Lessons from a Not So Successful Pastor

What to do when your church is at a crossroads.

It’s been a busy summer here in Minnesota. First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) which is located in the suburbs of the Twin Cities is moving. We spent the winter and spring looking for a realtor and getting the property ready to be sold. It sold faster than expected and we’ve spent the last month and a half getting ready for the move. Ever since we reopened for worship in the late Spring of 2021, I’ve been dealing with a changed church. The time away meant we ended up losing some members and that changed the congregation in dramatic ways. We also gained a few people as well which also made a mark on our congregation.

As we spend our last days in the building, I am reflecting on what has been learned by our congregation. I wanted to take a moment to share what I’ve observed seeing how our congregation dealt with moving and also what happened to other congregations in our area facing similar decline. When churches lose members and lose focus, the temptation is strong to give up and close the church. I don’t share these as some kind of expert, but by experiencing them through the school of hard knocks.

Here is my advice to congregations in similar straights:

Pastoral leadership matters. Three Disciples of Christ congregations in the Twin Cities decided to sell their buildings. Of the three, only one remains in active ministry. There are a lot of reasons that this one congregation will remain active in ministry, but the one I want to lift up here is this was the only congregation that had a settled pastor. Yes, I am the pastor of that congregation. I don’t bring this up to show how great of a pastor I am'; I think my pastoral skills are pretty average. Instead, I share this because when a congregation is declining the pastor is the one that can make or break the church. They are the ones that people look to for vision, hope, and for support in rough times. My observation is that when a pastoral role is vacant, congregational leaders and the full congregation don’t have that person to look to for guidance, especially during challenging times. The result is that in those hard times people get frustrated. The desire to sell the church building and walk away is stronger than sticking through the hard times. A settled pastor is going to be the one that can say how this church can survive and even thrive in lean times. They provide the local church with an opportunity to get beyond themselves and a possible future making a difference in their community.

A note about Interim Pastors. Interims can fulfill various roles in a congregation. I think interims should be able to help a congregation cast a vision. But another role is to be a hospice chaplain, to help the church close orderly. What I’ve noticed not just in Disciple congregations is that many interims come to declining congregations not to help them revitalize, but to help them close. There is a need for hospice interims, but it feels too often that interims are designed to be nothing more than pastors who close ailing congregations. I have known interim pastors that came in determined to help a congregation turn around and they were able to make it happen. But I’ve also known interims that are not really suited to the work and it seems they can only fall back on offering palliative care-making sure the congregation is comfortable and can close orderly.

You need to have strong lay leadership. You need pastoral leadership to help a congregation in decline, but you also need strong leadership that is able to lead a local church in challenging times.

In the history of the Disciples, it was lay leaders, not pastors that started churches. There was a gathering of Christians that wanted to see a church and came together and started a church. The pastor usually came along later and in some cases when they did they might only provide pastoral leadership a few times a month. Disciples and other mainline Protestant denominations have become dependent on pastoral leaders to keep churches going. I tend to think money and technology helped force the creation of strong lay leadership and as Mainline Protestant denominations lose people and money, it means that we need to have lay leaders that are strong in not just administrative leadership, but in leading worship, and Christian education and other aspects of church life. This is important, especially as the full-time pastor becomes less and less of a possibility.

It’s all about the mission. Does anyone remember the missional or emerging church trend of 10-15 years ago? Everything was about how the church had to reach the next generation, which was back them GenX and Millenials. There was a lot of talk from young pastors about the need for more missional communities. There was talk about mainline decline and what needs to be done to get things back on track. There was also a lot of pushback that things were okay. The result is that some of the people that were concerned about the decline pursued other endeavors. Some went into the more political realm, while others went into business. But the state of the church still hasn’t changed- churches are struggling and closing.

One of the things I’ve observed over the years following the pandemic is that mainline Protestants have forgotten why churches exist. We have forgotten the mission. My cohorts of a decade ago were invested and wanted to change things, but ended up hurt and frustrated and eventually walking away. Meanwhile, churches grow smaller and smaller and no one knows what to do.

One thing I’ve noticed from pastors, middle judicatory leaders and even myself is how we don’t really engage in attempting to answer the question: what is the local congregation for? Why do they matter? What is God calling the local church to do and be in the world? What happens to the world when a congregation closes?

I’ve learned churches need to ask these questions even if their pastors and denominational leaders aren’t. If they believe the congregation is more than just about taking care of their needs then church leaders have to seek and find out what their mission is. As the old hymn goes “We’ve A Story to Tell to the Nations,” a story that matters. And congregations must find a way to tell that story. We have to stop seeing church and matters of faith as “luxury goods,” as Walter Russell Mead once said and as something that is vital to our lives and the life of the world.

Stop feeling sorry for yourselves and learn to take a risk. What I’ve noticed over the years is how often churches that are in decline are not willing to really think outside of the box. They want things to remain the same. I’ve been a pastor at two congregations that could literally look at pictures of the church in better days when the pews were full of people and wonder what happened. You can sit in grief and start to say, “Woe is us!” And believe me, I’ve done this myself. But too often I’ve seen congregations that close that were not willing to take a risk. The congregation was filled with people who wanted someone, somewhere to come and “fix” everything and make everything the way it was. But no one was coming to save them. They either had to take a risk of faith or they could die.

We are planning to move from our church building to a temporary space at a Lutheran congregation. We have no idea if we will be successful. We could end up closing after all. But even if that happens, it will be because we took a step of faith. If we die, we die knowing we took a chance at living instead of simply giving up.

I remember how First Christian Minneapolis chose to enter into a relationship with two other churches in order to live into the future. They move forward from their past and into a different future. A church that was struggling a decade ago has new life, because it was willing to stop feeling sorry for itself and being to move forward in faith

I’ve always loved the beginning story of Abraham found in Genesis 12. Here is this 75 year old man that has already lived a life. He said Sarah could have just stayed put. But he heard the call of God and took a risk. God called him to be the father of a great nation. He could have thought God was nuts in asking an old couple to lead a great nation. (Heck, he probably did think God was nuts.) But still, in faith, he moved forward and God blessed him and through Abraham, the world was blessed through the Jews and through one particular Jew, Jesus.

During the time I was an associate with First Christian in Minneapolis, I learned a prayer from the Lutherans who were one of the other partners. It became the prayer of all three congregations as they worked building the new space we would all call home. Called the Holden Prayer it is a prayer that should be the prayer to any congregation as it goes through a time of change:

O God, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go, but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

May God support your congregation as you seek to learn where God is leading your church.