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When the Growth Cycle Ends

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When the Growth Cycle Ends



Vision is clarified. Strategy is developed. Action plans are implemented. Lives are changed. Needs are met. Growth follows. The pattern repeats. And the end never comes. Or does it?

The reality is that growth seasons run in cycles. As sure as there’s a beginning, there’s an end. What kind of ending depends on the church and its leaders.

What happens when the growth cycle ends? Consider three possibilities:

  • The church crash lands—the result of a single, fateful event or a long-simmering issue that finally reaches its explosive climax.
  • The church enters a holding pattern—the curse of the plateau.
  • The church recharges for another growth cycle.

If the church crash lands, then casualties are the result. It might be worn-out leaders or church members who leave for greener pastures. Church finances may suffer and ministries may become hollowed out over time. In the worst case there’s no course correction and the church eventually dies.

Crash landings occur when the leader fails to cast clear vision, multiply disciples and build a solid missional foundation for the inevitable challenges that lie ahead.

If the end of growth happens due an organizational deficiency, then the church is in danger of entering the up and down—but generally flat—trend line called the growth plateau. Most churches can’t break free from this holding pattern without some significant course correction.

In these first two scenarios, growth ends because something went wrong. Several factors can trigger an end to ministry growth:

  • Leadership Drift — Leaders lose sight of the church’s unifying mission and vision and spend valuable resources on sideways energy.
  • Staff Turnover — Seasons of high team turnover make it difficult to sustain ministry momentum and growth.
  • Failure to Execute Effectively — Too little time and resources spent on Christ-centered, nuts-and-bolts ministry execution is a recipe for stalled growth.
  • External Factors — If we learned anything from the COVID-19 experience, it’s that we can’t control a wide range of external factors that impact church growth and health.
  • Internal Conflict — Lack of vision clarity often leads to conflict among church leaders and members.
  • Apathy and Entitlement — Lukewarmness and complacency are the enemy of a growth mindset. If enough of it takes root, then the church loses its spiritual vitality and stops growing.

Even though we face growth challenges, unhappy endings aren’t inevitable. There is hope for leaders and churches ready to recharge for another growth cycle. Tony Morgan offers this aspirational perspective:

Most churches start, grow, thrive, decline and eventually end. But I believe God’s plan for our churches is that they grow in maturity towards a peak of sustained health, and that as methods and traditions and culture change, they continually reevaluate and refresh, finding new ways to lead people towards Jesus.

Healthy churches possess clear vision, effective leadership and able execution. After a short pause at the end of the growth cycle they are able to recharge, refresh and relaunch into a new season of growth.

As church leaders, we are the ones most responsible for positioning our churches to navigate the peaks and valleys of growth. We should prepare well because wherever our church is in the growth cycle, the end is coming.

So what’s the Big Idea?

Avoid organizational pitfalls that lead to crash landings and the curse of the plateau. Instead, build a healthy church ready to navigate the inevitable end of the growth cycle. Then recharge and relaunch into a new season of growth.

Resources


Source

“Understanding the 7 Phases of a Church’s Life Cycle” by Tony Morgan, The Unstuck Group (June 21, 2021), https://theunstuckgroup.com/phases-church-life-cycle.

Strategy Starts in the Mud

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Strategy Starts in the Mud



The best ideas and strategies come from leaders and teams closest to the people being served and the ministries deployed to meet their needs. Think about that for a moment. While we often make strategic ministry decisions around the conference table, consider that a better way is to create strategy and generate ideas with volunteers, key leaders and teams who make ministry happen every week.

It’s not that big picture, top-down leadership doesn’t matter. It’s still a vital part of the way churches create vision, clarify direction and build out Great Commission strategies for evangelism, discipleship, missions and worship. But it shouldn’t end there.

In fact, a key observation of my 30 years in ministry is that most churches don’t fail on mission and vision. Instead, most churches struggle and often stagnate on strategic ministry execution. And execution success or failure rests with the front-facing teams who do most of the hands-on work and implementation of nuts-and-bolts ministry.

Empowering leaders and volunteers to make ministry happen is a paradigm shift for many leaders. Execution with less control or oversight isn’t always pretty, and it’s usually done in a way you wouldn’t do it yourself. But that comes with the territory. This is the “mud” of day-to-day ministry—an analogy for how laborious, challenging and messy it can be to implement those Big Ideas that mobilize the church to go and make disciples. There’s no question that it’s a glorious calling, but the mud remains. Ministry can be messy.

Enter a strategy planning process that often tells instead of listening. Nilofer Merchant says it this way:

As we all know, simply telling people what needs to be done is rarely enough to produce action. Yet that’s exactly what many organizations often do in the strategy process. Creating excellent strategy depends on collaboration throughout the organization.

Collaboration and collaborative leadership take many forms, but some of the most important are organizational strategies and tactics—everything we do (and don’t do) to achieve our missional objectives. So how do you foster a spirit of collaboration as you make strategy in the mud? Here are a few tips:

  • Lead By Asking Questions — Peter Drucker said: “The leader of the past knew how to tell – the leader of the future will
    know how to ask.” Don’t be afraid to ask questions.
  • Ask for Strategic Input — Most Big Idea strategy development happens at higher levels of leadership, but don’t neglect
    input from others. Collaborate with leaders and volunteers to allow for strategic ideas to bubble up from the bottom of the org chart. Ask them: “What does your team believe they can accomplish?”
  • Collaborate with a Cross Section of Leaders — Devolve as much authority for developing ministry tactics as you can. The most effective action plans develop in departmental groups, volunteer teams and hands-on serving ministries.
  • Delegate Execution Decisions to Ministry Teams — Ask departmental ministry teams and key volunteer leaders to develop the action plans for accomplishing your mission, vision and values. Place a high value on bottom-up leadership, strategy development and execution.

So what’s the Big Idea?

Create strategy and generate ministry ideas with volunteers, key leaders and teams who make ministry happen every week. And for maximum ministry impact, delegate execution to ministry leaders nearest the people being served.

Resources

   
Sources

Nilofer Merchant, The New How: Creating Business Solutions through Collaborative Strategy (Sebastopol, CA: O’Reilly Media, 2010), 32.

Marshall Goldsmith, “Advice on Getting from Here to There” (Business Week), Accessed March 5, 2025, https://marshallgoldsmith.com/articles/advice-on-getting-from-here-to- there.

Change the Environment to Change the Meeting

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Change the Environment to Change the Meeting



Early in my ministry life, I remember a weekly staff meeting around a large conference table in a cramped room (with fluorescent lights and leather-bound club chairs). At the time, I didn’t think much about the setting or the meeting outcomes, but in retrospect, I see how the two things are inextricably linked.

It’s clear that different rooms can often produce very different meeting outcomes. Perhaps you need to create a new leadership dynamic, cultivate a different kind of interaction, or facilitate a specific team collaboration goal. And it might be useful to tweak your team culture in some specific way. Whatever the objective, environmental factors play an important role.

Consider these scenarios and the problems they create:

  • The Capacity Problem — A large group of 40 people gathers in a room with a large conference table that only seats 20 people. The result? The other 20 people become second-tier participants in the meeting because they’re not at the first-tier table. The solution? Reduce the size of the meeting or find a bigger setting.
  • The Engagement Problem — A group meets together in a room with seating in rows and a lectern up front. The result? The leader talks a lot and group engagement suffers. The solution? Circle up and plan activities to “break the ice.”
  • The Formality Problem — A group gathers in a sterile room with tile floors, harsh lights, metal folding chairs and rectangular tables positioned in a square with a head and foot. The result? The formality of the setting impedes open conversation. The solution? Find a new room with couches and lounge chairs to encourage less formality and honest, open dialogue.
  • The Collaboration Problem — A large group of 45 meets in a room filled with round tables while the leader asks for group dialogue and feedback. The result? The leader does most of the talking and group collaboration falls flat. The solution? Form smaller groups with round tables and have table leaders give feedback to the larger group throughout the meeting.

These examples show just how much the environment shapes the meeting. It also tells us that meeting purpose is the most important factor in where you meet, who you invite and what you talk about—the meeting agenda.

Recognize that different meetings have different purposes: information, collaboration, planning, execution or vision. Depending on your objective, you’ll do best when you match the environment with the meeting’s purpose.

Consider these environmental factors that impact meeting goals and purpose:

  • Space — Is there enough space for everyone?
  • Furniture — Is the look and feel conducive for the meeting’s purpose?
  • Seating — Are the chairs comfortable and configured correctly?
  • Setup — Does the room setup contribute to the meeting’s goal?
  • Technology — Does the room have adequate sound and presentation tools?
  • Lighting — Is the room well lit?
  • Composition — Are the right people in the room?
  • Food — Is the meeting long (or early/late) enough to require coffee, water, or snacks?

So what’s the Big Idea?

Change the environment to change the meeting.

Resources

Dechurched America

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Dechurched America



Have you thought lately about the people you used to see at church? They may be folks who came regularly prior to COVID-19 and the resulting closures. They could be people who spent most of their time around the edges of church life—the ones who may not have fully committed to the cause of Christ.

Even now, you may be thinking about someone specific, or even more telling, someone who’s currently in danger of joining the growing ranks of those who used to go to church.

That topic is fully discussed in The Great Dechurching by Jim Davis and Michael Graham. Their research describes the 40 million Americans who’ve left the church in the last 25 years: dechurched people that represent 16% of the adult population. Perhaps the most significant consequence of this seismic shift are its effects on subsequent generations.

What will the absence of faith, spiritual growth and meaningful church relationships mean for them? For a broad range of personal, relational, sociological and moral outcomes, it can’t be good.

The research in The Great Dechurching offers some very Big Ideas for churches:

  • Moving — When churchgoers move to a new city, they are removed from their previous rhythm of church attendance, relationships and accountability. It’s no surprise that many fall away and never find their way into a new church.
  • Discipleship — Shallow and nonexistent disciple making structures are the single most important explanation for American dechurching. Meaningful membership and a robust discipleship process are essential in twenty-first century churches.
  • Relationships — Everyone needs deep relationships for their emotional, physical and spiritual wellbeing. More than a club you join, church is a family with heartfelt connections and deeper than surface-level conversation.

Discipleship matters. A startling observation about the dechurched is the strong tendency for people to decouple from a local church when they move to a new city. This speaks to the habits and rhythm we establish in our lives, but more importantly, it tells us we haven’t discipled folks carefully enough to establish sustainable Christ-centered, missional maturity in their lives.

Our Great Commission mandate is to make disciples, which translates to clarity in our disciple-making process and the church’s primary role as an incubator for personal spiritual growth. When our churches fail on this point, we invariably leave many people in a vulnerable state, susceptible to a degraded culture and worldly decoys that pull them away from God and His church.

Relationships and biblical community matter almost as much. That means loving, caring, sharing and listening. So many dechurched people have experienced some form of relationship trauma, often unforced and unintentional, and usually the result of the broader cultural trend of less social interaction. Incidentally, this coincides with a general diminishing of relational intelligence and soft skills both inside and outside the church.

What’s our best response to this grim assessment of our current reality? We should reengage the people around us with our full relational attention, armed with the gospel and God’s loving embrace of those who are lost and adrift. Graham and Davis say that: “Some people need a nudge, others need a dinner table, and others need years of patient and prayerful, consistent movement into their lives.”

In other words, dechurched people need our time, our patience, our prayer and our devoted attention to forming real relationships and deeper connections.

All of this resonates with the bigger cultural conversation we’ve having about the loneliness epidemic, anti-socialization tendencies and increasing isolation felt by a growing number of Americans. A recent survey by the Harvard School of Education reports that 21% percent of adults have had “serious feelings of loneliness.”

Among people ages 18-29 the rate was 24% and among those ages 30-44 the rate was 29%. According to the survey, a leading cause of loneliness was “no religious or spiritual life” and “too much focus on one’s own feelings, and the changing nature of work” by around 50% of those surveyed.

So what’s the Big Idea?

A strong discipleship process and healthy, biblical community are what vibrant churches do to engage Christ-centered people and help them grow spiritually. And it’s the very thing that keeps churchgoers from joining the growing ranks of those who used to go to church.

Resources


Sources

Jim Davis and Michael Graham, The Great Dechurching: Who’s Leaving, Why Are They Going, and What Will It Take to Bring Them Back? (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2023), 50.

“What Is Causing Our Epidemic of Loneliness and How Can We Fix It?” by Elizabeth M. Ross, Harvard Graduate School of Education (October 25, 2024), https://www.gse.harvard.edu/ideas/usable-knowledge/24/10/what-causing- our-epidemic-loneliness-and-how-can-we-fix-it.

Are You a Self-Aware Leader?

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Are You a Self-Aware Leader?



Are you a self-aware leader?

Answering yes means that you recognize what you’re good at and what you’re not. It means that you understand what you know and what you don’t. Most of all, it means that you’ve learned what you can do yourself and what you should give away to others.

Self-awareness multiplies your capacity to lead and makes you a more effective manager, relator and communicator. The personal and professional implications are staggering:

  • You understand the truth about yourself. You see your own strengths and weaknesses and confidently hire team members who compensate. You readily acknowledge the strength of the team over and above your own agenda.
  • You recognize how other people perceive you. You moderate your behavior with keen situational awareness. You are sensitive to team culture, work relationships and collaborative opportunities.
  • You see reality for what it is. There’s a ready willingness to explore, listen, measure and investigate. You listen to the truth and accept constructive criticism leading to better outcomes and greater effectiveness.
  • You have clarity about your environment. Where others see confusion and get lost in the whirlwind of day-to-day busyness, you have clarity about where you are and where you’re going.

What can you do to improve your self-awareness quotient? A few ideas include:

  • Assess yourself. Plato said it well, “know thyself.” Commit to learn more about your personality—your character, feelings, motives, habits and skills. Learn more about yourself with personal assessments such as DiSC, Myers-Briggs and StrengthsFinder 2.0.
  • Engage a coach. There’s a reason that high capacity leaders and self-aware people have personal and professional life coaches. It works. Engaging a coach to ask probing questions from a neutral point of view leads to increased clarity and awareness.
  • Ask a co-worker. A sure sign of leadership maturity is a willingness to engage your supervisor in frank discussions about strengths, weaknesses, blind spots and workplace perceptions. If you have a good relationship with a supervisor, direct report or co-worker, then make yourself vulnerable enough to start an introspective conversation.
  • Talk to a friend. People who know you best are uniquely qualified to provide honest feedback on your self-awareness IQ.

So what’s the Big Idea?

Awareness about yourself and how you’re perceived by others is important. Self-awareness multiplies your capacity to lead and makes you a more effective manager, relator and communicator.

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