Leaders are readers.  It’s the idea that we need to continue to be challenged in our current understanding and be willing to grow.  Often, growing in our understanding of the familiar seems unnecessary.  After all, we already “know”.  Churches and church leaders can fall into the same patterns of thinking.  They already know and understand, so there is no need to grow in their knowledge and understanding.

The more I learn and know, the more that I learn what I didn’t know.  And the deeper into the weeds of ministry we get, the more important it becomes to continue to get our heads out of the weeds and ensure that we are on course.

The following are my reflections on some insights gleaned from 7 Practices of Effective Ministry by Andy Stanley & Lane Jones (Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 2004.)

Effective ministry does not happen accidentally, but rather intentionally and strategically.  Andy Stanley artfully provides a new lens for the ministry practitioner to approach ministry from this vantage point.  This new lens has the potential to transform ministry from being mediocre with minimal results towards a ministry that is vibrant with significant results; in a word, effective.  The practitioner leveraging Stanley’s “7 practices” will be challenged to replace old systems and approaches rather than incrementally modify and add to existing processes.

The church has drifted off mission and lost its way.  It has become a slave to form and lost sight of its function.  The form is the way that we “do” church.  The function is what the church is and who it should be.  To be effective in being the church, the church needs to rethink how it is accomplishing its mission.  Is the church aiming and the correct target and is the target being hit.  Indeed, the church of the 21^st century needs to reestablish clarity about its mission.  Further, the church of today needs to focus about the method of accomplishing the mission.  Additionally, the church needs alignment of the people and processes central to moving towards accomplishing the mission.  Indeed, there is a distinction between getting the job done and getting the job done well.  Stanley calls the church to move towards a more missional approach to effectiveness that is intentional, strategic, and uncompromising.  Indeed, the church can find itself mired in being efficient and effective at the wrong thing.  Notwithstanding, all hope is not lost.  The church can choose to transition back to the core mission and engage her people to be what God has called her to be; the body of Christ.

Stanley’s narrative approach to introducing and teaching is clearly artful and highly effective in communicating truth.  To that end, he provides conceptual ideas (principles) that may be implemented in various ministry contexts without being overly technical, academic, and philosophical.  Indeed, principles are transferable and timeless and have wide application.  Church leaders would do well to heed many of Stanley’s contentions.  Further, he rightly observes that principles and practices are simply tools to increase ministry effectiveness and are not of themselves the vision, values and strategy.  Indeed, God must provide the overall direction and His people need to be aligned with Him primarily.

The principle of “clarifying the win” provides an important perspective that there are certain things that matter most and church leaders need to keep this out front through constant communication in varied forms.  To be sure, when church leaders do not continuously define the most important goals and objectives (the “win”), then the people with choose for themselves what they deem to be important.  Indeed, a tremendous deliverable for this principle is that of alignment; everyone is on the proverbial “same page.”  It is the idea that church leaders continually cast the vision for what God has called this local church to be and what it will not be.  Further is the idea of how the church intends to get there and how it will not.  Stanley rightly introduces a penetrating question that can help to guide the leadership team in navigating the challenging waters of what matters most.  “What do we want people to walk away and do?” (Stanley 79).  This ensures that the vision and goals are the focus rather than the latest pet project or idea.  Indeed, couched in this principle is knowing where the church is heading and being able to identify that they have made progress.

Here are a five key ideas to apply to church growth at Mount Auburn Christian.

Think steps rather than thinking programs.  It is the idea of keeping it simple through intentional integration and interrelatedness of every step in the process of moving people towards a vibrant relationship with Jesus.  Moving people towards the destination of Christ-likeness should be a process that is ongoing and not compartmentalized by a silo ministry model.  Indeed, life change best happens through intentional interdependencies that accomplish the biblical purposes of the church; CONNECT (fellowship), WORSHIP, GROW (discipleship), SERVE (ministry), SHARE (outreach/evangelism).  In other words, everything we do at Mount Auburn Christian can be an opportunity to fulfill one of the purposes of God’s church and intentionally provide a transition or “step” in fulfilling another purpose.

Create an effective step in the process that is easy, obvious and strategic (Stanley 94).  Indeed, to make the next step obvious, leaders need to consistently explain what is important and what is next.  This provides a “road map” to guide people towards ongoing life change and transformation into the likeness of Jesus.  This is will have the secondary benefit of discouraging people from being territorial and enable everyone to see how their ministry step is an important part of and enable to the big picture.

Be tenacious about staying simple.  Stanley courageously makes leadership decisions about saying no to popular “churchy” programs including Christian schools, midweek services, men and women’s ministries, children’s choirs, adult Sunday schools, Easter or Christmas pageants and recreation ministries (Stanley 105).  Indeed, the first century church was effective without such trappings and the 21^st century church can surely be as well.  Streamlining what a church does to ensure that is unwavering in being great at a few foci rather than mediocre at many to maximize the impact.  At Mount Auburn Christian, we need to evaluate what keeps us from being simple.

Think outside the bun.  We tend to cultivate a church sub-culture that is an “us-versus-them” mentality.  Churches today have become quite adept at speaking “Christianese” and have lost sight of what it is like to not attend church.  Indeed, attending church and maintaining our church-kingdom has become the priority.  We must return to being kingdom-builders that are on mission for Christ by seeking and saving those that are lost.  This is a drastic difference from seeking and preserving those that are saved.  Connecting with people who do not know Jesus must be at the top of our priority.  We have to ask the penetrating question: Are we as a church trying to reach people or trying to keep people?  Listening to outsiders has to be part of the strategy.  Stanley’s “listen and invite” approach is an excellent method to keep the main thing the main thing by making reaching people our priority.

Effective church is what Jesus promised we would be (Matthew 16:18).  Too often we have tried to make the church be what God did not intend it to be; a religious club or charity.  Stanley has offered bold practical practices to rethink our approach to doing church.  I am convinced that the church must be willing to make serious adjustments to its approaches to enable effectiveness.  Mediocrity results in apathy resulting in being comfortable with the status quo.  Effectiveness is the result of being intentional and strategic and a willingness to make necessary adjustments to get the compass realigned to true North.  Stanley’s “7 practices of effective ministry” are a clarion call to do just that.

Let’s keep journeying together as God shows us how we can best engage the culture of today while getting our heads out of the weeds every now and then ...

WORKS CITED

Stanley, Andy, Reggie Joiner, and Lane Jones. 7 Practices of Effective Ministry. Colorado Springs: Multnomah Books, 2004.