Jump directly to the Content

5 Signs Your Leadership Has Quit On You

How to know when you're losing credibility.

When I lost the support of my congregation's leaders, I was completely caught off guard.

I had been with the church for a couple of years. We were a rural congregation (about 200 people) with many different programs in place. I had started a small groups ministry and revamped our benevolence and youth ministries. Everything was going great. Or so I thought.

There's an old joke about a minister coming back from vacation to find an eviction notice hanging on the parsonage door. Well, my experience wasn't quite that bad, but it was traumatic.

The previous summer I'd taken a church growth course for my M.Div. My course project was to assess our congregation's abilities and potential for growth. After I studied our congregation and community, I concluded that while we were mission-minded, our opportunities for growth and expansion were limited due to the low population and the high-church culture of our area. As a result, my recommendations for the future—while ...

March
Support Our Work

Subscribe to CT for less than $4.25/month

Homepage Subscription Panel

Read These Next

Related
Is Seminary Old School?
Is Seminary Old School?
4 pastors weigh the pros and cons of higher education.
From the Magazine
The Evil Ideas Behind October 7
The Evil Ideas Behind October 7
The Hamas attacks in Israel have a grotesque ideological history and deserve unflinching moral judgment.
Editor's Pick
What Christians Miss When They Dismiss Imagination
What Christians Miss When They Dismiss Imagination
Understanding God and our world needs more than bare reason and experience.
close