Leading a church during its zenith, like coaching a successful basketball team, is an odyssey, an adventurous combination of pain and joy.
— Leith Anderson
Recently a pastor flew to Minneapolis just to meet with me for two hours. Near the end of our conversation, he asked, “What is it like to be successful?”
His question caught me by surprise, because I, like most pastors, live with the day-to-day reality of local church ministry: I don’t think of myself as successful.
In 1992, after the Chicago Bulls had won their second straight nba championship, head coach Phil Jackson was asked about the difference between the first championship season and the second.
“Last year it was a honeymoon,” said Jackson. “This year it was an odyssey.”
The ecstasy of coaching the Bulls’ first championship had been followed by the anguish of leading them to repeat their success. The Bulls’ squad, led by Michael Jordan, was essentially intact from the previous season. But their burning passion to win, which they had their first championship season, was noticeably absent at times. In addition, every team was gunning for them. In the playoffs, their opponents sometimes came from behind to beat the Bulls. They almost lost a second championship.
As I reflected on my friend’s question, I realized success from the outside looks great — a growing megachurch with staff, programs, and financial resources. From the inside, though, it feels like an odyssey, with moments of joy attended with many pressures — staff issues, performance pressures, periods of heavy debt.
Leading when everything is going right is just as challenging as leading when everything is going wrong. During good times I try to be on top of things with the same intensity so that I can meet the challenges and take advantage of unique opportunities.
The Golden Handcuffs
In some ways, success is all it’s cracked up to be. Leading in good times, like surfing the perfect wave, is a thrill. Though it has its pressures, I’ll take it any day over failure.
In the shoot-’em-up tv show “The A-Team,” Hannibal Smith, the motley squad’s leader, would occasionally pull his cigar out of his mouth — while bullets flew and the bad guys were winning — and growl, “I love it when a plan comes together.”
As the church’s pastor, I too love it when a plan comes together, when broken people go from disaster to healing to helping others. After sixteen years at Wooddale, I’ve had the enormous satisfaction of seeing God’s plan realized in this ministry.
Through our ministry a woman came to faith in Christ. Her skeptical husband, after finally coming to church one Sunday, was upset with me. He didn’t like what his wife had become. I met with both of them for four hours one evening, attempting to answer his questions like, “Is there a God?” and “Is there absolute truth?”
Impressed by my patience to discuss his questions, he returned to church the following Sunday. Later he became a follower of Christ, and recently, both of them told their faith stories in a Sunday service. Now they’re zealously seeking to win their family and friends to Christ.
That’s addicting. But there’s more.
Years ago, I heard Billy Graham speak at an Urbana missions conference. Though the other speakers that week spoke eloquently and deeply, clearly the crowd’s accolades went to Graham.
His talk, frankly, wasn’t any better than the rest of that week’s lineup. The audience, though, respected Graham’s accumulated credibility from his lifetime of integrity and faithfulness. They ascribed to his Urbana sermon an excellence even beyond its high quality.
In that sense, success relieves some of the constant pressure to prove oneself. And that’s nice. If I consistently preach good sermons, the congregation will grow accustomed to excellence. So when I do have an off Sunday, they’ll give me the benefit of the doubt. That relieves a lot of pressure.
Good times also enhance your credibility. If an army general has won ten battles in a row, the top brass will want him in command. If a baseball pitcher has a history of weathering stormy innings, especially with bases loaded and no outs, the manager will want him on the mound. So will congregations want successful pastors.
As I’ve mentioned, while Wooddale was building its new worship center, I asked the leadership to plant a church in the Minneapolis area. To do so meant diverting financial and people resources and possibly jeopardizing our building project. The church voted to step out in faith.
Past successes gave me credibility to make a solid case for the church start. I might not have been able to lead in that direction had the church not been growing.
Bursting the Bubble
Pastors of successful churches quickly discover that the grass is not necessarily greener on the “success” side of the fence. While leading during good times, I’ve discovered two popular, though bogus, notions about success.
• Ministry is easier. From a distance, successful ministries are often idealized. Successful pastors sometimes perpetuate this by exporting their successes in church growth seminars across the country. It’s somewhat akin to the bucolic, medieval Camelot in which King Arthur lived. From the outside, King Arthur had the perfect job in a perfect world. The turmoil inside Camelot, however, eventually brought down the knights of the Round Table.
At Wooddale, we have a futures task force that has been hard at work creating a long-term dream for the church. The task force met with Wooddale’s elder board to present this “dream for the next decade,” which involved, among other things, changing our purpose and organizational structure — a critical piece of legislation.
That evening, the discussion about Wooddale’s future got sidetracked. Instead of igniting passion for what God might do, the meeting drifted into a discussion about our current Sunday evening service.
Even after Wooddale’s successes, motivating still takes hard work. I’m still amazed that I can give a seminar about how to change an inward-looking church into an evangelistic church and then return to Minneapolis only to find I can’t get a bulletin board changed. Success doesn’t change the day-to-day reality of parish ministry.
• Pastors are the single cause for success. At seminars or pastors’ conferences, often I’m asked, “How did you ever get Wooddale’s leadership to the point where they are? How did you train them to think strategically?”
The question assumes that I was responsible for nurturing great leadership. Wooddale could boast of excellent leadership long before I arrived. I’m the beneficiary of the successes and skills of a host of other people. (Maybe that’s one reason why I’m reluctant to leave. If I go elsewhere and don’t succeed, people will know I wasn’t the reason at Wooddale!)
A pastor I know with a successful ministry recently moved to another part of the country. Nearing retirement, he had decided to take on a difficult parish, as he had thirty-five years earlier. This time, though, he failed, and he was surprised and disappointed. He assumed that his success could be exported to another time and place. But the chemistry just wasn’t there.
Success is complex. In addition to the Holy Spirit, a host of factors contribute to an organization’s success or failure — timing, the culture, the pastor, the staff. Too often in church work, God gets the glory if it succeeds, and we pastors get the blame if it fails. God should always get the glory, but pastors shouldn’t necessarily assume all the blame.
Plowing a Straight Furrow
When things are going well — steady numerical and spiritual growth, financial solvency, and an infectious enthusiasm about God’s presence — leaders will encounter subtle shifts towards entropy.
For instance, subtle pride can creep in. There’s no therapy group for successful church leaders, no place where pastors can go and say, “Things are really going great. Please uphold me in prayer and hold me accountable.” Sometimes I think there ought to be such a place, for ministry success is dangerous.
I had lunch with a friend who pastors a local Presbyterian church. In the weeks following Easter, he ran into several other pastors, asking how their Easter services went.
“Every pastor quoted the number of people who attended their services,” my friend said. “Not one mentioned Jesus Christ or having an experience with God.”
Pride of this sort is a subtle sin that takes some strange expressions. Typically, it is stereotyped as: “I’m wonderful. I do everything well. I’m the best there is.” More subtly it says, “I feel so blessed that the Lord is using me in such great ways.”
My struggle is with a reverse pride: I’m not as tempted toward arrogance as I am with discouragement when everything doesn’t go as I had hoped. I become too bothered with circumstances and programs not being the way I want them to be.
What I am really saying is “I’m the most important person in this ministry. I’ve got to have it my way, and if it’s not my way, it’s wrong.” This is egocentric, and something I want to avoid.
Connected closely with pride is the narcotic of approval, which can drug us during periods of success.
I find myself falling into typically human patterns. If I’m not congratulated on how well I’ve done, I’ll ask someone for a “critique,” knowing full well I’m likely to get some strokes, If I’ve been criticized, I run to others, asking for their opinion, telling them how I’ve been criticized. I know who most likely will affirm me as a good preacher or Bible teacher or leader or administrator. Like most people, I’m insecure at times. Ironically, success can sometimes make me more insecure and in need of approval.
Part of that is due to rising standards. When Roger Bannister broke the four-minute mile barrier, the world standard for running a mile was changed. Today, however, Bannister wouldn’t even qualify for the Olympics.
Success raises the standards. This year’s Easter service needs to top last year’s. This is reinforced by the way we pastors fudge on the number of people who attend our church. I’ve never met a pastor, including myself, who rounds down to a lower hundred — 377 is not “about 350” but “about 400,” 1,420 is not 1,400 but “nearly 1,500.”
In today’s culture, the bar for pastors has been set at world-record height. However, not everyone will be able to pole vault nineteen feet. Not everyone can win a gold. Likewise, every pastor will not pastor a church that easily fulfills its mission and relates to its community and grows into a megachurch.
The baby boomer generation is clearly motivated by success, which is an added pressure to modern pastors. Pre-World War II generations were motivated more by hardship. Fund-raising letters are an example of this.
The previous generation responds well to a letter crying, “If we don’t receive $50,000 before December 31, we might have to shut our doors.” “Boomers” are less willing to throw good money after bad. They like to jump on the bandwagon of success — “We reached 4,000 youth last summer. With your help, we can reach even more this summer.” That’s one reason boomers flock to megachurches.
Much of the pressure to succeed is internal. I tend to pick the external pressures that correspond with my own internal expectations. If I’m insecure about who I am, I might become a workaholic, believing that I’ll be successful only when I pastor a large congregation. I then imagine the congregation expects the church to grow 15 percent each year. In fact, the expectation originates with my own psychological weaknesses.
Often, when pastors burn out and then reveal to their congregations the pressure they’ve been under, their congregations are shocked. They say, “I thought he was doing fine. Everything appeared to be going so well.”
When leading in good times, often the inward desire to continue our success can victimize — and potentially sabotage — God’s blessing in our ministry.
Finally, there is the fear of incompetence. I’ve been told that no one who has won a Nobel Prize has made a significant contribution to science or literature thereafter. The achievement curtails itself from being repeated. The effort to win the first Nobel Prize saps too much from the individual. That can feel threatening to the successful pastor. Success can limit success.
Each of us has only so much giftedness and energy. We may be able to lead a church to only a certain level of success. And then we simply can’t run any faster. What if I don’t have any more to give? I’ve wondered. What if I don’t have any way to do better next time? More success means a higher standard, and at some point, I might not be competent to lead the church.
I also wonder about getting older. At age 48, I still feel up to the task of leading this church. But what about when I’m 55? Is church growth a young man’s game? What if I don’t have the personal resources to succeed with ten years until retirement?
These fears aren’t crippling, and in my normal routine I’m not too concerned about such issues. I don’t have to be a Nobel Prizewinning leader to lead a church effectively. Still, I’m wise to monitor such emotions to make sure I don’t get prematurely discouraged or fall into patterns that would undermine the gifts and abilities I do have.
Recession Proofing Your Ministry
I want to be at my best when God expands his economy in Wooddale Church. God is in the success business — isn’t the kingdom of God about expansion and growth? So I try to be focused when in the midst of his blessing.
• Service your networks. My wife, Charleen, and I invited to our home a local pastor whom I’ve known since ninth grade. We attended high school together and then went our separate ways for twenty years.
Now that we live in the same area, we’ve been able to renew our old friendship. We’ve talked about plans to drive a minivan to New Jersey for our high school reunion. Whether we actually attend the reunion is irrelevant to the time we could spend together driving there and back.
Pursuing and developing our friendship is important to me. Success heightens the need for close relationships because of its pull toward isolation. Many of my friends are forthright with me, helping me cut through the self-deceit success can bring.
My friends help me keep success in perspective. My world is relatively small; my successes are small. A network of close relationships keeps my feet on the ground. Servicing that network is important especially when things are going well.
• Allow others to succeed. As a teenager, I always made sure I got in my share of waterskiing — and even a few extra shares. I loved the sport. I’d do anything for a turn on the water.
Today, I’d rather watch my own kids ski. They are far better than I ever was — they slalom, barefoot, and perform acrobatics I never dared to do. Driving the boat isn’t even important to me. I just enjoy watching them excel for the pure, simple pleasure of seeing them succeed.
The same is true in ministry. I get a great satisfaction sitting in a worship service and hearing a young pastor preach a good sermon. Much of the satisfaction comes from feeling that I had a part in his success. I’m involved in growing successful people, not just an institution. And that helps me focus on people rather than things, on others rather than myself.
• Realign self. With the busyness and demands of success comes the need for a reality check, to realign oneself with what is and what should never be. It is separating myself from the enterprise.
Pastors have a hard time distinguishing between who we are and what we do. A person of integrity, of wholeness, stops periodically and says, “How do who-I-am and what-I-do fit together?”
Charleen and I own a lake cabin in northern Minnesota, where I can go and not be a pastor, where I won’t run into many parishioners. I’m just me. I’m just an average guy who wears jeans and a sweatshirt, like everyone else.
On the lake, I can clear my head and ask myself, How does this part of me fit with the pastoral part? How does what I say publicly fit with what I do privately? To me, it would be awful to appear different publicly than I am privately. I either adjust what I’m saying or adjust who I am. A continual process of realignment helps me do just that.
• Reach outward. A pastor of a large church was having some problems in his congregation. I didn’t know him well, but I felt compelled to see if I could help. I called the church office.
“He’s not taking calls,” the secretary said. “The church gave him a leave of absence. He’s out of town.”
“Well, just leave a note with my office and home number,” I replied. “He doesn’t need to call me back, but if he wants to talk, I’d be glad to talk with him.”
He returned my call. Later I discovered I was the only person who had called him — not his denomination, not other staff members, nor other pastors. That experience has reaffirmed my desire to look outward in the good times, taking the initiative to help others.
• Get a Merlin mentor. I believe everyone should have a mentor, especially younger pastors. After being damaged by something or someone, a mentor can say, “Oh yeah, I know all about that. That’s happened to me a lot of times.” Suddenly, I’m okay. I’m going to make it through my down time.
This mentor doesn’t have to be alive or even know that he or she is a mentor. In one scene in the movie Camelot, with the unanimity and integrity of the Round Table falling apart, King Arthur is desperate: Lady Guinnevere is having an affair with Lancelot, and the other knights are fighting among themselves.
What does King Arthur do? He walks into the forest and reflects, What would Merlin do? Merlin, by this time, was dead. Still, he mentored the king from the past. King Arthur placed himself in Merlin’s shoes and thought about his problems from Merlin’s perspective.
Like Merlin to King Arthur, Harry Emerson Fosdick has been my mentor from the past. Fosdick pastored a church in New Jersey, close to where I grew up. I’ve read his biography and listened to his sermons on tape. While I disagree with his theology, Fosdick has mentored me through his view that preaching is counseling. He’s had a profound influence on my ministry.
All pastors should pick mentors. We can’t figure out everything for ourselves. We need the wisdom and comfort of others to navigate the waters of ministry. Choosing mentors — alive or otherwise — is a powerful tool to monitor our emotions and guide our decisions during the roller coaster of ministry success.
• Find what restores you. Discouragement often sets in after success — mostly because we’re emotionally and physically depleted. So I’ve tried to restore my energies regularly.
Throughout my entire ministry, I’ve worked on Mondays. I’ve never taken it off. In fact, everybody at Wooddale works on Monday; that’s when our staff meets. Often we’re tired and on the emotional downside of a successful Sunday. But by being together, we find encouragement and strength.
If I stayed home and slept on Mondays, I’d compound my discouragement. It would run like a virus through my emotions. (I also have a theory about days off: if I’m going to be depressed and thinking about resigning, I would rather be paid for that day than waste it at home!)
It’s Not Over Till It’s Over
When I was in the seventh grade, my father, who rarely took me to sporting events, said, “I’ve got a couple of tickets to the World Series today. How about going with me?”
I was excited. I’d never been to a major league baseball game. So my father and I drove to New York from our home in New Jersey and went to the game. I was a Brooklyn Dodger fan, but that afternoon, no Brooklyn Dodger even got to first base. They were shut out. I went home, crushed.
Not until twenty years later did I realize what I had witnessed. What I thought was defeat — my favorite team had gotten sorely beaten — was an astonishing historic moment of victory: Don Larson of the New York Yankees pitched the only perfect game ever in World Series history.
Often what is perceived as failure or success does not correspond to our reality. In the end, only God knows. But during those times when success seems apparent, I’ve learned to relish its benefits and pay close attention to its effect on my soul and my ministry.
Copyright © 1993 by Christianity Today
