Why are some churches growing and others declining? After combing through data on thousands of churches over several decades, I’ve concluded that there is little or no predictable cause and effect between geography, demographics, or the age of churches and their prospects for finding and advancing their mission.

Given their circumstances, none of these churches should be experiencing mission growth. At least, given what we’ve thought was needed to grow a church. Worship styles alone do not guarantee success. Christian rock is no more likely to attract everyone than singing traditional hymns will drive everyone away. While there is much to be said for inspired, creative worship, no one style works everywhere. None of the churches noted above sound alike.

With every explanation for declining churches, there are many examples of churches advancing their mission in spite of difficult circumstances. In the country, small towns, and the inner city—you name it—in all these places, churches are discovering mission opportunities. At the same time, some churches in good locations are declining and dying. Why? It’s often about the right kind of congregational leadership.

In two recent books, the authors claim that pastors and denominational church leaders have not developed the right kind skills for serving faith communities. Most surprising is the corrective from Jim Collins in Good to Great and the Social Sectors, subtitled, “Why Business Thinking is Not the Answer.” It’s a brief (35 pages) corrective for church leaders and others in the social sector that may have been overly enamored with examples of successful corporate leaders in his popular book, Good to Great.

On the back cover is a Collins quote, “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.” This could apply to both the business and the religious community.

Corporate CEOs have executive power while leaders in the social or religious sector have “legislative influence.” To be effective with legislative influence requires what he calls “true leadership.” “True leadership only exists if people follow when they have the freedom not to. If people follow because they have no choice, then you are not leading.”

A key understanding in Good to Great is the “Hedgehog Concept.” Collins took this idea from an Isaiah Berlin essay which in turn was borrowed from an ancient Greek parable by Archilochus: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing” (emphasis mine). While a fox knows many complex ways to trap a hedgehog, the hedgehog can thwart every trap with one basic response, that of rolling into a ball. The hedgehog’s ability to reduce life’s various complexities to a single organizing idea or principal is its genius. Collins states that the Hedgehog Concept is arrived at by reflecting deeply on the intersection of three areas:

1. What you can be the best in the world at (and, importantly, what you cannot be the best in the world at).

2. What drives your economic engine.

3. What you are deeply passionate about.

Collins claims this concept is even more important for religious leaders, if they adjust the second point because, “The whole purpose of the social sectors is to meet social objectives, human needs, and national priorities that cannot be priced at a profit.” As Collins writes in Good to Great, “When you get the Hedgehog Concept right, it has the quiet ping of truth, like a single, clear, perfectly struck note.”

In The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World, Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk, who have organized the Missional Leadership Institute , describe their experiences in adapting executive coaching techniques. Although their training process is borrowed from the corporate world, they are convinced that neither corporate models of leadership nor the traditional model of the pastor as caregiver work to create missional churches.

Through their institute they guide pastors and denominational executives through their “Missional Change Model” (a “360 degree feedback process”) through which a group of 12 to 15 leaders selected by the pastor or denominational leader agree to serve as a team to help evaluate leadership effectiveness in key areas of missional responsibility. They are convinced that for pastors and denominational leaders to become missional leaders, “They must become apprentices in the process of awareness and understanding, evaluation and experimentation in order to develop commitment to missional leadership.”

Roxburgh and Romanuk claim that strategic planning, goal-setting models from the corporate world produce dysfunctional faith communities already frustrated over their lack of numerical growth in spite of their best efforts. In a time of unpredictable change, congregations need leaders who know how to unite congregations around core missional values where success is defined as faithfulness to a vision inspired by scripture and their own spiritual narrative.

There may no longer be any good circumstances to start and sustain missional churches. And there are probably some churches that even Rick Warren and Bill Hybels couldn’t turn around. But they, and a lot of other missional leaders, are doing quite well at advancing what we believe is God’s mission through missionary people in local congregations.

by Tom Nees
Director,USA/Canada Mission/Evangelism Department

Books Consulted:
Collins, Jim. Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t. (New York: HarperBusiness, 2001).
Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great. (Boulder, Colorado: HarperCollines, 2005).
Roxburgh, Alan J. and Fred Romanuk. The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World. (San Francisco, California: Jossey-Bass, 2006).