Feb 14, 2007

I dont want to be successful

I just would like to throw this idea out and see if any of you have some ideas on this thought.
We all know that many pastors get stressed out, a lot of times i hear of pastors becoming depressed. How can that be? I mean, isn't this supposed to be the most fulfilling job out there?
I think this is the problem. Instead of the world finding value in our verbiage and way of life and therefore adopting it as their own, the exact opposite has happened. The church has adopted some ideas that the world uses, and the main idea is the word 'successful'.
If you declare a business 'successful', it is because that business has made an enormous amount of money. They made the enormous amount of money because there were a very large number of people that bought their product. That is 'successful' in the worlds terms.
We want to be a 'successful' church. So, we adopt the definition of 'successful' from the business world and therefore we do whatever is possible to get a large number of people in our churches. And when that doesn't happen, people get upset at pastors and then pastors become so overwhelmed and stressed, it just gets ugly.
What if we start trying to change the vocabulary of this idea. Instead of wanting to become a "successful" church, let's want to become an "effective" church. Instead of having the goal of getting a large number of people, we focus on actually effecting the people that attend our churches now. By getting our minds around this idea, we focus less on "a show" and more on spiritual formation, which is the way you effect people for the kingdom.

--ideas courtesy Todd @ GoodPeople

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