Pastor Mark Reynolds' Podcast

Some churches assume that they pay their pastor to do all of the ministry; he (or she) is the employee and they are the paying customers. Performance is measured according to how much work the pastor is dong to effectively meet the expectations, needs, and demands of the membership. In this way, a church becomes pastor-centered and inwardly focused. It gets stuck in codependent caretaking and chronic people-pleasing and loses sight of its real mission: to make new and better disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. As such, once the pastor loses the ability (or desire) to keep doing most of the work, the church stagnates, declines, and (if there isn’t a significant change in course) eventually dies. To avoid this trap, both the pastor and the people must stop seeing the church as a place where paid staff offer a variety of free social and civic services, and start seeing it as a base of strategic mission that works for Jesus. The required shift is from a consumer mentality to a producer mentality. The central question is not, “What can the pastor or church do for me?” but “How can I serve the mission of Jesus Christ through the shared ministries of the church?” One of the most effective ways of creating this “holy shift” is by emphasizing the importance of every member getting involved in shared ministry through small groups. Small groups can be a powerful antidote to the slow drift into pastor-centeredness. Once this important shift happens, the people begin to understand that the vitality, growth, and longevity of a church does not rest squarely on the pastor’s performance, but on the people taking ownership of the mission that Jesus gives us to makes disciples for the transformation of the world. This message will encourage pastors on the brink of burn-out. It will also light a fire in the heart of the laity to take responsibility for their own spiritual growth and to start seeing themselves as ministers of the gospel!