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A Business Perspective on 101 Great Ideas for Growing Healthy Churches

MICHAEL LOFTHOUSE

Get ready or go under! Those leading and managing a church now work in an environment that is dominated by secularism, where the authority of religion and religious organizations is declining. A destructive and threatening marketplace exists in which potential customers switch their allegiance to rival providers and where effective leadership and management is not an option, it is a necessity.

This competitive environment creates customer mobility and the related pressure that congregations are now consumers. It is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain or grow the customer base. This places on clergy added marketplace pressures regarding the content and structure of their religious services and organizations. Is the environment inviting? Are their products attractive? Is this what customers are prepared to ‘buy’?

Leading and managing a church now also brings with it added challenging personal contemporary secular job demands. These pressures can lead to role conflict, isolation and a lack of professional autonomy. Ministry alone cannot guarantee a successful church. As secularization tightens its grip, religious organizations typically respond by attempting to replicate secular management, structures, practices and strategies, often with little understanding of consequences. They often fail to adequately prepare those who are to operationalize this ‘new way’ of working.

In today’s church clergy must lead and manage with diminished institutional and personal legitimacy, while simultaneously dealing with a work context characterized by high expectations and congregational change, often without the necessary leadership and management skills and competencies.

That is the bad news. The good news is that it is possible and many have thrived and prospered in this challenging environment; which has meant that their churches and congregations have thrived and prospered. This book is a testament to this assertion.

What do I recommend to meet these challenges? I have a simple prescription. Adopt an internal personal and organizational orientation towards good leadership and management practices; learn from successful competitors and peers, including those from the secular world; be prepared to get your leadership and management hands dirty, be adaptable, adventurist and honest, especially with yourself and be prepared to fail; find and refine your own leadership and management style; and, importantly, accept that ministry alone is no longer sufficient to sustain your church.

Remember, there is only one measure of effective church leadership and management and that is a profitable church.