Leadership Journal

Our vacation Bible school was going on, and I was discouraged. We couldn't afford the full curriculum package. We made do with a few posters tacked up here and there. The entire thing was basically thrown together at the last minute by the same woman who had always done it. To top it off, VBS was being held in our musty church basement that always made my sinuses ache.

It was truly a wonder that anybody sent their children at all. After all, I had read that baby boomers demanded excellence in church programs—everything slick and professional. Our VBS was anything but. And yet we had a full enrollment.

As I passed the door to the third-grade classroom, a boy in the class seemed angry that, in the Bible story, God was going to destroy the world and kill everybody in the Flood. Listening to him confront the teacher, I suddenly knew that Cobblestone Church had an excellent VBS. It was helping boys and girls encounter, and at times wrestle with, God.

That, I believe, is what defines "excellence" in a small church—or any church, if you look beyond the numbers. Are people growing, and are we, pastor and leaders, helping them in that growth? Are more people active in our ministries? Are we reaching beyond our doors with the gospel?

If we judge ourselves solely by statistics, we're going to be discouraged. One year our church lost some members—several through job transfers, a few because of theological disagreements. When I met with the board for a year-end evaluation, I asked that we assess ourselves in light of how Scripture and our denomination's confessional standards define "church." By those standards, we were doing quite well.

Here are other ways we strive for excellence in God's service.

Cobblestone Church would be content if I tried hard to be everybody's friend, preached a sermon every Sunday, taught the occasional new members or adult Bible study class, did visitation, and married and buried people.

The congregation certainly isn't putting pressure on me to stay current on church growth ideas or to steep myself in hermeneutics or church history.

My congregation isn't asking me to articulate a vision for their future. They are quite content with the way things are now.

As a small-church pastor, I face the temptation to settle into the comfortable role of family chaplain. It's certainly easier than risking the role of change agent, and it's easier than stretching my mind and, at times, my faith. But God hasn't called me to coast. He's called me to lead, serve, and grow—and in so doing, help Cobblestone to do the same.

In the small church, we're all friends, and friends overlook faults and rarely call one another to account. Friends don't say things like, "Say, Fred, when did you say that treasurer's report would be done? Wasn't it last week?" So in churches like Cobblestone, projects can sometimes take forever to complete. A Sunday school ...