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Avoid a Cascading Ministry Failure

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Avoid a Cascading Ministry Failure

Smithsonian Channel’s “Air Disasters” is must-watch TV in my home. The catastrophic incidents in aviation history are presented with reenactments, survivor interviews and cockpit recordings. But what’s particularly interesting are the insights that show what went wrong and whether or not the crashes could have been prevented.

Accidents sometimes occur after a series of unforeseen or unintended events create the conditions where flight systems, pilot training, safety protocols or mechanical parts fail. And very often, one failure is compounded by another and another producing what’s known as a failure cascade.

A cascading failure is “a failure in a system of interconnected parts in which the failure of one or few parts leads to the failure of other parts,” growing progressively with self-reinforcing momentum. One part of the network fails which triggers a flood of other breakdowns and failures. Then, each new problem gets magnified and grows exponentially as more pieces of the system fail.

Cascading failures in ministry often build for years under the surface and then emerge in some major event that produces a series of stumbles, missed opportunities and downside momentum. It could be caused by the unhealthy exit of a key leader, poor team culture, a difficult or changing community context, church conflict or a creeping sense of apathy and entitlement in the congregation.

When a church strings together a series of these challenging events, the danger of cascading ministry failures increases. And while churches and leaders bear some responsibility for this, it’s often true that unrelated and unforeseen situations come together to create the conditions for a prolonged breakdown.

And while the failure cascade is one possibility, that doesn’t mean it’s inevitable. What do leaders and churches do to stay centered on growth, spirit sensitivity and the Great Commission? They have:

  • Clear Vision — They focus on Christ-centered, missional objectives above everything else.
  • Personal Spiritual Discipline — Leaders who prioritize a heart connection with Jesus are less likely to experience spiritual drift and leadership insecurity.
  • Organizational Spiritual Discipline — A church with biblical preaching, teaching and doctrine will usually have strategies and action plans with gospel impact. Those congregations aren’t prone to complacency or lukewarmness.
  • A Heart for Discipleship — When a church makes disciples who make disciples, it builds the DNA of multiplication into its identity. That’s the very definition of a growth mindset.
  • Intentional Leadership — Leaders who watch for the signs of mission drift and sideways energy spent on second-tier distractions are a key guardrail for the small stumbles that lead to bigger issues.
  • Hyper Contextual Ministry — A focus on reaching its community keeps a church centered on the gospel imperative. Thom Rainer says it this way: “When a church ceases to have a heart and ministry for its community, it is on the path toward death.”
  • Effective Ministry Execution — Intentional ministry, solid planning and resource allocation ensure that what the church does matches what it says about the gospel. Growing churches don’t leave these decisions to chance.

So what’s the Big Idea?

Avoid a cascading ministry failure with a growth mindset centered on the Great Commission. Missional leaders and churches have clear vision, spiritual discipline, a heart for discipleship, intentional leadership, hyper contextual ministry and effective ministry execution.   

Resources


Sources

“Cascading Failure,” Accessed April 8, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascading_failure.

Thom S. Rainer, Autopsy of a Deceased Church: 12 Ways to Keep Yours Alive (Nashville: B&H Books, 2014), 28.

Ministry Command and Control

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Ministry Command and Control

There’s inherent tension between leaders and followers in any congregational church. Because effective leaders usually have a strong sense of vision and values for accomplishing the church’s missional objectives, and some members and leaders desire a voice in those same objectives, there’s bound to be healthy push and pull.

Victor Lipman says it this way:

The qualities commonly associated with management and leadership—being authoritative, decisive, forceful, perhaps somewhat controlling—if not moderated by a high degree of awareness as to how one comes across and is perceived by others, are also qualities that have the potential to easily alienate those on the receiving end. Most people chafe under too much authority, too much forcefulness, too much control.

Lipman was describing what teams and employees feel in a business setting, but he just as easily could have been describing what happens in your local church.

Most churches (and church members) value decisive and forceful pastoral leadership. The expectation for bold proclamation, scriptural truth and spiritual leadership are held high in our tradition, while other values may seem less important. But that doesn’t mean pastoral leadership is, or should ever be, one-sided.

The forces of collaboration—working with others, listening, making adjustments, compromises, introspection and self-understanding—multiply your capacity to lead and make you a more effective manager, communicator and pastor.

There are three categories of commanding (and collaborating) leader:

  • The Over Commander – The leader who tends to overdirect and neglect the value of team cooperation and discussion (The “CEO” Pastor).
  • The Over Collaborator – The leader who tends to prioritize collaboration over almost all forms of direct leadership (The Indecisive Pastor).
  • The Self-Aware Commander and Collaborator – The leader who recognizes the need for both command and collaboration moments depending on context and need (Our Aspirational Goal as Pastors).

People desire strong, spiritual leadership in most churches. But any leader worthy of his high calling as Pastor recognizes the need for collaborative thinking and consensus building. So how do you strike a balance between commanding and collaborating?

For churches, consider a few best practices:

  • Build trust with strong, biblical, spiritual leadership.
  • Model a culture of mutual respect between pastoral staff and volunteer leaders.
  • Create defined roles for leadership teams and committees.
  • Communicate regularly with church leaders.
  • Build a structured process for collaboration and decision making (usually regular meetings).
  • Commit your planning, organization and vision documents to a written plan.

For pastors and leaders, learn to moderate your command-and-control instincts:

  • Listen to your team and your church.
  • Ask questions.
  • Seek common ground and build consensus.
  • Demonstrate a willingness to make adjustments.
  • Collaborate with intentionality.
  • Command with humility.
  • Measure your words and commands.

So what’s the Big Idea?

Navigate the tension between command and control vs. leadership collaboration and participation. Hold high the aspirational goal of a leader who recognizes the need for both command and collaboration moments depending on context and need.

Resources


Source

“Why Are So Many Employees Disengaged” by Victor Lipman, Forbes (January 18, 2013), http://www.forbes.com/sites/victorlipman/2013/01/18/why-are-so-many-employees-disengaged/.

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.

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.

Resources

From Self-Reliance to God-Reliance

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From Self-Reliance to God-Reliance

Think about the ways that being independent gets sewn into your life. It happens in school from the first day you go to Kindergarten. It happens in business as you learn to promote yourself and advance your career. It happens as you move away from home and take responsibility for things your parents used to do for you.

But after all those lessons in becoming independent, you have to live in the opposite direction. For most of us, the first big lesson happens in marriage. We discover the limits of self-reliance and the beauty of a collaborative, loving relationship with someone else.

But the greatest lesson in dependent living is the one we learn as a child of God. Jesus said:

I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing. – John 15:5 (NIV)

Abiding in Christ means that you depend on Him in every corner of your life. That happens most readily through prayer. Bill Hybels said it this way:

From birth we have been learning the rules of self-reliance as we strain and struggle to achieve self-sufficiency. Prayer flies in the face of those deep-seated values. It is an assault on human autonomy, an indictment of independent living. To people in the fast lane, determined to make it on their own, prayer is an embarrassing interruption.

Interruption or not, prayer is the indispensable ingredient in any relationship with a communicating God. Without it, the faith relationship breaks down and your independence asserts itself once more. To break the chains of self-reliance and self-sufficiency:

  1. Start your day with prayer. Confess your sins before God and commit to an attitude of worship and Spirit-sensitivity throughout the day. Taking that simple step at the start helps build a supernatural perspective for the daily grind.
  2. Live with God-reliance vs. self-reliance. Approach your daily routine with healthy skepticism about old habits and tendencies. Ask key questions to keep the proper perspective for living a life on mission for God. Pray short prayers throughout the day, asking God to help in both the big and small things.
  3. Consider the source of every decision you make. Are you making decisions with human wisdom, knowledge and motivation, or is a supernatural God transforming and directing your life? Remember that prayer and meditation is not an interruption, it’s at the heart of your relationship with a communicating God.
  4. Acknowledge your inadequacy at every turn. Demonstrate humility and servant leadership, remembering that God is holy and you are not. Believers are not meant to operate independently from the sustaining presence of their God. Your humble words and actions make that task a lot easier.

So what’s the Big Idea?

Live with God-reliance vs. self-reliance in every aspect of your life. The key is regular communication with God in the big and small things of life. That unnatural activity pushes self-reliance to the side and leads you to embrace total dependence on an eternally faithful God.

Resources


Source

Bill Hybels, Too Busy Not to Pray: Slowing Down to Be with God (10th Anniversary Edition, Revised and Expanded), 2nd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 9.

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