Give advice to many church leaders on any topic, and you’ll often hear them say, “You don’t understand. MY church is different.”
Then they’ll give you five reasons why their church/city/people/culture is different, so, naturally, the rules or whatever piece of advice you’re giving them can’t apply to them.
I don’t buy it.
I mean, sure, there are some differences from place to place. The West Coast isn’t middle America. Vancouver isn’t Milwaukee. And the inner city isn’t suburbia. Nor is a retirement community a college town. Granted.
But the question still remains…
Is your community really that different?
So different that the law of gravity gets suspended within your boundaries?
So different that people stop behaving like people, or that Netflix isn’t available?
Here are three reasons your church isn’t really all that different, as well as some observations of why people (including me) do this.
The Mono-Culture Is Everywhere
People in NYC read James Clear’s blockbuster book Atomic Habits. So do people in Kansas City, Miami, and Seattle. Mcdonald’s, by the way, has locations in all of these places, too.
Taylor Swift is a mega-star in Green Bay, Austin, and London. She also happened to be big in Kansas City long before Travis Kelce showed up.
Similarly, people all over the world use Gmail, ChatGPT, and Microsoft Office. People in Boston and in Bangladesh listen to Drake and Olivia Rodrigo.
Independent coffee shops and Starbucks spring up in small towns and major cities alike.
While there are fun local variations (New Orleans jazz, Chicago Deep Dish Pizza, Montreal Smoked Bagels, or Californians who drive EVs), the mono-culture of culture is a thread that runs through every community.
The mono-culture is everywhere. Pastors, if your community is as unique as you claim it is, Apple wouldn’t sell iPhones there.
The mono-culture is everywhere. Pastors, if your community is as unique as you claim it is, Apple wouldn’t sell iPhones there. Click To TweetPeople Are People
The inescapable truth is that people are people wherever you go.
Love, lust, envy, joy, sadness, loneliness, connection, jealousy, deceit, self-discipline, laughter, discouragement and hope show up wherever human beings show up.
That’s not only true in your community; it’s been true for thousands of years. Even a cursory study of any passage of scripture or historical work shows you that humans have been dealing with human intrigue, drama, and emotions ever since there were humans.
The stories of Joseph’s jealous brothers and Julius Caesar’s betrayal by Brutus resonate today because, well, not much has changed in the world of human dynamics in thousands of years.
As long as you serve people, you’ll be dealing with grief, contentment, boredom, surprise and heartbreak.
Hint: If you speak to what unites us as humans, the things we have in common, you will always have a bigger audience because people gravitate to what resonates.
If you speak to what unites us as humans, the things we have in common, you will always have a bigger audience because people gravitate to what resonates. Click To TweetCommon Growth Obstacles Are Common Growth Obstacles
I’ve had the privilege of serving church leaders of every sized church for years.
Whenever I visit a church, it’s not difficult to guess some of the dynamics that are at work without even knowing all the details.
If you’re a church of 50 attenders, you probably have a matriarch or patriarch (often unelected) who makes most of the decisions in the congregation, and it’s become an impediment to your future growth and a thorn in your side.
If you’re hovering between 150-250 attenders, you’re probably starting to feel like you’re burning out because everyone wants a piece of you. It was easy to do pastoral care when the church was small, but now that it’s bigger, everyone has the same expectations that you’ll be there for them, but no one has given you any extra hours to meet those expectations. And you can’t see your way out of it.
If your church is 400-600 in attendance, you’re probably dealing with board challenges. You want to keep them informed, but so much is going on it’s too complicated to really condense the information into manageable pieces to keep them informed. Sure, your board wants to govern well, but they want to get involved in more day-to-day decision-making than you’re comfortable with.
If you’re between the 800-1000 level in attendance, you’re likely struggling with the senior pastor or senior leadership team bottlenecking decision-making. Things are grinding to a halt because too many decisions get stuck waiting to be made, and you’re too busy to make them.
If you’ve passed 1,000+ in attendance, you’re probably struggling with an insecurity of feeling like you’re not that needed anymore. You’ve been freed up most of the management and now you’re focused on weekend messages, top decisions, creating a healthy culture, and raising the funds you need to grow. But there’s part of you that misses being needed in the weeds.
If any of this is resonating, the reason is simple: it almost always happens this way.
Oh, and wherever you land, these are the exact challenges that my programs (and the community) inside The Art of Leadership Academy help you break through.
The good news? You don’t have to keep learning from your own mistakes. You can get the day-to-day strategies, tactics, and insights that produce tangible results — starting today.
There are almost no exceptions to these rules and dynamics. We’re a little more like each other than we want to admit.
Church leaders, we’re a little more like each other than we want to admit. Click To TweetSo What’s Really Going On?
Honestly, I believe arguing that ‘your church is different’ is a form of defensiveness.
It’s a well-disguised way to justify the status quo. It masks the fear that the change might be too much for you to navigate. It provides a strange comfort that makes you feel better about being stuck. In knowing ‘why’, what worked for everyone else won’t work for you.
"MY church is different…" is a form of defensiveness. It's a well-disguised way to justify the status quo and mask the fear of change. Click To TweetOf course, the resistance pretends to protect you, but it doesn’t. It sabotages the future—yours and your church’s.
I’m no stranger to making excuses.
For years, the best way to get my message out was via this blog. Millions of people a year read it. And millions still do.
But my team kept telling me the future is in video.
Honestly, I was tired of doing video. I’d done it for years as pastor of a church, and to this day, I enjoy typing into a keyboard more than I do looking into the lens of a camera.
Writing is thinking for me. Often, only by writing do I fully understand the ideas I’m processing.
To justify my favorite medium (this), I’d explain to my team and others how we were different… That we had one of the most visited websites in our field… That we got so much affirmation from our readers.
And all of that is true.
But here’s what is also true.
People have been pivoting to video for years as their preferred method of consuming content. Social media, for all of its pitfalls, is the place where the next generation goes for ideas and content.
So, eventually, I realized I had to stop resisting. We rebuilt my studio and we’re doing more video than ever.
It was change or stop serving the people we serve and want to serve.
Whatever you’re leading isn’t that different, either.
By the way, you should check out my video content on this topic (Instagram and YouTube) — the odds are very high that it has more views than this post has readers.
