(Second of two parts; click here to read Part 1)
Kent, when you served the small church in California, did you feel successful?
Hughes: I wrestled with a deep depression: I was giving everything I possibly had and yet was having great difficulties. When I came to College Church, I didn’t do anything differently,but the church took off. The only thing that had changed was the setting. Schaller: Today, what’s the condition of the church you served in California? Hughes: When I left, it was a church of about 150. Then the church went through a succession of pastors and shrank to less than 100. Today it’s a preschool with a congregation that worships there on Sunday morning. It’s a beautiful, Spanish-tiled building sitting on several acres in a beautiful suburban area right off the 57 Freeway. Schaller: That illustrates what we’re talking about. The number-one victim of competition is the church that runs around 150 at worship. It is too big to have the advantages of a small church and too small to have the discretionary resources to compete. In the last five years, there has been a sharp drop in the number of middle-sized congregations that average 150 at worship, or, to put it more broadly, run between 100 and 200 in worship.
Only a small percentage of our new members are conversions in the historic sense of the word.
The loss of the middle class.
Schaller: In a sense. Thirty or forty years ago, a church of 150 was the best of both worlds: It was big enough to offer what people wanted. It had a full-time resident pastor and yet was small enough that people could know one another. Kent, I would say that the difference between College Church today and your church seventeen years ago in Southern California is not just sociological; it’s a different era today. In 1975, a high proportion of pastors had the skills to pastor a congregation of 150 people. Today, only a third as many pastors have that competency level.
Why wouldn’t that number be higher today, given all the information and seminars and conferences since 1975?
Schaller: They haven’t worked.
Why not?
Schaller: You’re making me feel terribly guilty because I can’t live my life over again. I spent a lot of time leading pastors’ workshops; I would never do that again. All we do is teach pastors how to go home and feel frustrated, because there’s nobody to second the motion. If they take home an idea from the workshop and try to introduce it, there’s no support system. Then it doesn’t fly, and they feel frustrated. Forgive me. I produced a lot of that frustration.
What would you do differently?
Schaller: I would create workshops for pastors and leaders, paid staff and volunteers from congregations. Ideally there would be five to ten people involved. When they arrive home, there are five to ten people ready to introduce a new idea. To expect a pastor to do it single-handedly is expecting a medium-sized miracle.
Still, why would only a third of pastors from 1975 have the skills to pastor that same-sized church today?
Schaller: There are two reasons. The bigger of the two is that the level of competence to be able to do that has jumped. For example, an awful lot of players in the nba in 1975 couldn’t get a job today. The second part is, we’ve lowered the bars to ordination in order to fill the classrooms of seminaries. Almost every seminary dean or president will tell you this. While qualifications to be a pastor have gone up sharply, the people we admit to seminaries don’t carry that level of qualifications.
What temptations does a pastor face as a result of the increased competition?
Hughes: Some pastors may say, “Well, we switched to contemporary music because contemporary music draws people,” but they haven’t asked, “What is the purpose of worship on Sunday morning?” They don’t know their pillars. Schaller: What I hear both Brian and Kent saying is “intentionality” and “being faithful.” Being faithful means dealing with the “what” and the “why.”
Other than becoming more focused, how can churches deal with competition?
Schaller: One way to get around the issue is to rent the facilities for daycare—one easy out is to become a landlord and collect rent. It’s seductive because you get paid not to be the church. Another alternative, at least in my tradition, is to subsidize mediocrity.
Who subsidizes it?
Schaller: The denomination.
One alternative to competition is to become a landlord and collect rent; somebody pays you not to be the church.
How long can that continue?
Schaller: A while back, the Episcopal Church said it had been subsidizing mediocrity for about a hundred years. This year, 9,000 Protestant churches will close across the United States. Most will close because they couldn’t compete; closing was a more attractive alternative than thinking.
One unspoken feeling among pastors is, “I went to seminary with So-and-so, and he didn’t seem like anything special, and yet he’s pastoring a large, growing church.” Isn’t there something besides skill that factors into the equation?
Hughes: If you put me in Gary, Indiana, I might empty any church there. I was a right fit for College Church. That said, my five years in the church in Southern California was preceded by ten years as youth pastor in a flourishing church. So I learned the attitudes and ecclesiology and the structure for mission, evangelism, youth work from the inside of a healthy church. I got a lot of my dna there. When I walked into College Church, I knew what to do. A positive church experience can be hugely determinative. Schaller: There was a day when one size fit all. Today churches are increasingly different from one another. And to a substantial degree, I think people are different from one another, in that we follow a lot of different trails to get to adulthood. I think the number-one benefit of competition is it is increasingly forcing pastors either to get out of parish ministry or to think the way Kent and Brian think. Now the content of what you [Brian and Kent] think is not quite as significant as the fact that you’re thinking about the “what” and the “why.” The second benefit is on a qualitative basis. What you were saying, Brian, is that in the case of the young man looking for a Christian wife, you can’t compete. You accept that as a fact: Some things you’re able to do; some things you’re not able to do. If competition forces people to say, “No, our church doesn’t do that,” that’s great. Larson: I’ve accepted our limitations now, and that has really changed my viewpoint on ministry. Right now, for example, we’re struggling with Sunday school. We meet downtown. We have six kids in the church; two of them are mine. But I don’t apologize for our limitations.
How did you get to that point?
Larson: I still am sensitive to that fact that when I preach, it’s like an audition. People are shopping, and if they don’t see something they want this week, they’re not going to return the next. But there is no comparison to the sense of joy and fulfillment I feel in ministry now compared to how I felt fifteen years ago. Then I was driven; I felt if we didn’t get the church up over a certain number, I was a failure. Today, I don’t feel that way. For the first fifteen years of my ministry, I was so focused on the corporate aspect of getting bigger, I couldn’t find any joy in what was what was happening in individuals. Today, I’m trying to balance those two better. I’m not satisfied with where the church is—because I am compelled by the love of Christ and the Great Commission—but I am content.
How do you measure success now?
Larson: Critical for me is, Am I preaching the truth to people? Am I spiritually vital? Am I where God wants me to be, doing the best I can for God? Am I trying to bring that spiritual vitality to others?
So the most important way to handle this competition is for a pastor to find “true north” for him or her. What about the person who says, “My needle wobbles a bit”?
Hughes: You need to define what ministry is about from the Word of God. Read the Book of Acts and the Epistles with virgin eyes. There’s a transformational creativity in forcing yourself and your leadership to examine the biblical priorities. Larson: If we are sincere about the Great Commission and about bearing fruit, and we seek God in his Word and in prayer, I believe we’ll begin to find our true north. Slowly but surely, the needle starts to move to where it needs to be.
1997 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal. For reprint information call 630-260-6200 or contact us.
