Tim Suttle says the assumption that bigger is better pervades the church leadership culture.
1. Faithfulness, not success, is the goal of the church
The church’s job is not to grow, multiply, or expand. The church’s job is not to take back the culture for Jesus. The church’s job is not even to survive. The church’s job is to be the church—to be the faithful people of God who organize their common life together in such a way that they image God to all creation. Sadly, most American churches do not image God so much as they image American story of bigger, better, stronger, higher, and faster. The story of God is quite different. This story says the last will be first and the first will be last. Authentically Christian leadership does not embrace success as a worthy objective. Instead the Christian leader must embrace the way of descent, and the cruciform life of dying to self and others. The American way is up. The Jesus way is down.
2. A fixation on success creates anxiety and burnout
When a church chases ministry greatness, and makes growing attendance their primary metric for success, the most consistent outcome is not growth. The most consistent outcome is anxiety. CEO style church leadership may or may not produce growth, but it always produces a consuming anxiety in the lives of the members and leaders who constantly feel bad for not being bigger. All of that anxiety adds up over time. It usually falls to the pastor to try and keep the system healthy. The megachurch pastor is like the liver of an alcoholic body. The anxiety, pressure, and stress generated by the megachurch are not shared equally but are focused primarily on the pastor. Just one person cannot cleanse those types of systemic toxins, and eventually the pastors will burnout.
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