Count the Cost

For the past several weeks I have been leading a course of the Financial Peace University. My wife and I took the course several years ago and it was an eye opener. I would encourage everyone who reads this to immediately sign up for the course. It is amazing. We will be joining another church in hosting another one this summer… sign up and show up.

Though I took Algebra, Plane Geometry, Solid Geometry, Trigonometry and Statistics in high school, I have never been real good at old fashioned arithmetic. I find writing a budget to be challenging. Following it is easy but getting it all on paper is no fun at all. But there is such wisdom in making a plan… especially a plan for your money. It is especially empowering when you adjust your spending to fit the plan you have for your life. As Christians, we are called to live differently than others and that includes our spending, saving and giving. Living differently in how we deal with money will NOT happen if we don’t plan for it. It just won’t.

There is great wisdom in planning. Before beginning any project, ministry, building or implementing a new idea we need to make a plan. Jesus put it like this: "Suppose one of you wants to build a tower. Will he not first sit down and estimate the cost to see if he has enough money to complete it? For if he lays the foundation and is not able to finish it, everyone who sees it will ridicule him, saying, 'This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' (Luke 14:28-30) If we take Jesus seriously, which we rarely do, most of us are ridiculous. We just rush through life with little thought or planning, bouncing from one thing to another, one project to another, one person to another, one interest to another and, in the end, wonder what we have done or accomplished.

I see this same phenomenon in churches. We rush from one ministry to another, following one promising idea after another, without a clear mission, vison or clearly stated long-term goals. Like the culture in which we exist, the church seeks to be “relevant” and with it. And we wander from our mission and calling. BTW, our calling is to make disciples… to produce fully functioning mature Christians.

In the life of the church, a mission or a ministry might be suggested; it sounds good so we immediately engage and rush into it. The first issue that must be addressed and question that must be asked is, “Is this what God wants us to do?” Unfortunately, that is a very difficult question to answer. The proposal must to looked at in the context of the mission of the church – does it fit – does it help us fulfil the church’s mission? Though it is a theological catch phrase, we really do need to pray about it and listen intently for God’s guidance. Doing this takes time, patience and some quiet reflection.

Next, before beginning a new ministry, the church must count the cost. Can we do this with excellence? Not perfection, but excellence. All we do is in the name of God and we certainly don’t want to represent God as in the business of sloppy, crappy ministry. After seeking God’s leading, I follow a simple formula when considering if we can, in fact, implement a ministry. It is: Vision + Resources = Ministry. If it fits your vision, then you must honestly look at your resources to see if you can do the ministry well. A church’s resources are: talents, energy, availability of personnel, time, money and facilities. If you have enough of these to do the ministry with excellence, go for it. If not, begin praying for God to provide your needs. Expect Him to and when He does, move ahead.

Don’t just move ahead and presume God is going to fill in with what you need. There is a fine line between faith and presumption. If you are tuned in God follower, you will know when to move ahead on faith and when to wait.

This is a topic I often consider because I serve a church that is strong in the desire to do ministry and weak in the resources to get those ministries done. I have a great bunch of people but we tend to lack the needed energy to do some desired ministries. I am praying for God to send resources – talented, energetic, committed people. Is God speaking to you about doing some ministry in the life of the Norwood Christian Church? Just askin’.

Copyright © 2017, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

Bill McConnell is the Interim Minister at Norwood Christian Church in Cincinnati, Ohio, and is a Church Transformation consultant and a Christian Leadership Coach. He is a frequent speaker at Church Transformation events. His latest book on church transformation is DEVELOPING A SIGNIFICANT CHURCH and is available at Westbow Press.

He can be contacted @ bill45053@gmail.com. Connect with him on Facebook @ William T. McConnell or on Twitter @billmc45053 or visit his Amazon Author Page @ Amazon

I Didn't Sign Up for This

A few years ago I was honored to be invited to Pennsylvania to participate in the ordination into ministry of a wonderful young man I had been coaching. It was a great day in Scott’s life and in the life of his church. The look of joy and pride on the faces of his wife, Brenda, and his parishioners was a thing of beauty.

In preparing to deliver the ordination message, I could not pass up to opportunity to look again at the words of Jesus as he sent his disciples out to do ministry. “As you go, preach this message: ‘The kingdom of heaven is near.’ Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matthew 10:7-8) Everything about Scott’s ordination day reminded me of my call to the ministry. I was reminded that I didn’t sign up for the job it has become. “Heal the sick and raise the dead”: you must be kidding.

Have you ever felt under qualified for a job? I have… for many years. It is called the ministry. One of the voices in my head (Don’t worry, this one is just me talking to myself.) keeps saying, “You can’t do this.” I have found that voice to be eerily and consistently correct.

As I began preparations to answer God’s call on my life, my hope was that going to seminary was going to prepare me for ministry. Wrong! Three years and a master’s degree later and still the mocking voice in my head was correctly assessing my ineptness. Like most students, I spent a couple of my school years serving a student church. The experience was supposed to help prepare me for ministry. The only thing it did for me was verify that I was totally incapable of doing the job. Let me give you an example.

It was a lovely spring day during my last year of school that I received a call from one of my parishioners. In a rather agitated voice she explained that she was having a problem with her husband and wanted to know if I could come over and talk to him. Even though I had no idea what I was going to say, feeling obligated, I agree to make a visit. Upon my arrival at the family home – a farm, I discovered that I had arrived on the scene without all the pertinent facts at hand. One of the several potentially helpful facts the dear lady failed to mention was that her husband, who had been drinking all day, was up in the loft of their hay barn with his deer rifle taking shots at anything that moved. And when I pulled up in the barn lot and headed for the house, I was something that moved. Fortunately he was drunk enough that none of the four shots he took at me came particularly close to hitting me - which, considering my size, was pretty much a miracle.

While amazing myself with my foot speed from the car to the house and observing that I ran faster that day than my high school football coach would have ever believed, I again mentioned to myself that I was not capable of doing this thing called ministry. As I was heartily congratulating myself on surviving the trip to the house I also thought that I should give deep consideration to going back to college and picking up the courses needed for a teaching certificate.

I am embarrassed to admit that while in seminary I did something I had never done before. I read the Bible. It was an unnerving experience. It was in the Bible that I read Jesus’ instructions to a group he was sending out to do ministry. He told them to heal the sick, raise the dead and cast out demons. The casting out demons part sounded like a particularly good idea during this home visit on this day.

If healing the sick and raising the dead were included in the job description for doing ministry, you could count me out. I had developed a couple of skills and hoped to develop a couple more, but healing and raising the dead were not in my repertoire.

Well, one thing led to another and I ended up in the ministry. Fortunately I started out in a pretty safe place, as an associate minister at my home church. No pressure there. That congregation had known me all of my life, had watched me grow up, which was not a pretty sight, and knew just how inept and incapable of doing any meaningful ministry I really was. Expectations were not running high.

Then one hot August day, just a few days before I was to leave the church and move to Iowa to take a church in a small town there, God and I had one of the first conversations we had ever had. It was Wednesday and my day to make the hospital calls. I was on my way to my first stop to visit a woman I had known for years. She was the mother of a good friend. Martha was in the hospital suffering from a ripping case of lupus and she was not doing well. Lupus is a disease that affects the immune system and causes the body to attack itself. One by one Martha’s internal organs were shutting down.

So I’m tooling on down the road, minding my own business, thinking about nothing much in particular when I get the strongest impression that I should pray for Martha to be healed. I mentioned to whomever or whatever was giving me that impression that I don’t do healing. I hadn’t signed up for healing. I had some hair back then, but I was no leisure suit wearing, high volume talking, money raising, television faith healer. If they had healing classes in seminary, I must have missed them.

I had been trained to go to the hospital, be pleasant, not stay too long, don’t sit on the bed and pray with people before I leave. The prayer I prayed was always a nice, generic, blah, blah preacher prayer. It was a nice prayer but not a prayer for healing. I could be pleasant, but I don’t do healing. The “impresser” clearly spoke into my thoughts and said, “You don’t heal people, but I do.” I explained that to pray for healing would make both Martha and me uncomfortable. I had learned early in my ministry that my job was to make sure everyone remained comfortable. And even though I had not seen it in the church’s Policy and Procedure Manual, I was pretty sure that praying for healing was against company policy.

Involved in this “conversation” I had lost track of time and where I was. It seemed that suddenly I found myself in the hospital parking lot and the impression that I needed to pray for Martha’s healing was stronger than ever. I wasn’t really great at calling on people in the hospital but I must tell you that never in my life had I been more uncomfortable making a hospital call as I was making that particular hospital call.

When I entered the room I was shocked to see how bad Martha looked; how sick she really was. She could not have weighed more than 80 pounds and she was too weak to sit up in bed. “Oh great”, I thought, “Nothing like a bit of a challenge when confronted with my first prayer for healing.” We visited for a few minutes. As I prepared to leave I asked, as was my habit to ask, if she would like for me to pray for her. She said that she would like that. I then admitted to her that I felt like God wanted me to pray for her healing and asked if that would be okay with her.  She smiled warmly and said it sounded like a good idea to her. So I took her hand and prayed. I don’t remember the exact words but I do remember that the prayer was very short and very direct in asking for God’s healing hand to touch her. She smiled and we said our goodbyes.

Just a couple of weeks later my family and I set sail toward the adventures God had in store for us in pastoring a church I a small town in Iowa. I figured I would never see Martha again. The next few months were hectic as we found ourselves settling into a new home, a new culture and a new church. For us, with two young children, being 600 miles away from home was difficult. December rolled around and we were excited to be going back to Louisville to spend Christmas with the extended family. My home church was kind enough to invite me to preach while I was in town for the holidays. I think the invitation had more to do with them wanting an excuse to give a young preacher with two little children and another one on the way a little money and less to do with them wanting to hear me preach.

There was a nice crowd at the early service and we were able to see lots of friends. As usual, the attendance at the late service was much larger. Greeting the several hundred people as they poured out of the sanctuary was almost overwhelming. As the crowd thinned down a nice looking middle aged lady approached me. I greeted her with a handshake and a hello. She smiled at me and said, “You don’t recognize me, do you?” I had to admit that I didn’t. She said, “I’m Martha. I have been looking forward to coming to church today to tell you that God answered your pray. From that day you prayed for me, I have been getting better every day. God healed me.”

I am embarrassed to admit that I was shocked. She had not been prayed for by a great man of faith. No, it was just me, Rev. Incompetent. And she was exactly right. I didn’t heal her, God did. But God was kind enough to let me be a part of a miracle. The lesson I learned that day is I am not capable of healing the sick and raising the dead. And that is not my job. My job is to expose people to the God who does those things.

I am still looking forward to the day I perform a funeral and everybody goes home afterward.

Copyright © 2013, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

Leadership Takes Courage

The church of the 21^st Century in North America is struggling mightily with some significant problems and challenges. I am proud of the church for being willing to engage in such a struggle. For much too long the church chose to take the approach that there were no challenges; that there were problems, not with the church but, instead, with the culture.

Many have addressed the plethora of problems confronting the church: From a lack of authenticity, to a lack of mercy, to a lack of love, to a lack transparency, to a lack of direction, to a lack of consistency, to a lack of direction, to a lack of hospitality, to a lack of mission, to a lack of whatever. What the church lacks has been thoroughly dragged out and inspected. Except one thing. We haven’t taken a hard look at one of the church’s greatest weaknesses; one of the things lacking that is causing the church the most distress. I believe that to be the lack of courageous leadership.

When I talk about church leadership I understand that churches are led by both clergy and lay leaders. But I, as a member of the clergy, am going to only address the lack of strong leadership that our pastors are failing to provide for the church.

It is more than understandable why our pastors are failing to provide leadership for our churches. Most of us did not answer a call to leadership; we answered a call to the pastorate; to be pastors. Most of us went to school – 4 years of college and 3 years of seminary – to train for the pastorate. We learned to read and write and speak. We learned some theology, Greek and Hebrew, pastoral care, Christian education, spiritual disciplines, church administration and, most importantly, how to run a projector. We took classes in almost everything except leadership. Leadership wasn’t on the agenda and, for most of us; it is not on our radar screen.

In fact, most of us were taught to do church in reverse leadership. Instead of answering a call to a church and leading the people forward in God’s calling for that church, we were taught to go to a church and ask this question: “What do you want to do?” Like most politicians of our era, we attempt to lead from behind. Back in the crowd is a place of comfort and safety. Nothing of much consequence happens in the life of a group (or a country) when such non-leadership is exercised, but one’s life expectancy in the organization is markedly increased.

Most of us fail to lead because we were not taught to lead and leading never occurs to us. We just coast along from church to church to church wondering why nothing particularly significant happens in our ministries and finally land safely in retirement. We become so accustomed to not much happening in our churches we come up with statements like the one a dear preacher friend made to me several years ago: “If you move them and inch, you’ve done some great work.” The truth is we have worked hard but we have not done great work. We have hardly moved them. And we won’t do great work until we learn to lead our churches in the Mission God has called us to.

When we look at the topic of leadership we must think in terms of courageous leadership. Leadership that does not display courage is not truly leadership. And this, I believe, is where we have a profound problem. Like a majority of folks, being courageous day in and day out is too much to ask. We can have flashes of courage. But courage as a way of life is difficult. Because of the personality type attracted to ministry, many of we preacher-types tend to want people to like us and approve of us. More of the ministry we do than we would like to admit is done so people will like us and approve of us. Doing pastoral ministry often brings gratitude and thanks from those receiving that ministry. And that gratitude really massages the old ego. Having people recognize us in public as being “wonderful” for being there for them during a difficult time is addictive. It is not a bad thing, but it can become primarily why we do ministry. And that is unhealthy.

The courageous leadership it takes to lead a church forward often is met with opposition and sometimes with anger, unkind words and even threats of violence. It takes courage and conviction to deal with such criticism and remain on task and on target. In a vast majority of churches I have worked with, any display of opposition immediately halts the forward momentum of new or proposed ministries. We are so afraid of offending someone that we allow the most negative people in the church to “lead” the church. We abdicate leadership for fear of incurring someone or ones’ displeasure.

Bill Hybels, pastor at Willow Creek Community Church, encourages pastors to ask and answer a difficult, soul searching question. “As a leader, how often have I aborted a vision secretly because I’ve lacked the courage to do the hard thing?” This is true in far more cases than any of us would like to admit. Leading a church into change and transformation is difficult, demanding and dangerous. The possibility of verbal abuse, exhaustion from long hours of work and having people oppose every new initiative is extremely high.

Many clergy look at that and decide to not take on the challenge. Instead, we quietly exist in dying churches patiently waiting for the day of our retirement. I say, shame on us. We are afraid someone may not like us. We are afraid we might be fired. We think: Life is good, why upset this good deal? Brene Brown challenges us: “You can choose courage or comfort. But you cannot choose both.”

For those of us honest enough to answer yes to the question Hybels proposes, he also says: “Don’t go to your grave with you cool visions and dreams. Don’t die a coward.” Strong words but good words. As many have already said, I want to come to the end of life regretting the mistakes I have made instead of regretting the many things I did not have the courage to attempt.

The church in our culture is losing ground in any way you choose to measure it. Most of our churches “leaders” choose to wring our hands, bemoan the demise of the church, encourage our people to hang in there and invite others to join us in dying as an organization, and continue to do business as usual. This is not leadership. The most often repeated command from God, “Be not afraid,” was not given by chance. If you are going to be a God follower and a church leader, be of good courage. Please.

Copyright © 2013, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved

Will Work for Food

For what seems like at least the last ten years, there was a man standing at one of the interstate highway exits near the University of Cincinnati holding a sign that read, "Will work for food." I will admit that every time I saw him I couldn't help thinking, "Well, yes. Me too. I work for food." I am beginning to believe I was wrong. I am beginning to think that I don't work for food… or clothing… or housing.

Since recently resigning my position at the church I have been serving for almost 20 years I am, for the first time in over a quarter of a century, looking at the possibility of being unemployed. I am, quite honestly, surprised at how the prospect of not having a job has unnerved me. I will admit that the cessation of income is a bit bothersome but not earth shaking. As my childhood pastor once said, "I am not hung up on money, but my creditors sure are." Fortunately, other than a mortgage, I have no creditors. That aside, having money for things like gasoline (Soon to become a major purchase.) and food and clothes does sound like a good thing. And health insurance… health insurance would be good. Making the house payments would be nice.

But as I watch and wait and listen and look for where God might lead me next, I am beginning to realize that I don't just work for food… or money or the stuff that money enables me to buy. I work for a whole lot more than that. My work, doing ministry, brings meaning and purpose and fulfillment to my life. I am told by some of my friends and colleagues that I am supposed to find meaning and purpose in other ways and what I do is just a job. And on some level, they may be correct. But I don't fully agree with them. Not since my work is ministry. Being a Christian is not something I do, it is who I am. And doing ministry is not an activity, it is not a profession, it is not a vocation, it is not a job. For me, it is a way of life… a calling of God.

So, as I pray and seek God's will for my future, I am discovering that I don't work for food. I work to fulfill God's purpose for my life. But go ahead and send the check.

Copyright © 2011, William T. McConnell, All Rights Reserved