Being cramped is a part of ministry at every turn, at every level of growth—and probably at every church.
—Larry Osborne
When I first came to North Coast, the walls of the “sanctuary” were not lined with stained glass. They were spotted with the remains of innumerable food fights. While we rented the facility on Sundays, Monday through Friday it served another function: lunchroom for the local high school.
Obviously, it wasn’t an ambiance that lent itself to traditional worship. One Sunday, a dog wandered up the aisle in the middle of my sermon, nuzzling and sniffing at the faithful. Another Sunday, a boisterous gang of adolescent skateboarders decided to show off their skills right outside a row of large Plexiglas windows.
On top of that, I had taken a cut in pay from my previous salary as a youth pastor in a large suburban church. As the new pastor of a fledgling church plant, I no longer had at my disposal a secretary, copy machine, or many of the other trappings of civilized ministry. Instead, my new office was a refurbished garage with a beat-up desk that my previous church had given me as an act of charity.
After a quick start (we jumped from 120 to 150 in a few weeks), we leveled off. It soon became obvious that ministry from a cramped position would not be a short-term aberration but a long-term way of life.
As a twenty-eight-year-old rookie pastor, I had two choices: adjust or quit. I chose to adjust, all the time thinking that if I hung in there long enough, the day would finally come when ministry from a cramped position with significantly limited resources would be a thing of the past.
That day never came. I’ve since discovered that there is no time in ministry when something doesn’t hinder ministry. Today we have more staff and volunteers, and larger facilities than I ever imagined, yet I still often feel cramped. We always need more space, money, and workers to do ministry right.
Being cramped, then, seems to be a part of ministry at every turn, at every level of growth—and probably at every church. We have no choice: if we are going to minister, we’re going to have to learn how to do it from a cramped position.
Here are some things that have helped our church succeed in less-than-ideal circumstances.
Ignore some cramps
Pastors commonly—and mistakenly—assume that if something is wrong, we have to fix it. Whether the pressure comes from well-meaning and caring members or from our sense of duty, I’ve learned that, in many cases, it’s a good idea to ignore these pressures and let the problem be.
Yet one of the hardest facts to accept when ministering from a cramped position is that you’re not going to have a well-balanced ministry. When you’re working under severe budgetary constraints, for example, shoring up one program inevitably means taking away from another.
During a critical stage of our church’s growth, we had a lot of young families with small children, and we had some older adults. But we had almost no families with junior high or high school kids. So we poured our limited resources into creating a topnotch children’s program. As a result, we attracted more people with young children. But we had a huge demographic gap where youth ministry was supposed to exist.
Still, there were a few families with junior and senior high kids. It was hard to look them in the eye and say, “I’m sorry, but we just can’t minister to your kids right now.” But that’s exactly what I had to say to one man I dearly love, the father of two high school girls. He understood our limitations and continued to support me and the church, and he’s one of our elders today. But it was hard for him—and for me—to ignore this area of weakness in our program.
Of course, it’s a lot easier to ignore pressures if we offer the congregation a compelling alternative. Peter Drucker calls it building on our islands of strength—which we did by focusing on families with young children.
That’s why, when we hired our first full-time staff person, we resisted the powerful temptation to make youth work part of his job description. I went to the board and asked them to make a rule that Mike would not work with youth. I wanted the church officially to declare that we were going to ignore this area of weakness and focus on building our strengths, which at that time were our children’s ministry and home groups. The board agreed. Eventually, those islands became so strong and brought in enough new people and new funding that we were able to develop an outstanding youth program. But the key was waiting until the time was ripe rather than trying to fix it at the first sign of brokenness.
This principle continues to guide us today. Right now, for example, our missions effort is anemic at best. Because our church has been growing rapidly, we’ve put a lot of effort into absorbing and ministering to new people. So our missions emphasis has taken a back seat.
Does this mean that we don’t care about the Great Commission? Of course not. We were active in missions during the years when growth was stagnant. I’m confident we’ll be a missions church again in the future. But right now, we’re expanding the kingdom by focusing on the corner of the kingdom that is bulging our own walls.
“Be what you are—don’t try to be what you are not” is a slogan that helps me work effectively within limitations.
Give volunteers a break
Since I was the church’s only paid employee, and there was no funding for support staff, I had to rely heavily on volunteers.
In the beginning, I was frustrated. I had previously relied on an efficient secretarial pool. Volunteers were well-intentioned but often inconsistent, inefficient, and unreliable. They didn’t do things the way I wanted them done.
But I’ve learned how to work from this cramped position. First, I’ve changed my attitude. I now realize that while a church ministry is my life and my career, it is only a side dish on the volunteer’s plate. A volunteer can and will call in sick at the last moment when a paid staff person might drag him or herself to work. That’s a pain. But the truth is, many times I would love to do the same but don’t only because I’m paid to be there.
Still, volunteers are fabulous, dedicated, committed people. In addition to the demands of their jobs and families, they give hours of time and energy to keep the ministry of our church humming. To begrudge their inherent limitations is to miss out on one of God’s special blessings.
Second, I make sure they’re given the best tools to do their jobs. Good volunteers may save the church money, but keeping them isn’t cheap.
I once observed our volunteers folding bulletins and newsletters by hand, and I thought to myself, This is boring, lousy grunt work. If these people are going to volunteer their time, they deserve to have the job made as easy as possible. So even though our church was still small and struggling, we bought the best folding machine available. It’s a pattern we follow today. No matter how tight the budget, we try to ensure that our volunteers have reliable copy machines, efficient computers, and trustworthy printers. Quality tools make a big difference in morale and in ministry.
Third, we’ve taken the pressure off some of our volunteers by making the job as manageable as possible. For instance, we found that our volunteer Sunday school teachers were often ill-prepared when they stepped into the classroom. You know the routine: sometime late Saturday night, the teacher cracks the David C. Cook lesson book for the first time and ends up reading or stumbling through the lesson on Sunday morning.
There’s an old rule of thumb in business: if three people in a row fail at the same job, the problem is not the people; it’s the job. In a similar vein, if volunteer after volunteer comes to class underprepared, perhaps the job needs to be redefined.
That’s what we did. We got rid of the traditional teacher and class setup and replaced them with storytellers and shepherds, and we began a program called “Kids’ Praise.” We brought all the kids together for a fast-moving, entertaining, Sesame Street-type program led by a good storyteller. (We’ve found it’s a lot easier to find four or five good storytellers than to recruit eighteen Sunday school teachers.)
These leaders conduct a program of music, humor, and fun; the gathering then breaks into small groups. An adult “shepherd” leads each group of children through a simple, loosely structured craft and discussion time. There’s no lesson to teach, nothing to prepare for. While they lead the children in a craft, the shepherds encourage the kids to talk about the lesson presented in the larger group. Their function is not to teach but to be a loving, adult presence—a much easier job description for volunteers.
Look for partners, not helpers
As the church grew, we reached a point where we needed to add support staff. There was enough money to hire a part-time secretary and a part-time ministry assistant. Naturally, I felt I needed a full-time person at each position!
At first, I decided to lessen my load by hiring a part-time assistant to do all the things I hated doing. But before long the relationship soured, and I had to let him go.
Back to cramped square one. This time, though, I took a fresh approach: I decided to ignore my needs for support staff and hire ministry staff.
I pooled the money that would have been spent on a part-time secretary and part-time assistant and hired a full-time associate pastor. Instead of being hired to do what I didn’t want to do, he was hired to do what I couldn’t do. He brought a set of ministry gifts and skills that complemented mine. My overall workload wasn’t reduced, but our ministry was multiplied. He’s still with us years later, and he now shares the preaching load. But in those early years, it meant I didn’t have a secretary. Still we were capable of doing a lot more for the kingdom.
Frankly, sometimes I found it hard to share ministry with a partner. To have a secretary or ministry assistant would have sometimes been easier on my self-esteem, like the first time someone in our church asked Mike to perform a baptism. Until then, I had done all the baptisms, so Mike told this person, “I’m sure it will be no problem, but let me check with Larry.”
He came into my office and asked me about it. I had somewhat of a relationship with the person being baptized, and I remember wondering why this person chose Mike over me. But I said, “Sure, go ahead.”
After Mike walked out, another associate, Paul, whom we had later hired, stepped into my office and closed the door. He had overheard the conversation. “That was tough, wasn’t it?” he said. “How do you feel?”
“Not so great,” I said.
That conversation gave me helpful insights into myself. Yes, it did hurt a little. I should have been happy that someone asked Mike to do this baptism. My goal, after all, was to create a shared ministry. In the long run, such discomfort is worth it.
Improve it
No matter how many ways you adapt a building, it always seems to prove inadequate in one way or another. Figuring out how to minister in a less-than-ideal facility is one of the most challenging aspects of ministry.
A year after I arrived, we moved out of our elegant cafeteria with its spaghetti-bedecked walls, and we rented space in a church that held its meetings on Saturdays. Though it was a definite step up, we still had plenty to complain about: the lighting was terrible, the sound system was inadequate, and we were still squeezed for classroom space. Furthermore, we felt stymied by being renters, not owners. Cramped again.
The temptation was to crank up a building fund to escape, but that would have taken years to accumulate. And the financial drain would have stifled our fledgling ministry.
Then it dawned on us: Why not offer to improve the facility at our expense? Our landlords were pleased to let us invest in their facility, so we fixed the lighting, improved the sound system, and even paid half the expense of a building-expansion program. We couldn’t fix our problem, but we sure could improve upon what we had.
As our congregation continued to grow, we ran into a new problem. Our landlords decided we were getting too big for their facility, and they informed us that they were breaking our lease—without notice. In effect, they were kicking a church of eight hundred out in the street!
We could have sued and forced the church to honor the remaining four years of the lease, but we felt it would be unbiblical to take another church to court—and it would have given the local press a religious scandal to run with. So we decided to pack our bags and go.
Our congregation was too large to move into a storefront, we didn’t have enough time or money to put up a building, and no other church properties were available. But by God’s providence, we found a large building in an industrial complex. It was a retail frontage, with a warehouse and loading docks in the back. It had plenty of parking. And it was the only place in the area that was large enough to permit us to grow.
But many hearts sank when folks first saw their new “church”—half the floor was at ground level, and the other half five feet lower running back to the loading dock. It made some long for the good old days in the cafeteria!
Again we were forced to find a way to improve what we couldn’t fix. We angled the cement drop-off and created a ramped floor, which gave us a creative and functional sanctuary space. Ours may be the only retail space in America with such a fabulously sloped floor!
Make lemonade
Cramped quarters can also make discipleship a challenge. All along we’ve had trouble getting adequate classroom space, especially for adults. Not having adequate facilities for formal or large gatherings can lead to one of two things: you can complain about what isn’t or make creative use of what is. We’ve chosen the latter. If we couldn’t meet in Sunday school classes on Sunday morning, we could at least meet in small groups in homes in the evenings.
As a result, home fellowship groups have become the hub of our ministry (and ironically, the most significant contributor to the health of our church). Today more than 70 percent of our Sunday morning worshipers attend one of these groups. They study in greater depth the Scripture passage preached on Sunday, giving everyone a common focus and allowing people to deepen their knowledge of Scripture and relationships with one another.
This is perhaps the best lemonade we’ve made from the lemons we’ve been handed. We wouldn’t go back to adult Sunday school even if we had the space to do so.
That’s ministry
As I write this, the 1980s are commonly being viewed as the decade of consumption and the 1990s as the decade of limits. It may well be that a lot of pastors and churches will have to learn to live within their limitations and find creative ways to minister from a cramped position.
Does that mean we have to trim our idealism and vision for the future? Must we downsize our goal of expanding the kingdom of God? Absolutely not! Limitations don’t have to diminish our effectiveness. Limitations just force us to be more creative as God expands his kingdom.
Looking back, I believe my greatest mistake when first confronted with cramped quarters was comparing my situation with others. I began feeling I couldn’t do anything because I lacked the resources others had. I periodically slumped into a mood of paralysis and defeat.
But no more. I now look at limitations from a new perspective, tinker with solutions, and try to come up with the most enterprising and inventive answers I can. Our church is not something we’ve planned or engineered. It has evolved as we’ve looked for creative solutions to our cramped circumstances.
In fact, I’ve come to believe that restricted ministry is in some ways part and parcel of ministry: it’s a string of cramped positions, where problems and limitations are just disguised opportunities for ministering in new and creative ways.
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