Don’t you want to go to a church that sounds like Ephesians 4:11-16? In my last blog, I shared how if you will lead according to this passage of scripture, you will see the results of church growth and unity.
But if Ephesians 4:11 is the biblical way to lead, then there must be negative outcomes to leading in our own strength or from a people-pleasing mentality. Let’s just kind of reverse the script here and take a look at it because sometimes when we know the consequences, we find what we need to stay away from them at all costs!
1. Without a strong mission and vision statement, your people will not be equipped for kingdom advancement. If all you have is entertainment value and a motivational sermon every week and it never points to purpose, people will just take it and leave. They’ll come on occasion when they feel like they need something, and they’ll stay away when they don’t.
Let me ask you this. (I ask my people this regularly.) If Christianity were done like you do it, would it outlast your generation? This question has a tendency to make you think, “Wait a minute. I want my grandkids to be a part of a fired-up kingdom of God movement, where they’re hearing from God and doing kingdom work.” What does that look and feel like? If you don’t model it, they will never know. They don’t pay attention to what we say, but they do pay attention to how we live.
2. If you’re not leading with the right goals in mind, your members won’t discover purpose. If your purpose is attendance, if your goal as pastor is just to get people in the seats, then at the end of the day, if a lot of people show up, you may be happy, but you’re not really discipling or growing the church.
Is your team growing? If they don’t discover purpose and how they fit within a plan that’s clear, if there’s no process, then their attendance is the end result. Everyone needs to know the process and then be challenged to the next level. Even if they don’t think they can, you need to be the coach that says, “I need you right now in the game, and if God be for you, who can be against you?”
3. If you’re not pointing people towards purpose, selfishness will rule the day. “What I want” and “how I feel” form a partnership – and there are consequences for that. Members live discouraged lives, and their potential is squandered.
Pastor, I guarantee you that the answer to some of the prayers you’ve been praying and the personnel you’ve been praying for are sitting in your pews. But their potential is undiscovered. And if there’s no process for it and there’s no clear targets, there’s no Great Commission outcomes attached to the church’s mission and goals.
Again, people get discouraged when they don’t feel like they’re hitting purpose and then suddenly they’re just coming to church to “hang out.” Consequently, if there’s not mobilized saints, there’s going to be overworked pastors. We are not the answer to every problem. We are leaders. We are equippers. That’s what Ephesians 4 tells us.
4. Church membership declines without Ephesians 4 leadership. When people are placed in positions of influence, suddenly they need to listen to the Holy Spirit. Why? Because now they’ve got purpose and are being challenged to do something they’ve never done before. That’s exactly where you want people to be: Taking risks. Stepping out. Listening to the Holy Spirit. Having the support of their pastor and the kind of training necessary to make them good at what they’re supposed to be doing. If we don’t do that, immaturity and carnality will prevail. We’ll be creating more problems that need to be fixed because of selfishly prone saints who aren’t in touch with their purpose.
5. If you people please, disunity, fractioning, and power struggles will begin. We all want to be loving leaders, but when there’s a leadership vision-casting void or we’re cow-towing to everyone’s whim and fancy, some vision caster is going to come in there and start blowing their own trumpet. That’s when disunity and even a church split can happen.
6. The kingdom potential of every believer is missed. The gifted among us produce envy instead of appreciation. We don’t want an envious, critical spirit to rule the day because somebody’s gifted and got up and did what they wanted to do. Nor do we want others with giftings to remain quiet because they don’t want confrontation or to challenge the gifted individual’s domain.
7. When we people please, we abdicate our leadership role, which ultimately leads to insecure membership. People will think, “I know my shepherd’s supposed to take me to green pastures and still waters, but I’m not sure he knows the way. Should we be looking for a new leader or somebody that’ll get us to our next cheeseburger?”
In a leadership void, someone will step up. I don’t know if you remember the movie “The Patriot,” but in the end battle scene when the tide really turned for the Revolutionary Army, Mel Gibson’s character rallied the troops. They were beginning to retreat, and he grabbed a hold of the standard, shoved that flag up in the air and said, “Hold the line! Hold the line!” And all a sudden they all turned around and began to fight again. The battle was won in that great scene! That’s a pastor, especially if you feel like you’re in decline and your people are retreating. They need somebody who will stand up and say, “Hold the line for the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords!”
Pleasing people can easily move the church into resistance to the will of God. In other words, God has a plan for the church and the community, but when His mouthpiece is mute, no change takes place and you actually become a factor of resistance.
People look to churches for answers from God. If you don’t give them that, they think either God’s not interested or they can’t really trust you, so why come to your church? Not having an answer is a pitfall and resistance to the will of God.
When the church forfeits its place, it loses its influence in the community.
People vacillate with fads and popularity, and it perpetuates immaturity. If you’re looking for something cute to make people show up instead of building purpose into your membership, the pitfall is immaturity and perpetually looking for the next seminar that will get people in the church’s front door.
So how do we avoid these pitfalls? In my next blog, I’ll offer some suggestions that I have discovered in my limited experience in ministry. Stay tuned!
This blog was created using content from the webinar Pitfalls of the “People-Pleaser Pastor”.
