The Ecclesia Network

a missional church network

Bob Hyatt

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Becoming a Distributed Church without Becoming a VIRTUAL Church.

One of the things I have thought a lot about over the last two decades is the intersection of technology and church, particularly as it relates to how church communities are formed or mal-formed by their use of technology.

The current crisis of quarantines and social distancing has led to nearly all churches developing an online presence and streaming their worship and teaching. Many were prepared because they have been doing so for years, developing digital congregations who’ve never been a part of a live gathering, or “podrishioners” who have connected to the church via the medium of podcasting. Others have been scrambling to figure out how to be the church when we can’t be with each other.

In this time of upheaval and racing to figure out how to keep the basics of community together without physical presence, there is an opportunity for formation, but also a danger of malformation.

1st, Christianity is an incarnational faith, an embodied vision of the advancing Kingdom of God.

That’s not to say that spiritual impact can’t be made from a distance, but it should shape how we interact over distances. In other words, if the ecclesia is the “gathered” group of believers, then during this time substituting watching a video of a church service for the actual fellowship, accountability, touch, and sacrament of gathering is just virtual church… just church enough to be dangerous. Dangerous because it cements people into patterns of passivity, of watching rather than participating, of judging the quality of the service as they are serviced by religious professionals rather than experientially joining with others in listening to the Spirit of God.

But… If during this time, our preaching becomes more interactive, and more voices are heard, not less (1 Cor. 14:16), if we see people who would normally enter and exit a church service without speaking to others now discussing the Word in breakout rooms, getting to know others, praying for others, people sharing their requests and thanksgiving with the whole body, becoming more mindful of the needs of others in their church, the ecclesia will be closer to what it was meant to be after this crisis than it was before. More of the Body of Christ using their gifts for the good of others, not less, more people feeling connected and cared for, not less, and more people invited into the Kingdom and folded into the body of Christ because they went online looking for some encouraging content to consume, but instead found a community of people ready, willing and able to use digital connection as a bridge to real-life connection and companioning.

2nd, the choice between walking down the road to virtual church or distributed church is a choice being made right now, this minute.

As you are thinking and planning (and hopefully praying about) what you are planning for the next few weekends, the question is not “How do we do everything we normally do on Sundays in the same way we normally do it- just digitally and with increasing excellence?” The real question should be “What opportunities does this crisis and this medium, in particular, offer our church for growing deeper and broader? What does the Spirit want to do in us during this time?” One thing I’m fairly certain God is uninterested in doing is making you into a fantastic producer of digital church service shows for people to passively consume.

In fact, my prayer during this time is that God will use this crisis in North America to break us of our consumerism, to deepen our hunger for real connection, to disperse more and more of the Church from mega-gatherings of people there for religious goods and services to smaller groups of Christians, equipped by their leaders, blessed and sent to do the work of ministry themselves in their particular contexts of neighborhood, schools, and work.

3rd, understand that when life begins to go back to normal, people will be back at work long before they are “back at” church.

My suspicion is that restriction of gatherings of 50+, 100+, 1000+ will continue for a while as we deal with waves of infection rising and falling. That means that the future of the church (at least in the near term) is found in distributing itself, not in creating clever workarounds for a couple of weeks until we can get back in the building.

Many churches will not survive the coming months. That’s a harsh reality we’re going to have to deal with. The ones who don’t aren’t necessarily big or small, young or old. They are the churches for whom the Sunday gathering is the irreducible minimum without which they cannot survive. I suspect the churches that do survive are the ones who right now are ramping up their equipping efforts, not their production values. They are driving hard toward a vision of a distributed church, where they may gather to worship together (digitally or otherwise), but everyone knows the majority of the work of ministry is happening throughout the week, because discipleship and nothing else, is their highest value.

Churches that focus on digital excellence and producing a virtual version of their Sunday gathering will find only fewer people in the seats when they are able to reopen their doors, because they’ve shown people a more comfortable alternative to getting up and getting dressed on Sunday morning- a way to “get their church on” without leaving home, speaking to another person, or being asked to serve in any meaningful way.

But, churches that focus on becoming more distributed during this time will find themselves with new life after this crisis is over- fresh expressions of church being birthed out of the connections that have been made, by the people who have been encouraged to step up and lead out in ministry to others, in places that will be open to smaller gatherings long before mega-churches are able to reopen.

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A Thought at the Beginning of Lent: She, Out of Her Poverty, Gave

“Calling his disciples to him, Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put more into the treasury than all the others. They all gave out of their wealth; but she, out of her poverty, put in everything—all she had to live on.'”


I was remembering recently a time when, years ago, during a group lectio divina meditation on this Scripture, the line the Holy Spirit highlighted for me was this: “She, out of her poverty…”

As we sat with this passage, the question that came up for me was “Where is MY poverty?… And what would it look like to give out of it?”

I suspect that too often, in our context, we are overly-focused on giftedness. We want people to know their gifts (and ours) and, in a sense, to operate out of their “riches.” When it becomes clear that someone is good at something, or has resources in a particular area, we want them to begin serving, giving, worshiping God with that. And so the musician who plays well is encouraged to play for God. When it becomes clear someone can speak and communicate well, we encourage her to use that gift for God and for us. The good graphic designer is pressed into using that gift for the community, the natural leader to lead, the one with the gift of hospitality to be hospitable. And there’s nothing wrong with that. God has given those gifts to us for a reason.

But giving out of our gifts, out of the riches of what we do well and willingly is easy. Maybe too easy, in many ways.

Giving out of our gifts, out of the riches of what we do well and willingly is easy. Maybe too easy, in many ways. Click To Tweet

In sitting with the question of where my poverty lies, I realized- we all have areas within ourselves of relative riches and relative poverty. And God wants it all. He created us, bought us at great cost to Himself, and desires that we give to Him our whole selves- that our worship of, devotion to, service of Him be wholistic.

But I wonder if, like us, God tends to smile at certain gifts more than others- not that He doesn’t take delight in all service, all worship honestly given, but…
In the same way we value the hand-made gift, the hand-written note, the thing that shows effort and thought, I wonder if God sees gifts given out of our riches a little differently than gifts given out of our poverty? The easy gift of operating out of our strength vs the harder gift of having to dig deep into our less-comfortable and less competent places.

For me I know I am very comfortable in certain areas of ministry and less so in others.

And as I sat, meditating on this, I became convinced that God wants me to worship Him not simply out of my surplus- to give to Him what costs me little because I have so much of it, or am good at it. He does want those things- but perhaps what is more worshipful of Him, more forming for me, and ultimately maybe even better for others is when I take stock of the areas where I am poor and decide to give God everything I have there- to step out, and as an act of worship, do what is less comfortable, less likely to end with the positive ego-enhancing feedback we all so love.

God, this Lenten season, may I learn to value my poverty more than my giftedness- my weakness more than my strength. Because it is in my weakness that Your strength and grace are shown and bring me to maturity.

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Equipped for the Future

I’ve been involved in the Ecclesia Network for about 11 or so years now. Something that sometimes happens is that I’ll meet someone who tells me something I taught at a Genesis training, or in one of the Spiritual Formation days I’ve done, or written in a book, a blog or an article really contributed to their ministry or their personal formation in a significant way. I hear this as more of a statement about the value of belonging to a network of leaders that contribute to one another more than as a statement about the value of what I personally bring. Throughout the last 11 years I was focused on planting and growing a church in Portland, OR. But beyond that, because of Ecclesia, I’ve had the opportunity to impact people and places across the nation. As the saying goes, because of Ecclesia relationships, “my fruit has grown on other people’s trees.”

Over this last season, I’ve been heartened to see how many people are leaning in with our network, not just to take part, but to actively contribute to the lives and ministries of others. It’s the goal of our Network to partner with, equip and multiply missional church communities and leaders. And much like a local church community, what this doesn’t mean is that it’s the job of the staff to partner with, equip and multiply… What it does mean is that everyone, every community that’s a part of this network has a role to play. YOU have a role to play.

As our network continues to expand and grow, my personal dream as Director of Equipping and Spiritual Formation is not just that we’ll be able to offer more and more avenues to equip leaders within (and beyond!) Ecclesia, but that more and more of you would grab hold of the opportunities inherent in a relational network and find the joy of not only following God in your local ministry context, but also what it means to walk alongside others in our network and own the task of partnering, equipping and multiplying.

To that end, here are some of the big dreams I sense God forming for the next season in our network:

Big Dream #1: Equipping for more stages of ministry life

We’ve done, I think, a pretty phenomenal job of making sure that someone who is in their first 3 years of church planting and pastoring has access to some amazing equipping, coaching and more. We know what it looks like for pastors and churches in year 3… but what about year 5? Year 10? Year 15. Over this next season we need to be thinking and praying about what it looks like to partner with and equip leaders and churches in those seasons of life and beyond.

Big Dream #2: Broader and deeper connections

Our Leaders Circles continue to be one of the best ways for people in our network to connect with one another- whether it’s new church planters, more seasoned leaders, spouses of church planters, worship leaders- we’re continuing to push out broader and broader in the numbers and kinds of leaders we are able to connect relationally. We’d love to see that continue to expand to cover those engaged in various kinds of ministry in our network churches- children and youth, discipleship/formation, associate pastors, those leading men’s/women’s ministry. Wherever there would be benefit in leaders supporting each other and sharing resources and encouragement, we want to work (for you and with you) toward that.

Big Dream #3: Walking with YOU, come what may

5 years, 10 years, 15 years in… Ecclesia isn’t just for those in the initial stages of planting. As J.R. said in his update- ministry can be lonely and it can be hard, regardless of what stage you find yourself in. We know you desire for your church community to be a “family on mission” together. We dream of our network being that same thing- leaders and communities, one relational family, on mission together over the span of years and years. Praying for one another, encouraging one another, cheering each other on, and contributing in significant ways to what God is doing in each others’ lives and contexts.

Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?

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Are You Doing What You Should Be Doing?

When we first start off in ministry, whether as an intern, a youth pastor, or an associate, our ministry duties mostly consist of what other people give us to do and things we have to do because they are in our job description or because there’s no one else to do them, irrespective of whether we enjoy those things or are even good at them.

And if we’re not careful, that pattern can persist throughout our ministry “career.” Doing what we do because it’s expected of us, because there’s seemingly no one else who can or will do those things, and precious little time and attention given to the pieces of ministry we actually love.

This passive stance towards our own job descriptions leads to burn out, dejection, and pastors who either quit… or wish they could.

But freeing ourselves from the hamster-wheel of duty and expectations and embarking on the journey of moving our job descriptions towards what we are good at and passionate about is easier than you might think.

And it all starts with identifying what you do, what you love doing, and what you are good at doing.

Take a look at the chart above. Begin to think thru all you do in the course of your ministry. What are the things you are good at? Not great at? What are the things other people could do if they were given permission or mentoring? What are the things only you can (currently) do? Draw this quadrant grid and start plotting!

Is there anything is that lower left corner? What will you do with those things? The one thing you probably shouldn’t do is keep doing them? What’s in the lower right quadrant? What steps will you take to get batter at those things? Spend some time thinking and praying about how to get better here- what classes (online or local) can you take, books can you read, mentors or coaches can you enlist?

Now do the same with the grid above. What pieces of ministry do you LOVE? Which would you never do again if you could avoid it? Plot it all.

Now, put your results together. What are you good at AND passionate about doing? What should you be working towards getting off your plate? And…

What would the IDEAL future job description look like? What conversations with staff, elders or others do you need to have to move closer to this? What would you ADD if only you had time? What can you give away to MAKE that time? What do you LOVE doing, but need to get more skillful at? And how can you grow in those things?

Doing this exercise as a Lead Pastor with 10-15 years under her/his belt will look different than doing it as a first year associate. When we start out we have little power to shape our jobs- but we can identify what we love doing, what we need help in learning how to do better and what we could give away. Later, as we gain experience and seniority, and with it, the freedom to choose more and more what we will do and what we won’t, intentionality and being honest about what we are good at, could get better at and is worth our time getting better at, and what we can and should just give away will help us make it for the long haul.

Do yourself (and those working with and/or for you) a favor and spend some time thinking about what you are doing, what you could stop doing and where you could grow.

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Disappointment and Christmas

Christmas is nearly here. And with it, for many people, the “Post-Christmas Letdown.”

Some of the strongest memories I have are of the two sides of Christmas- the first side being the anticipation- looking at all the gifts under the tree, wondering what could be in them, sneaking out early on Christmas morning to raid my stocking and shake presents trying to make a mental tally of the heavy ones which probably had something cool in them and the light ones that were more likely to be underwear or socks or something else that was so NOT a Christmas-y gift, but would get wrapped up anyway just to “up” the present count.

I loved it, and even though it was hard when I was younger, as I got older I eventually even learned to love stringing out the anticipation by stringing out the opening of presents. Some years it seemed to last most of the day- none of the everyone-tear-in-and-get-’em-opened-in-15-minutes-or-less stuff. Of course, I could never last quite as long as everyone else. So often, my grandparents would still be opening their last presents after dessert, at 7, 8 o’clock at night, while I just watched.

And that’s the second feeling I remember- not quite as nice as the first. The feeling, when it was all over of.. That’s all? That was pretty cool, but…

Anticipation. Disappointment. And if the disappointment didn’t come right away, it came eventually. As an only child, I almost ALWAYS got what I wanted, and more. But all of those things I was sure would complete me, make me into the kid I dreamed of being… all those things seemed a little less vital, a little more chintzy a day, a week, a month later.

What does that disappointment year after year, when we got what we wanted but then realized it was not quite as meaningful as maybe we thought- what does that tell us?

Something crucial.

There’s a story in the Gospel of Luke where Mary and Joseph take the newborn Jesus to the Temple for dedication. It says

At that time there was a man in Jerusalem named Simeon. He was righteous and devout and was eagerly waiting for the Messiah to come and rescue Israel. The Holy Spirit was upon him  and had revealed to him that he would not die until he had seen the Lord’s Messiah. That day the Spirit led him to the Temple. So when Mary and Joseph came to present the baby Jesus to the Lord as the law required, Simeon was there. He took the child in his arms and praised God, saying,

“Sovereign Lord, now let your servant die in peace,
    as you have promised. -Luke 2:27-29

What would it take to get you to say, “Now, I can die in peace”?

Simeon had been waiting his whole life just to catch a glimpse of the salvation that God was sending- talk about anticipation. And when it came, he knew. He knew- this was it- the real thing.

I have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared for all people.
He is a light to reveal God to the nations,
    and he is the glory of your people Israel!” -Luke 2:30-32

I love that for Simeon, all the waiting, all the anticipation actually paid off. Why? Because he was waiting for the right thing.

All his waiting had led him to Jesus.

For us, at this time of year- disappointment is found mainly in two places- when we don’t get what we want- when things don’t turn out the way we had hoped- and when they do, and we’re still not quite satisfied, not quite happy, not quite filled.

Let me tell you two stories.

My dad died about a few years ago. We had a real rocky history- more of a non-history, really- He just wasn’t around. And he died and I never got what I wanted from him. That had always been a huge disappointment, a source of anger and discontent for me. I needed my dad and my dad was never there.

So, what do you do with something like that? It seems you can either let it make you more and more angry or sad, which will destroy you, especially after any hope that the situation might change is gone. You can just “get over it” which in some ways is to say “pretend it doesn’t bother you.”

Or… you can allow that kind of disappointment to point you towards something better.

Awhile after he died, I was meeting over breakfast with some guys I had breakfast with every couple of weeks, and I found myself feeling the craziest thing: gratitude for my dad. 

We were talking about various things God was doing, pushing or pulling us toward, and one guy was mentioning how grateful he was for having a wonderful dad. He loved his dad and tried to look past the one or two little things that really bothered him about their relationship because he knew his dad cared. But still, there were these one or two things that felt something like a wound…

As we talked about those one or two little things, my only thought, and what came out of my mouth was this: Well, thank God your dad isn’t perfect. Because if he was, you wouldn’t have needed Jesus.

It was a revelation to me when in High School someone told me my view of God was likely very much shaped by my view of my father. While the correlation wasn’t perfect, I could certainly see some of the ways it was true. 

We get angry when our parents fail us, or when our dad isn’t the loving, gracious, patient (fill in the adjective) father we want. We get even more angry when we realize they were meant to be a certain way, draw a certain picture… Our parents, and for the sake of this discussion, our fathers, are meant to point us to another Father.

But here’s the thing: more than meant to- they DO. Even the crappy ones. 

They point us to God in both what they do well and in what they do poorly. They point us to him when they succeed in loving us and when they fail to. 

How? How could they point us to Him even when they fail, when they disappoint us?

Because if they were perfect, did it ALL right, offered us unconditional love that was always patient, always wise, always nurturing and building into us… well, I guess we wouldn’t need God, right?

We’d be satisfied with that guy over there in the Lay-Z-Boy and completely miss the God of the Universe, the God who made us, pursues us, died for us. I had a choice of what to do with the disappointment left by my dad- and here’s what I chose: to be thankful for a dad who didn’t get much right (and that’s probably about the most generous assessment I’ve ever done of his fathering). I’m thankful because though he never pointed me to God intentionally, by his absence and indifference he drove me to lean all the more heavily on the God who is always present and never indifferent- the God who loves me, like the Psalmist says, with an everlasting love. 

I realize that may be an odd way to appreciate my dad, but it’s the truth. The disappointment he left me pointed me to something even better. And if that’s ALL my dad ever did for me, I think it’s enough. 

But sometimes- the problem isn’t that we don’t get what we want. It’s that we do- and it’s still not enough.

A few years ago I was living in the Netherlands, working as an associate pastor- doing mainly youth and worship and I had youth group at my house on Wednesday nights. I’d have 25, 30 kids in my house each Wednesday night, pack the place out, do a lot of crazy stuff, eat, sing, pray- it was a good time. And each week, after everyone would leave, I would spiral into a deep depression- some weeks actually crying. I had a house full of people- a ministry where kids were showing up, connecting to Jesus… and yet after each and every week I would nearly break down.

It took me awhile to figure out why that was. I was really lonely while I was there. I was about 27, 28 and the whole church consisted of people aged 0-18 and late thirties on up. I was in this gap with ten years on either side of me, not married, in a foreign country… and I started to look forward to filling my house with people. Not because I wanted to help these kids know more about Jesus, though I DID want that- but more and more I realized, I wasn’t trying to fill my house, but my soul- something was missing and I was asking these kids to fill in me a social and spiritual need that they just couldn’t. And the real tragedy is, I feel like because of that, I actually missed out on simply enjoying what was. They were great kids, it was a great time of ministry… but I was asking it to do something for me it couldn’t. And it wasn’t until I began to look somewhere besides people for that sense of love and affirmation, that I was even able even to begin to relate to people in the right way.

Our problem isn’t so much that we don’t get what we want- especially around the holidays- we often do! It’s just that we ask those things to do for us what they simply can’t. And so we’re disappointed again, and again, and again. We hope that this year will be different- that the family dinner will be perfect, that the opening of presents will be just so, that everyone will love exactly what we got them, no one will fight… and what we find is that it rarely happens exactly that way and we’re disappointed.

Or worse, it happens exactly that way and still, somehow, it’s not quite enough…

Simeon was satisfied, because he was looking to and for the right thing.

But before you think he was just a wild-eyed dreamer, look again. He was pretty realistic about the trouble this Savior would bring. Look what he said next.

Jesus’ parents were amazed at what was being said about him. Then Simeon blessed them, and he said to Mary, the baby’s mother, “This child is destined to cause many in Israel to fall, and many others to rise. He has been sent as a sign from God, but many will oppose him.  As a result, the deepest thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your very soul.”- Luke 2:33-35

Simeon prophesied that Jesus would have a confrontational effect on the world around Him. He’d cause many to fall, but would be a joy to others. Sent as a sign from God, and yet… opposed. Like so much in life, how Jesus impacts you depends on how you take Him. And as a result of that dynamic, we can say along with Simeon that Jesus reveals the deepest thoughts of our hearts. How?

Just by showing up. Just by being the presence of God to us, the salvation that God has been promising since the beginning. Christmas… Christ, reveals the deepest thoughts of our hearts by breaking into our world and claiming our allegiance. By saying: Here is salvation, and nowhere else. Not in your family, your job or career, your artistic pursuits, not in your 401k. Not in getting what you want, no matter how good what you want may be.

I love that for Simeon, who had waited all his life, Advent was no disappointment. Why? Because it revealed the deepest thoughts, hopes, dreams, and aspirations of his heart. And that heart was set on something real, something deep- something that wouldn’t disappoint. What He was waiting for was Jesus. And Jesus is who showed up.

What’s the deepest part of you? What do you worship? What do you rest all your hopes of happiness and fulfillment on?

Jesus, as the angels sang, the Savior, Christ the LORD, by showing up and claiming our worship, reveals where we place that worship, what our hearts are resting on.

And no matter what it is we put our hearts on, it will always come up short. Just try it. Try looking to your spouse to make you happy. Your kids. Your anything… anything but Him. Whatever it is, no matter how great, just like unwrapping that thing we so thought we wanted, when we actually get it, we find, it doesn’t do quite all we had hoped it would do for us. No- nothing wrong with family, job, career, 401k… But don’t ask it to do for you what only Jesus can.

Satisfy.

Bring lasting peace…. Save you.

Every year we have in Christmas a beautiful reminder: A reminder that God has shown up on the scene, become Immanuel, God With Us, to be our salvation, our peace, our joy. AND a built in-reminder when we stare at the pile of torn wrapping paper and presents we’re thinking about returning… that nothing else can fill that place for us.

So- this year- enjoy Christmas. Enjoy the presents, the family, all the trappings of the Season. There’s nothing wrong with that. But remember- when you inevitably feel a twinge when it’s not exactly like you hoped it would be, when even should you get everything on your list, you find that there’s still something missing, something not quite there… that is, in a sense, Christmas doing its best possible work: Pointing you to your need for something deeper, pointing out where you are putting your hopes for happiness, on people, on presents and things, and pointing you towards something, Someone, that truly can bring peace, Jesus.

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Surviving The Seven Year Slump

The question was one I’d answered countless times before… but the response to my answer was one I’d never heard.

I was speaking at a church planter’s training when Chris Backert, the National Director of the Ecclesia Network asked me “How many years has your church plant been going?” I told him we had just hit our sixth anniversary.

“Oh… Year seven in church plants is traditionally the worst.”

At the time I nodded and laughed nervously. We had recently hit a few bumps in the road so what he was saying made some sense. In retrospect, what I wish I had done was to sit down and grill him on every aspect of what I’ve come to think of as the Seven Year Slump.

Chris’s anecdotal wisdom, gained through observing countless church plants and church planting networks in his Ph.D. work proved to be exactly on the mark. In truth, year seven was hellacious for both me as a pastor and for our community. I wish we could have seen it coming. But then again, he tried to warn me, didn’t he?

For us, year seven was marked by relational breaks in the staff, people leaving, and a general malaise as we drifted unable to focus on vision or mission while we worked exhaustingly to put out fire after fire. It seemed like we had reached a point where the way we had been doing things, and doing them successfully, no longer worked.

In the midst of all that, I remembered the one other thing Chris had told me about all this. “Year seven is all about endure, endure, endure. If you can make it through, years 8-15 are generally pretty great.”

I clung to those words.

Since then I’ve seen this pattern repeated in church plant after church plant. I wouldn’t call it an absolute law, but rather a general truism: somewhere around year seven, a new church hits a place of crisis, a place where what got them there in terms of leadership skills, structure, and ways of dealing with problems no longer works.

Why does this happen?

There are a number of reasons having to do with both the pastor and the people. Generally speaking, years 1-2 are years of excitement. Even in the hard parts, there’s a novelty and a joy in working out the issues, in finding the ways that this new church will handle problems, talk about the hard parts of community and together become who they are becoming. In years 3-4 that community and its leaders are finding their footing and in years 5-6 experiencing the fruit of their work and enjoying having hit their stride.

But by year seven the cracks are showing. The leaders are tired. There are some natural churn points where people leave and year seven is one of them. In fact, it’s often the point where some of the last of the core group who helped start the church decide to move on. This can have a huge effect on both the pastors and the congregation as these folks whom everyone thought were so central to the life of the community decide to leave.

This is also often the point of pastoral burnout. Regardless of how many people are helping, the emotional and psychological toll of the previous seven years often means that at this point a pastor will feel he or she no longer has anything to give, that the well has run dry and worse, because the church has changed drastically over the last few years, the lessons and skills learned at the beginning no longer seem adequate to take the community forward.

Year seven is where the impatience and unrealistic expectations of a community are often revealed– we thought we’d be farther along, better able to handle problems… more mature as a community. Even harder, as the pastor is tired and butting up against the ceiling of their own skill set, the community begins to feel the restlessness that often hits leaders around this time.

Even established churches are not immune to this seven-year cycle. I recently heard of one church on the east coast that has existed for 200 years, and with the exception of two pastors, every pastor’s tenure has lasted between six and eight years. The cycle repeats itself.

How do we handle this seven year slump? How can we navigate the twists and turns of what one pastor friend of mine recently described as “the worst year of his life”?

First, as was mentioned earlier, year seven is all about endure, endure, endure.

It’s a marathon, not a sprint, and the issues you face during this time will not be easily resolved in one elder meeting, or with some quick changes. This is a time to throw yourself not into problem solving and working harder, but into a deeper dependence on God and a heightened listening to the Spirit. God is at work, both in the hearts of the leaders and in the community itself, and year seven is a time to pay special attention to that.

Second, realize that this is a normal thing.

You are not the first leader or community to experience this. It’s not an indictment on you or your skills or your walk with God that you are hitting this rough patch. It’s a natural phase in the growth of a church, and more, it’s a necessary phase.

Richard Rohr, in Falling Upward, says

“So we must stumble and fall, I am sorry to say. And that does not mean reading about falling, as you are doing here. We must actually be out of the driver’s seat for a while, or we will never learn how to give up control to the Real Guide. It is the necessary pattern. This kind of falling is what I mean by necessary suffering… It is well dramatized by Paul’s fall on the Damascus Road, where he hears the voice “Why are you hurting yourself by kicking against the goad?” (Acts 26:14). The goad or cattle prod is the symbol of both the encouragement forward and our needless resistance to it, which only wounds us further… Until we are led to the limits of our present game plan, and find it to be insufficient, we will not search out or find the real source, the deep well, or the constantly flowing stream… There must be, and, if we are honest, there always will be at least one situation in our lives that we cannot fix, control, explain, change, or even understand.”

The seven year slump then, is not so much a problem to be managed or fixed, but a necessary part of our journey. It is a period of life that God uses to get our hearts and the collective heart of our church off of the grandiose dreams of “success” we held at the beginning and onto something deeper, onto God Himself.

Third, year seven is a good time as a pastor to revisit and re-evaluate your call.

Some people excel at planting churches and new works. Some people excel at maintaining and growing to slow maturity what has already been planted. Not everyone can excel at both. Year seven is a great time to look in the mirror and ask yourself what type of leader you are. Are you a planter/pioneer who needs to be involved in new things to stay vital? Are you a shepherd/homesteader who can plant him or herself for the long haul? Are you someone who has thought of themself as the first but now is being called by God to do the hard work to become the second? The key to asking and answering these questions fruitfully is brutal self-honesty. There’s no point in just cutting and running from the seven year slump as things get hard. No matter where you go it will be waiting for you just down the road.

These kinds of soul-searching questions of call need proper space to be processed, and that’s why…

Fourth, year seven is the year you should take a sabbatical.

The natural burnout of this season, combined with the need to do some serious thinking about the church and about yourself as a leader demand time and space, away from the urgency of ministry. You need time to be alone with God, time to rest, time to find clarity.

Someone might say that year seven, with all the turmoil I’ve described in the life of a church is a terrible time for a leader to be absent. On the contrary, it’s a great time- not only because the leader him or herself with all their tiredness and anxiety is often an underlying source of the turmoil, but also because another necessary part of church maturity is allowing others to lead, to make mistakes, and to learn. Letting go and prying your white knuckles off the wheel for a season is the best thing you can do.

Year seven and the period directly after it is a wonderful time for corporate reflection as well. It’s a time to evaluate our expectations over and against reality. We thought we would be that type of church, at that size, at that place of maturity… But we’re not. Can we give thanks and enjoy being the church God has allowed us to be and let go of the church we thought we would be?

It’s also a good time to evaluate the practicality of structures and skills. What works in a church plant doesn’t necessarily work in a church 7 or 8 years along. What needs to be let go of? What needs to change and grow? What’s missing that needs to be addressed? Working through these questions can aid greatly in dealing with the emotional slump that is often felt in year seven communities and bring back a sense of excitement and forward movement. In addition, as leaders, it’s a time to look not only at our call, but at our skill set. As we are becoming and have become a very different community than in the past, do I need to learn new leadership skills, new ways of leading and loving these people? Can I admit to myself that if I am to remain and lead this community in its next season of life I need to learn some new things, read some different books than I have been reading, take a class or in some other way learn to lead in a different way for a different time in the life of our community?

Lastly, the seven year slump is a call to see, and to help our congregations see struggles and problems, from relational issues to questions about how ministry or leadership should be structured, formationally.

In other words, it’s a great time to remind a congregation that growth, not numerical growth but spiritual maturity as a community, comes not through the easy times, but through the hard ones. That as much as we’d just like to fix everything and move quickly on, the reality is that if we do that, we run the risk of missing what God is doing through the growing pains, through the relational struggles, through the mess.

For our community, the seventh year was an incredibly hard and painful one. But as we moved past it, we began to see how God had been at work, stretching and growing us. For me personally came the realization that while I thought I had gotten the pastor thing pretty much down, I really hadn’t, and in fact needed to go back and unlearn some things, rethink some things, and generally stop thinking I/we had “arrived.”

The gift of the seventh year was to humble me and make me into a learner again. I took a sabbatical, took my hands off the wheel for a season, and came back more relaxed, and more trusting of God than my own skills. I did reevaluate my call during this time, wondering if it was time to hand things off to the leaders I had helped raise up in our community over our seven years together. Ultimately, I decided that there was more for me to do in this church, but not in the same way. Whereas I had been the “Lead Pastor,” after this time we transitioned to more of a team leadership where the elders as a whole led the church. And those elders freed me up to try some new things and take on some new roles outside our community; coaching other pastors/church planters, and working with our church network. This allowed me to feel good about staying, but also scratched the itch I had to do some new things. It allowed me to continue to lead, but in completely new ways, alongside others, rather than over them.

Due in part to some hard decisions we had to make, and in part to communicating them poorly, during this period we lost about 1/3 of our people. Those who chose to remain, however, were committed. They had been taught through this time the necessity of praying for their community, its elders and its pastors. We all together had learned valuable lessons about how we communicate with each other, support each other, and what it means to be formed by God together through the pain of community.

As we emerged from this painful time, we began to realize that life was continuing, our community was still there and most all, God was still present and working.

One of the real beauties of the year seven season is that year eight comes after it. It’s tempting to think when you are in the middle of the mess that the mess has become your new reality- that this is how it will now always be. But take heart, endure, listen to what God is doing in your midst, and know that should you choose to stay, years 8-15 are generally pretty great. And should you go and your community continue on, both you and your community get to start over. In either case, God is present and at work, bringing you and your church to further maturity in Christ.