Helping church leaders make the transition from the present to the future

It’s Hard to Overcome the Importance of Passion

Carol Childress, Leadership Network Explorer editor

Lyle Schaller has been called the “dean of church consultants” and voted the most respected observer of the American church scene (LA Times national religion poll.) He is perhaps best known for his books and articles that appear like clockwork in bookstores, journals and magazines everywhere. Although “retired,” he still gets on a plane every now and then enroute to sharing his wisdom with pastors and other church leaders. Two weeks ago, we caught up with him in Dallas where he spoke to a church leadership conference. The following are excerpts from an interview with Schaller after the conference.

Earlier this afternoon, you remarked that the number two issue facing congregations was assimilation (leadership being no. 1). Who is doing a good job of assimilation?

SCHALLER: As far as I can tell, the best ones are the churches that have said, “We’re not going to deal with that issue. We’re going to assimilate people before they’re even eligible to become members. By definition, anyone who’s a member is assimilated. What we want you to do is move along in your faith journey. As you progress in your faith journey, that will be the assimilation process.” To put it in simplistic terms, the result is that everybody is assimilated before they become members. A part of the process is the extended new member or prospective new member class, which helps someone to know what they’re joining and what level of commitment is expected. If they aren’t interested in that much commitment, then they decide, “Well, it’s been a good eight or nine or ten months together, but I don’t want to follow through by becoming a member.” So in effect, what these churches say is – and this is my language, not theirs – “We don’t worry about assimilating the uncommitted. What we do is assimilate the committed before they become members.

You talked a lot about the concept of a ministry plan and observed that the real difference in churches is whether or not they have an intentional plan for ministry. Elaborate on that, please.

SCHALLER: A Christian is called to lead an intentional life and congregations are called to be intentional. There are several ways to organize around an intentional plan of ministry. One of the ways churches organize is language or ethnicity, and this works for the first three or four generations. Today, the most common one is that we are organized to take care of our own people. We have had a lot of churches organized around the magnetic personality of the pastor. There is a huge number of small congregations that run 25-35 that are part of an extended family and kinship ties. Another one is “How do we intervene in the lives of unchurched people?” There are two ways: one is at cycles or stages of life and another one is around a faith journey such as being seeker sensitive. We have a lot of churches organized around the Sunday school, or worship or children’s ministries. Some churches are organized around real estate. . . “We are obligated to pass on this piece of real estate to the next generation.”

You also talked about how people identify with their congregation. What are the linkages or the identifying hooks today?

SCHALLER: There are four that are fairly common today. One is “This church is meeting my spiritual needs and/or my family’s spiritual needs.” That’s consumerism if you want to use a dirty word. A second one is, “This is my social network. This is where I found most of my personal friends, my social network.” It may not be related to the small group movement at all, but is a very informal, self-created, self-generating, self-perpetuating social network. Probably the smallest of the four is “I owe this church so much because this is where I became a Christian” or “This is the church that saved my marriage” or “This is the church that helped me find a job when I was laid off.” In a sense these are healthy debts, not dependency. The final one, which I have some problems with, is the pastor loves everybody. You know, “My tie here is with the pastor.” When that pastor leaves, there is anywhere from a 20 to an 80 percent drop in attendance.

Let’s talk a little about staffing for churches. I hear pastors say they are looking for two major things: a passion for ministry and the ability to lead others, to equip others. What are you seeing as emerging patterns of staffing?

SCHALLER: Three things. One, remember that churches tend to staff for yesterday, not tomorrow. Two, in terms of specialized staff, there is an increasing number, especially with younger leadership, of staff teams. They may have a leadership team and then they have teams with lay volunteers and part time people. Finally, the key issue is one of passion. There was once a day when we asked prospective staff about academic accomplishment. Today, the number one question is “What is your passion in ministry?” It’s hard to overstate the need for passion.

Schaller’s newest book, The Very Large Church, was released in April and published by Abingdon

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