Competition...Not so with you

when the church acts like the world

After Jesus celebrates the Passover with His disciples and institutes the Lord’s Supper, a weird and wild argument breaks out at the dinner table. The disciples start arguing about who is the greatest.

A dispute also arose among them, as to which of them was to be regarded as the greatest. And he said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those in authority over them are called benefactors. But not so with you. Rather, let the greatest among you become as the youngest, and the leader as one who serves. For who is the greater, one who reclines at table or one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at table? But I am among you as the one who serves” (Luke 22:24-27).

Jesus tells His disciples that the way of the world, that is the way the world exercises power is not welcome among them. The greatest is the be as the youngest. The one who leads as one who serves. The argument and competition for primacy and greatness is shut down. Not so with you. This is not how we will operate.

Fast-forward not quite 2000 years and this argument is still occurring. The church looks way too much like the world in its exercise of power. Service, humility, and gentleness are easily brushed aside for forceful personalities and hot takes on the culture wars. And I’m just as guilty as anyone else.

Somewhere inside me is a desire for competition, a willingness to prove myself (especially to prove my intelligence, eloquence, and all around rightness). This desire for competition is probably fine when it comes to signing up for a marathon or some other personal goal. But it is not welcome in the church.

Such competition kills the church.

I was attending our district convention last week. Competition was mentioned my our keynote speaker, my friend Jeff. He mentioned how in his context in the past, churches competed with each other for people, for members. But now they have moved on to collaboration and things are getting better. I mentioned to him that in my context, the competition has taken a new shape. It’s no longer a competition for who will thrive and have the biggest congregation. It’s a competition for who which congregations will survive and which will close.

A few days later, another friend of mine shared this graphic about our church body.

As you can see, in 20 years, our church body’s attendance was nearly cut in half. And yet, the number of congregations barely moved. It decreased by only 5%. Whether you are in the same Christian tradition as me or not, I’m guessing your church body’s statistics will look similar.

I mentioned in earlier posts that a lot of conversations have centered around a pastoral shortage we are experiencing and projecting will get much worse in the next 10-20 years.

I think all of this is related. And I think it is all related to competition.

I was a child for much of this timeframe, so this is just guesswork. Take it with several grains of salt. Through the 80s, 90s, and 00s, much of the church body was in competition for members. Numbers were shrinking. Attendance was dwindling. And churches wanted to remain where they had been in the past. They wanted to keep the staff they had. Shrinking, whether 150 to 100 or 1200 to 800 felt like dying.

Now, the competition has shifted. The competition in the next 10-20 years is going to be for pastors and commissioned ministers. There are not going to be enough church workers for the congregations that exist.

And very soon, even overlapping with the church worker shortage, the competition will shift to who can survive. Where there are 5 churches, only 2 will survive. Where there are 2, only 1 will remain. Where there is 1… This has already begun in certain parts of the country.

The antidote for this, as the keynote speaker noted, was collaboration. A mindset that looks at congregations, not as competition, but teammates within the kingdom of God, working toward the common goal of introducing people to Jesus and cultivating disciples of all the nations.

Perhaps the hardest part about all this is that the closures will probably happen regardless of if we stop the competition. But in collaboration, perhaps we can make congregational closures just a little more bearable if we already view one another as family rather than rivals or worse.

Another friend then posted this, “Just a quick reminder, the church is never in decline. It is always increasing.”

It means that when people die, they are transferred to the church-triumphant. But there is only one church. The statistics in the graphic above are obviously not showing the whole picture. It’s not as if God is tearing pages out of the book of life.

And while this is a helpful perspective to remember when we over-focus on institutions and buildings, I think there is an appropriate grief to church numbers shrinking.

I was sitting with one of my shut-ins yesterday. She always asks about some of her friends and how they are doing. But she also always asks about new people in church. Because to her, knowing Jesus is important. And if our congregation is dwindling…so too must other churches be dwindling. And more people knowing about Jesus, and joining us for worship is a good thing. Even if the church only grows, boy, we need to be planting more seeds.

And I think that’s really an indication of what these numbers all say. We’re not acting like we’re working together in the garden of the Lord. We’re acting as if the harvest is scarce, and we need to ensure our fair share by stealing from others.

“Not so with you,” Jesus says. “The harvest is plentiful.”

Thanks for reading.

Andy