Leading a church is difficult. There’s pressure from many sources.
You may see agendas pushed by the church denomination, other leaders within the church, church members and many other sources.
There’s always something someone wants you to be doing, and this causes a conflict of direction within the church. Because of this, we see church leaders making mistakes in areas that are deadly to a church.
1. Church growth: While I believe a church that is spreading the good word should grow in size, there’s also the fact that some churches can only grow to a certain size.
To place a demand that a church continues to grow and reach certain attendance goals will not help the church.
Rather than focusing on numbers, focus on the spiritual growth of your congregation. This is what truly matters, not the size of the church but the impact that has been made in the lives of the men and women you teach.
2. Outward appearances: There are plenty of churches that have dress codes and desire for their congregants to look a certain way. They believe you need to dress up to enter the house of God.
Yes, your outward appearance does affect the way people look and view others. It even conveys a certain amount of respect for where the person is going.
However, there’s a better thing to focus on. Focus on whether or not people are desiring to enter into the house of God. If they only have rags to wear, welcome them in anyway.
3. Image: In our search for a new church, we’ve seen churches who desire to be seen as hip and popular and cool. The extent to which the church leaders are going to make this apparent to an outsider are often off-putting.
We actually got up and left from one church because of the push from the pulpit on how cool the church was.
Give the desire to have a hip image the boot. Instead, deliver the message in a compelling way that makes people want to attend. If you preach the Word, you will change lives.
4. Money: I already know what you’re going to say on this. Money is important. We have to bring in money to keep the doors open.
This is true. Money is needed to maintain a facility and have the lights stay on.
The problem comes when there’s message after message on the importance of tithing and giving.
People know they should give. People even want to give.
But people get tired of hearing it over and over and over again.
Stop begging for money from the pulpit.
5. Fear: Fear is a powerful motivator. We use it when raising kids to prevent bad behavior, and we use it on adults to keep people from breaking the law.
We also use it in the church. We use fear to get people to give. We use fear to get people to stay away from unsaved people. We use fear to control congregations.
Preach fear when needed, but don’t neglect the life and power Christ has given through His death.
