Phil Yancey wrote a final column for Christianity Today that has been resonating with my pondering of late.

Those who know me well know that I spend a good deal of my time on the issues of form and structure of church. Not something I write on much because to be honest, it's quite boring most of the time.

The tradition of church I am involved with and ordained into is part of the "Stone-Campbell" movement. The movement was originally about church unity and finding form and expression of church in New Testament principals and experience. It's a worthy goal however we can easily get caught up in silly questions like "Should we have musical instruments in church?" and it really starts to miss the point.

Getting back to my pondering...

Like I said, I research a lot of form and structure questions because I believe that context is important to the shape of a local congregation and can not be externally imposed by either a church governing body or by society and culture at large and the latter does seem to be playing a leading role in how we structure our churches.

So my thoughts are, what if everything we do in church is counter-productive to the gospel? How often do we sit down and ask the hard questions like this? Is having a building productive or counter-productive? Is music productive or counter-productive? Is prayer time productive or counter-productive? Is meeting productive or counter-productive? Are small groups productive or counter-productive? Is feeding the local homeless productive or counter-productive? Is not feeding the local homeless productive or counter-productive? And so on.

There are two questions that come out of this. 1. What would happen if we just did the opposite of everything we are currently doing? 2. Are there some elements of our practice (in our particular contexts) that should just be rid of?

In one church I worked with they took the first approach uncritically and without thought. They saw the decline in their church and said to themselves "what we are doing isn't working so let's do the opposite", but it all ended up being superficial. They changed the music, painted the hall, even changed the communion plates but it was at it's core the same place.

When we set about to change things do we ever really deeply examine ourselves and our church community to see beyond the superficial? I'm not saying you should stop feeding the homeless if that's what your church does, but there may well come a time where doing so is counter-productive to the mission of the gospel in your church. Hard to believe, but it's true. Just because you can do something does not mean that it is the right thing to do.

(This is a bit of hyperbole but I really want to make the point clear that just because something is good, that does not necessarily make it the mission of your local church, all of these things need to be approached with prayer and discernment.)

Simply cutting programs is not the answer to indiscriminate change. Just because the visitation program has been running for 50 years does not make it an antiquated or useless endeavor.

Getting back to the point once more...

Have you had an honest assessment of the health of your church and it's activities in sharing the gospel?

Let me suggest these questions to gauge the health of your church:

 * Is it growing? Growth is not the best indicator of health but an unhealthy body doesn't grow.
 * Are your programs understaffed? Are you just spreading a congregation too thin?
 * Are you scared of asking somebody outside your church to evaluate it's health?
 * Pastor are you scared of your congregation?
 * Congregation, do you look for an excuse to not be involved in the life of your church, be it Sunday or any other day?
 * Are you spreading the gospel?
 

I plan for this to be the last post about church growth as it relates to structures. I started the series because I have a deep seated belief that the local church is ultimately a force for good in this world and that the pastor at the helm needs to have a fuller understanding of his position within the church.

Just as God has ordained some to be teachers, apostles, prophets and healers, there is a variety within each of these groups that needs to be recognized. The giftings of one pastor may be to a small congregation where as another imbued by with gifting to lead a large church.

I still believe that the local church is the ultimate force for good but the curtain need to be pulled open and the church needs to see the little man called Christendom who has been calling our shots for far too long.

Christendom is a concept borne out of a close connection of church and state, not necessarily a theocracy but a symbiotic relationship where one feeds the other to their own ends. And Christendom thinking is destroying the church.

We live for the most part in a post-modern, post-Christian, post-denominational world. A world that has lost automatic respect for the church and it's teaching because of how we have represented Christ and His teachings. Witness what clerical abuse of children, institutional thinking, denominationalism, political manipulation by refusing communion to those who expouse Heterodoxy in their thinking. These things and Christians who exhibit little to no Christ-likeness has stolen away the good will of the church universal and must be examined and where appropriate repented of and where appropriate rejected or redeemed.

Christendom has ended but we are still behaving as if it's alive and well.

The net effect over the entire Christendom epoch was that Christianity moved from being a revolutionary, social and spiritual movement to being a static religious institution with its attendant structures, priesthood, and sacraments. Taken as a sociological reality, Christendom has been in decline for 250 years so much so, that contemporary Western culture has been called by many historians (secular and Christian) the "post-Christendom" culture.
    -Michael Frost, Exiles, p.4

    
I'll go out on a very short limb and say this, the decline of the (at least Western) church is because of a failure to see it's place in the world clearly.

So how do we begin to turn this around? It's not what you might think.

Step 1: Christian unity!
Step 2: See step 1.

Our Savior Jesus once said "A house divided against itself can not stand" and later went on to say "My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one: I in them and you in me. May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me." (John 17:20-23)

If we resolve to be Christians, one body, one faith, one baptism, one together and open to the transformation of our lives by the Holy Spirit of God I believe that church form and structure will flow naturally into our current contexts. In some places it will look the same as before and in other places radically different but we have a God big enough to handle it.

This is the call of an Emerging Pastor and their leadership of Gods church.

The Program sized church is the third in our series examining the transitions that churches need to make in order to continue to grow. The Program sized church is making the transition from one that sees the pastor as the center of the church and all relationships, to a more supportive role.

Weighing in at 150 to 350 active members, the Program sized church starts to replace direct pastoral contact with, you guessed it, programs. Now this isn't as bad as it sounds, it's all about empowering the congregation to take up active ministry roles within the church.

New leaders are raised up from within the church and the pastor must provide guidance, structure and development to this new layer of management. The pastors primary task in my view is to minister to this group as Jesus did the disciples and through them impart the direction and values of the church.

More energy is required of the pastor to identify leaders and partnering with them, ensure that the church programs are kept on track. This does not mean that the pastor withdraws from the congregation, they should still be making time to visit a church member in hospital or counsel a couple through personal tragedy but I wouldn't expect much time for the pastor to make a great deal of follow up visit's at the persons home.

The key skills for an effective Program sized pastor is the ability to pull the church along a common vision. If the congregation becomes too fragmented it may pull itself apart with competing demands of different ministries. This is not to say that you should drop the mens ministry in favor of the womans ministry, rather you could not commit to two projects requiring more than 50% of the congregation, (although I would probably put that figure at 25-30%).

If the pastor is driven by direct pastoral care work, ministering to the Program sized church may leave them feeling unfulfilled, unless they are gifting in administration they should consider deeply before committing to this church. This is not any indictment on the pastor, rather recognizing where God has make them most effective.

As I mentioned in the last post, the Pastoral sized church is really in my sights at the moment because that is where the church I am serving is heading. This is not the "best" method of leading a church, rather it's an appropriate method for a church of this size, 50-150 active members.

The Pastoral sized church places the clergy at the center along with a small team of leaders (typically Elders depending on your denomination). This group displaces the patriarch/matriarch of the Family sized church and requires a degree of discipline and good communication with the church to accomplish it's leadership goals.

The pastor who sits at the center of a circle of leadership must be able to delegate authority in such a way that releases them from the burden of doing it all. If too greater hand is left on the reigns, the pastor will burn out, conversely, too loose a grip will weaken the entire structure of the leadership.

The central difference between a Family sized church and a Pastoral sized church is not only the leadership structure but the role of the pastor in meeting the spiritual needs of the congregation. The Pastoral sized church is expecting a called and trained pastor to minister too them directly rather that being a Chaplin style support to the church.

The pastor takes on an important and pivotal role in the congregation, you would not expect the pastor to be absent from any part of the church life such as bible studies and prayer groups. The pastor is also seen as on-call and the first call for people who are experiencing times of personal crisis. When a member of the congregation called the pastor, their expectation is that they would visit that day or very soon afterwards and it would be the pastor, not a designated pastoral care person.

This availability proposes an increased risk of burnout on the pastor and pressure on their family life and must be managed with a good degree of wisdom. Boundaries are key issue here, they must be publicly expressed, consistently applied and supported by the leadership team. The upside of this relationship with the congregation is that they will be fiercely loyal to the pastor and hopefully be attentive to their guidance.

The Pastoral sized church is similar to the Family sized church in that everyone still knows everyone else. They will at least know them by sight if not by name. When the congregation butts against the upper limit of this church size, say 130-150 people attending each Sunday an interesting dynamic occurs. As Carl Dudley put it in Unique Dynamics of the Small Church,(see footnote) they begin to feel "stuffed." Members wonder about the new faces that they don't know-people who don't know them. Are they beginning to lose the intimate fellowship they prize so highly?

At 150 members the pastor will feel like they are being drawn and quartered by the pressure and demands of 150 people trying to know them intimately, this is a key reason for a church to make the next leap to a Program sized church.

This is a key barrier to growth. It is at this point that the pastor and congregation need to make a conscious choice, either maintain an intimate relationship with the pastor or loose the grip and grow as a church.

I am not making a value call here, the context of many churches may be that a smaller more intimate congregation will be one that honors God. But this must be understood lest the church numbers drift ever upward and put extreme demand of the pastor.

A pastor with a strong personality, outgoing, expressive and rich interpersonal skills will fare will in the Pastoral sized church. They must be a person who can feed into the highs and lows of peoples lives as well as preach, teach and lead worship. This pastor will be the primary focus of the church.

---
Dudley, Carl. Unique Dynamics of the Small Church. Bethesda, MD: Alban Institute. Another helpful book is Lyle Schaller's Looking in the Mirror (Abingdon Press 1984).

I find exploring the family sized church particularly relevant to me at the moment. I have just come from a Program sized church that has shrunk to a Pastoral sized church (and still acts Pastoral sized) to a Family sized church that is starting to break through to Pastoral sized.

A family sized church has fewer than 50 active members. Lets focus on ACTIVE for a minute. That doesn't mean count the heads of all the adults, it means count all those people that contribute to the live and vibrancy of the church.

Family sized church earns it moniker because it (dis)functions much like a family with appropriate parental figures. The matriarch, patriarch or both control all of the churches leadership needs and looks to the pastor to provide pastoral care, that's it.

The key to pastoring this church is to know your place. You will not be the source of authority, direction or leadership. You are there as a Chaplin of a small family and will come into conflict with this family if you do not understand this.

"It is generally suicide for clergy to get caught in a showdown with the patriarchs and matriarchs within the first five years of their ministry in that place"

This doesn't mean that you have a limited role here, just that your approach needs to be on a carefully calculated vector. You are there to pastor the parental figures as well as the "children" and your vision and giftings can play an important role in providing consultancy to the parents and working alongside them for the betterment of the congregation. But once they decide against an idea, drop it, it's finished.

The pastor should be aware of issues of triangulation. When people complain to you about the patriarch/matriarch and encourage you to lead a mutiny you need to redirect this energy into strengthening the relationship between the congregation and the parents. The dynamics of the family is such that most members will consider it too risky to be caught siding with the pastor against the parents when the issues involved are publicly exposed.

That is mostly the negative aspects of the role. On the positive the family sized church will provide someone with strong pastoral care skills an opportunity to work within their giftings and (God willing) be on the ground floor of the growth of a congregation into a much larger faith community.
With regard to tenure, typically the longer the pastor stays with the church the more influence the pastor will build with the congregation, especially if you stick with the congregation through difficult times.

Barriers to growth start at the top, with the Pastor and his attitude to what the church is and what it should be. I tend not to advocate one style of church over another, I don't particularly care if your church is emergent, emerging, traditional, contemporary, is in a factory, a clown college or an old monastery. What I do care about is that it is a community of people expressing Kingdom qualities to it's greater community. A group of people reaching out to the marginalized for and with the love of Christ.

When we look at the question of the pastor as a barrier to growth, we need to look at the size of the church and how he runs it.

Consider these 4 categories:

• The Family Church(< 50 active members)
• The Pastoral Church (50 to 150 active members)
• The Program Church (150 to 350 active members)
• The Corporate Church (> 350 active members)

These create 4 natural barriers in the life of a church that must be confronted and dealt with proactively when your church is going through a phase of growth or contraction. The size impacts the effectiveness of the pastor as well as the manner of their leadership.

A pastor who leads a church of a particular size as if they were another size is most likely setting themselves up for failure. For example, suppose you are a leading a thriving Pastoral sized congregation and find yourself called to a new congregation already in a Program-size. That leader will need to make a significant shift in thinking if they desire to be effective in their new congregation. They move from the primary leader in the church to either the team leader or a team member or a larger leadership group.

It may be that the new church has called you to grow a specialized area such as small groups or outreach. You are now no longer responsible for the entire congregation, but a sub-set of them. Your will for the direction of the church becomes part of a greater whole which can lead to frustration if you do not accept this.

Conversely, if you have been brought in as the team leader you need to accept that you are setting overall direction for the church and the execution of individual components of this is not within your control. There are just two many parts for you to micro manage.

Over the next 4 posts I am going to unpack what these church sizes mean for the pastor. What their responsibility is to the congregation, leadership styles that work for it's size as well as the pitfalls of working with a church of that size.

I am not a church growth guru but I know people who are. Some of them are impressive people who look to build the Kingdom others are not.

Growing you church is not about you, it's about the Kingdom of God. If your heart is to increase numbers to justify your new building plan, raise your status as a pastor or use those numbers as a measuring stick then I'll ask you to stop reading and pray for God to reveal to you His Kingdom purposes for your ministry and His goals for your church.

There is a correct size for your church and it is not the same as the church across the road, the city or the country. The size of your church is defined by it's context, pastor, community and it's willingness to serve.

• Context and community: A country town of 200 people will probably not grow a church of 2000 (or even 200).
• Pastor: The growth of the church will be limited by the willingness of those in control to part with that control as growth occurs and to cast a vision of the incarnational Kingdom in your community.
• Willingness to serve: The desire of the church to be the Church will determine it's reach and influence.

If God is looking to build you into the pastor of a mega church, may He bless you. If his desire is for you to consume that country community into a community of believers then may He bless you there. If your to lead an incarnational community of house churches and small groups then may He bless you there as well.

Whatever the shape, church growth is about honoring where you are and the limits imposed on you.

Some people say, "It's all about the numbers", and they are right. So too are those who say "It's about people, not numbers". We reconcile this by concentrating on growing people into a community of believers not numbers on a growth chart. If you can agree on that, then we are well on our way to discovering the barriers to church growth that are internal and external to our ministry.

In the last post I discussed the first prayer that in my experience God always answers: Grow me. When we ask for God to grow us he is faithful and will place something in our path that we much choose to use for our growth.

The second prayer that God always answers is "Break me".

This is a dangerous and tough prayer to get past this lips. In my experience it comes with repentance or the need for repentance. When I have prayed break me it was because I had been building up a shell around myself which had hardened and was making me inflexible to the demands of the Spirit.

The biblical writers call this a hard heart. When the prophet Ezekiel was speaking to the nation of Israel about their sin he echoed God's heart to His people with these words:

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you will be clean; I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws. (Ezekiel 36:25-27 )

Cynicism about people, the trauma of life, disappointment, failed expectations, a rocky marriage, rebellious children, lust, dependence; these and much more cause our hearts to slowly turn hard as stone if we do not deal with the issues properly.

The prayer of break me is in line with the heart of God but it hurts when he brings the hammer down on it. Ezekiel promises the new heart and spirit but my experience is that it isn't a delicate surgery but God smashing through the hardness.

Often that which has made us hard has chained us down into negative patterns of life. It might be a failed relationship that causes us to keep all others at arms length or lust that keeps us chained to the computer screen. I believe God can simple wipe away these negative patterns and free us but this is the road less traveled. Rather, when He breaks away the stone He causes us to confront our sin, decisions and the patterns that occurred afterwards in order to grow us.

Afterwards we need to stay broken to be attentive to the Spirit of God afterall

 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
  a broken and contrite heart,
  O God, you will not despise. (Ps 51:17)

God answers this prayer because he wants to see us broken. Not broken as in disrepair but broken of hardness, because when we are broken we are truly fixed.

When I first came to faith the pastor of the church told me a (true) story about prayer.

He took a young girl (in age and faith) to a Christian bookstore to help her find something to challenge and grow her faith. The girl came across a book called something like "When God doesn't answer prayer", which shocked her because she did not know that God might say no to prayer, it was contrary to her experience of prayer.

In a few weeks time I will be speaking to my new church on the topic of prayer and I so I've been reflecting on the kinds of prayer that in my experience God always answers.

The first prayer that God always seems to answer is Grow Me.

Grow me, stretch me, move me. Whatever way you choose to phrase it, whenever we ask Him to take us out of the comfortable place God obliges us quickly. My "Grow Me" prayer used to be "God, place someone in my path for me today who I can share about Jesus with". Any morning that I prayed those words I would encounter someone later in the day who I could establish a conversation with, share their burdens and then share with them hope.

In actual fact I would have most likely run into that same person during the day (although I certainly believe that God brought some of us together in extraordinary circumstances). So did my prayer achieve anything? If I was going to bump into the person in the lunch queue at work, or still sit next to them on the train anyway, did my prayer change the circumstances at all?

Quite simply the answer is yes, because prayer changes us. When I prayed for someone to share my faith with in the morning I had not only asked something of God but I had prepared myself for it to occur. My thoughts during the day were, "is that the person God?", I lived with the anticipation that James shares with us in his letter to the early church: "But when he asks, he must believe and not doubt, because he who doubts is like a wave of the sea, blown and tossed by the wind" (James 1:6)

Grow me, is a prayer always answered, and it's a dangerous thing to ask of God. Try it today.