A Different Leadership Experience

I preached at the Payne Church of Christ three weeks ago. In my visit there two and a half years ago, I preached to about fifty people. In this recent visit, I preached to nine. The shocking thing to me is that the people are so loving and so kind, yet the church is dying. It is a blessing to be around them but for some reason corporate failure has set in.

I left scared and with an urgent burden on my heart to pray more diligently and to approach our church about change. It's only a matter of time before our group of forty-five becomes a group of ten. We have not experienced any numerical or visibly spiritual growth since we arrived there. A church that refuses to change slowly loses (or quickly in a split) each family or individual who wants change. Eventually, all that is left is those individuals who like things the way they have always been done. The end is death to a local body. We need change now before the gangrene sets in.

It was with this overriding conviction that we must change and we must change now that I went into our Sunday meeting. I was nervous. I did not know how it would be taken, but I had prayed for it a lot. After some good discussion, the leadership decided to gather together Tuesday night for a special meeting on change. I was encouraged by their thoughts and action.

Then came Tuesday. I was again nervous, but it was mixed with excitement. I showed up at the church early and prayerfully waited for the others to come. One of the elders began the meeting with some Scripture reading and a serious call to prayer. We prayed for a lengthy time, followed by singing "Be Thou My Vision" together. It was a great experience with the Spirit present at the meeting.

The only official things that were decided at the meeting were little things. The leadership, who has been operating for some time without a paid minister, decided to meet together for a weekly "staff" meeting on Sunday mornings before church. In this meeting we will make sure that all of the people in the church are being adequately ministered to, that we are taking advantage of every opportunity that arises to minister to the community, and, pray together. They also appointed me, at my request so it is really no big thing, to go to the community ministers' meeting as our church's representative so that we can remain in touch with the other churches on a formal level. The last decision was one to create a building maintenance committee so that the leadership meetings do not turn into maintenance meetings, which they have the tendency to devolve into.

I am amazed at how some men can enjoy sitting around talking about pipes, duct work, holes, and wiring, but these guys could spend a day doing that. When they asked me whether I would be a deacon around a year ago, I answered that I would as long as that did not mean being a deacon of building. I want to do ministries and help the community, not focus on the maintenance of the building. If they had room for a different sort of deacon, then I would be willing. Although maintenance is an important thing, the church I was youth pastor at only used the deacons for maintenance. Being a deacon should be so much more than that.

Those decisions seem like little things, but each one represents a huge step. Meeting together for prayer was rejected when I proposed it around three months ago. Now they were willing. Being involved with the other churches is a huge step because there is a tendency in the conservative wing of the church of Christ to think that all other churches are evil, they are going to hell because of false doctrine, and we should not interact with them. Creating a maintenance committee will free the leadership up to tackle the issues that need to be addressed in the future.

The greatest ideas were ones that we left the meeting with the plan to pray over. The discussion over whether to cancel Sunday night was one of the major areas of disagreement during the meeting. One individual was set on it not being canceled despite knowing that it is a cultural creation and not really all that relevant anymore. He just likes it and would like to do it despite the fact that it is grossly ineffective. Due to a transition in our leadership of operating on consensus rather than voting and forcing the sole dissenting voice to come in line, his opinion needed to change or else we could continue to have Sunday service the way it has always been. In the middle of the discussion, someone proposed moving our Sunday evening service to the local nursing home. I thought it was a great idea. The nursing home has the dilemma of ministers not showing up when they said they would for their Sunday afternoon service and this would give them a permanent service with a fixed time for the elderly at the home (and their families along with anyone in the community) to go to. One of our leaders was going to discuss this with them this week. This seemed to make everyone excited about the possibilities. It would mean canceling Sunday evening classes, which might face some resistance, but I have been surprised by things already.

The other issue that we are to pray about is when and how to implement helping those financially burdened in town to replace their sidewalks. Our town council recently began to enforce mandatory replacing of cracked and dangerous sidewalks. For instance, my parents just spent over $3000 to comply. Many people in this community do not have that sort of money. With the deadline for compliance quickly approaching, our church is going to tackle replacing the sidewalks at some of the houses. We need to figure out how to uncover who really cannot afford to fix their sidewalks and what is the best way to go about it. But the very fact that it came up during the meeting and was well received is a great thing. Now we have to iron out the details and get active.

So if you would, please keep our church in your prayers. This is a crucial time in its history. We need to change and not stop changing. We need to start being a place that the Spirit of God is present and that is bringing people from the community into His presence. I am excited at the beginning steps, but it must continue.