Pages From 10 Stupid-things

How Leaders Can Overcome Costly Mistakes

Ten Stupid Things that keep churches from growing Geoff surratt

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1 Trying to Do It All

“Just because I’m the janitor doesn’t mean I can’t perform your wedding.”

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hen I was pastoring little Church on the Lake in Texas, my schedule followed a similar pattern each week. I began every Monday morning by resigning as pastor. I told my wife and whoever else would listen that the church was full of whiners, the leaders were wimps, and the preaching was poor. Although they often agreed, by noon my little pity party was over and I headed into the office to start the week. The first task was to see if we were still in business. I checked the offering count from the weekend, saw what bills were due, checked our account balance, and breathed a sigh of relief if we had enough in the bank to pay the bills and my salary for one more week. I then found my way back to my office to begin praying that God would give me one more sermon. Actually, two more sermons, because I had to preach on Wednesday night as well. Actually, three more sermons until we finally canceled the Sunday night ser vice after I decided I couldn’t stand listening to myself speak three times a week anymore. (When I first started pastoring, I prepared four sermons a week because I also taught Sunday school. I quit teaching or going to Sunday school early on because I had always hated Sunday school as a child and figured I didn’t have to go anymore now that I wore big-boy pants.) Tuesday was accounting day. That was when I entered all of the tithe checks into the database I kept on my personal computer. I knew this wasn’t the wisest way to keep the books, but it was better than the system they used when I came to the church. A sweet older lady we called Sister Dolly used to count the money, make the deposits, and write the checks. The challenge was that math wasn’t Sister Dolly’s strong suit. Occasionally she added checks to the balance rather than subtract them. That can cause some consternation at the end of the month. Once a month another volunteer took her work, mistakes and all, and transfered it into a handwritten ledger. Any expenses he didn’t recognize he lumped into the miscellaneous category. One month we spent more on miscellaneous than on all the other categories combined. The next month I became the church bookkeeper. On Wednesdays, in addition to coming up with a fresh word from

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4 Settling for Low Quality in Children’s Ministry

“If flannelgraph Bible stories were good enough for me, they’re good enough for your children.”

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10 Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing

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and are almost always ineffective. Instead, weave life-change stories through your sermons. Talk about children who are giving their lives to Christ, volunteers who are finding fulfillment through ministering to kids, and positive experiences you have had working in the children’s ministry. Never make working with children sound like punishment. Celebrate the fun and life change that happen just a few yards down the hall every weekend. When you go public with your commitment to children’s ministry, parents will know that you care about what they care about and volunteers will be inspired to get involved. And children’s lives will be changed for eternity. With six children of his own, Craig Groeschel is deeply invested in the children’s ministry of the church he planted, LifeChurch.tv, based in Edmond, Oklahoma. His passion comes through loud and clear in our discussion of the importance of a quality children’s ministry in a growing church.

SPOTLIGHT Craig Groeschel, LifeChurch.tv

When I met LifeChurch.tv’s (www.lifechurch.tv) leadership team at a Leadership Network event, my first thought was, “Who are these crazy guys from Oklahoma?” At the time they had about seven thousand people attending four campuses, but their vision was to open dozens of campuses all over America and beyond. They talked in terms of tens of thousands of attendees and dreamed of changing the world. Five years later they now have campuses in Oklahoma, Arizona, Texas, Tennessee, New York, and Florida, as well as an Internet campus with more than twenty thousand people attending a LifeChurch.tv experience every weekend. One of the things I’ve been most impressed with at LifeChurch.tv is the leaders’ unwavering commitment to quality ministry to children. Whenever they talk about core values, they

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8 Favoring Discipline over Reconciliation

“I felt guilty asking Mom to leave the church, but sometimes you have to make the tough call.”

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Geoff Surratt

IQ Test Take a few minutes to evaluate the team-based aspect of the ministry of your church. 1. How would you describe your church? a. b. c. d.

Steered by committees Team led Pastor led Other ________________________________________

2. How well defined is the mission of individual teams at your church? How can you help further define their mission? 3. Do all of your teams understand the vision of the church? Have you cast vision adequately to the team leaders? Do they buy into the vision? Do they see the connection between their team and the vision? 4. Are your teams led by leaders? Which leaders need to be mentored? Which teams need new leaders? 5. Do the teams feel empowered to operate within their sphere of responsibility? How can you do a better job of empowering them?

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ZONDERVAN Ten Stupid Things That Keep Churches from Growing Copyright © 2009 by Geoff Surratt This title is also available as a Zondervan ebook. Visit www.zondervan.com/ebooks. This title is also available in a Zondervan audio edition. Visit www.zondervan.fm. Requests for information should be addressed to: Zondervan, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49530 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Surratt, Geoff, 1962Ten stupid things that keep churches from growing : how leaders can overcome costly mistakes / Geoff Surratt. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-310-28530-4 (hardcover, jacketed) 1. Church growth. I. Title. BV652.25.S87 2009 254’.5 — dc22 2008044721 All Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved. Scripture quotations marked NCV are taken from the New Century Version of the Bible, copyright © 2005 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked NLT are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, IL 60189 USA. All rights reserved. Internet addresses (websites, blogs, etc.) and telephone numbers printed in this book are offered as a resource to you. These are not intended in any way to be or imply an endorsement on the part of Zondervan, nor do we vouch for the content of these sites and numbers for the life of this book. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other — except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Published in association with the literary agency of Mark Sweeney & Associates, Bonita Springs, Florida 34135 Interior design by Christine Orejuela-Winkelman Cartoons by Mark Sheeres (sheeresillustration.com) Printed in the United States of America 09 10 11 12 13 14 • 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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