When did we decide to pursue growth instead of strength?
This article might annoy you if you’re not a Christian, but I would love your feedback. Please don’t misunderstand this article as a commentary on non-Christian life and practice; instead, it critiques how many of us who call ourselves believers have been conducting ourselves.
What I Have Noticed
Over the past ten years, I have worked and served in several different ministry settings, and I am starting to notice something concerning me.
Lately, it seems that most of my decision-making conversations revolve around how we will be perceived by people outside our camp rather than the value of what we have to say to people who share our values.
At first, I thought this was a great idea, but lately, I’ve come to believe it could be more problematic.
For example, when I was working full-time as a student pastor, many of our decisions were based on how we would be perceived by students who were living within the bounds of the Christian faith. We provided free dinners every week because we knew that would be a valuable addition for kids who didn’t believe in Jesus. When we planned our teaching times, we would include games and prizes because we knew that would help engage people outside of the Christian faith. When we would write questions for our small group leaders to use during discussion, we would include topics and pop culture references because we knew that would be interesting to people whether they knew Jesus or not.
At the time, I supported all of these decisions. I thought it was a great idea to keep things interesting to people who might not be on the same page as our organization.
But I have changed my mind.
Every decision we made seemed like just one small detail and one tiny choice. However, each tiny choice led to another small decision, unintentionally redirecting our entire mission.
When we started, our mission was to strengthen and encourage our students to grow their faith in Jesus. But after a few years of tiny decisions, our mission had changed almost unnoticed and entirely by accident. No longer were we focused on strengthening the faith of our Christian students; now, we were focused almost exclusively on comforting, including, and entertaining our non-Christian students.
We started out as a church and ended up being a club — a far less interesting club, at that.
Our conversations started with strengthening students’ relationships with Jesus but ended with ensuring that we didn’t offend people who don’t believe in Jesus or use divisive language for someone involved in a different way of life.
To some degree, I’m writing this to make sense of my thoughts on what I’m seeing. At this point, a vast majority of Christian ministries are making critical mistakes. Of course, I might be wrong.
Know Your Purpose and Know Your Mission
Strong organizations know they exist to serve their mission. Sports teams make sure all of their decisions eventually lead to winning games and, eventually, championships. Retail organizations ensure that they are continually serving their customers. Even politicians are supposed to make sure that they are serving their constituents.
Think about it. Soccer teams exist to win games. The coaches aren’t sitting around trying to figure out how to make their team more accessible to people who are out of shape and can’t run. Most of their practices and conditioning exist to accomplish the opposite.
If a soccer coach decided to spend most of their time ensuring that their team was open to people who can’t play soccer, they would likely be looking for a new job in concise order.
And, for the most part, this is fine.
Many of us who will never play on a pro-level sports team are inspired by the incredible focus, determination, and commitment that championship teams regularly display.
Perhaps part of the issue is that people who claim to live a life defined by Jesus often fail to meet the most basic standards of Christian life, such as honesty, integrity, and rejection of self.
Christian Churches exist to strengthen the faith of people who are committed to serving Jesus.
That is probably up for debate. There’s always the tension of how much we exist to serve people within the community of faith and how much we exist to reach out to people outside the community of faith.
The solution is to strengthen the community of people inside the faith to ensure that they are equipped to care for and reach out to people outside of the faith.
We shouldn’t ask ourselves how a non-Christian will feel about this; we should ask ourselves whether this will strengthen the faith of someone who is committed to following Jesus.
The more we focus on and make decisions based on people’s opinions, feelings, and beliefs outside of our immediate mission, the weaker our organizations will become. This is a readily accepted fact in every area of life except Christian faith and mission.
Let’s Get Back to Basics
Stop leading youth groups to be more digestible to non-Christian students.
Stop figuring out ways to make your churches and bible studies more acceptable to people who don’t believe in Jesus.
Stop compromising on your values on the faulty premise of strengthening your evangelistic outreach.
These are subtly flawed ideas that lead to weaker faith and diminished discipleship.
When I started, I would have disagreed, but I’m beginning to see it clearer and clearer every day.
It’s more important to pursue strength than to hope that you will accomplish growth.
I’m beginning to believe that the more you stay laser-focused on strength, the more you will accidentally accomplish growth.
My wife and I host a daily Bible podcast called God’s Plan, Your Part. This year, we are studying one chapter of the New Testament each day. To listen to our latest episode, click HERE.
