This is Why We Can't Have Nice Things

I live in a very small community that is economically dying. A conversation online reminded me of an exchange I had a couple of months ago.

I made a decision in business to stop focusing my efforts in town. Instead, I was going to travel to work, because there was money on the road, and the local community didn't provide a reliable enough income stream. In fact, during a stretch of nearly a month, AFTER all of our savings had been depleted, I made the princely sum of $50 for the stretch. And selling off our belongings wasn't netting us enough to ride the storm out.

And so I stated that I was shutting down the local side of the business almost in its entirely. The time and money I was spending to advertise, promote, and pay insurance premiums was not justified by the almost nonexistent business it was netting me.

The result of my statement was blowback from some of the community. One person went so far as to tell me that I did not belong in this town, and that I should move out for the betterment of the town.

It took a bit, but I slowly began to realize that is the exact same problem I've had in the church through the years. As people beat their brains out to figure out why folks are leaving their congregations, I have actually taken the time to talk with some of the families who have left. And I've found that their concerns are very similar to mine. Yet instead of listening to the people who have left, pastors tend to only hear the voices of the church growth professionals, who tend to write off the exiting congregants as collateral damage.

In the meantime, they've allowed people to come in who look the way they want, talk the way they want, say "amen" in the right places, and most of all, never EVER criticize the leaders. Because divine inspiration, it seems, can only come from those who are ordained by men.

The net result is that, not only are there wolves in the flock, they are in many cases LEADING the flock. The allure of building more building than you need and judging your success by how many people you can pack into that building is far too strong. Bring programs, they say. Entice the kids and the parents follow. All of these are gimmicks that never ever focus on the heart of the community.

But they are also indicators of poor leadership. Ask most of the pastors (or, getting back to the community issues, community leaders) to produce a strategic plan and you will seldom find one. Ask them to perform a SWOT analysis, and you're likely to find blank stares meeting you in the boardroom. Because a SWOT analysis requires talking to those people who left. And listening.

Instead, like the fine person who offered to run me out of town, the church is doing the same thing. The people who leave are written off, discarded, and no real change is ever made because the only people left in the seats are yes men and women, who grossly misinterpret what it means for a pastor to be "above reproach".

I've given up hope that any of my articles will ever be read in their entirety. Yet I keep them, and I keep writing them, in the hopes that one day someone will actually read them and GET them. Until that time, expect nothing to change.