What Will Get You Fired?
This week I had a interesting conversation with my friend Colin Packer about what will get you fired in a congregation. Of course, there are certain things that will get you fired, and most of you know what they are, like moral sin, or teaching false doctrine, but this post is about the differences between what will get you fired in a 200 member church compared to a 600 member church or larger. It is a contrast of a middle size church to a large size church. Colin has predominantly worked with larger size congregations in his past while I have been more involved with middle size congregations in my past. In a middle size congregation, if you do not bring growth to the congregation, typically you will not get fired, in fact, I have had friends who were fired for doing the opposite and bringing a ton of growth to a church, and the elders asked them to leave. In a middle size congregation, you maintaining means that you are relationally connected to the church. Do you have a good relationship with the elders, do you have a good rapport with the long standing members, and mostly do you provide the relational aspect to the membership. This means do you visit enough. Your preaching has to be sound, but does not have to be great. Mostly, you will not be fired in a middle size church because you are not providing growth.
In contrast to this, in a larger size congregation, if you are not providing growth to the church, you will be asked to leave. You have to be a leader more in this situation, and help a large congregation move the attendance up. If you do this, you will be hired away quickly in a 500 member congregation to a larger one, but once you are in the 1000 member congregation, mostly you need to continue to provide an increase in numbers. The relational aspect declines a lot in the large church, and moves to a great speaker format. This is because this is all most members will judge you by. Can you bring down the house?
What do you think of all of this? And how do elders or congregation make a bad hire because of these differences in outlook in congregational size? Love to hear your thoughts.
Related posts:
- Philip Fulmer and Preachers being Fired
- A Little Church With A Large Work
- The Firing of the Minister
- What Was That Sower Doing?
- Future of Churches of Christ
About The Author
It is also interesting that most congregation seek the best speaker in a hire, but this is not always the best guy for a church.
my thoughts are that we act as if it is the job and responsibility of a preacher / minister / pastor to grow the number of christians. it’s God’s responsibility to save people, and to draw them to him. our responsibility is merely to share the gospel.
it also concerns me that we measure the number of christians in a church by counting the number of people there. i think that’s a mistake.
Just heard of one preacher that was let go in a larger congregation, and the impression one gets, from an elders’ statement, was that they were looking for numbers. So you may be right.
Yea, we should not act that way, everyone should be part of evangelism, but it is not always the case, in a larger church, the lead minister is mostly responsible for leading people to lead others to Christ, and as for the numbers, you are right, not really a good count, but mostly this is all we have.
If memory serves me correctly in the early church when the congrgation got very large the congregation split into 2 separate units each taking half the eldership and teachers so as to train up new teachers and elders. In a large congregation I have felt like I was lost in the shuffle. In a smaller congregation I feel like my talents are better used in the service of the Lord. Smaller is better for the flock so that everyone feels that they are contributing.
The easier question would be “what won’t get you fired?” Unfortunately, preaching isn’t the way to go if you are concerned about job security.
I wonder if we place too much emphasis on attendance numbers. I’m not bashing people who do emphasize attendance numbers, it is objective, obvious, and better than nothing, but it can only tell you so much.
I often think back on what Jesus did. He started the first “mega-church” of thousands, and then preached a sermon to deliberately run most of them off. Imagine if He would’ve had an eldership to answer to!