I have never seen strong values come out of a committee. Values, to be held passionately, require a point person.
—Paul Johnson
I was not yet out of college, only twenty years old and starting a new church. My wife, Darla, and I were newlyweds playing house and, in a way, playing church. Darla would cook up someone’s new recipe, and I’d experiment with someone’s recipe for church growth.
My recipes usually called for ingredients from marketing: I’d identify people’s needs, build programs to meet those needs, and then administrate those programs. The programs worked, people’s needs were met, and the new church grew. Since we didn’t have any children and were in a rural community, my wife and I could make regular visits to every attending family. People loved the personalized attention they received.
It wasn’t long, though, before I realized my methods were restrictive. My passion for meeting people’s needs was building a congregation with ever-increasing needs. The church grew because people came to have their needs met. But when I could no longer meet their needs, they could leave just as quickly as they came. I came to see that few in the church had actually adopted my vision—they just appreciated having their needs met.
I began to realize that need-meeting, as a method of church growth, works only to a point.
Woodridge Church, for example, my latest church plant, is in a metropolitan setting. If I introduce programs that meet people’s needs and attract visitors, many of the visitors will tell me, “There are fifteen churches within a fifteen-minute driving distance that have better programs than you do.” I can’t compete with that.
After five years of on-the-job training in my first church, I began preparations to start a new church. I decided need-meeting would not be the basis for my new venture. Instead of focusing on the purpose for the new church, I tried to discover what its passion would be.
Passionate values
Prayerfully I reflected on my experience and identified values I felt had been missing in my pastorate. Programs, strategy, and meeting needs would still be important to me. But the basis for my churchplanting ministry would be passion—deeply felt values explained in visionary language.
I’ve been refining these values in each of the four churches I’ve started. Here are several values that reflect my passion now.
1. We will be a contemporary and progressive evangelical church, intentionally committed to discipleship. Each one of those words communicates a value to which people can give themselves.
Darla and I were once in a music store buying an electronic keyboard. The store manager asked, “Are you starting a group?”
“Yes,” I replied, “but probably not the kind of group you’re thinking of. We’re starting a church.”
Before he could change the subject, I pressed on to talk about our being progressive: “This church is going to be contemporary and relevant. People often feel that the church is answering yesterday’s questions, but I think real Christianity is on the cutting edge. It’s relevant and provides real answers to today’s questions. In fact, we don’t want this church just to be contemporary, we want it to be progressive—to be moving ahead, not static. I know God is powerful, and his church should make an impact on our city.”
Intrigued, he visited the church, accepted Christ, and became a significant part of our new church.
2. Our worship will be seeker-sensitive. We have chosen a slightly different tack than seeker-directed churches, where everything is done with converting seekers as the goal. The main purpose of weekend services in a seeker-directed church, for example, is to help seekers come to faith.
We don’t want to cater solely to seekers, but neither do we want to limit our ministry to believers only. Instead we want to walk the middle ground.
Our goal on Sundays, consequently, is meaningful worship for believers that is also sensitive to seekers. We plan each service knowing seekers will be present. We are sensitive to their needs and concerns, but we don’t plan the service exclusively for them.
We assume that God is opening them to new possibilities such as worship. Though they do not yet fully believe, because God is already working in them, we feel they can have a meaningful worship experience. For us that’s enough. In 1 Corinthians 14, Paul says that proper worship should be so powerful that unbelievers will fall on their faces and worship God. They will say, “There really must be a God!”
We tell our people that our worship will be a safe place to bring their friends. We’re not going to offend them. In fact, we’re going to celebrate the fact that they’re investigating. But at the same time we want to unabashedly worship the Savior.
For example, we use terms a seeker can understand. We want them to be uninhibited as they sample worship—as if they were taking a test drive. We also encourage believers to translate the language we use into deeper expressions of worship. For instance, when we say celebration, they should understand worship. A Scripture study means a sermon, and investigate or think through means consider the commitment this calls for.
3. The process is as important as the product. We want people to accept Christ, but we want to honor the validity of their journey to him as well. So we celebrate the process of people coming to Christ and growing in him. We will not allow ourselves to be alarmed if their lifestyles or practices are inconsistent with our own. Instead, we rejoice when they move in the direction of committed discipleship.
God uses different things to bring people along. We’re content just to be part of the process, helping them grow to the next step. We don’t ask, “Do they fit our mold?” but, “What is it God wants them to experience through this church?”
Some lifelong Christians have joined our new church. But since they’ve adopted this value, they view the church as a process too. They’re not going to evaluate its success in terms of numbers, programs, and money. They don’t expect the new church immediately to offer all the services of an established church. We’re all in process.
4. We build people, not programs. A statement of purpose answers the question, “What kind of things are we trying to do?” But in terms of people-vision, we first ask, “What kind of people are we trying to build?”
We want people to become the Michael Jordans of Christianity. We want them to be impact players—in their work, in their homes, and in their neighborhoods. It’s not that we want only the supertalented; we want ordinary people to make a difference wherever they are. It might be that their pain and weakness makes as much of a difference as their success and triumph.
For instance, one woman, sexually abused as a child, helped begin a support group for people with similar pasts. Her contribution to the group became a redeeming outlet for her own recovery. “Starting this group,” she said, “has finally helped me deal with the pain I went through.”
5. When we study and serve, the Holy Spirit will produce joy in our lives. One man came to me when his wife suddenly abandoned him. I could support him in his grief, but because we were a small church, I couldn’t refer him to a pastoral staff counselor or a supportive singles’ ministry.
Instead, I told him about our value statements and reminded him that the best thing I could do was give him an opportunity for study and service so the Holy Spirit could produce joy in his life.
“You know,” I said, “if you’re really going to get past this grief to find real joy, you’re going to need some opportunities to serve and to study. It might be that the very things you find painful are the things that will give you strength to reach others.”
In a month or two, he was involved in a small group where he was able to help another person facing the same kind of problem. He took his eyes off of his own pain and need and became caught up in the vision, impacting the lives of others. In doing so his deeper needs for fulfillment and purpose were met.
Discovering the joy of service, however, is a value that has to compete with other legitimate experiences. In my most recent church plant, the mothering church provided funding and a “hunting license” to recruit a core group from among church members.
I found, though, that the members attending the mother church attended there because they liked its many programs and evangelical thrust. Few were receptive to the idea of a new church outreach until I told them about the values the new church would emphasize. Only then was the gravitational pull of the mother church weakened for some. Soon I had a core who were willing to switch churches, sacrifice, and commit themselves to a new church.
This emphasis on values, however, goes against the grain of much teaching about church growth and especially church planting. In fact, I found that if I wanted to be passionate about these values, I had to abandon my misconceptions about church growth and adopt a new frame of reference. Here are five principles that have helped me do that.
Don’t seek out just anybody
When starting a church with next to nothing, the temptation is to do whatever is necessary to get anybody in—as long as they’re warm bodies in the pew. But that’s not necessarily best for the church. Some people can divert the church from its purpose.
Consumers. These people come with primarily one thing in mind: they are shopping for the church that will best meet their needs. But they’re not that interested in becoming investors in the mission of the church. Unless I can change these consumers into investors, they will distort the values of the church.
The best tools I’ve found to encourage people to buy into the church are the values expressed in the church’s vision. I use vision statements to tell people the reason we meet needs: not because we care so much about their immediate needs but because we care about fulfilling the vision for this church, which aims to fulfill people’s deepest longings. “We want you to join and be part of this church,” we say, “because as you do, your larger needs will be met.” This approach turns consumers into investors. They discover they can be part of something close to the heart of God, and they can be part of a mission larger than themselves.
Antagonists. It’s better to have empty pews (or in our case, chairs) than seats filled with antagonists. Empty pews usually leave the church’s vision intact. But the wrong kind of people tamper with our values and exert a negative influence on the church. New churches seem especially vulnerable to antagonists, who are frequently looking for new power bases. They are black holes of spiritual energy, sucking out the resolve of those around them.
One man visited our new church and responded enthusiastically to its ministry. He eagerly found new friends and became part of our core group. Because he blended in so agreeably, I didn’t adequately explain the church’s values and vision.
Some time later he handed me a five-page, typed statement advocating a radically different worship style for the church. “Either this church will have to change,” he said, “or I’m going to have to leave.” But of course it wasn’t that simple. He began to lobby his friends in the church with whom he had gained confidence. When he eventually left the church, everyone close to him felt the pain of his withdrawal.
When I recruit someone like that, I’m recruiting trouble. As an optimist, I might think my personality and ministry would win him over. But such people demand too much of my energy. They undercut what I’m doing. If people are not open to the vision I’ve laid out, there’s no reason to try to get them to sign on.
It can be a temptation to accommodate their views, especially if they seem to be just a degree or two off our vision. But an angle of just a degree, stretched out far enough, can become a major gap. That minor discrepancy in the beginning may become a major source of contention three years later.
That’s why I think the sympathetic or nurturing pastor may not be the best kind of church planter. The pastor with a shepherd’s heart may find it difficult to resist this temptation. The first time someone balks at his vision, his pastoral instincts take over: “Well, this vision is not as cut and dried as it sounds. We can adapt to your concerns.” When a pastor embraces the shepherding, caring role at the expense of his vision he will undermine his ability to lead.
Those who are different. Some people are not mean-spirited, they’re simply different—they don’t share our values. But if people who have other values come to our church, they won’t have the cohesiveness to stick through difficult times. It doesn’t matter how much they like me or benefit from my ministry. They need to go where they can invest in the vision.
Woodridge, for example, has a set of values more consistent with my Baptist theology. If I were to start an Episcopalian church, however, I would need to have a different set of values:
Where our statement says we’re contemporary and progressive, if I were an Episcopalian I might emphasize heritage. Or talk about time-tested truth. Another vision word might be diversity: “We celebrate diversity in people’s thinking.” I might also use the word mystery: “Though we grapple to understand coherently the complexities of life, as spiritual people we leave room for mystery, for the fact that God works in ways we can’t fully comprehend.”
What I would not say, is: “We Episcopalians have two sacraments and The Book of Common Prayer.” Rather, “We have continuity with history. When you sit in our church, there’s a sense of timelessness. Words that the apostles used are spoken again.” In this way, instead of defending liturgy, I’ve stated our values and vision.
If core Christian beliefs are at the center, I don’t judge one set of values to be better than the other. They’re just different. No single church can fully reflect God’s multifaceted passion. It would be a mistake for me to recruit someone whose values and personality would better fit another tradition. I would only make them unhappy, and ultimately, our church would suffer because of their unhappiness.
Don’t duplicate success
Newly planted churches sometimes fall into the trap of trying to clone themselves to “successful” churches. But clones almost never work. More likely, what works in one setting will probably have to be reworked in another.
Woodridge was birthed by a large, established church, Wooddale Church of Eden Prairie, a suburb of Minneapolis. But Woodridge can’t be a clone of Wooddale. Daughter churches will likely have a genetic mix: in our case, Woodridge has mixed the Wooddale approach with the community church philosophy, something our team of church planters in central Wisconsin had worked with. We’re similar in that both churches are intentional about ministry, committed to excellence and evangelism.
We’re distinct, however, in that Woodridge is more entrepreneurial. Because of where we are in our development, we are more process-oriented. We’ve inherited a view of ministry from others, but we’ve developed it on our own.
Because we’re not trying to duplicate something that’s already successful, we’ve been able to maintain a positive self-image. We’re doing something new! If we were to compare ourselves with the mother church, we’d start feeling pretty discouraged. Instead, our positive attitude about our uniqueness is contagious. New people can sense the upbeat outlook.
A church planter should, first and foremost, be an entrepreneur. Church planting calls for someone who is a nonconformist, a selfstarter, and an innovative leader. Someone may be a natural salesperson, but the church planter should be something more, someone who would say, “If I’m going to sell insurance, then I want to start an agency, not just sell the product.”
Don’t trust tested techniques
A major mistake made in church planting is to seek the perfect program or strategy: “Oh, full-color brochures! Now I’ve got it. That’s why Woodridge could start with all those people.”
The brochure helped, but even if we had never printed it, I believe we would have grown.
More than techniques, a new church needs values. Values keep us in line. Church growth can be cancerous growth if the methods used are unbiblical. Values help us clarify the kinds of growth that are healthy. Values determine the methods we use.
Recently I asked our leadership team to evaluate a letter I intended to send to our regular attenders. I wanted to motivate people to stronger commitments of time and money. The leaders, however, asked me to show how the letter was in line with our values. One leader even pulled out our church’s value statement and told me to rewrite the letter using the statement as a guide.
Whenever people start a church by modeling programs after some other church, they should first ask themselves if they have the same underlying values that motivated those programs in the first place.
Don’t let individuals eclipse vision
Some people accuse me of neglecting individual needs. “You’re sacrificing people to feed the vision,” they say. Many pastors have a more shepherding attitude than I have: they want to meet the needs of people. They try to sense the direction people want to go.
As a church planter, on the other hand, I’m more likely to say, “Here’s the vision God has given us to fulfill. We have to do whatever it takes to realize that vision, even if it means losing a few individuals along the way.”
I have to be careful that I’m not misunderstood at this point. People are important. People are why Christ died. But when I allow a dysfunctional person to strangle a church’s calling, I undermine God’s purpose for us. Sometimes I have to risk alienating one person for the good of the whole. Still that can be painful, and there’s a part of me that regrets it whenever it happens.
Don’t lead by consensus
Consensus is highly valued in our country. In the church we see attempts to lead by consensus. That almost never works for a new church.
The problem is that often the vision of the new church, when drawn up by group consensus, won’t be the same vision necessary to reach the community. It may not always take a leader to decide on where to go (although it usually does); it does take a leader to get a group there.
I have never seen strong values come out of a committee. Values, to be held passionately, require a point person. Normally the pastor has to be that point person, inspiring values that reflect God’s heart for the community. Committees function best when they ratify the value statements of the leader.
Sometimes pastors feel they would be dictatorial if they were to propose the values. But proposing what God desires to do is not the same as controlling or manipulating others. Strong leaders surely must be sensitive to the people they lead, especially if they want to generate commitment from people. Still, they must lead.
What has worked for me is to state my values, selling the vision in sermons, classes, and conversations. In fact, seldom does a day go by that I don’t bring at least one conversation around to value statements. And they’re part of almost every sermon that I give.
When I first developed a passion for these values, I wondered if it wouldn’t be risky to start a new church based purely on this kind of vision. What if people disagreed with my values? What if no one wanted a contemporary, progressive new church, for example? What if I failed to attract people?
It seemed shortsighted to launch a work without the proven methods of defining community needs and developing strategies and programs to meet those needs. I felt as if I was throwing out my box of church recipes.
To my surprise (and delight), these values—the things I felt defined God’s heart for my work—attracted people. When I gave them a vision based on passionately held values, some, frankly, balked. But many became committed and have helped found and shape churches that continue to develop faithful and steadfast disciples of Jesus Christ.
Copyright © 1997
