There's Only So Much I Can Do

The fourth post in a series of reflections on how twenty-six years of ministry have changed me.

We moved from Bellingham, Washington in early 2003 to work with the Garnett Church of Christ in Tulsa, Oklahoma where I preached for six years, before moving to Austin, Texas to plant a church in 2009.

The transition from preacher to church planter was the result of one of the major shifts in my thinking about church work during my time at Garnett.

When I started this series, I declared my intention to make these reflections more about me than the churches I worked with.

Church: Where Youthful Naiveté Goes to Die

But when it comes to my time at Garnett, it feels impossible to explain how ministering there changed me, without sharing some of the backstory of how I came to be the preacher there in the first place, which also explains why ministering there proved to be such a challenge.

When the Garnett elders offered me the job, the church had been without a preacher for three years.

During that time they had done intense “congregational therapy” with several church coaches and consultants.

This season of rehabilitation was brought about by a breakdown in the leadership structure and rapid decline in church attendance after the retirement and unsuccessful replacement of a long-time, beloved, dynamic preacher with an irreplaceable personality.

The failed transition to a new preacher with very different preaching and leadership styles exposed a number of problems within the Garnett system.

As one church consultant said, “In my work with churches, I’ve seen just about every problem a church can have. Garnett is the first church where I’ve seen all those problems in one place.”

While I wasn’t there for this part of the transition, I don’t think it’s an exaggeration.

Another consultant said in the early days of the interim, “Garnett was very sick. I wasn’t sure it was going to survive.”

The elders, deacons, and invested members, to their credit, took the time to work on the church system before looking for a new preacher.

Even then, when they finally did launch a search process, it failed to yield one.¹

After three years of therapy and coaching, remodeling their leadership structure and systems, and searching unsuccessfully for a preacher, through a series of unlikely events, encounters, and conversations, they circled back around to me and ultimately offered me the job.²

Why would a struggling church of 750, down from over 1400, invite a 29-year-old whose only experience was working with a small church of 75 to be their next preacher at such a critical point in their recovery?

I believe there are two answers to this question.

First, they believed my preaching gifts were strong enough to provide a positive experience for the church on Sundays.

Second, no one else was interested in the job.

Despite the church’s hard work and patience, and the endorsement from their leadership coaches, more experienced preachers (wisely?) stayed away.

Why did I take the job?

First, I needed a job.

I knew I was done at Sterling Drive.

I had already gotten my real estate license and if I didn’t find a preaching job, I was going to become a land developer.

Second, I loved the idea of not only preaching at Garnett, a church I had visited several times when attending the Tulsa Workshop, but also stepping into the role of directing the Workshop.

It was an immediate move from the outskirts of the Church of Christ world to smack-dab in the center of the action.

Third, I believed in Garnett’s potential to grow again and someday fill the three-thousand seat worship center constructed during its heyday.³

Garnett Church of Christ, 2011

I remember one of the elders saying to me after I took the job, “Once you get here and get going, we’ll be back up to 1400 in no time.”

I don’t fault him for saying this.

We were all hopeful back then, and it was music to my ambitious ears.

The honeymoon lasted less than a year.

Many of the old problems resurfaced.

Staff members resigned.

Elders quit.

Attendance declined.

Along the way, I made my share of mistakes.

I preached sermons that were not helpful during turbulent times.

I ignored my critics when I should have listened.

I engaged my critics when I should have ignored them.

I let myself be drawn into unwinnable power struggles with key leaders.

I stayed too long after the situation became untenable.

While I remember being able to justify just about everything I said or did during those difficult days, the fifty-year-old version of myself cringes at some (not all!) of the decisions my thirty-something self made.

I can also see in hindsight how my brash attitude from the stage and my introversion everywhere else made it easy for others to misinterpret my efforts and assume the worst about my motives.

I spent my first few years trying to clean up lingering messes predating my arrival.

I spent my last few years trying to clean up the messes I made while trying to clean up the pre-existing messes.

No matter what I tried, and my team and I tried just about everything, nothing worked.

There was only so much I or anyone else could do.

I left Tulsa to plant a church in Austin because I was convinced trying to bring deep change to an existing church is a futile endeavor, even when deep change is essential for the church’s long-term survival.

Of course there are exceptions.

And yes, with God all things are possible.

But most congregations most of the time are bound by the organizational DNA formed in their early years, usually in response to the personality, leadership style, and relational influence of their founder or most influential leader.

I would much rather build a house from the ground up, I explained to friends who questioned my intent to plant a new church, than remodel an existing house where I’m limited by the decisions and mistakes of the original builder and previous homeowners.

While I didn’t fare any better at church planting than I did at reviving Garnett, my conviction about the unlikelihood of deep change in existing congregations has not wavered.

The downside of this conviction is that it bends me toward pessimism.

When I hear about a once thriving church falling on hard-times because its old ways of operating are no longer working, revealing its long-concealed and ignored dysfunctions, I have lessening expectations of its long-term survival and no expectation it will return to its glory days.⁴

The upside of this conviction is that it has helped me avoid similar messes when search teams from declining churches tell me, “We’re just one good preacher away from growing again.”

It’s also made me more realistic, patient, and less reactive in my work with existing churches.

I no longer see my job as helping existing churches return to what they used to be or become something they’re not.

Rather, my role is to encourage and equip churches to be the best version of themselves they can be, within the constraints of their organizational DNA.

This has helped me be a more content preacher and leader.

It has also kept me from needlessly frustrating church members by forcing genetically incompatible theological or practical changes on the congregation.

This is the section of the post where I’d usually close with a pithy line to put a bow on what I’ve written above.

But nothing is coming to me.

There is no bow to put on my time at Garnett.

I know that my time at Garnett was painful for many.

It was painful for me too.

We were all doing our best.

There was only so much we could do.

1. I did one phone interview with representatives from the search team during that first process and they decided they didn’t want to move forward with me.

2. At the time I believed the circumstances around my coming to Garnett had God’s fingerprints all over them. I still do. Just because things didn’t go well doesn’t mean God wasn’t involved.

3. It was also financed during the tail-end of the oil boom in Tulsa, leaving the church with debilitating debt after the crash. This insurmountable debt was a limiting burden my entire time at Garnett, eventually forcing us to wait until after all the bills were paid each month to see what, if any, funds were available for ministry.

4. My pessimism is fortified by the fact that the first two congregations I served for a combined twelve years no longer exist. Both closed their doors several years ago.