's like being an alcoholic; you're not going to stop drinking until you find something better than what that alcohol is doing for you, and so, I mean, the negative stuff doesn't do it, so you’ve got to have something better. So, if folks came to the church that was led by Christ and that everybody was important, everybody's part of a family, then people would come and say, I want what they got because they got more than what I can find in my golf game.