Overcoming Barriers to Growth | Michael Fletcher

Michael Fletcher. Overcoming Barriers to Growth: Proven Strategies for Taking Your Church to the Next Level. Bethany House, 2006. 144 pp.

God Has a Plan for You and Your Church!

If the pastor and elders will adjust the way they relate together in leadership and realign some of the internal structures they built into the church, they can keep right on growing. Most churches don’t make those adjustments for two reasons: (1) They don’t see the barrier, so they don’t see the need; and (2) they don’t want to change what they perceive made them successful in the first place.

This is where the trouble starts. The church slows in its growth, even though it continues to slowly add people. Unfortunately, folks are leaving at about the same pace. Under the surface, frustration mounts, especially among the leaders. The pastor attends a seminar held by a successful church on how to become a megachurch—a dream of his since before he planted this church with a few close friends. His new “vision” is met with resistance, especially from the one elder who works in corporate America. . . . Another elder comes back from vacation with an idea gleaned from visiting his daughter and son-in-law’s church. His excitement over what he perceives to be the key to moving forward in growth is interpreted by the pastor as dissatisfaction and a growing lack of commitment. Still another elder reminisces over dinner about the glory days of old and ponders aloud if churches really need to grow after all.

Feeling a need to keep things in line, the pastor reaches for greater control and, in an effort to exert his God-given authority, announces a new initiative from the pulpit without consulting the elders. The next elders’ meeting is really the next embers’ meeting as members smolder, acknowledging the rightness of the new idea but burning over the wrongness in how things were handled. . . .

In my travels inside and outside our network of churches, I have seen this same scenario occur time and again. Sadly, this type of interaction and jockeying for control is far too common in local churches. What began as life-giving, rewarding, and even fun has become dead, boring, and stressful.

Most churches stuck in non-growth patterns lose people not only from the periphery but, unfortunately, also from the core. Often, over time, the very ones who made the church what it is depart, distraught over what they feel it has become or, in some cases, hasn’t become. They leave to join churches that are not only growing larger but are also more vibrant expressions of the body of Christ. These growing churches seem to move along effortlessly. Everything they do seems to work, while making anything work in the non-growth church is a major effort. These painful endings to long-standing relationships only add to the strife and frustration in churches that are needlessly stuck behind a growth barrier. In some instances, hopelessness and a sense of defeat set in, replacing the youthful, expectant faith of the past with a desire simply to hold on and wait for better days.

Everywhere I go I see the same problems. Pastors are frustrated with their leadership teams, and the leadership teams are frustrated with their pastor. Typically the church is not growing, and the mechanisms required for problem-solving have become ensnared in a quagmire of confusion. . . .

Having helped local churches through these barriers for years, I have noticed that in all churches the transition period prior to reaching the growth barrier requires internal change in the unseen mechanisms of the function of the church, namely, in the relationship between the senior pastor and the local church leadership team or eldership. If those changes are made, then the church is prepared to address the growth barrier successfully. If the internal changes are not made—and most leaders never detect the need for internal restructuring—the church will never make it through the barrier no matter what external changes they make.

Whenever I talk to pastors, it never fails: we always get around to talking about their frustration with trying to bring a vision to life. Whenever I talk to eldership or leadership teams, it never fails: they are struggling, at some point, with the pastor. They all love each other and are committed to the success of the church, but over time something has gone wrong. That “something” is a failure to recognize a transition. And now the tension caused by needed, yet neglected, restructuring has affected precious long-term relationships.

On the road to becoming a megachurch there are three key stages of leadership structures or configurations and two major transition points. Tension mounts as these transition points are approached. These times of tension, interestingly enough, occur at the same point as the major growth barriers. If pastors and leaders properly anticipate these transitions and adjust appropriately, stress can be reduced and leadership teams can work together to experience growth instead of working against each other. . . .

For the record, I am not interested simply in helping churches get larger. I am interested in helping them become healthy, from the inside out, so they can grow. If the internal structures of the church are not properly aligned, the rest of the church will not function properly either. . . .

My passion is to see people released into ministry—not just leaders, but every church member. I want to see people becoming who God created them to be and functioning maturely in all their gifts and callings. I want to see the church released into the world, acting as a vehicle for the aggressive advance of the kingdom of God on earth. I want to see the church change the world, and average, everyday believers being the ones used by God to do it! For this to happen, the local church has to be structured in a way that will best facilitate the development and release of God’s people. We don’t have time to sit in board meetings and fight over who is in charge. We have a world to change!

Taken from pp. 7-14 of Overcoming Barriers to Growth by Michael Fletcher. Used by permission of Bethany House, a division of Baker Publishing Group, © 2006. All rights to this material are reserved. Materials are not to be distributed to other web locations for retrieval, published in other media, or mirrored at other sites without written permission from Baker Publishing Group. Visit http://www.BakerPublishingGroup.com

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