Be true to your church
The old Beach Boys' hit, Be True To Your School, has a lesson for pastors of small-churches, too. While the Beach Boys were singing about loyalty to your school, I'm talking about being true to your church's history, personality, and memory. I think one of the biggest mistakes pastors of small-churches make is leading against the grain of their church, trying to make it into something it's not.
How do I know this is one of the biggest mistakes small-church pastors make? Because I've made it more times than I want to admit. In my first full-time pastorate, I served a little country church in rural south Georgia, called Zion Hope. This rural church was like a hundred other small country churches amid the pine forests of south Georgia --attendance was about 60, and there were more folks in the cemetery behind the church than inside it. They were more lively, too, I thought.
I was young, smart but not wise, and determined to bring "life" to that little church. One Sunday, I moved the pulpit out of the sanctuary because I liked preaching without a pulpit. The only problem was the members didn't like it. So, I put the pulpit back and learned to live with it.
Undaunted from the pulpit disaster, I asked the church to buy a bus so we could pick up the kids in the trailer park down the road. Although the church finally vote to buy a bus, that project created no small amount of controversy. And guess who got stuck driving the bus each Sunday morning? That's right -- me.
I kept trying to make that little country church something it wasn't over and over, again. I redesigned the Sunday bulletin, changing the Old English typeface into a trendy font. I reorganized the Sunday School, added new classes, got the church to write a new constitution, hired a part-time music director, and pushed the little church way beyond its capacity for change and ministry.
For a while it seemed to be working. Attendance doubled from 60 to 125. One Sunday we had 175 in worship. It was great! But, guess what happened? After I left Zion Hope to take a church in Atlanta, everything reverted to the way it was before. Attendance settled back into the 60s, the church sold the bus, and the music director left.
I only stayed 18-months at Zion Hope, restless because "they didn't want to do anything," I told myself. The truth was, everything I wanted them to do wasn't true to who they were. My single focus on growth overlooked relationships, feelings, and their context. Years would pass before I realized that Zion Hope was far more patient with me than I was with them.
What would I do differently now? I would listen to their stories. I would hear them talk about how God was at work in their lives. I would value the experience and vision God had placed there long before I arrived. I would try to understand who they were as a community of faith, and let them shape me in their walk with God. I would be true to the church God had nurtured and preserved. Otherwise, it's all wood, hay, and stubble.
