Delight, Disillusionment, Despair, and Discovery
In my last blog, I focused on “The Costs of Consumerism.” If you sensed some passion in that post, it’s because I faced those costs first-hand in the church I led for 35+ years.
Allow me to share my story.
Delight
Fellowship Missionary Church was born in 1982. Fifty men, women, and children joined me, my wife, and my kids in a great (and scary) adventure.
We began meeting in a YMCA, setting up and tearing down our gathering space every week. A sound system was brought in and a sign was put out and we waited for the people to come.
Amazingly, they did.
Our style was reflective of the times – good worship, solid preaching, and warm fellowship (small groups). And, as the numbers grew, so did the pressure to meet their needs.
Being the only staff member, I began to unconsciously live by a punishing philosophy. “It’s all up to me. If we hope to keep these folks, I have to meet their needs.”
It worked. FMC realized unprecedented (at least in our tribe) growth. We soon were forced to open up overflow seating. We easily blew by the “200 Barrier” and soon recognized the need to build our own facility.
Land was bought and a building was constructed. And in 1985 we enjoyed our first Sunday in our new home.
More people came. I could no longer meet all the needs so additional staff was hired.
New programs were added. Goods and services of all sorts were provided as those who came had a sense of expectation that their needs would also be met.
The mantra from the 1989 film, Field of Dreams, “If you build it they will come” became ours with a twist. “If you provide it, they will attend.”
It worked. The church continued to grow.
People loved the worship and the preaching, the programs and the ministries. The philosophy morphed a bit, but it held the same theme: “It’s all up to the staff. If we want to keep folks, we have to meet their needs.’
As it relates to discipleship, ours was an incomplete paradigm. Offer a weekend seminar on spiritual disciplines. Provide fill-in-the-blank study guides for small groups. Support the overseas missionaries.
The call to “reach out” kept the thought to “dig deep” on the back burner. I attended conference after conference that trumpeted the value of opening the doors of the church wide to lost people.
Again, I bought in fully. And, again, it worked. Attendance soared to over 2,000. More people required more programs …and more staff...and more buildings.
To be sure many people who came to the church crossed the line of faith. However, I began to be troubled as it related to what it cost to hold those people.
Other churches were also finding success, and before I knew it, we were in competition with them to hold onto our “market share.” Could we offer bigger incentives, better programs, greater benefits?
Disillusionment
My delight began to turn into disillusionment. While we were adding numbers, we were creating consumers. The accusation began to be leveled, “FMC may be a mile wide, but it’s an inch deep.”
For some time I dismissed this as the railings of jealous competitors. But eventually, I had to admit that what we were turning out was a cadre of believers who were better stanced to enjoy the American Dream rather than disciples who were better prepared to engage in the advancement of God’s Kingdom.
I had to admit that what we were turning out was a cadre of believers who were better stanced to enjoy the American Dream rather than disciples who were better prepared to engage in the advancement of God’s Kingdom.
A week-long seminar I attended in 2007 validated my concern. There, a fiery ex-missionary blasted the American church for its shallowness. He then contrasted its lack of disciples with the number of disciples being developed in “undeveloped” countries.
My heart sank as I had to admit that FMC (and I) had become victims of our success. Now that we had grown to be the size of an elephant, that elephant had to be fed. And it had a big appetite.
While the speaker did a great job of exposing the problem, he offered little to nothing by way of solution. My disillusionment moved to despair.
Despair
When I returned home, that emotion was masked by all the challenges that always follow a week away. And the continuing numerical growth assuaged my feelings of guilt.
But the thought still surfaced with increasing regularity. “Are we simply adding people or are we making disciples?”
Are we simply adding people or are we making disciples?
And the nagging question continued: “But how? How do we change an established culture without blowing it up?”
Discovery
By God’s grace, a few years later, I finally saw a flicker of hope from some leaders who had begun to do just that. They weren’t perfect examples, but they were living examples.
They offered a better way (ironically the biblical way) whereby I could transition a church from a focus on delivery to a focus on development. A way whereby rather than perpetuating the creation of consumers, there would be the formation of reproducers.
It brought me full circle. From Delight through Disillusionment, past Despair, and into Discovery.
We knew that changing the culture of an established church would take huge effort and much time. (The elephant had been created and it still had a big appetite!)
But we began the transformational process. And little by little it has taken root.
Even though I am no longer the lead pastor of FMC, I’m pleased to see that this process has continued. It’s not perfect by any means. But it’s happening.
As for me, I want to continue discipling pastors and leaders toward this end. That’s part of what my coaching is about. If you’re interested, I’d love to chat.
In my next blog, I’m going to continue the discussion of a disciple-making culture by talking about the difference between a Delivery Culture and a Development Culture. I hope you’ll check it out.
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