God values the means over the end.
—Fred Smith
This is a very personal opinion that comes from observing and participating in many churches for more than fifty years: Most churches are run on the poor human system, a kind of system with which you’d run a marginal business.
There are two other systems with which churches can operate: the good human system, and the spiritual system. Only the last is the one on which the church of Christ should be run.
Poor human system
In a marginal church you have a “Mom and Pop” operation, and both “Mom and Pop” are tired, harassed, and limited. One may serve different functions than the other, sometimes not even properly classified functions. Sometimes Mom is a better financier than Pop, so she handles the cash register. Pop may have more energy than Mom and so when he’s on the premises, he keeps the store open longer. He may sit at the front door while she sits at the back, or they may reverse it.
I see churches run this way.
The pastor and his wife are running a “Mom and Pop” operation. The church will not pay Mom, although they expect her to work. She runs the missionary society, helps with the catering, makes calls with Pop, and usually plays the organ. If she’s really strong, she may teach a class and even quietly help him prepare the sermon. Though she is not paid, she comes under the same review as “Pop.” These operations never grow very big because Mom and Pop have to see to everything and do everything.
Some insidious things usually start to happen. Mom and Pop often learn to like this management style and they become attached to the location, or at least they don’t know of another place to go. And, being human, security becomes important to them. If Pop isn’t the greatest preacher on earth, then the people he invites in to preach have to preach worse than he does—Mom’s going to see to that! This is so human that we can quickly appreciate it and understand it.
Now, what happens? Mom and Pop inadvertently form a small clique. They want control of who is on the board of deacons, who is doing everything—even the janitoring—so the janitor will be sure to come and tell them what he heard from the members who didn’t know he was listening. This control system is initiated out of a desire for security. It is one of the most limiting factors that can exist in an organization. Directly or indirectly, many smaller churches are controlled by Mom and Pop, and you’ll find they come in varying degrees of attractiveness. Sometimes Mom and Pop are pretty hard to get along with; sometimes they’re great; sometimes they fight with each other; sometimes they are a wonderful team.
The poor human system of administration has nothing to do with doctrine, which can be anything from super-fundamentalist to liberal. The poor human system is a management style, a style that can be spotted the moment you walk in the front door. Pop leads the singing, makes the announcements, prays the prayer, preaches the sermon, pronounces the benediction, and runs down the aisle to shake hands with the people at the door. He does everything—just like a small business owner—because it is his little operation. It’s the only system he knows. And God bless Mom and Pop! A vast number of Christians would not be blessed if they did not exist.
I’ve often wanted to sit down with a Mom and Pop team and say, “Do you know there’s another system? Do you know there’s a way to do all this and not work yourself to death?”
Laypeople help in perpetrating this human system. They enjoy the familiarity with Mom and Pop. It helps them know their place in the congregational mix. They like the paternalistic, benevolent feel that comes from Mom and Pop, and they develop their own form of clout by being part of Mom and Pop’s personal family.
We have to be careful when we talk about the poor human system in a church. Poor human system doesn’t mean poor Christian experience. Some of the finest, most meaningful Christian experiences one can possibly have will be found in a church run by poor human administration. This is true because there is no system where humans are able to accomplish what only God can do.
Good human system
The key to a good human system is a dynamic leader. This is a person who could make it in business, ministry, or almost anything. He or she has that rare combination of abilities to preach, teach, and administer. When I say good human system, I’m talking about good human management, the kind that can be learned through an MBA program.
Good human managers are organized and understand organization. They understand human nature. For example, Napoleon’s strength was that he understood what men would do in war. A good human system preacher understands what people will do in a religious context as well as in a human context. Thus he knows how to motivate them. A good human leader understands that any successful operation is run by a small oligarchy, and that the oligarchy is controlled by one person. Egotism plays a big part in any human system.
The leader understands how things get done. He doesn’t argue with it or philosophize about it; he accepts it. He isn’t always apologizing, “Well, I hate to get things done this way, but …” He genuinely believes that he knows the way to get things done, and he sees it happen time and time again. He knows how to utilize people’s strengths and buttress their weaknesses. He knows that people don’t essentially change. People enthusiastically do what they can do well, and they drag their feet on what they can’t do well.
For example, the good human system requires that you divide work into its logical parts. Then, you put somebody in charge who has the capability of doing it. When the good human leader starts using a new person, he always assigns rather than delegates to him. Assigning means telling him what you want, what time you want it, and how you want it done. And you expect him to do it himself while you watch the task get done. As you develop experience with this person, you find there are certain things you can delegate to him. Delegating is the second step; you simply tell him what problem you’d like to have solved, and he develops and implements the solution. But you must have working experience with somebody in order to move from assignment to delegation. I’ve seen people who bypassed the assignment process, delegated prematurely, and then wondered why the delegation system didn’t work. We have all seen new Christians, particularly wealthy or famous ones, hurt by overuse before they mature—God can wait for them to mature; it’s the rest of us who get overanxious to use them in our programs.
Motivation in the good human system is identical to the motivation used in any other successful human process. Participation, recognition, rotation, the feeling of belonging, moving up through the ranks, one title after the other—all of these principles are the same anywhere.
A person gets tired of teaching one grade level, so you move him to another grade level so he won’t lose interest in teaching. If a person’s tired of being on one committee, you put him on another committee to keep him excited. Also, you protect the organization by rotation. You keep someone from sitting in a job until he thinks he owns it (squatters).
With a good system you must set up feedback networks. You must find your troublemaker and remove him. However, the good human system leader never goes head to head with him. You develop people whose specialty is removal procedures. In business they are called hatchetmen. Transferred to the church, this process takes on more of a spiritual tone. It’s like a hive. The queen might want a drone removed, but she never stings the drone. The other bees do. The whole transaction may be couched in very pious tones, involving even public prayer.
Privately, the men I know in the good human system are very candid with their close associates. However, they take a long time to move a person into the inside group. I noticed that former Texas governor John Connally said, “I have very few close friends and I take a long time to make one.” What he may be saying is, “There are parts to my life or organization I don’t want anyone to see until I trust them.”
Good human leaders are lonely, but they don’t necessarily try to avoid loneliness; they accept it as part of the price. I mentioned this one time to the president of an architectural firm, and he said, “You’ve just identified all my problems. Because I hate to be lonely and I’m always telling my associates about my half-baked plans, bad things begin to happen to me.” He didn’t realize that everyone who would be helped by his half-baked plan began to support it, and everyone who would be hurt by it started to work against it—before it was formulated! Confusion and polarization were born out of his desire to talk.
In the good human system, great leaders appear open but are often closed. In fact, in the good human system, hypocrisy is often a requirement. This is one of the reasons I do not feel it is a system that God would prefer to use. For example, if the leader wanted Deacon Smith removed, he would publicly shed great tears about the “trouble” in the body, and how the Lord had helped him to identify this problem, and how the Lord needed to help him help these “people.” Invoking the Lord is a smoke screen. It is the “good” human system working in its best and worst fashion. And this is the hypocrisy that bothers me.
But keep in mind that I’m convinced God’s going to use whatever system is around. I think this is part of his sovereignty. I also think it is part of his humor. Remember the old saw, “God can use any kind of vessel except a dirty one”? Well, from my experience, that is the only kind he can use. We are sinners.
As an aside, there are certain principles I have accepted that have given me a kind of relaxation about these matters. I am convinced of the sovereignty of God. God doesn’t need me; God loves me. This is so different from human ways because we love only people or things we need. God doesn’t need us and still loves us. That’s another thought too big for my mind. It can be understood only by my heart. When I really believe in the sovereignty of God, and the fact that God doesn’t need me or anybody else, and that his plan is going to be ultimately successful, it gives me a relaxation that cancels a lot of fear and anxiety.
People inevitably say, “Well, how are you going to get God’s work done? How are you going to motivate people to evangelize?” You see, they’re humanizing. What is really being said is that God’s work cannot be done any way except by the human plan. It’s part of our love of legalism; it’s part of our humanizing of God; it’s part of our lack of belief in the sovereignty of God.
The motivations in the good human system are absolutely human. The politics are human. You bring in the people that you can count on. You never let a person into the inner circle until you have his vote in your pocket. You never take a chance on a person who might vote on an issue as he sees it. The system admits a person who will question the issue but is sure to vote with the group.
There is always a subtle relationship between motivation and manipulation in effective human leadership. Motivation is moving along together in mutual advantage. Manipulation is moving along together for my advantage. If I were going to write a book on motivation and expected it to be a big seller, I would title it, “How to Get People to Do What I Want Them To.” It wouldn’t be about motivation; it would be about manipulation. Motivation is letting people recognize joint interest and then moving with them toward that mutual interest. In the spiritual system, you only need motivation. In the good human system, often manipulation and motivation are combined.
It all boils down to this: we value the end over the means. God values the means over the end. His purpose for us isn’t that we “succeed.” His purpose is that we mature, and we mature by the process. Therefore, the process must be pure.
But man doesn’t see it this way. Man says the end is a successful church. The end is numbers, the end is respect, the end is “stars for the crown.” And in all of these varying concerns about the end, we become careless about the means, because we don’t recognize that the means is the method by which God is developing us. His end is our maturity, not our “success.”
For example, if you ask any pastor, “Will money make any difference in the hereafter?” he will say no. And yet in subtle, almost subconscious ways, many pastors will snuggle up to the rich in the church because they represent the means to achieve certain ends. I can almost hear some rich person say, “Pastor, will my wealth make any difference in the hereafter?”
“Absolutely not.”
If the rich were open enough, they would then ask, “Then why does it make so much difference here in the church if not in the hereafter?”
I believe God wants to get us as close to maturity as he possibly can. Here in America we are basing a great deal of our Christian success on the good human system—a system taken right out of industry and entertainment. In many cases ministers could be replaced with non-Christian executives. This scares me.
You watch a human system leader and he will often slowly start to satisfy his ego off of the organization instead of sacrificing his ego to the organization. He eventually comes to that dangerous turning point where he goes from cause-orientation to self-orientation. When he begins his leadership he may be very cause-oriented, but as he sees the cause prosper, he starts to embezzle from the cause—either praise, credit, position, or money. The things that should have gone to God he starts to take. His actions say, “I’m motivating these people to bring these things to the altar; therefore I ought to have a little of it. I ought to get a commission.”
Once he starts this process his commission begins to climb, and soon he has gone from one percent to 15 percent to 50 percent. In extreme cases, he finally says, “Well, God really doesn’t need it, and since I’m God’s man, I’ll just take it all.” Thank God these people are few in number.
The human system is built on ego. For example: It almost always removes time for meditation and time for God. When you talk to many of these human system leaders, they seriously and sincerely decry their need for more time to personally pray and study the Bible. They study the Bible to preach, but they don’t study it in order to live. These leaders have a great tendency to never find this kind of time because of “the system.” They have committees to attend and meetings to run. Have you ever noticed how these people have a great dramatic sense for appearing at every committee meeting as though it were the Second Coming? They have this sixth sense for dropping in and blessing the place with their presence.
The people of India have a word—darshan—that blesses where the spiritual leader stands, and the people walk under his shadow. The human system leader has many ways of doing this. Have you ever heard someone say, “At three this morning, I awoke and the presence of God was upon me and God was saying to me …”?
You see, everyone who hears this tends to think, “Stupid me, I was sound asleep. No wonder this man is a man of God—he’s talking to God at three in the morning.” This is a means of establishing authority.
Or he says, “I am convinced that building this edifice to God is God’s will.” And the followers meekly set in marble the date and the name of the pastor. And if that doesn’t get the job done, they’ll also chisel in the committee names. You can go to the airport and find the same thing. Good human leadership qualities always leave the same identifying marks, whether they be found in industry, politics, or the church.
The thing in the human systems that we’re most proud of, we should be the most ashamed of. In the first century it was impossible to unite thousands of Christians in one body and fail to revolutionize—not a city, not a state, but a country. The very fact that we can proudly put thousands of born-again people together and not make much more than a ripple on the life of a neighborhood shows our weakness, not our strength. What is our pride should be our shame.
Spiritual system
While the good human system is based upon a dynamic, highly motivated, competent leader, the spiritual system is built around—not upon—a shepherd whose purpose is to develop mature Christians—not a facility, a memorial, or a human organization. He looks at a facility as helpful but not vital. Organization is part of the process—for himself as well as for the flock. In human systems the individual leader doesn’t tend to mature spiritually because his purpose mitigates against spiritual maturity. In the maneuvering and the manipulations and the passing out of the accolades, the human system leader is forced to claim more spiritual maturity than he has.
But the leader of the spiritual system is different. By definition, he is not an administrator. He’s a shepherd. The shepherd is involved in administration, but it’s one of the functions of the church—not his personal function. He doesn’t train the sheep to walk in tens and twenties or by age groups with the separation of men and women because he knows that isn’t too important. He knows how many sheep there are, and he is prepared to take drastic action if one is missing. But his function does not revolve around personal power. A function that is saturated with responsibility is very different from a function that is saturated with power.
A pastor told me he was going to Africa with his staff, and I asked him how many he was going to take. He said, “All of them. All the personnel—eleven ministers.” I asked, “Who’s going to run the church?” He said, “The same laypeople who are running it when we’re here.”
His job wasn’t to run the church. His job was to minister to people. I don’t know of very many human systems that could stand the strain of every paid worker being gone for six weeks. The place would fold up.
The spiritual system utilizes people by their gifts. Its function is ministry and its object is maturation. Spiritual system leaders push the dynamics of growth and leadership toward their people for the people’s benefit, rather than pull from the people the dynamics of “growth and leadership” that will ultimately benefit themselves.
If I were pastor of a church I would have to take as my first concern the spiritual vitality of the leadership. I would try to see that the lay leaders took seriously what we together claimed to profess. If I saw that they did not take it seriously—and I don’t think it’s very difficult to find out whether a person takes faith seriously—then I would see it as my task to individually help them. I would not pour guilt on them, because I’ve become convinced that I can make a man feel dirty, but only the Spirit can make him want to be clean. I would make every effort to help each one come to a genuine belief in the hereafter and the judgment of God, and the availability of God.
The late Ray Stedman, pastor of Peninsula Bible Church in Palo Alto, California, used to do something that I never understood until recently. The elders board would make no major decision until they got absolute unanimity. Not a majority vote, but a unanimous vote. I told him that was totally impractical. Then I started to see what was happening. Think of the tremendous responsibility of being the only person who kept something from being done. If you really believe in the judgment of God and the hereafter, and this belief affects your day-to-day relationship with God, you will take your lay leadership quite seriously. So I see a totally new reason for this kind of decision making I had never seen before.
I think Ray did it because he felt it was scriptural, but I see the practical reality. It wouldn’t work if the people didn’t have a spiritual vitality, because they would get a great satisfaction out of having the power to stop the whole process. Here, instead of having the right to stop it, they have the responsibility for stopping it. It’s a totally different dynamic.
As a pastor I would also ask the lay leaders to be monitors of my spiritual vitality. I can’t assume, because I’m the pastor, that I will always have spiritual vitality. I would appreciate it if one of my leaders came to me and said, “Pastor, I sense that you’re a little low. I came to pray with you. May I read Scripture with you?”
For your lay leaders to talk to you about your spiritual vitality, and you to talk to them about theirs—that would be the heart of a successful church operated on a spiritual basis.
If we really believed the church belonged to God, we wouldn’t want to “bottom line” it. But because we really believe it belongs to both God and us, we want to numerically evaluate it. We want to see how we’re doing so we can be proud of it. We all know the temptation of figures. I’ve never met anyone in religious life who underestimated numbers pertaining to his organization. It’s an accepted practice to puff a little air into the numbers.
Wouldn’t it be different to hear a preacher say, “I want a church whose size will be determined by the maturity of the individual members”? It would mean that he has control of his ego. He can’t have his eye on the big church or the bishop’s job. Both pastors and laypeople have become so busy and so traditional and so habit-bound that we don’t stop and ask, “Is this God’s or is it mine? Am I treating it as God’s or am I treating it as mine? Am I motivated by ministry, or am I motivated by desire and human ambition?”
When I read Ray Stedman’s book Body Life, I didn’t think it was a complete statement of what went on. While riding with Ray back to an airport I said, “You left the heart out of Body Life. What you have written won’t work.”
Naturally Ray was surprised and he said, “I tried to be honest.” You couldn’t make Ray defensive, which to me is one of his saintly qualities.
“What you have left out is what most of us can’t do,” I told him. “You have gained control of your ego. And without control of the ego, the Body Life system won’t work.”
I don’t think it would have disturbed Ray if he were to be called into business or medicine or anything else. I think he could have walked away from Peninsula Bible Church and not expected them to build a big building and name it the “Stedman Memorial Auditorium.”
I have a suspicion that at some time in Ray’s life he dedicated his ego to God. This is not to say Ray wasn’t human. But I believe he came to the place of saying, “This ministry is God’s.”
Copyright © 1997
