Remember, as iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another (Proverbs 27:17). Congregations sharpen each other too.
As long as there aren’t any serious alternatives to your church, you can get away with sparse ministry offerings, mediocre sermons and subpar music—for a season. But when NewChurchPlant.tv comes to town with top notch everything, sooner or later it’s going to hit you that the playing field has changed. Actually, it was changing all along—the competing church just made it obvious.
There are at least a couple of strategies churches can use as they pursue friendly competition with other congregations.
One is the “do it better than the other church” strategy.
If the other church’s pastor has great sermons, your sermons will be masterpieces. If their band is really good, yours will be better, and so on.
Another strategy is to do what the other church isn’t doing.
No congregation can be all things to all people. No matter how successful a church is at reaching the masses, there are always going to be opportunities for other congregations to reach different souls. Some people don’t like rock worship bands. Others don’t like lectionary preaching. Some don’t care for small groups. Others aren’t keen on Sunday School.
Every church with strengths also has a few weaknesses. You can capitalize on those weaknesses by making them your church’s strengths.
In 1 Corinthians 9:24, Paul writes, “Don’t you know that all the runners in the stadium run, but only one gets the prize? So run to win.” (CEB) The next verse tells us, “The runners do this to get a crown of leaves that shrivel up and die, but we do it to receive a crown that never dies.”
In this passage, the Christian life is compared to and contrasted with an actual footrace. Our prize is not temporary, it’s eternal. And it’s not finite, it’s infinite. The paradox is, although there’s more than enough of a crown to go around, we’re still supposed to run to win. And since we’re all in the same race, we’re competing with each other, even though we’re ultimately on the same team.
Perhaps God is pleased when we try to outdo one another—but in a holy way.
Church is like that too—we’re all working together for the same kingdom, but we’re doing it in competition so we can push the entire body of Christ toward excellence.
