Page 1170 – Christianity Today (2024)

Sometimes you can tell quite a bit about a book from its cover. On the outside, Michael Horton’s Ordinary: Sustainable Faith in a Radical, Restless World (Zondervan) looks a lot like David Platt’s bestseller Radical, and that’s no accident. Horton, editor of Modern Reformation magazine, a founding figure behind the White Horse Inn’s teaching ministry, and host of its radio show, aims to provide an alternative to trendy calls for radical living. He thinks such calls serve mainly to make ordinary Christians anxious about whether they’re really Christian enough, and pastors anxious about ensuring that their ministries are radically transformative.

Horton comes to their aid with a Reformational perspective that diagnoses such anxieties as the outgrowth of works righteousness. If we are justified by faith in Christ alone, then we need not be anxious to show how Spirit-filled we are by living extraordinary, radical lives. Having already received the promise of the Spirit in baptism—God’s promise, which we can trust he will keep—we are free to serve our neighbors with ordinary good works. We are freed from establishing our credentials before God or our own consciences. And we are even free, Horton states, to enjoy our neighbors as gifts rather than making them into our own projects, as if it was our job to transform their lives.

Horton argues that the underlying theology behind oft-heard calls to be wild and crazy radical believers—as if Christianity were an extreme sport—is works righteousness in a new, consumerist mode. For some time, radical has been a favorite word of advertisers and ideologues alike. Every website with something to sell now routinely promises a transformative experience.

Instead of another call to be radical, extraordinary, or transformative, Horton would have us return to the ordinary means of grace, those practices of the church in which God has promised to make himself known: preaching the gospel, teaching the faith, administering the sacraments, and worshiping with a local congregation. Instead of advertising life-changing experiences or the next big thing, the aim is a sustainable faith for the long haul. The great strength of being ordinary, after all, is that you can do it for a lifetime.

The Contrarian’s Dilemma

Ordinary continues the long-standing work of the White Horse Inn on behalf of launching a new Reformation among Western evangelicals. But the tone is notably less shrill than Horton’s 2008 book, Christless Christianity, which attacked various celebrity preachers by name. Seeing the cover, I expected a few juicy remarks about megachurch pastors like Platt. My expectations were disappointed, which is a good thing.

Feisty contrarians can be fun to read, but they often fail to build up the church. And Horton seems to be outgrowing some of his contrarian urges. An explicit message of the book, in fact, is that it’s time for the “young, restless, and Reformed” to grow up. Restlessness is to be expected in an adolescent, but the church needs to foster something better than the perpetual adolescence promoted by our culture and institutionalized in many youth groups. We need to build up the church, and the restless tend not to stay put and build.

In a similar vein, we are often reminded that “radical” means getting to the root of things (as the Latin radix means “root”). But a good gardener (in one of Horton’s illustrations) does not keep pulling everything up by the roots and moving it around. You need to stay put for a while, untransformed, if you are to grow. It’s like being married, in that the key virtues are faithfulness and constancy, not radical transformation.

Or consider one of the best vignettes in the book, which illustrates Horton’s point that ordinary doesn’t mean mediocre. A passerby once stopped at a massive construction site and asked what everybody was doing. “Hauling dirt,” replied one. “Cutting stones,” said another. “Building a cathedral,” said a third. All true. For the only way to build a beautiful church is to do a great deal of mundane, unglamorous labor, and to do it conscientiously and well. The impatient desire to be radical and extraordinary, to hasten the coming of the next big thing, interrupts the humble work required to accomplish something excellent.

But Horton faces a tricky problem. As a critic of the church on behalf of the church, he has to be careful about what he is tearing down. It’s too easy to take potshots at celebrity preachers and high-powered ministries, especially when your own ministry has gained visibility and grown rather high-powered itself. The White Horse Inn, after all, is now much more than a radio program: It is a multimedia entity that presents conferences, podcasts, blogs, publications, and various “special offers” on its website.

The great problem for a contrarian who loves the church is that relentless, highly visible criticism can feed further anxiety, driving harried pastors to look yet again for the latest new technique, strategy, or ideology that will genuinely make a difference. So Horton’s chapter against “super-apostles” came as a pleasant surprise. Instead of inveighing against celebrity preachers, it focused on the ordinary work of ministry, the day in, day out of preaching, teaching, and pastoral care. A book written like this won’t grab attention like a scathing polemic, but that’s part of the point.

Gets the Job Done

The great alternative to consumerism and celebrity culture within the church is preaching the gospel, and Horton does a fair amount of that in his book. For all his Reformed emphasis on doctrine, he knows that faith is not just a matter of believing the right doctrines, much less learning how to get saved. It means first and foremost being united with Christ, given by God’s sure promise, so that we can trust that our ultimate transformation is in his hands. Knowing this allows us to love our neighbor for our neighbor’s sake, not in order to prove how transformed we are.

Horton, in the edifying and non-contrarian mode most evident in the second half of the book, clearly aims to present good news for pastors in particular. He emphasizes that their regular work of preaching and administering the sacraments is the covenanted means of God’s redeeming grace—the transformation that cutting-edge conferences and websites can only talk about. It is like a reminder that the work of hauling dirt and cutting stone is the work of building the cathedral.

I hope pastors and many other ordinary Christians will find this book an encouragement to trust more deeply in the promises of God. Ordinary is not perfect, showing the weaknesses of a book written too quickly by someone who writes too many books. It’s a bit long-winded, a bit repetitive, and not always well organized. But like the work of preaching—which does not require superb, earth-shaking sermons every Sunday—it gets the job done. And the job is not to say something memorable of one’s own, but to point to what God has already said. An author who does that has done the proper work of the church.

Phillip Cary teaches philosophy at Eastern University in St. Davids, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Good News for Anxious Christians: 10 Practical Things You Don’t Have to Do (Brazos Press).

There was an effort recently to ban the word "bossy", spearheaded by Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg. The reasoning behind this is that when “bossy” is used to describe women (as it almost always is), it discourages them from speaking up for fear of being saddled with that derisive term. I had never considered that before, and wondered if there are other words that can have the same effect – adjectives that have specific connotations when employed towards specific people. And I came up with at least one more example, a term which I have heard on a few occasions: angry. People of color and other minorities who are vocal about issues of race and justice are often called angry – “angry asian man”, “angry black guy", “angry feminist lady”, etc.

People of color and other minorities who are vocal about issues of race and justice are often called angry – “angry asian man”, “angry black guy", “angry feminist lady”, etc.

This might not seem like a big deal because some of these people are indeed angry in a purely objective sense. But the use of this word in this context often carries an additional connotation, that this person's anger is not appropriate or justified. That is what people really mean when they talk about an “angry _____ person” – they are saying, “unnecessarily and excessively angry _____ person.” Intentionally or not, the use of that word implies abnormality, an anger that is pathological in nature, as if a product of genetics, rather than context.

You can see this dynamic at work in nearly every racially charged controversy in American culture, from the riots in Ferguson to debates on football mascots, where people are quick to dismiss the concerns of minorities as nothing more than political correctness run amok. In this way, minorities are often portrayed as having an anger problem, rather than having a problem which makes them angry, two very different things.

But this tendency is hardly limited to secular American society. It is also a pressing issue in the evangelical church.

Minorities are often portrayed as having an anger problem, rather than having a problem which makes them angry, two very different things.

Contrary to common belief, many evangelical churches are very enthusiastic about diversity, and will even go out of their way to include and elevate minorities when possible. This does not describe all churches, but it is not as uncommon of a phenomenon as one might think in American evangelicalism, at least in my experience. And for this, these churches should be commended. They rightly recognize the importance of having diverse people of color and minorities participate in the life of the church.

But while evangelical churches and leaders may enthusiastically invite people of color to the table, they are rather less enthusiastic when that person expresses an opinion that is angry or critical. The response in such situations is often shock, quickly followed by a conspicuous unwillingness to consider that their anger might actually be justified. And nowhere was this tendency on clearer display than last year, in a situation that transpired with Rick Warren of Saddleback. In a tongue in cheek posting on the Saddleback Facebook page, Pastor Warren posted a picture from China's Cultural Revolution: a passionate comrade of the Red Guard smiling broadly, arm co*cked at a jaunty angle. Warren's point was to poke fun at his own staff, and the attitudes they should/do have when they come to work. To be fair, it is a comical sort of picture, and Pastor Warren's intent was hardly malicious.

But the reception from Asians, especially from the Chinese community, was swift and sharp. Multiple leaders spoke out about the use of this picture, and asked for it to be taken down. But Pastor Warren and other leaders were clearly bewildered. They defended the use of the photo by stressing that it was just a joke, and refused to remove it, nor issue any sort of an apology. Countless others echoed this perspective via social media and comments boards, blasting critics for making such a big deal out of nothing, or even accusing them of race-baiting. Their message was clear: the outrage was silly and unjustified, the unwarranted rantings of "angry Asian people".

Their message was clear: the outrage was silly and unjustified, the unwarranted rantings of "angry Asian people".

What these leaders completely failed to recognize was that the impassioned response of Asians was not pathological, but historical. The Cultural Revolution of Communist China may mean little to nothing to most Americans, but to people from China, it was a period of immense upheaval and trauma. Some historians estimate that as many as 1.5 MILLION people died during the Cultural Revolution, either as a result of direct action by the government or else by the policies they enacted. Even more sent to prison camps, including countless Christians (Christianity having been outlawed by the communist regime). And the Red Guard, the group which the picture portrays, were a paramilitary gang that were guilty of heinous atrocities so terrible that they even haunted those who perpetrated them.

In this light, perhaps you can begin to understand why this was so upsetting to the Chinese Christian community, for a respected American evangelical to utilize such an upsetting image for lolz, and worse, to blithely dismiss the Asian response as illegitimate. Using that picture is not entirely unlike someone posting a picture of a cheery SS officer from Nazi Germany, hand extended in a crisp open handed salute to the Führer – hardly proper fodder for comedy. For me, as an Asian-American evangelical, but also an admirer of Pastor Warren, this was a deeply discouraging moment.

But thank God, this is not the end of the story.

It took a while, but once Pastor Warren and other leaders were made aware of the historical context of the picture and its negative significance on Chinese Christians, they took it down and apologized for their insensitivity. An even more encouraging example was set at the Expontential West conference last year, when organizers assumed an encouraging posture of listening and learning after playing a video that featured dated Asian stereotypes. There was also Thom Rainier's outstanding apology on behalf of Lifeway Publishers for the "Rickshaw Rally" VBS curriculum, which was published before he even began his tenure there. So yes, this situation serves as an example of how the privileged can make uninformed and hurtful assumptions about the reasons for anger in minority communities. But it is also an example of how those same people were willing to listen and learn, and how we are all so much better and stronger as a result.

And so encouraged by this, this is my request to evangelical leaders:

First, thank you for the opportunity to participate more deeply in the life of the church. Your willingness and leadership to that end has not gone unrecognized, at least by me. But please understand that inviting minorities into leadership of the church means that you will also have to understand their stories, as well as their pain. Anything less is just tokenism. And while the anger that people of color and other minorities bring with them may be shocking to you, it is not without very real cause. We are not angry people as much as we are angered people, and there is a crucial difference between the two. Please, do not dismiss our realities just because you do not share them. Instead, take a moment to listen, really listen, and try to understand where we are coming from. You may realize that we have more reason for grief than you thought.

To be clear, we do not enjoy this anger, nor do we want to remain angry in perpetuity. In fact, we want you to be angry with us, and to work to furiously tear down all principalities and systems that do not reflect God's character and His Kingdom. We are family in Christ, and love you.

But know this: until we see that justice done, we will remain "Angry ____ People".

The first time I read it, I was convinced someone had been following me around. If I kept a journal, I would have been sure they were reading it. As it was, I was certain someone had opened a door inside my mind, walked into the darkest places, and written it all down in this book.

The book was Richard Rohr and Andreas Ebert’s The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective. (It’s pronounced any-a-gram.) I had been flipping through it, but quickly realized this wasn’t a book to flip through. Intrigued and scared, I wasn’t quite sure what it was.

The Enneagram is an ancient personality typology, understanding people through the lens of their passions and their temptations. The fear came from a desire to turn a blind eye to the worst parts of me. I was pretty familiar with the Myers-Briggs test at that point, and appreciated learning about my type and how I interacted with others. I knew the color of my parachute, had found my strengths, and figured out who moved my cheese. In other words, I was conversant in personality types and leadership literature. But self-awareness, I was learning, only goes so far when you just celebrate your strengths.

At the recommendation of a friend, I took the Enneagram online assessment, which categorizes each person as a number, one through nine. I was a three. It sounded like a nice number—number of persons in the Trinity, number of gifts from the wise men, the number of things that should be in a list. There’s even a Latin saying—omne trium perfectum—that means “everything that comes in threes is perfect.”

Turns out, the Latins never heard of the Enneagram.

If it sounds a little mystical at first, that’s because the roots of the Enneagram stretch back to the fourth century —or so authors Rohr and Ebert posit. Its exact origins are contested, but by many accounts, the idea of having nine types (“Enneagram” means “nine-pointed shape”) derives from Evagrius Ponticus’s eight deadly thoughts and the central thought he called “love of self.” Ponticus was a Christian monk and ascetic, a Roman citizen in the late 4th century who lived in a monastic community outside of Alexandria many years of his life.

During his tenure in Alexandria, Ponticus developed a list of deadly thoughts: vainglory, anger, greed, gluttony, sloth, sorrow, pride, and lust, to which he added “love of self” as the first thought of all. This list provided the blueprint for what were to become the Seven Deadly Sins of the Catholic Church, which Pope Gregory I would assemble from this list some 200 years later.

This is where the Enneagram differs from all the other strengths-oriented personality indicators out there. The fact that it is rooted in a fundamentally dark view of humanity—that we are sinning people who are inclined to sin in specific ways—isn’t exactly a cheerful view.

Some people object to the Enneagram on these grounds; other Christians take issue with Ponticus’s spirituality (he was what you might call a mystic). But in my experience, it has been one of the most helpful spiritual tools I have ever come across. It also seems to be having a bit of a renaissance among Christians right now, which I think can be traced to a growing desire for self-awareness that goes beyond the familiarity of the Myers-Briggs or the color of our parachutes. There are also several voices in the Christian community—Richard Rohr among them—whose research and writing has brought new life to the Enneagram.

The types all correspond with a specific need or temptation. The two, for example, has the need to be needed—they will make themselves indispensible to others and worry they are not valuable when they are unwanted. The eight has the need to oppose whatever threatens to control them or whatever forces of injustice they perceive. The three—my type—lives under the need to succeed. We are driven by a fear of being worthless, and so we will tap-dance our way through life in order to receive the accolades we so deeply desire.

There are upsides to the Enneagram, too—it’s not all doom and gloom. The twos, for example, are often the most helpful people you come across, willing to drop anything to help you out. The eights are the people you want on your side when you are working against evil or exposing abuse. And we threes will work tirelessly to accomplish whatever goal is set before us.

But the real power in the Enneagram lies in its ability to expose the dark underbelly of every person—their sin pattern. This may have to do with why the Enneagram has not been as well known as other personality typologies, because who really wants to dive deeply into their worst habits? This is certainly why I wanted to close the book when I started reading about the threes. It was so spot-on about the things I am ashamed about—my inclination toward deception, my deep desire that people think well of me, my belief that success and not my identity in Christ defines me—that reading this felt like ripping off a mask I had been wearing for years.

It was like coming into the light. In fact, it was a sort of step into the light. “Take no part in the unfruitful words of darkness, but instead expose them,” Paul writes in Ephesians 5. “For it is shameful even to mention what such people do secretly; but everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light. Therefore it says, ‘Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.’”

This is how God brings us into the light—not in comfort but in pain, not in ease but in struggling. When we toss words like “raw” and “broken” around in the Christian community, this is what we mean—this is the specific, concrete fact of what it means to be broken: Drawn toward deception, vanity, and pride. Other people will have other issues, but in knowing mine, I can be better equipped to pray, to confide in trusted friends, to read the truths of Scripture.

Every night at 9:40 p.m. I get an email from the Enneagram Institute. A couple days ago, this popped up on my phone as I was getting ready for bed:

Each type unconsciously tends to “train others” to see them in a certain way. Average Threes can be emotionally detached, chameleonic, and in need of credit. How do you want others to see you?

It wasn’t cheerful bedtime stuff, but it was the truth. And it gave me the chance, as these things do, to be grateful for a chance to know the truth about myself. Because only once we know the truth are we really ever in the light.

When Lou Huesmann came to Grace Long Beach 24 years ago, the historic church had known the heights of success and the challenges of decline. Some were expecting Huesmann to preach the church back to its former glory. Instead, God began to transform the church's definition of success as well as Huesmann's vision for pastoral ministry. Leadership Journal's editors spoke with Huesmann about how embracing the full narrative of Scripture convinced him to change his ministry scorecard. (To watch a video of Huesmann discussing this topic, click here.)

Why did you become a pastor?

My dream for ministry was pretty simple. I just wanted to help people. In my own life, I had experienced the reality of Christ through a church. I went from microbiology to ministry because I wanted to bring something to people that would have a lasting impact on their lives.

How did seminary equip you to do that?

It equipped me to understand the text of Scripture so I could preach it. At the time I went to seminary, the emphasis was on preaching. In fact, it was all about preaching. The assumption was that if you preach well and you have confidence in God's Word, it would change everyone's life. Good preaching could take care of everything.

You sound unconvinced.

At that time there was a tremendous dualism. Culture was viewed with suspicion. You preach the Word to help Christians be more Christian, not to help them engage the culture. A pastor's job was to work hard at understanding the Scripture, not to work hard at understanding the culture or understanding what people are doing in the world.

So what did your ministry look like early on?

I wanted to see people's lives changed, and early on I understood that to mean getting more people involved in Bible studies and the church. Looking back, I see that it was a very narrow and somewhat naive view.

Narrow in what way?

There is a narrative of success in American churches that celebrates size and programs, budgets and buildings. We celebrate what we value: how many people are coming? How big is the building? These things may not be spoken, but that is the scorecard.

That puts immense pressure on pastors to keep things at church growing. It also puts tremendous internal focus on sustaining the church. I was never taught in my training to focus on those things, but it didn't take me very long to pick up the message that church activity was the scorecard. So my own ministry became about getting people involved in the church to grow it.

Was that true when you came to Grace Long Beach?

When I came here in 1990, this church was almost 80 years old. It had a giant footprint, and a historic presence in Long Beach. What was communicated to me was that if I preach well, then I will fill up this building, and we will all feel successful again.

I felt this great tension in preaching. Why was I doing it? To prove that I could keep the legacy of this church going? So that people would celebrate me as a hero? Was preaching how to make the church great, or my name great? I had to sort through a lot of motives and it didn't happen instantaneously. A lot of these motives can be masked as spiritual. We can convince ourselves and others that we're doing it for Jesus, when the reality is we are self-serving. It's very possible for us to deceive ourselves.

So the temptation is to build our kingdom rather than God's?

Right. But that began changing for me when I started facing the reality of what God was doing in the world. As I read the Scripture, I don't see where God is concerned with church buildings or even the size of a congregation. I see God wanting to do something in the world. That began to shift my thinking and the way that I see people.

We celebrate what we value: how many people are coming? How big is the building? That is the scorecard.

Were they just here to serve the church? Maybe my vision, my agenda for what we were to be about, was too narrow. I realized I was taking my scorecard and imposing it on these people. I was telling them that what you do for the church really matters, but not what you're doing the other six days of the week. Seeing God's larger work in the world brought clarity to me. We began saying to people, "Yes, it really does matter what you're doing the other six days of the week. In fact, you're responsible to step into that work, embrace it, and see it in light of the larger trajectory of what God is doing in the world."

That message became transformative around here. It also allowed me to release people to what God was calling them to be about rather than trying to get them to make church the highest priorty in their lives.

What triggered this shift in perspective for you?

It was born out of reading the Scriptures narratively. Some talk about the narrative having four chapters: creation, fall, redemption, and restoration. As I began to see this grand narrative I realized that where you start really affects where you end up, and where you end up really affects the way that you live today. That's what began to transform my ministry. I began to see how this narrative shapes the way I live, the way that I see the world, and the way I pastor other people to see the world.

In the church we began to talk a lot about the narrative of Scripture. We wanted everyone to see the basic story, to see that this narrative begins in creation, it ends in new creation, and there's something that God wants to do in that middle that involves us. We are to be signposts that reveal what the world will be like when God is finally in charge. I tell them we're like Costco food samples. Through us others get a little taste of the new creation so that they'll want more.

I want them to imagine engaging their vocations, their parenting, and their marriages as signposts for the new creation. As people encounter us, they should get a sample, a taste, of something different—of a world that they really long for that they didn't think was possible.

How did this call to be "signposts" change your ministry scorecard?

How do you define success now?

It's a more difficult scorecard to measure. What makes the old scorecard so appealing is that it's very tangible and concrete. You can objectify buildings and budgets. You can give reports to your board on those things, and they can give you a raise. This new scorecard is really in the hands of the Spirit. You have to trust God to be the one who gives the final score.

Even more difficult was how this new scorecard challenged me personally. When you release the scorecard of the externals, the tangible ministry assets, there is a cost. There are going to be people who want you to build the giant program, the huge edifice. I think it's because Christians often feel insecure in the culture. They feel like a minority that lacks credibility, so we feel the need to show the culture we can be successful too. We can match the culture in crowds and buildings, piece for piece, and feel good about ourselves.

Jesus never called us to do that. In fact, he calls us to the place of weakness. By letting go of that old scorecard, I had to ask myself, "Am I willing to face anonymity? Am I willing to never have a larger building? Am I okay with not being noticed? Could I give my life away to bring life to others, so that they in turn could bring life to others?"

That's my ambition now. That's what changed for me. It's not less ambition than before, but a redirected ambition.

How did all this change your preaching?

I began preaching about vocational stewardship—the idea that God calls us to our work and cares about what we are doing the other six days of the week. I had people say to me, "I've never heard anybody talk about work." Usually the only thing affirmed about work is that it allows people to give money to the church, or that it allows them to provide for their families. But that's it.

We've tried to affirm work as part of God's calling for us in the world, and we try to tell stories that highlight how people see God in their vocation. Again, what you celebrate is what you value. We believe that God is active outside the church and in people's vocations. That message, told repeatedly over time, begins to shape the culture of the church.

If you're emphasizing what God is doing outside the church and in people's vocations, does that mean deemphasizing what's happening inside the church?

Yes. One way Grace Long Beach is helping people see God the other six days of the week is by not making the church the focus of attention. We purposely do not try to schedule people's lives around the church. We're in Southern California and people are busy. We've got a lot of young people here, young families, people in professional vocations. If we are continually creating a schedule and telling them, "We want you to come to this church event," then what we're really saying is that what's happening in the church building is more important than what God may be calling you to do outside it."

Then what is the purpose of church?

The church is to be a community that gathers together once a week to celebrate what's happened the other six days of the week. People know that if they come here on a Sunday, their friends will be here. They can connect with them. They can find out what's going on in their lives and work. They can share their lives together.

Letting go of that old scorecard, I had to ask myself, 'Am I willing to face anonymity?'

I believe that in sharing our lives together, the Spirit of God can show up in those conversations, and we can be encouraged. We can grow. We can be challenged. It's not just the pulpit where that is happening. We must have a high view of the priesthood of believers and recognize that the church is not the center of everything as many pastors would like to believe.

When we understanding the bigger gospel, this bigger narrative that begins at creation and ends at new creation, we see that the church is not the hub of the narrative. The hub is Jesus. It is Jesus that we orbit around as we engage our vocation, when we parent, when we interact with neighbors. And it's still about Jesus when we gather on Sundays. The community gathers to refuel and ask, "What does a Jesus-shaped life look like in this place, in this community, at this time?"

That's what has changed for us. The church plays an important role, but it's a resourcing role. It's the role of giving one another life and encouragement to stay centered on Jesus during the other six days of the week in all that we do.

Paul speaks about leaders equipping the saints in Ephesians 4. Is that what you mean by the church having a resourcing role?

Yes, but resourcing also means giving up control as a pastor. One of the things I had to come to grips with was the fact that I am not an authority on everything. Christ has called people at Grace Long Beach to all kinds of work that I know nothing about, so how could I equip them? I discovered I don't have to know all about the medical profession to speak with medical professionals. I just have to be comfortable releasing them, giving them the freedom to serve Christ there. I have to affirm what he's called them to. They know medicine far better than I do, but what I can do is challenge them to live a life, including their vocation, that orbits around Jesus.

I try to become conversant in different fields, but I also became comfortable with my limitations. If we are truly a community, then I need to release them to learn from each other and figure out the questions that apply to their own vocations. The leader's role is to get the educators together to talk about education, and the medical professionals together to talk about medicine. I needed to be willing to let that happen. I don't get any credit for it. I don't know what's going on. There's no focus on me. They may not even need me anymore because the Spirit of God is at work in their lives and they are trying to figure out how to orbit around Jesus in their vocations without me.

It's similar to parenting. Either you let your kids discover things on their own at some point or you hover around them and you smother them. Problems occur when there is no differentiation between the child and the parent. The same is true between a pastor and the people. Once I understood my calling, I could play my role and let them be who they are called to be. I didn't need them to become ministers, and I didn't have to know everything about each of their vocations. Out of that differentiating comes flourishing.

That's very different than ministry models that place the church at the center of life and focus on what people are doing in the church.

We cheer what a person is called to do outside the church. When someone starts a new business, or takes a risk, or tries something new, we're going to be interested in what they're doing, and we're going to celebrate it. I think this is why people are thriving here. They realize that we love what they are doing. We may not understand it all. I certainly don't understand all the artists who are here. They're doing some stuff that's great, but I don't get it. They love explaining it to me.

The people of Grace Long Beach know that I'm for them and I love to learn from them. I'm always asking, "Tell me about your calling. Tell me about what you're doing." They are teaching me something. I give them something, they give me something. There's mutuality and it's beautiful.

The missional church movement has been talking about engaging in evangelism seven days a week outside the church. How is what you're talking about different?

I know there are a lot of churches with signs posted as you leave that say, "You are now entering the mission field." There's an emphasis on evangelism out in the community. We certainly want people sharing the gospel Monday through Saturday, but a lot of people have a church background that told them the highest form of ministry is evangelism. So when you start talking about vocation, it's only natural for them to assume what we mean is telling your coworkers about Jesus. They think vocation is only intended to be a platform for evangelism.

What we've been trying to help people see is that it's more than just evangelism. It is about embracing the goodness of work. Work is inherently good because God is the one who has called us to it. It doesn't become more good if you use it to evangelize people. Again, we talk about being a signpost, about bearing witness to the reality of God. As we forgive, as we show mercy, as we are patient, as we are not anxious, we reveal to people what God is like. Could those conversations lead someone to faith in Jesus? Absolutely! But that's not the only scorecard we're using as we talk about vocation.

How do you respond to people who think vocational discipleship is just another passing trend in ministry?

There's always a new bandwagon. The reason vocational stewardship is not a passing fad is because it comes out of Genesis 1 and 2. You see that it's deeply rooted in what it means to be made in the image of God. That is not a fad. It is theologically robust to call people to be image bearers of God in their work. That means doing our work in reference to God, by understanding his calling on our lives, by being a steward of our work, and asking questions of our work in light of God's kingdom—ethical questions.

All of these things should be part of this conversation, and they are permanent and lasting issues. They will endure because they're firmly rooted in the text of Scripture.

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

When you're Max Lucado, everyone asks you to pray. At church. At parties. At sporting events and birthdays and reunions and open houses. If you lead a church, you know the feeling. Most people think of prayer as a solitary act, but for you, it's much more. It involves standing before others and addressing God on their behalf. It means giving voice to the needs and desires of an entire community. In his latest book, Before Amen (Nelson) Lucado shares his thoughts on the "power of a simple prayer." We wanted to know what he's learned about praying in public and leading others in prayer.

What does a good prayer do?

A prayer is simply an honest conversation with God. A good prayer creates a sense of communion between the one who prays and the One who hears the prayer. At our core we're afraid of being left alone. Ever since Adam and Eve hid in the bush, we've all battled with this sense of distance between us and God. So a good prayer reestablishes a sense of communion with God. We know we're not alone.

In your latest book, you confess to being a "prayer wimp." How can you acknowledge shortcomings in this area without losing credibility in the eyes of the people you lead?

People often assume that all church leaders have really solid prayer lives. So it's encouraging any time leaders can acknowledge they struggle in this area. And certainly I do.

Some days are very busy. I'm in the middle of one right now. I got in early this morning from a trip that was delayed. I had trouble getting out of bed on time. Then I remembered my daughter was using my car, and I had to arrange for somebody to bring me to the office. I got off to a rocky start. I'd love to say I get up early each day and have a good, long prayer time. But I don't. And on the days that I don't, that's okay.

But it's a balancing act. While I admit that I'm a prayer wimp, I also say I'm a recovering one. I'm making progress. We leaders can communicate that we are struggling in areas of our life but we're working on them too. We don't want to pull the church down into our failures. What is healthy for a church, for a group, is for the leader to say, "Yes, I struggle with this too. Here's what I've learned."

How do you pray publicly in a way that's helpful to listeners? Does praying in public change the way you pray?

Yes, it does. To pray on behalf of others is a huge privilege we have as pastors. What an honor to stand before them in God's name and ask God to bless and encourage and strengthen his people. When we get to heaven, we may find that was the best part of everything we ever did.

To pray on behalf of others is a huge privilege. When we get to heaven, we may find that was the best thing we ever did.

It also gives us the chance to model sincere prayer. Jesus was really hard on those religious leaders who made theater out of their prayers. We have an opportunity to model honest, heartfelt prayer. May the Lord deliver us from using those prayers as a time to showcase our own spirituality.

Every weekend I say, "Lord, forgive the one who speaks. His sins are many." I do that genuinely. And through the years, people have said, "The fact that you're willing to acknowledge that before you preach makes me more willing to listen as you preach."

We all have times when we're not feeling very spiritual or we're downright discouraged. What's the appropriate way to pray for others when you're in that place?

I became a Christian when I was in college, and I began attending church. I was so surprised when the minister began a sermon one day by praying, "Lord, I don't feel very religious today. It's been a hard week. But if you can use me to encourage this church, I'd really appreciate it." That was profound for me to hear as a young man. I didn't know that was permitted.

No preacher feels strong and righteous every Sunday. For that pastor to acknowledge that endeared him to me. And I believe it was the appropriate way for him to handle his emotions. I've done that a few times over the years.

To be honest, I love preaching. And so when I stand up to preach, I'm usually pretty enthused, because of all the parts of church leadership, that's the part I like the most. But there have been times when I've said, "Lord, you've got to help me today, for whatever reason, I'm not firing on all cylinders."

Are there common mistakes you see pastors making with public prayer?

It's always a mistake to try to impress people with your knowledge or your eloquence in prayer. I just don't see that there's ever a time to use prayer for self-promotion. And people have a keen sense for hypocrisy from a church leader. They sniff it out. It really discredits a minister when he or she uses prayer, of all things, as a time to display their spirituality.

What we can do is model the earnestness of prayer, the genuine importance of prayer. When prayer is honest and genuine, it is worth a hundred sermons on prayer. Prayer doesn't need to be long, but it needs to be sincere.

Can prayer serve a similar function as preaching? To not only communicate with God but also to convey something about him?

Many of the psalms declare the characteristics of God. They declare his holiness, faithfulness, and recount how he led the children of Israel out of captivity. So yes, there is a place for that in prayer.

We have a leader in our church who, when he prays, often restates the characteristics of God. At first I reacted against that: Why is he saying, "God, you are faithful. God, you are good. God, you are kind."? Just get to the requests. But now I think he's onto something. We need to be reminded of God's characteristics. "Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed by thy name," Jesus taught us to pray. What we're doing there is we're declaring. Our prayer isn't making God more hallowed or more holy. We're just declaring that for our own hearts, and I think we're declaring that in the presence of the devil. The devil needs to know that we believe God is holy, and that we're aligning ourselves with him. So I think there is a time to declare the attributes of God in prayer.

We've all been part of a service where prayer seems to galvanize people and unite them. What role does prayer play in the formation of the church community?

We've seen this dynamic in our own congregation. To experience the joy of answered prayer is a wonderful bonding experience for the church. We've seen the power of prayer as we've gone into a major initiative.

Right now we're trying to discern if it's time for us to do some important capital improvements. Our elders have already spent 40 days in prayer, and now we're collecting data on what it's going to cost. We'll take that to the church and say, now you pray about it for 40 days. Then we'll come together and make a decision. Couching major initiatives in prayer is essential. When the church is praying about its decisions, it teaches individuals to pray about their personal decisions as well.

I'm guessing in most contexts when it's time to pray, people turn to you. That's a privilege. Is it also an annoyance?

It really is a privilege. It happened just a couple weeks ago at an open house in our neighborhood. I went more as a neighbor than anything else. But the owner of the house called everybody together and said, "Hey, thanks for coming to look at our new house. We're happy to be here. And, hey, there's Max. Max, will you come up and pray for us?" I saw it as a neat opportunity.

As ministers we need to be grateful for those opportunities. We should be grateful that anybody would invite us to pray. You can't resent that. Even in our increasingly secular society, people want to pray. They want to talk to God. They have something within them that longs to connect with their creator, however they define that. So this is a great privilege for us as ministers to be called upon to pray and to genuinely lead people into the presence of God. Let's seize every opportunity that comes our way.

There was a time when I would go to the hospital and was uncomfortable asking a stranger, "Would you like me to pray for you?" But now I feel no hesitation. Every person wants to be prayed for. Even if they don't ask you to pray for them, if they're in a hospital bed, they need strength. And that's a great opportunity.

Many times new believers are hesitant to pray. How can we get new believers to start praying?

Well, that's really the target audience of this book, Before Amen. It's for people who struggle to pray, because I do think people are afraid that they will mis-pray, that they won't have the right words for prayer, or they'll say something wrong. We can help erase all those fears for people. We do them a wonderful favor just by reminding them of what our Lord Jesus taught us, and that is when you pray just say, "Father in heaven, hallowed be thy name."

We begin by talking to God as our heavenly father. And there is great power in remembering that God wants to be known as a father. And good fathers do not turn their children away. Just advancing that simple truth takes someone miles in understanding prayer.

Are there any prayers that you have prayed publicly that you look back on and say, "Oh man, that was a bad prayer"?

There have been times I've prayed publicly and very passionately, and later that day I think, I got carried away in that prayer, didn't I?

After each sermon we invite people to come forward for prayer. Last weekend we had a lot of people come forward, and they filled the aisles. I prayed one of those shaking-my-fist-at-heaven type prayers. I was pleading with the Lord, "Please bless these people. Heal these people!" It was a very passionate prayer.

Later in the day I worried that I'd gotten carried away. But then I checked myself and said, no, there's a place for it. It's okay to have earnest prayers, fiery prayers, fervent prayers. Those are well heard in heaven.

My role as one of the ministers in our church is to offer fervent, public prayers to God. Better to come across as appearing overly dramatic if you're sincere than to come across appearing hypocritical if you're not.

Sometimes I'll kneel in front of the church. When people come forward for prayer, I'll kneel down with them, because I don't know what else to do sometimes.

People come to church with so many problems, and this is such a crazy thing we say. "Bring your problems to God, and he'll help you." That's a huge thing we're saying. So I have to say, "God, you got to do your part now. I've told them to come and talk to you."

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The bells rang, signaling that it was time to arise and pray. It was 3 a.m. I was in the middle of England staying with a monastic community for a conference on leading organizations in prayerful community.

As I read the conference literature months in advance, the idea of 3 a.m. prayer seemed exciting, even romantic. Now it was different. The air was piercing, the kind of cold you only find in heavy stone buildings. It was the middle of the night, and the idea of leaving my comforter for the 200-yard walk in driving wind and rain to the chapel, another stone building lacking central heat, seemed much less appealing.

Like the religious I stayed with that cold British weekend, the early church was also a community that found their identity in and through prayer. As Luke describes it in Acts, "They all joined together constantly in prayer."

Today such prayer is harder to find on the church landscape. I am not saying that churches don't pray. They do. But for many of us, prayer is another activity we do alongside all of our other pursuits, rather than being primary and defining all other ministry components. The difference is seismic.

We no longer live in agrarian societies that lend themselves to rhythms of harvest and fallow, times of hard work and times of rest, times of ministry and times of prayer. Our culture breeds on-the-fly spirituality. We give Jesus a few minutes as we're on our way to something else.

Today we can find churches known for strong teaching or dynamic worship or social justice or evangelism. With a few exceptions, church leaders do not define themselves by the apostolic standard of the primacy of prayer and the Word. It was Jonathan Edwards who said, "There is no way that Christians, in a private capacity, can do so much to promote the work of God and advance the kingdom of Christ as by prayer." Most of us tend to nod our approval of that, and then charge full speed into our next plan, project, or ministry passion.

Here's the rub. The church is running out of effective options created in the power of its own volition, charisma, and talents. Our energetically constructed plans become progressively less effective with each successive generation. We are in need of something more powerful than slicker services, ever more radical missional pursuits, or more culturally savvy ways to share the gospel. For those early apostles after the crucifixion and ascension of Jesus returning to Jerusalem to regroup, their very first act was to pray (Acts 1:14). Having come to the end of themselves, they prayed. That was the totality of their strategic plan. Today we need leaders who follow that path.

Where to Begin?

This begins with the leaders' example. An organization rarely prays more than its leaders do. This is something I learned while working for the evangelistic youth organization Young Life. Jim Rayburn, the organization's founder, was a man renowned for his prayer life and who in the 1950s prayed, "Lord, give us the teenagers that we may lead them to thee." It was a prayer God has faithfully answered for over six decades.

An organization rarely prays more than its leaders do.

In the summer of 1997, while working for Young Life, I was assigned to head a work crew at Malibu, a camp of unmatched grandeur and ethereal beauty located in British Columbia's Princess Louisa Inlet. There I met a man who had the privilege of meeting Rayburn decades before. As a young intern, he had been asked to pick Young Life's founder up at the train station and transport him to another of the group's youth camps.

Excited to spend a couple uninterrupted hours unpacking the brain of this modern missionary, he jumped at the chance. The man told me what happened immediately after collecting Rayburn from the train platform had shaped his understanding of being a prayerful leader ever since. Within five minutes of being in the car, Jim suggested that they begin to pray for the teens coming to that week's camping event. Two hours later, as the car pulled into the camp, Jim was still praying. When the car stopped, Rayburn thanked the man for the ride and got out.

What I took away from my years at Young Life was that an organization will never go further than its prayers. Leading prayerful community begins with its leaders' commitment to personal prayer and ripples out from there.

Young Life was still modeling this commitment to prayer when I worked for the organization in the nineties. As its missional employees, we were required to take one full day (with pay) per month away from the office and dedicate it to solitude and prayer. In this way Young Life leadership was making a profound statement that they valued prayer as much as ministry production. Regular all-staff prayer gatherings, required days of prayerful reflection, and staff training on prayer are just a few ways you can model your organization's commitment to creating a balance between a prayer-based and a production-based model.

Prayer as Story

Prayer based organizations make prayer visible and accessible. One of the easiest ways to do this is by framing prayer as story. This is because prayer has a tendency to be more nebulous and harder to measure than many of the other important callings the church has.

When a faith-based mercy organization reports the number of wounds they have bandaged or homes built, its mission is much more easily understood. And when the missionary shares how, through your support, Joaquin from El Salvador was able to get a new prosthetic leg, there is a deep emotional connection.

Leaders who are effective at leading prayerful community understand that every prayer is also attached to a story. They tell the stories behind the prayers they pray and regularly report how God has responded. This can be done regularly during weekly service times, in newsletters, in video reports from the field, or at staff gatherings.

Prayerful leaders invite the community to be part of something larger than themselves and encourage the entire organization to press on in prayer by celebrating the victories and bonding together in difficulties. In this way, prayer transitions from being something distant from the community to becoming the very storyline of its existence.

Create Common Cause

Prayerful communities understand what they are praying for and why. Few things ignite prayerful community like common cause. The better a people understand what they are praying for, the more likely they are to become part of that story. The key is communication.

For the last few years, I have been leading a social-media-based prayer community called "Praying for Your Elephant." The elephant metaphor is meant to represent those prayers that, if answered, would be game-changers. One of the things I challenge the community with is to be strategic and specific with their prayer requests. By imploring the members to create a list of 100 petitions, I help them frame their prayer life into something more concrete.

This small exercise has led to the most profound prayer experiences I have ever been part of. This is because we often fail to recognize how often and elaborately God answers prayer. Seeing someone post their request and then hours, days, or even months later report on how God responded not only blesses the entire community, but acts as a spiritual catalyst encouraging others to also pray. Nothing inspires prayer like answered prayer.

Make Prayer Eventful

One way to identify an organization's priorities is to look at its calendar. This is because we tend to do what we believe in. If prayer is going to transition from the sidelines to the forefront, it will have to become concrete and tangible.

One of the simplest ways to accomplish this with your core team is to plan your spiritual calendar before you plan the rest of your organizational year. Deciding what days you will fast, pray, or gather for larger prayer-centered events before developing the rest of your annual events is one of the best ways to begin building a community defined by prayer.

My frigid experience in England taught me a great lesson about leading communities defined by prayer. Prayer is not always easy. It would take much more than a fleeting and romantic desire to actually equip my church to pray like the revivalist of old. Prayer, game changing prayer, would take not only devotion, but deep desire and discipline. Sometimes, as I found, the first step in this direction is just being willing to get out of bed.

Adam Stadtmiller is pastor of LaJolla Christian Fellowship in LaJolla, California.

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

My wife and I never felt "called" to be foster parents, at least not the way people usually describe these things. No eureka moment or voice from above. School, work, and relationships had exposed us to the need (about 400,000 children in the U.S. foster care system, roughly 100,000 of them are waiting to be adopted). Scripture told us this is the sort of thing Christians do (Deut. 24:17-22; James 1:27). So when we realized we were able, we decided we should be willing. Then we waited.

In fact, we waited for nearly a decade. Why?

We waited because we knew we couldn't do it alone. We were acquainted with the demands of fostering, and we knew we couldn't do it—not well at least—without a lot of help. Every child needs a community of nurture, support, and discipline that extends beyond their immediate family. How much more does that apply to children who have experienced the trauma of being removed from their home for their own protection? Unfortunately the church we attended seemed unwilling to help us shoulder so great a responsibility. So we waited, stranded between desire and ability.

Mission Made Impossible

Too often the story ends here. We read Scripture, we desire to obey, but we have no idea how. So we throw up our hands in exasperation and exclaim, "This stuff is impossible! I can't love that enemy. I can't minister to these prisoners. I can't take widows or orphans into my home." Perhaps we are even tempted to think that these commands were never meant to be obeyed.

Think, for example, how many sermons spend the first 10 minutes explaining what Christ taught, and the next 15 reassuring the congregation it doesn't apply to them? "Now we've got to use moderation and common sense here … obviously, this will look different for everyone … what really matters is if your heart is right."

Often we spend so much time on why Scripture's commands don't apply to us as individuals that we don't consider new Spirit-inspired ways of obeying together.

The trouble isn't with Scripture's commands or Christ's teachings. The trouble is with us. Having drunk our culture's individualism to the dregs, it rarely occurs to us that there is any way of obeying Scripture other than alone. And by ourselves Scripture really is impossible to obey.

Obeying Together

Thank goodness, then, that we were never meant to obey all by ourselves. The Scriptures—the histories, the songs, the prophecies, and the letters that make them up—were written for communities. They were read in communities and they were meant to be lived out in communities (Mark 10:29-30). This is why we pray to "Our Father who art in heaven." Not my father. And we beseech him for "our daily bread."

Christianity is an adventure far too big to complete alone. In order to faithfully and consistently follow Christ we need the emotional, material, and spiritual support of a community much larger than our biological family; we need the church. Only there do we find the Spirit-inspired imagination to live out Christ's directions together.

That's how it was with us. Thankfully, in time we found ourselves surrounded by Christians who were willing to share the responsibility of children with us, and so we began taking in foster children. One was eight-year-old Adrian. Our brothers and sisters in Christ were his aunts, uncles, grandmas, and grandpas. They played with him, prayed with him, disciplined him, and discipled him. They took him fishing and helped him with homework. Most of all they made a point to be present in our home and at our table.

My wife and I know we're not saints. We are imperfect people who rely heavily on the body of Christ.

We needed every ounce of the help we got. Adrian was 300 pounds of anger, fear, and defiance packed into a 45-pound package. Frankly, caring for him alone would have exceeded our mental, emotional, and physical capabilities. Without help I have no doubt we would have given up on the foster care system. Worse still—I wince at writing this—we would have given up on Adrian.

We simply couldn't have done it alone, not in a way that was either healthy or sustainable. But in Christian community we gained a reservoir of resources that provided us the endurance to prove to this child what he had learned not to believe: that there is a love that will not give up on him.

Adopting Together

Then, after nearly a year with us, Adrian's biological mom unexpectedly decided to rescind her custody rights. Suddenly Adrian and four of his siblings needed a permanent home. Though this wasn't what we planned, we couldn't imagine not adopting Adrian. But what about his four siblings? We never imagined having that many kids—just the one was plenty. Still, how could we love this child without loving his siblings as well? How could we provide him security while leaving his brother and sisters in the wind? Once again, desire and ability were at odds.

We gathered our closest Christian friends, those who had already helped us so much with Adrian, and asked if they would share this also. "Would you adopt these children with us?" They said yes, and they promised they would stand by us no matter what came. Because of that promise, we could promise our children that we would stick with them no matter their trials or troubles.

We also stood in front of our larger church body and asked for help. The vast majority were wonderfully supportive. They encouraged us to do it, and they provided tremendous help. But others were not so enthusiastic. Some, though not to our faces, said it was irresponsible. "Nothing personal, but you can't parent these five kids well. That's more than anyone can handle." On the other end of the spectrum, some said we were saints for even considering it.

We knew better. We knew that adopting these children was not impossible or irresponsible. But neither was it especially heroic. It was none of these things because we weren't doing it alone. When we obey together we happily resign the mythical ideals of the saint, the hero, the exceptional individual, and in their place we insert the living, breathing body of Christ.

You see, in the body of Christ it was possible for us to do what we felt called to do, indeed what Scripture called us to do, but what we were utterly helpless to do by ourselves. The community called church made it possible for us to obey.

Raising Christians Together

With tremendous gratitude I can report these Christians have been true to their word. I would like to celebrate everything they have done for us, but space allows only a few examples.

Because of their promise numerous friends have found housing nearby our family. They take it that seriously. One couple even moved across the street.

Because of their promise members of our church have spent hours helping our kids catch up in school—no small thing when you have four kids between 7th and 11th grade who previously completed schoolwork only when they were in the mood (which, as you might guess, was not often).

When it became clear that some of our children needed to be home-schooled—something we'd never imagined doing—this community of believers once again filled in where my wife and I fell short. A science teacher dissected animals; a math teacher explained algebra; musicians taught guitar and piano; one computer programmer taught the kids how to create a digital game of ping pong.

Most important of all, because of their promise, brothers and sisters have nurtured my children in the faith. I'm not embarrassed to say that my kids do not always sit by my wife and me at church. They sit beside other adults they admire. My children study how they worship; they watch them pray; they read Scripture from a shared Bible; and they spy the notes they take on the sermon. By watching and mimicking they learn how to be Christians.

Besides this, different ones have taken it upon themselves to meet weekly with our older children to disciple them. These times together—running an errand with some advice along the way or a weekly walk full of thoughtful questions—might seem like no big deal. In fact, they are an invaluable gift, particularly during the teenage years when parents—largely by virtue of being parents—are by definition not cool. How wonderful, how absolutely essential really, to have adults we trust, and that the kids admire, who reiterate the exact beliefs and values we teach at home.

No Saints Allowed

My wife and I know we're not saints. We are very imperfect parents who rely heavily on the body of Christ. And isn't that how it's supposed to work? We can't all adopt, but we are all called to care for orphans. We can't all take in the homeless, but we are all called to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and provide clothes and shelter for those who are cold. In the church this is possible because in the church everyone contributes to everyone else's obedience.

In other words, when I bring my kids to church they are everyone's problem, in the best possible sense. In the same way, when my friend Cameron brings someone who's been living on the streets of Knoxville, that person is everyone's concern. This is a relief for Cameron and an opportunity for me to participate in his obedience.

Here the glory shines where it should, on Christ and his church. Why should we claim the glory for ourselves? Alone we are helpless to obey. It is only in the Spirit-filled community called church that we are made able.

No, there are no saints here, not unless you include everyone.

Jason Johansen is co-pastor at Grace and Peace Church in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Not all small churches are created equal. Sure, some are small because the leadership doesn't have enough vision or skill to reach their community. But Karl Vaters believes that the pressure to raise numbers has kept many small churches from capitalizing on their inherent strengths. For 21 years, Karl has served as pastor of Cornerstone Christian Fellowship in Fountain Valley, California. In that time his church has grown—and shrunk—and finally settled into its mission to be the best small church it can be. He wrote a book, The Grasshopper Myth, to challenge small church leaders to think bigger by thinking smaller. Vaters spoke with BuildingChurchLeaders.com managing editor Laura Leonard about how small churches can find their niche and become the small church God has called them to be.

How did you come to see yourself as a "small church pastor"?

For the last 21 years, I have been at Cornerstone Christian Fellowship. When The Purpose Driven Church came out in the mid-90s, I had all of our leadership couples read it. It changed the way we did everything, and we grew from 75 to 200 or so. I realized we were at the 200 barrier, so I started reading, studying, and going to conferences to figure out how to break through it.

We made it to about 400 people, but after a year at that level, things really started going south, really quickly. We shrank so much it wasn't fun anymore, and I stopped counting—we were probably in the low 100s. I was in a bad place spiritually and emotionally. I followed all the rules, and they didn't work.

A former pastor who is now a counselor walked with me through that long season. He said, "Karl, you've got to figure out how to redefine success." When he said that, I wanted to punch him in the nose. I thought what he meant was, "You've been trying to jump a 10-foot bar but you're only jumping 9 feet, so lower the bar to 9 feet and call it a success." I couldn't do that. But he said, "Forget about jumping a bar. If the bar is to your left, success is to your right."

"What do you mean by that?" I asked. And he said, "You have to redefine success. It's not about jumping the bar anymore. Success for you is going to look different than butts in the seats. You've got to figure out what it is."

It took me awhile to take that in. But once I did, I realized he was right. God had given us a small church, and the amount of work that it was going to take to become a big church was going to be (1) outside my gifting, and (2) maybe not where God was taking us. If we were going to be a small church, we should be the best small church we possibly could. That's what success looks like for us.

Should numbers ever be a goal for a church?

I don't think numbers are a good goal. If you look around, 80 percent of the churches in the world are under 100 people, and 90 percent are under 200 people. What if that's part of a strategy God wants to use, rather than a problem God wants to fix?

I'm very slow to say that God calls some churches to be small, because this ministry of mine celebrating small churches can still sound like settling: This is all we're meant to be. But there is a different set of skills that are needed over the 200 barrier than under it. It's not that I don't think that ministry needs to be done at those levels—it does. But I'm not called or gifted to do that. And I think the vast majority of pastors aren't. Most of us are shepherds at heart and we're being told we must become ranchers—but if we're not a good rancher, what do we do?

What do you think it will take to change the connotation of the term "small church"?

Those leading small churches have to recognize that as a valid ministry all its own. I got to the point of despising my church and myself, and being angry at God, because the church stayed small. Then, when I started redefining success, I wondered, Why am I mad at God for giving me a wonderful, healthy, vibrant small church? That's a valid thing to be.

There are certain things that small churches can do that bigger churches can't. Some people are blessed and encouraged by going to a big church because it reminds them that their faith is a part of something big, but there are a whole lot of people for whom a big church is just intimidating. It pushes them away. If we only push for churches to get bigger, we will lose the people whose worship heart is drawn to more intimate settings.

What would you like to say to small church pastors?

You don't need one more dollar, you don't need one more person, you don't need one more square foot in your building—you don't even need a building—in order to be right now what God is calling your church to be. Don't wait until some future time when you have more people to pull the trigger on being innovative and outreaching. Do it now. It may look different than you thought it was going to look, but God put you where he did, he gave you these people, and he gave you everything you need right now to do what he wants you to do right now.

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

Churchgoing is slowly but undeniably losing its role as a normative part of American life. Recently our team at Barna Group has been examining the unchurched—who they are and how they are changing—by poring over three decades of research on the churchless. We have uncovered a number of trends.

First, the unchurched population is steadily growing. Since 1990, it has jumped from 30 percent of U.S. adults to 43 percent today. (We define unchurched as anyone who hasn't been to a church in the last six months, excluding weddings and funerals.) It's important to remember that while this segment has grown, it is still a minority. Most Americans continue to have some connection to a church, even if only for holidays.

Second, the number of people who have never been active churchgoers has increased. In the last two decades, the never-churched increased from 15 percent to 23 percent. Currently, one in four Americans has virtually no personal history of church participation. In other words, there is no spiritual "muscle memory" for nearly 60 million adults, a number that had been about 30 million at the beginning of the 1990s.

Crammed calendars, kids' sports, endless entertainment options, and expanding weekend schedules are making church increasingly optional.

Third, what qualifies as "regular churchgoing" is being redefined. Active church attenders used to be those who attended three to four weekends per month. Today that's been reduced to just one or two weekends per month. Crammed calendars, kids' sports, endless entertainment options, and expanding weekend schedules are making church increasingly optional. Pastors say this is affecting their ability to build multi-week sermon series that build from Sunday to Sunday. It all means an increasing number of churchless weekends among Americans today.

Despite these changes, we've seen several positive trends. For one, the perception of local churches as a valuable part of a local community is holding firm, even among the unchurched. Most unchurched either view the presence of local churches in their community as a good thing or are indifferent toward it. Only 7 percent of unchurched adults believe that a church is a negative factor for their neighborhood. They tell us churches contribute to the common good of their community by addressing poverty, serving families, the elderly, or youth, cultivating biblical values or assisting those in recovery. These churchless adults aren't beating down the doors to participate, but they're not burning bridges with local churches either.

Another positive trend: Millennial born-again Christians are demonstrating a renewed commitment to evangelism. While Millennial born-again believers are less common than in previous generations, those who remain committed to Christ are sharing their faith with others. Their commitment to share their faith provides hope for the future.

Yes, overall, the trends are not positive. The unchurched are less and less responsive to being the target of "outreach" and increasingly resistant to being invited to church by friends.

America continues to be an anomaly: an affluent, developed country that retains strong churchgoing attendance among its population. But to keep that distinctive—and for the sake of the life-changing message of Jesus—the Christian community has an obligation to better understand today's unchurched.

David Kinnaman is the president of Barna Group and co-editor of Churchless: Understanding Today's Unchurched and How to Connect with Them (Tyndale).

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.

The Book

View from the TopAn Inside Look at How the People in Power See and Shape the World (Wiley, 2014)by D. Michael Lindsay

The Idea

D. Michael Lindsay (sociologist and president of Gordon College), conducted in-depth interviews with 550 of the most powerful leaders in the world over the course of 10 years. His subjects included 250 CEOs (including 20 of the Fortune 100 companies), 100 leaders of the world's largest non-profit organizations, 80 U.S. cabinet secretaries, and two former U.S. presidents. Lindsay set out to discover what sets these elite leaders apart. View from the Top details his findings, many of which overturn conventional thinking about what enables people to ascend to the upper echelons of leadership.

Overview

Introduction: Lindsay begins by describing his research methods and goal for the book: "to utilize narratives from the lives of individual leaders to explain general principles." He also addresses the apparent tension between Christian faith and power. "Some are surprised that I, as a Christian, am interested in power at all. Didn't Jesus eschew the trappings of power and overturn prevailing notions of greatness and influence?" Though Lindsay understands such objections, he believes "much good can come from people devoted to their faith sitting in positions of influence … provided their motives are kept in check by a life of prayer and accountability."

Chapter One: Act Personally, but Think InstitutionallyThe first topic Lindsay addresses is the importance of networks. "An elite network is necessary for leaders to get anything done," he writes. At the same time, he warns that building a network with bulldog ambition can backfire. "But in the real upper reaches of power, a leader must not be too pushy or self-promoting—the top tiers of society resist the overbearing aspirants." Lindsay found that mentoring relationships were critical. "Having a good mentor proved more significant in predicting career success than where one went to college or how wealthy one was as a child." Although we may think of top leaders as self-made individuals, success also came from their ability to align themselves with elite institutions.

Chapter Two:Leadership Begins at 20On average, the childhoods of elite leaders can be summarized in one word: ordinary. Sure, a privileged background gives someone a bit of a head start, but as Lindsay observes, childhood wealth actually turns out to be a poor predictor of becoming a high-level leader. Far more important to their eventual success was the willingness of leaders to take advantage of opportunities and connections in their 20s.

Chapter Three:More Breadth, Less DepthLindsay writes about the importance of "leadership catalysts"—formative programs or experiences that catapult people into high-level leadership. He examines The White House Fellowship, a program that enables young people to work as aides to top level government officials. Lindsay reports that 32 percent of the program's participants go on to senior level leadership. The secret to such success: first-hand exposure to successful leadership, connection to an elite network, and the opportunity to develop a "generalist mindset," which is essential to leading.

Chapter Four:The Essence of LeadershipLindsay identifies three strengths of successful leaders. They're productive with their time, manage people well, and create cultures that facilitate human flourishing. To boost productivity these leaders employed strategies that included rising early, shortening meetings, remaining accessible to direct reports, and carving out time just to think. To manage well these leaders used relational influence over mere positional power, often devising creative ways to escape the corner office and connect with employees at every level. These leaders also excelled at guiding the corporate culture of the organizations they led. They accomplished this by gathering information on the state of their organizations then making sure their vision and passion trickled down to others.

Chapter Five:Strength in the Crucible of CrisisLindsay takes a look at how leaders handle the three stages of a crisis: the preparation phase (before the crisis), the emergency phase (dealing with immediate problems), and the adaptive phase (bringing the organization back to stability). He stresses that just because a leader performs well in stage one or two, it doesn't mean he or she will automatically succeed in phase three. Returning an organization to stability after a crisis demands leaders tend to their own health of that of their organization to thrive over the long haul.

Chapter Six:Lead with Your LifeTop leaders see no dividing line between their personal lives and their jobs. They realize they are "symbolic actors;" everything they do reflects on their organization. Their jobs tend to take a heavy toll on their family lives. Many were divorced or had little time for their children, though some found ways to stay involved. Contrary to the perception of the money-hungry executive, different forces drive them, including a desire to make a difference in people's lives and just loving what they do.

Chapter Seven:Lead for GoodMany top leaders wield their power for the common good. In their best moments, they demonstrate an ethic of responsibility and conviction that create flourishing organizations that enhance the lives of employees and society in general. They also impact culture through philanthropy, and give most to educational institutes and second to religious causes.

Copyright © 2014 by the author or Christianity Today/Leadership Journal.Click here for reprint information on Leadership Journal.