Bill Easums Observations

From time to time, I write about movements that I see emerging. The last three movements I wrote about were local churches establishing and staffing church planting centers within their churches, congregations with more than one location, and churches and organizations whose goal is to reach their city for Christ.  All three of these movements continue to gain momentum. Now, I want to focus on another movement that is having a profound effect on American Protestantism and I want to couple it with the three movements already mentioned. 

Three forms of church governance dominate the church landscape today: congregational, representative democracy, and apostolic or pastor led. Feelings usually run high as to which one of these is the best form of governance.  However, most of the churches using forms of congregational or representative democracy are leftovers from Modernity, and are either dying or on a plateau.  On the other hand, the vast majority of thriving churches are apostolic or pastor led.  We’ve also noted that the thriving churches using congregational and representative forms of governance have figured out how to circumvent as much of their governance systems as possible.   Over the past 15 years, I have had the opportunity to observe some of

  The rule of thumb of this new movement – the less democracy in the church the more authentic and effective the church is in advancing the Kingdom of

I just finished the first round of consulting and training with the Action Chapel International. It is a movement of Pentecostal churches out of Ghana that has gone world-wide over the past twenty years and is now in the U.S.  My role is to help them bring some order to the movement without turning it into a denomination- the archbishop is very clear on that point. We put a loose structure in place that will allow them to truly be one church in one location throughout the world. Now my role is to provide ongoing training.

The reason I’m telling you this is because of something that happened the last day that made my trip. Keep in mind that we were imposing order on a movement that for twenty years was allowed to run with the wind. I was a bit concerned how well this new twist would be received. When we finished unfolding the new structure and accountability system, the Archbishop led the group in another round of prayer-centered worship. When he finished praying, without any prompting the entire room broke into clapping and praise. All I could think of was, now this is the way it should be in the church- when the spiritual leader speaks, the church rejoices.

I’m sure you’ve been in meetings where radical change was being unfolded to a board or congregation and the response was vastly different.  Somehow in most of the U. S. churches, especially those that are declining, pastors are not considered to be the spiritual leader of the congregation. Instead, they are looked upon as the servant of the congregation who is suppose to take care of the congregation the way a caretaker of a museum takes care of the artifacts. 

How did we come to this when the Bible is very clear about the spiritual authority of the Elders (pastors). They are to be respected and their leadership is to be followed or they are to be replaced.  Somehow we have replaced biblical authority with a demonic form of democracy. But we have no written record of God leading through democracy. Yet most churches impose some form of democracy on their people.

But here’s the catch- democracy and Holy Spirit are like oil and water- they don’t mix, ever. Isn’t it time we owned up to our sin of replacing biblical authority with democracy, and throw the villain out?

I talked about this in the opening chapter of the book I co-authored with Bill Cornelius, Go Big: How to Have Explosive Growth.  Anytime you have an organization with meeting-layered Democracy and consensus building, you hamstring the power of the Holy Spirit and you reduce the effectiveness of God’s movement in the world.

See you at the chaos.

Bill Easum
www.easumbandy.com

I first wrote about movements in my book Unfreezing Moves: Following Jesus into the Mission Field.   I described Christianity as an organic movement and compared it to modern day religion. God intended for Christianity to be a movement not a religion.  The problem is Christianity has been highjacked by our passion for democracy.

Movements only happen when an individual is free enough to take on the mantel of an apostle. Democracy hates an apostle with a passion- thus we have been free from movements in the U.S. for some time now.

However, over the past few years I’ve watched the emergence of a number of apostolic leaders who are changing the face of Christianity in the U.S.  In an article titled “The Apostolic Movement of our Time, I wrote the following about this new movement

• One quality stands out above all the rest in every one of these pastors – they pastor as spiritual leaders who listen to God rather than corporate leaders who lead based on democratic rule. 
• The rule of thumb of this new movement – the less democracy in the church the more authentic and effective the church is in advancing the Kingdom of God!

 You can read the full article here.

Bill Easum
www.easumbandy.com

This week I’ve been working with a charismatic movement of some 300 churches that were planted out of Ghana (Action Chapel International) led by Archbishop Nicholas Duncan-Williams. They had pulled together several of their key pastors from over the world to work out a structure to allow them to explode throughout the world. The presently have churches in Ghana, Netherlands, U.S., London, Italy, Germany, Benin, Nigeria, Cdlvoire, Sierra Leone and Liberia and are opening churches in Asia and the Middle East.  Their goal is 150 new churches in 2009.

They are functioning like a multi site church- one church in many locations. Like many movements that take off explosively they have no way of holding all of the leaders accountable financially and missionally. Getting  hole or the  financial is the easy part- you just start tracking and holding each church accountable for a certain amount coming back into the movement. Getting hold of the missional is more difficult.

In the mind of the Archbishop, the movement exists to plant churches throughout the world. This means that each church has to be willing to assist in the planting of churches, both with money and with planters.

The problem is this mission has never been intentionally articulated and recast on a regular basis. It has been a practice but not a clearly defined mandate that could hold all the churches accountable.

So we had to nail down the vision of the movement- to make Christ known throughout the world through the multiplication of Action Chapel International Churches. Once that was done I had to say, from hence forth all churches that remain in this movement must be on board with financially and missionally supporting the vision. 

Movements have to have two things to survive – trust in the founder and team players throughout the movement.  There can be no deviation on the vision. They exist to plant churches throughout the world and everyone must commit to that vision.

The buy in during the second day was incredible. The Archbishop had embedded his church planting gene in his lieutenants. Now they are ready to move forward.

I’ve been thinking and writing about movements now for several years beginning with my book Unfreezing Moves. Lately I’ve worked on a paper titled The Anatomy of a Movement. History hasn’t been kind to movements. The only way they survive is if the founder leaves a fluid system in place that carries on his or her spirit and raises up an Elisha who is as charismatic as he or she is.

I have to say I’m having a ball working with this group and hope to have more opportunities to work with them and to learn from them. They are much different from me but they are on the same mission I’m on- to make Jesus known throughout the world.

I have one more day with the group and then I’m home for a three week vacation. I  normally don’t work in the summer, but this summer has offered too many rare opportunities to turn down.

Bill Easum
www.easumbandy.com

One thing separates the mediocre pastor’s actions from those of the highly effective and might I say biblical pastor. Know what it is? Okay, don’t want to guess? Well here it is – the mediocre pastors spends most of his or her time doing all kinds of pastoral care- taking care of members, visiting the hospitals and shut-in, mediating conflict in the church, doing counseling, and doing things in the office other than devotional or sermon prep.

So what does a highly effective pastor do?

I guess before I answer that question I need to define what I mean by “highly effective.” To me “highly effective” means the pastor is doing something to enhance both the Great Commandment and the Great Commission, i.e. the church is a place of love, trust, and growing people.

So what does a highly effective pastor do? As little as possible other than focus on being the spiritual architect who sets the culture and mentors the core leaders.

So what happens to pastoral care?

Read Acts 6 and you will get your answer.

I have been a United Methodist Pastor since 1968 (the United Conference). That’s a long time. Obviously, I love the UMC. Do I Still love it? You bet.  If I were starting over today would I be a United Methodist again? I’d have to give that some serious thought! Does that break my heart? You bet. Let me tell you why? And as I do, keep in mind that what follows is a diagnosis of an illness that needs treating and not a negative rant of disenfranchised person.  If you don’t like the diagnosis, see another doctor and get another opinion but don’t bury your head in the sand and think the illness will go away on its own.

I choose the UMC. It did not choose me. I choose it because I fell in love with John Wesley, read about the sacrifices of the circuit riders, and was befriended by a couple of United Methodist Pastors at a time when I needed a good friend.  I read about Wesley taking it to the streets and the circuit riders doing whatever was necessary to carry the Good News from town to town as the country grew west and lasting on average 18 months before dying from the ordeal. I was so impressed with the passion and quest for the completion of the Great Commission that I gave myself 100% to the call to serve such a great system.

 But over these 40 years I have watched my beloved denomination drift into a deep and potential lethal sickness, and that saddens me.  I can’t begin to chronicle all the warning signs in this post but I do want to share one example that sums up a lot of the sickness I’m observing.

 A couple of days ago I received the following email from a friend (I have doctored it as to safeguard the anonymity of the person who shared it with me.  This friend was a pastor of a UMC but he had never been to seminary. He only had local pastor credentials (a term for second class pastors in the UMC).  The problem was he had grown the church from almost nothing (the UMC tends to give local pastors only small dying churches and saves the good ones for seminary graduates who have put in their time) to a church of almost 1,000.

At this point the DS enters the picture (aka, District Superintendent- the person who appoints pastors to the various churches) said to him, “We are going to have to move you since this church is now too large for local pastor.  We have several Elders (pastors) who have waited a long time for an opportunity to pastor a church this size.” 

Do you see the sickness in this?

First, because the guy hasn’t been to seminary he is not worthy of continuing to pastor the very church he built almost from scratch.  The circuit riders hadn’t been to seminary and they took the UMC from the east coast to the west coast. But now the UMC puts more faith in academic credentialing than demonstrated credentialing. Something smells here. This kind of thinking isn’t an isolated event.  I know another local pastor who has grown a totally dead UMC (the conference was about to see it when another UMC asked if they could try to grow it) to a church of over 3,000 in attendance and the DSs hound him to go back to seminary if he wants to keep his church.

As a side note- prior to 1950 the average Methodist Elder (pastor) had not been to seminar but in the 1960s it was mandated that Elders go to seminary. The UMC has declined every year since 1964. Seems obvious doesn’t it? God honors demonstrated credentials more than academic credentials. Why can’t we see this?

Second, the average UM pastor has been conditioned to bide his or her time taking care of the church they are assigned to, waiting for the big break to open up for them rather than believing if they want to pastor a larger church they will have to grow it themselves.  I have actually heard pastors tell me “If I had a good church I could do great things.” Where did all the sacrificial examples of the circuit riders go? Why does a system like the UMC encourage pastors to wait around till a bigger church opens up for them to be appointed to rather than hunkering down and growing the one they’ve got? The only answer I can think of is the UMC has a deep illness that is draining the life out of it. Why would any pastor want to build a church that would someday be used as a great opportunity for some pastor to move up the declension sheet (the salary ranking of UM clergy)?

So, why this post? To say to all UMC pastors, DSs, and Bishops, WAKE UP!  This kind of thinking is draining the lifeblood out of us.  Pastors, quit waiting for that big break and start growing your church.  DSs quit moving pastors around like academically trained pawns in a timed chess game and start appointing pastors based on their demonstrated credentials like Asbury and Coke did when Methodism swept this entire continent. And Bishops, ah Bishops, how do I say this-quit playing your political games, roll up your sleeves (like some are doing) and role model for us what it means to not just be a witness of social justice but also of the personal redemptive grace of our Lord Jesus Christ. That’s what we need and only that will return us to our once, but now lost, greatness.

The U.S. Church is in a mess (see The American Church in Crises) It continues to decline as the population increases.  We are facing the perfect storm if something doesn’t change.  And as is the case in all enterprises, that change must be initiated from the top, by the pastor.  If pastors don’t change the way they go about life and ministry, the Church will continue to decline in the U.S.

That’s why when a book comes along like the Hughes’ Liberating Your Ministry from Success Syndrome I want to puke. The last thing we need is to allow ourselves anyway off the hook for the mess we’re allowed to happen on our watch.  I don’t know the Hughes. I’m sure they are wonderful people, but reading their material, I have to wonder if they ever pastured a growing church.

I’m as skeptical about a person who says numbers aren’t important to faithfulness as I am about someone who says numbers are everything to faithfulness.  But I will not allow faithfulness to be relegated to some sweet life of loving, believing, prayer, and holiness.  Listen to the way the book is described at Christianbook.com  

 “Offering biblical perspectives and personal reflections, longtime pastor Hughes and his wife show you that true accomplishment in ministry lies not in numbers but in faithfulness, serving, loving, believing, prayer, holiness, and a Christlike attitude. You’ll learn to confront your feelings of failure differently—and discover a godly understanding of success. “The last the average pastor today needs is to find a way to comfort their feelings of failure. Man what a travesty. 

Pastors, please don’t rush out and buy this book just to rationalize your feelings. Instead get on your knees and break your heart over the plight of your city and resolve to make it a better place. Decide now to spend 80% of your time working either with non-believers or with leaders in your church who will spend time with their non-believing friends.

Bill Easum
www.easumbandy.com

In studying church planters over the past decade, I’ve discovered two keys to explosive growth:

1. the  pastor is fixated on evangelism.  Pastor, if you want your plant to grow then in the early stages of your plant you must set the example and do one-to-one evangelism.  You also have to spend more time out  in the public than with your flock.
2. and the pastor is healthy enough to hand-off ministry responsibilities to others the moment a person with leadership potential emerges.  Effective leaders know that they can grow the church only so far. If they want their plant to outgrow their ability to grow it, they have to empower others to share their faith with their networks.

Recently the Lilly Foundation did a study titled “New Church Development in the 21st century.” It was a study of over 700 church plants in seven denominations. They compared the habits of highly effective planters to those who were far less effective. Their findings backed up my two observations. You can read about the study in Extraordinary Leaders in Extraordinary Times.

Not long ago wrote an article about the secret to growing a small church or new church plant that got picked up and circulated through Rasnet. It seems as if my article stirred quite a controversy as well as some personal rationalization for failure. One such response was:

“I can’t help but believe that thousands of faithful pastors of small struggling church reading this article have just dropped into depression or into feelings of failure. I know many churches with evangelistic pastors and yet the churches continue to remain small (and the reverse is also true; church growth in spite of the pastor’s efforts……

It appears this article suggest the lack of church growth is the pastor’s fault, and the converse would also be true, if the church grows it is due to the pastor’s effort… which is something great to talk about a pastor’s conferences.

Kent and Barbara Hughe’s book , Liberating Your Ministry From Success Syndrome redefines success as faithfulness, serving, loving, believing, praying, holiness, and attitude (it’s a great read).

I believe direct evangelism grows churches, but to make it all about the pastor’s evangelistic activity seems short-sighted.  I believe that church growth is more than adding numbers to the roll or notches on a belt; it is about the people of God, on mission with God, making disciple for God, in order to make a difference in the life of the world and the kingdom.”

Here is my response:

I guess you would have to define faithfulness.  I define it as sharing one’s faith so the Kingdom can be expanded.  One isn’t held accountable to how people respond, but one is help accountable to both the Great Commission and Commandment. Faithfulness is far more than how one conducts one’s life.

The study doesn’t make it all about the pastor. The hand-off of ministry also includes one-on-one evangelism.  However, if the pastor isn’t concerned about evangelism then the church usually doesn’t grow, so there is a direct correlation between what a pastor does and how the church grows.

Remember, this study was about church plants.  Churches simply don’t grow if the pastor doesn’t do most of the work in the early days.

I’m also not prone to allowing anyone off the hook when it comes to our Lord’s last will and testament -”Go and make disciples” and “be my witnesses.”

Bill Easum”

Now, I wish to add more.  The last thing we need are more books like the one from the Hughes that define faithfulness in such a way as to remove all responsibility for the mess in which we find the U.S. Church. The last thing I want to do is liberate any Christian from the success syndrome, much less the pastor.  We’re in a mess my friends. We have enough mediocrity in the church today.  We have enough churches closing for lack of leadership. I’m fed up with pastors who are willing to spend their entire ministry changing spiritual diapers and caring for every spiritual hangnail that comes along. We’ve had enough failure. It’s time we took responsibility and led the Church home.

I want to commend all of those faithful pastors who labor each day to bring someone into the Kingdom and grow them forward. And I want to give a swift kick in the butt to those pastors who are content with spending all of their time baby sitting self-centered church members. Shame on you. God expects so much more from us. 

One of the new realities of new, thriving churches is the less they do the more they grow. Sounds strange, doesn’t it. Here’s what I mean.  I’m seeing more and more new, thriving churches doing only a hand full of ministries, usually limited to worship, small groups, and children and youth worship, and missions- and nothing more. Thus, less is more.

And the converse is true.  I see more and more declining churches with a full calendar of events. The goal of many pastors seems to be “if I can get new people involved in something, I’ve got them.”  So, they heap one program on top of another in hopes of involving more people.  Whereas this method worked when the church was more at the center of society, nothing now could be farther from the truth. All over-programming does today is split up families one more time as if society doesn’t do that enough.

So why not start cancelling all of the programs you have to annually prop up by begging people to attend? Then look over all of your programs and ask “Which ones really contribute to the spiritual or numerical growth of our church? And then discontinue all of those that do not contribute.

You see one of the mistakes most churches make is they tie their new people up in some many church activities that within a couple of years they don’t have any unchurched friends anymore.  Instead of bringing people to church two or three times a week, train them to spend time with their unchurched friends and let them see what it means to be a Christian. You’ll see a marked improvement in the number of new people showing up.   

Bill Easum

For much of the past three decades, denominational officials have been promoting seminars and programs aimed at revitalizing the church. I know because I have been the speaker or consultant to many of these groups. For many of these leaders, their goal was to breathe new life into churches experiencing declining memberships and lack of commitment. Yet after years of trying to revitalize these churches, the vast majority of them are still declining. What gives?

Reformation, renewal, and revitalization assume some preexisting foundation of faith from which to raise up a new church. But what if that assumption isn’t correct? What if the assumption is part of our problem? What if being a member of a church for 40 years doesn’t automatically guarantee any spiritual depth? What if holding every office in the church doesn’t automatically mean someone is a disciple of Jesus Christ? Do we dare look deep enough into our souls to find answers to these questions?

Based on the conversations and actions of the thousands of Protestant leaders with whom I worked over the years, I have concluded that most of them are spiritually dead and their institutions have ceased being the church. They have the form but not the substance of what it means to be the church.

Let me define what I mean by spiritually dead churches. If your church spends most of its energy on itself and its members, it’s spiritually dead.

Such churches are living corpses. They are physically alive; some may even be growing; but they are spiritually dead to the mission of the New Testament church—to make disciples of Jesus Christ. They’ve turned inward and exist solely for themselves. They look for ways to serve themselves, and the kingdom be damned.

They’re like baby birds sitting in the nest with their mouths open waiting for momma bird (pastor) to feed them with no concept that Jesus intends them to feed others. Oh, they might collect money to send away to some distant mission field, but they’re all thumbs when it comes to sharing the good news with their neighbor or community. What growth they might experience is not of their doing—it just happens because of the population growth around them.

Here are eight death clues. Spiritually dead churches:

1. Have lost their sense of mission to those who have not heard about Jesus Christ and do not pant after the Great Commission;
2. Exist primarily to provide fellowship for the “members of the club;”
3. Expect their pastors to focus primarily on ministering to the members’ personal spiritual needs;
4. Design ministry to meet the needs of their members;
5. Have no idea about the needs of the “stranger outside the gates;”
6. Are focused more on the past than the future;
7. Often experience major forms of conflict;
8. And watch the bottom line of the financial statement more than the number of confessions of faith.

Bringing life back

The starting point for unfreezing a stuck organizational system is the development of a solid community of faith that includes spiritual leaders, the absence of major conflict, trust, and a desire to connect with the unchurched world.

True spiritual maturity is approached when people turn their attention to those outside the church and seek ways to spread the good news rather than exercise their entitlements as members. Unfortunately, too many pastors assume their church has spiritual leaders and skip right over this starting point. It has become apparent to me that most church leaders do not understand that the decline of their church is due to the lack of spiritual depth on the part of their leadership.

So, now, I want to go deeper on the spiritual issue. It’s not just that our churches are stuck; they are spiritually bankrupt!

I know. These churches are filled mostly with good Christian people, but there’s no discernable spiritual power, just good Christian people—and we all know what Jesus said about being good. (Mark 10:18)

So it’s obvious. Isn’t it? The only solution for spiritually dead congregations is resurrection. You can’t revitalize something that is dead. They must be brought to life again! And that is resurrection.

Revitalization is a waste of time. You can’t breathe life into a corpse. Only God can do that, and that is resurrection.

My experience has taught me the resurrection of a church happens in three stages. It begins with a new pastor. Either the pastor experiences a personal resurrection or the church actually gets a new pastor. Next is the resurrection of the leaders of the church either by transformation or replacement. Finally, the church itself is resurrected and turned around through some tactical change. Then, if resurrection happens, our behavior changes:

1. The church turns outward in its focus.
2. Jesus, not the institution, will become the object of our affection.
3. The Great Commission will become our mandate, and we will measure everything we do by how many new converts we make rather than whether we have a black bottom line.
4. Membership in the Kingdom will replace membership in the church.
5. Pastors will cease being chaplains of pastoral care and will become modern-day apostles of Jesus Christ.
6. And those who try to control the church with an iron fist or intimidate the church at every turn of the road will be shown the door.

The primary reason society is shunning the institutional church is because for the most part it is spiritually dead. Spiritually alive churches, no matter what their form or where they are planted, always grow. That is the nature of the beast. That is the kind of church God honors. That is what the church was put on earth to do—spread the good news. When a church faithfully does that, it grows. Period.

Adapted from “A Second Resurrection” by Bill Easum from Abingdon Press