Phil Cooke

Amen, Phil.

Awhile ago I worked at a mega-church. Great pastor & people. But one of the downfalls to even greater success was the fellowship's inability to be innovative and spontaneous. Creativity was stifled. There was fear of risk. Innovation went through layers of leadership until a race horse became a 2 humped camel – the original idea was so severely tweaked it didn't look like the original after so many threw in their input.

The other issue was decision-making. The process, mostly, came down to what the pastor thought. But because he was so busy – and with a burdensome speaking and travel schedule – decisions large and small often went weeks or months without an answer. Paralysis. Inertia.

Your comment about smaller churches being more nimble might very well be on target. Simply because of their compact size and shorter threads of decision-making, these fellowships can respond to needs more quickly…and are fare more willing to try something new and innovative – because the risk is less.

The greatest concern I have with Churches as they get larger is that it is the nature of organizations as they grow larger to serve their own needs and to sacrifice individuals to that.

I've seen some instances where that has been minimized through intentional leadership, but unless that vision is maintained, eventually there comes a time where due to a change in leadership or perhaps extraordinary needs and circumstances that vision dies and the organization enters the normal life-cycle of decline that Churches seem to generally follow.  The problem is that by the time people can read the signs and see the quantitative and qualitative decline, it's too late to change much. 

The time to address the problem is before the curve starts down and few there are with the vision and wisdom to see it.

I know that church, or rather one like it. The one where the senior leadership decided the senior pastor needn't be bothered with people. I watched the pastor wake up (sort of) realize he was out of touch with the congregation, embark upon a 3 month re-dreaming process to help him get back in touch, and then filter all those ideas back through the same staff that isolated him in the first place. He eventually resigned and left the pastorate.

There is a large, respected church with a so-so tv ministry that hired a famous media consultant awhile back to come in and evaluate their media ministry. The consultant met with people from leadership to lower level, looked into what was working or not, checked the facilities, equipment, walked through the church and asked questions, etc. The consultant then went home and wrote a solid, detailed report of the good, bad and ugly. Made some professional recommendations, described what needed fixing, created a plan.

A few key leaders made sure that report – in its original form – was never read by the pastor of the mega church. Because the report was critical and uncomplimentary of leadership…that management needed to make certain specific adjustments and that some ministry leaders were the cruz of the problems with tv & media.

The leaders sanitized the report taking out the portions uncomplimentary to leadership (them). That cleansed report was what was handed to the pastor. Today, 3-4 years later, that tv ministry still struggles, off target,  a mere shadow of what it could be. Not hard to figure why.