“That is why you fail.”

(Yoda to Luke Skywalker)

We know for a fact that America is less and less involved in organized religion.  Mark Chaves, a Duke University sociologists, gives us a unique view of the religious climate in America in his upcoming book American Religion: Contemporary Trends.  While we remain remarkably religious when compared to other countries, the trends are going the way of Europe.  Roughly one-fourth of our country now says they never attend religious services.  Less than one-half of those interviewed, born after 1970, say they grew up in a household with a religious father. Even more telling is that the confidence of the people in the pews to those in leadership has dropped to an all-time low of just 25%! What we have in the institutional church, in spite of all our focus on “leadership development” in seminaries, is a leadership problem. 

Simon Sinek, a gifted author and brilliant mind, takes the complex concept of leadership and makes it discernible to all in what he calls Start with Why.  When we start with “Why” we move to “How” and then to “What.”  Most of us do it the other way around.  Case in point:

A congregation struggles with the fact that there are no young people attending worship.  The leadership goes about a strategic planning session (I have a lot to say about the wasted time and effort of this process but that will have to wait until later) and comes up with the need for a contemporary service to attract more young people.  “We need to update our music so more young people will come!” a leader of the church states emphatically!  This conclusion of needing to “update our music” is arrived at without any conversation with young people, without any data to back up the claim, it is just stated as fact. This is the What: a contemporary worship service. 

“So how (we move to the How) do we do this?” another leader asks. 

“Put an ad in the newsletter inviting all people interested in forming a contemporary worship band to meet on the first Sunday next month and we’ll go from there!”  (This is such a bad idea for a whole host of reasons.)

This is probably not the time to interject that young people, like middle-aged people, and older people have a wide variety of musical tastes, or comment that there is no such thing as “contemporary worship,” as all worship is contemporary, but I digress.  The group forms, learns some catchy little “contemporary songs,” like, “Shine, Jesus, Shine…” and off we go.  

What no one is asking is: Why?  Why do we want more young people in church?  Is it because we believe we have a message that can change their lives?  Is it because we need a different perspective of the world that we believe younger people will bring to us?  Is there a group of people in our community not currently being reached with the gospel of Jesus Christ, and we feel it’s our mission to reach out to this group?

Not really.  We want more people in the pews so we’ll have more offerings to help us pay our bills, and without a steady influx of new blood we know our days are numbered.  That may sound crass, but while the “Truth will set you free,” it will, in all probability, make you angry initially.  The problem isn’t with the need to attract more people, the problem is that there is no compelling “Why.” That is always the problem, and the reason, most congregations (and denominations) fail.  What is the compelling “Why” that would motivate someone to join your church?  To help pay the bills? To serve on one of the myriad of committees?  I have news for you: no one is walking by your church wondering if it could use their time and money.  

We never start with the “Why.” What is the one compelling reason God has put you in this place at this time?  When I ask churches “Tell me why you exist?” I get blank stares or the obligatory, “We’ve been here for 125 years, and that’s why.”  No, it isn’t.

Rather than spend all our time in “planning sessions” and go through the motions of putting up big sheets of paper and filling them with our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, put away the paper, pencils, and magic markers, and simply ask: “Why do we exists?”

I had the privilege of working with one of the most dynamic pastors, with exceptional leadership gifts (she graduated from the US Air Force Academy), and she drove the leadership nuts by continually asking the “Why?” question.  It’s a question we don’t want to answer because we don’t have an answer.  Perhaps, like the story told of a man swimming the English Channel with a bowling ball on his hand, when asked why he was making the journey so difficult, responded, “Because I’m not going to be the one to drop the ball!”

It’s time to drop the ball.  It’s time to let some things die (very biblical by the way).  Here is a suggestion that will transform your congregational life:  look at everything that clogs your congregation’s arteries (yes, folks, we have clogged arteries in the church), every program, meeting, ancillary project, and ask the question: “Why are we doing this?”

Simplify. If congregations would take just one compelling “Why” and focus solely on that, understanding that the “Why” must be something that impacts the community and world, we’d find  new energy and life.  Instead, we continue doing a hundred things with little energy (because, after all, the church down the street is doing it!), and little enthusiasm. We drag the bowling balls of by-gone eras, finding it more and more difficult to survive.  That is why we fail.

A compelling “Why” is like nectar to bees.  They’ll find you!   

  

 Scott