Any human enterprise can succeed or fail. Silicon Valley startups, marriages, mall stores, schools, and churches — there are no guarantees, no reliable formulas, no ideal preparation.

The recipe for failure tends to be predictable. Conditions change, but for reasons ranging from sloth to distraction to inadequate resources, leaders don’t change with them. Early success teaches the wrong lessons. Leaders dread failure more than they want to learn from it. Worthy ideas implode from lack of support, while bad ideas develop loyal followings.

It can be maddening. It can leave many wondering why they try.

I promote best practices as the key to leading a church. I have named those best practices and led church folks in learning and deploying them. But still success seems elusive. The unexpected happens, the reliable leader loses heart, a sizable cadre prove uninterested in success, especially if success means change.

Here is what I have learned:

First, the paradigm is the wilderness wandering. It is scary out there living freely and following God. It seems safer to go back to bondage. Even when God feeds and leads, discomfort and uncertainty drive many church leaders to lose heart. Going forward, however, is the only reasonable and faithful choice. Sometimes it takes a heavy/handed Moses to drive the sheep onward. I think we should be less afraid of strong leaders. Lay leaders should focus less energy on keeping clergy in line.

Second, the wise leader tends to be nimble. He or she can see an opportunity and move swiftly to embrace it, or see an obstacle and react to it. Churches take far too long to change direction.

Third, the rich and powerful shouldn’t be in charge. They tend to worry too much about saving face and avoiding failure. They mistake the church as theirs, rather than God’s. They cater to their own kind and fail to imagine others as having different needs or even validity. They don’t want to hear the Gospel, because its message to the rich and powerful is painful to hear. So they muzzle preachers and extol less-than-Godly attributes like tradition and facilities.

Fourth, failing churches misapply their energies. They tend to pour their energies into what they do best and find most enjoyable, rather than pouring energy into what God wants done and into what people outside their walls need. Thus, they focus on Sunday worship, when more and more people want community. They do mission as charity — noblesse oblige — when more and more people want deep commitment of life. They worry about gender and sexuality, when more and more have moved on to other concerns like income inequality, global climate change, and work-life balance.

Fifth, healthy and promising church communities show consistent attributes. They tend to be playful, irreverent, willing to try new things, tolerant of diversity, patient with their leaders, and not overly concerned with tradition or with money. Those are healthy attributes for any person and any community, of course. Maybe that is the point. Healthy leaders enable healthy enterprises. Churches, like any enterprise, should spend more energy on recruiting healthy leaders, training them in best practices, and protecting them from the crazies.
 

About the Author

Tom Ehrich is a writer, church consultant and Episcopal priest based in New York. He is the publisher of Fresh Day online magazine, author of On a Journey and two national newspaper columns. His website is Church Wellness – Morning Walk Media