Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Goals.

Scripture Verse that Caught my attention today: Jeremiah 23:28 Let the prophet who has a dream tell the dream, but let the one who has my word speak my word faithfully. What has straw in common with wheat? says the LORD.

Observation: Many ‘prophets’ in Old Testament times were merely saying what they wanted to say or what they thought people wanted to hear. They were not proclaiming an authentic message from the Lord.

Application: It seems to me that one of the hardest things to do as a pastoral leader is to set goals for and/or with a congregation. Why? Because the human element of pride is so close at hand.

For example, what if a pastor and/or congregation were to say, “we feel God wants our average attendance to grow by 50 people next year.” Really? Where did the number come from? Are you sure God didn’t say 53 people? Or 47? Is God pretty much limited to even numbers?

I’ve yet to hear a pastor say something to the affect of, “I believe the Lord is calling our congregation to shrink by 30 or so people by next year!” It kinda goes against the grain of conventional wisdom, doesn’t it?

Yet many congregations are shrinking…and it’s not always a bad thing. The congregation through which I serve as pastor is going through some modest shrinkage because some of own people are going about the work of helping other congregations. We have members who plan to move to another state to help start a new mission church. Hard to argue with that, isn’t it? One of our members was Ordained this summer. She takes with her a family of four to South Dakota where she now serves as a pastor. Am I supposed to be sad about that? Of course not! We have a few members who, for reasons of health and/or preference, are planning to move to warmer climates within the next year or two. I have no doubt that they will quickly find new congregations to call home and will be a blessing to those yet-to-be-indentified communities of faith. And occasionally all congregations have a family or two decide that another church in the area might be a better fit for them. Can’t really argue with that either since a good share of our current members and participants were once members or participants in other congregations and came here because we seemed to be a better fit.

The verse above and this time of reflecting brings to mind a few principles that might be worth considering in regard to setting goals for/with a congregation:

1 Goals that are more likely to be from God will be goals that are discerned primarily through prayerful listening and observation of the opportunities the Lord seems to be putting before you, rather than from a leader’s bravado and charisma. To put it in athletic terms, be very observant and be in position for the play come to you.
2 Focus on real ministry and service, not particular numbers. When the Bible speaks of numbers, it is usually after the fact for reporting purposes, not as a goal. Jesus didn’t say, “today let’s make it our goal to feed 5000 people.” Rather, he was going about his life as an authentic follower of God, and 5000+ people showed up for him to feed. In similar fashion, in the book of Acts they did not set a goal to have 3000 people saved. Rather, God sent the Holy Spirit and people spoke of that Spirit and the saving work was done and the number 3000 recorded.
3 Be ready to act when action is needed. Ministry is more about wise readiness and willingness than it is about knowingness. In other words, we don’t know much about when things are going to happen or even what in particular is going to happen. But we do know that something will happen sometime and that when it does, we want to be there to be able to offer service and hope in the name of Christ.
4 Most importantly, let all goals be rooted in thanksgiving for what God has already done through Christ on the cross rather than in the purported virtues of what we might endeavor to do after the fact.

That’s all I’ve got for today.

Prayer: Lord, even trying to write about goals has its own measure of futility. If I’m just dreaming rather than speaking your word, please let me know. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

(Readings today included: Jeremiah 23-25 and John 19)

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