Decline Is Never the Only Option

I got to play tennis not long ago with a man about my age who used to be one of the top ten players in the world. (When I say I got to play with him, what I really mean is I got to stand across the net and watch the ball go past me.) He still teaches tennis for a living, so he’s around the courts a lot. But he’s not playing much any more. In fact, he told me that he plays golf much more than he plays tennis, even though he’s pretty much a hacker on the course. I asked him why.

“Because when it comes to golf I’m getting better, whereas with tennis the best I can do is to deteriorate as slowly as possible.”

I thought about how hard it would be to recruit someone to be the president of even a large entity—say General Motors, or Europe—with that as their mandate: “Help us deteriorate as slowly as possible.” No wonder people would rather risk total failure heading up a start-up in Silicon Valley than make a comfortable living slowly steering the Titanic for the ice berg.

Nothing defeats the human spirit like stagnation.

If we were truthful about it, “Deteriorate as slowly as possible” is probably that shadow mission for all kinds of churches and denominations. One denominational leader told me that in his denomination they lost 10 percent of their people in a single decade; so they pulled together to work harder and lost 12 percent the next decade. They have already plotted on a graph what year they will go out of existence at the current rate.

Stagnation is a killer in ministry. I can’t control outcomes. But I must have a sense of hope that growth is possible. And growth does not begin with external results. It begins with the growth in the spirit of the person doing the ministry. The problem is most often people are not aware of that subtle moment when they have crossed the line from “growing” into “receding.”

So here are my candidates for the top diagnostic indicators of a ministry moving into “slow deterioration” mode. You may know of some group (or individual) that needs to do a little self-assessment:

Denial. The capacity of emperors to think they are making fashion statements is staggering. Gary Hamel has a wonderful line: success tends to be self correcting. The very process of being effective also tends to bring complacency, and when effectiveness goes down, we tend not to see it. (As Gary puts it: every successful organization is successful until it’s not. Companies pay him lots of money for these kind of observations.) If evangelistic fervor cools, or prayer decreases, or community lessens, or volunteerism fades, those of us at the center are sometimes the last to know.
Loss of motivation. People do not lose motivation simply through age, or challenge, or even repetition. They lose motivation when they lose a sense that they are able to grow. People rarely plan vacations to spend two weeks sitting on the beach at the Dead Sea.
Fewer people signing up to lead. My nephew is going through training to join the California Highway Patrol. Because he is based nearby, he sometimes spends weekends with us. The ordeal that CHiPs officers-to-be put up with is remarkable. Many of them do not make it through training. Those that do pay an enormous price of commitment. The very price he’s paying is part of what makes him value the badge. I can’t help but contrast this with leading in the church. Seminaries—and churches—will all-too-often take in any warm body that’s available. It is not higher salaries and longer sabbaticals that will draw people into serving the church—it’s a sense of urgent calling that demands a sacrifice and promises the opportunity to make a difference.
Phoning it in. Funny how this one gets sensed by everyone around a person before it gets sensed by the phon-ee himself. Sermons get perfunctory; teams lose morale, planning gets second-rate effort, accountability for results diminishes; and there is a general collusion to not name the dynamic.
Cynicism. When other ministries are being effective, instead of producing joy, it creates a sense of envy or a feeling of being threatened. Rather than seeking to learn from it, stagnant people will find some pretext for judging or dismissing it.
Spending more time looking in the rearview mirror than out the windshield. More stories get told about how things once were than about what may yet be. Who wants to be watching the road when all that’s left is a dead end?

The good news is that stagnation is never inevitable. I may not be able to control outward events. But God has other plans. As a wise man wrote long ago, “Outwardly we are wasting away, but inwardly we are being renewed day by day …”

God never aims at deteriorating slowly.

John Ortberg is editor at large of Leadership and pastor of Menlo Park Presbyterian Church in Menlo Park, California.