Quite a while back a friend was commenting on a church decision that a pastor had made. Not my current church or pastor – but another place and another time.  He was wondering how the pastor could preach such a great sermon and then turn around and make such a bad leadership decision all in the same week. It was if he was connected with God, but not the people in Church.

This is a common problem I hear about in many churches, and I think it stems from one problem: pastors sit in the front row. Churches look great from the front row. But once you start hanging out in the back row, you begin to see a very different church. One that actually questions why we do what we do.

Because, it also seems that the first couple of rows in church are also filled with “yes men” and “amens.”

Another cliché we hear in church is that 20 percent of the people do 80 percent of the work. And I would agree this is true.  The problem is that we are usually led to believe that the 80% are just not stepping up.  I would disagree with this. I believe that it is really that the church leadership just asks the same 20% of the people to do the work stuff over and over again.

It is in the back of the church that you find the 80% who want to get involved but don’t ever get asked.  You see, only about 20% of the people out there (according to some physiological studies) even have the personality that will fill out a card or go to a table to talk to people. The rest of the people are some where in the range of “they would ask me if they wanted me” to “I wouldn’t fit in with those people who are already doing things.”

But, anyways, the view from the back. I was in a meeting last week to discuss something we lead at church. The topic strayed a bit and got on to other areas at church, and I had to confess to them I had no idea what they were talking about. My wife and I just don’t get involved in things like men’s breakfasts and women’s book clubs and stuff like that for a specific reason. We believe in small groups. We believe that it is better to have a smaller number of deeper relationships than to have a large number of surface-y relationships.

Most churches today push the “large number of shallow relationships” angle.  When there is a break at church, they encourage you to “get to know someone you don’t know.”  Every time there is a bigger event, one of the reasons always given to participate is, you guessed it – “get to know someone you don’t know.”

Someone at this meeting pointed out that the men’s ministry stuff is really not that large – 20-30 people max. To me, that is still too large.  I really would rather dig in to the lives of maybe 5-6 other men, and have them dig into my life.  I just don’t see how accountability and discipleship can happen any other way. Jesus could only handle 12 such relationships when he was doing it full-time. And he still lost one.

I sometimes feel like we are the only people in America that feel this way.  We have yet to find a church that sets up a system for smaller, deeper relationships that also holds people to it.  Most churches seem to encourage a large number of church events and a full calendar over a simple structure that leaves enough time to dig in deep with a few.  Those that do set up the simple structure generally won’t keep people to it – if someone is over committed, they tend to keep piling responsibilities on them until they are ineffective in most of them.

This last part is happening to some friends of ours right now (they don’t read this blog). They are already over-committed as it is (and letting a few things slip through the cracks because of it) – and are being asked to take on some more responsibilities that I don’t think they will like or have the time for. They can do these responsibilities well – there is not question of that. They are just stretched too thin as it is.  We have tried to give advice to them on this issue in the past, and it didn’t seem to connect with them.

Sometimes I get to the point of wondering if it is even responsible leadership to let people under you take on more than they can handle. That is kind of the double-whammy I am worried about at our current church. They don’t have a good structure for deep relationship (we have small groups, but we also have a “way-too-packed” church calendar that keeps everyone in our small group too busy to hang out) and they let people take on more than they can handle. People are always the worst judge of when they are being over-extended.

The solution to this is simple:

1. Stop doing programs that encourage big meetings over deeper relationships. Create a flexible system of small groups and filter all church activities through that. If bigger scale activities happen (which is great occasionally), still coordinate those through small groups.
2. Some things like worship and youth have to happen at a global scale. So make it a requirement that people can only be involved in two things, and only one as leadership. This should apply to all levels, from pastor/elder to greeter.
3. Go to the uninvolved people in church and personally initiate with them to get involved. Cards and tables only work with a small subset of personality types.
4. And for goodness sakes, don’t be afraid of critical people. They wouldn’t criticize if they didn’t care. There is a big difference between judgment and criticism, but the average church treats all criticism as if it is judgment.