Very few leaders go into church leadership as pastors, staff, board members or volunteers hoping to be ineffective.
And yet so many churches and church leaders end up that way—ineffective.
You might be stuck in a church like that right now. Or even if you would say your church is ‘effective’ overall, there’s a very good chance there are areas of your ministry that aren’t. Or maybe you realize you’ve become less effective than you used to be.
Why is that?
Sometimes it’s because people have lost faith or lost their faithfulness. But often that’s not the case.
I see many churches populated with people who love God but have become completely ineffective.
And often the issues behind that are practical, and fixable.
If you’re willing to go where most leaders don’t go, that is.
Nine Ways to Make Your Church Ineffective
What do I mean by ‘ineffectiveness’? Great question.
I simply mean not accomplishing what you set out to accomplish.
For most of us in church world, that means something like leading people into a growing relationship with Jesus and growing by becoming a church unchurched people love to attend. At least that’s what we’ve set out to accomplish (it’s kind of the universal mission of the church). I imagine you are not that far off.
So, with that in mind, here are nine ways to lose your effectiveness in ministry.
1. Don’t dream.
The church should be the place where dreams are born and where dreams soar.
In far too many cases, churches have become the place where dreams die.
People with imagination, hope and optimism get squashed enough times that they stop dreaming.
And eventually, an ineffective church is marked as a place where people have long since abandoned thriving and are focused on merely surviving.
Want to be ineffective? Kill dreams.
2. Focus on yourself.
Ineffective churches are almost always self-focused.
The natural mission of the church (and almost every healthy organization for that matter) has an outward thrust to it.
But many unhealthy organizations lose their focus on outsiders and instead focus on insiders.
I realize you might be pushing back on this and thinking, Well, we can’t just ignore our insiders … we can’t ignore ourselves.
Change gears for a second. Do you know any people who focus exclusively on themselves?
That’s right. We call them self-absorbed, or selfish. And nobody really thinks hanging out with them is fun.
Why would anyone feel differently about a church that behaves that way?
