Pursuing the Full Kingdom Potential of Your Congregation

George W Bullard

• Publisher: TCP Books
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9780827230125
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Church

"Full Kingdom potential, " says George Bullard, "is a journey, not a destination. To reach your full Kingdom potential, its pursuit must be your enduring passion and desire." Drawing on his more than four decades of experience in congregational leadership, Bullard offers not just another process for congregational redevelopment. He learns from the past to take congregations on a spiritual journey that is open-ended, custom-made, and locally owned. His focus is on capacity building in each congregation, calling for a narrative approach to futuring in the life of congregations that responds to new things God is seeking to do in and through members of the congregation. From the TCP Leadership Series.

Chapter 1

Understanding the Full Kingdom Potential of Your Congregation

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The purpose of this chapter is to provide a conceptual framework for helping a congregation reach its full Kingdom potential. It deals with the difference between church growth, church health, church faithfulness, church success, and church transformation. It seeks to position the full Kingdom potential of a congregation as a journey rather than a destination. It seeks to help congregations realize that they must be molded in God’s image rather than in the image of humankind.

It’s Not about Closing the Gap

Let’s get right to it. One caution. Do not be turned off by these first few paragraphs. Stay with the meaning of the text and read below the surface. The implications for your congregation are earthshaking.

In this book I have no interest in several common approaches to congregational vitality. I am particularly not interested in closing the gap between where a congregation finds itself and where it wants to push forward to become. Look with me at the difference between closing gaps and taking a journey to reach your congregation’s full Kingdom potential.

Church Growth

I am not interested in the growth of your congregation. It really does not matter to me whether or not your congregation is growing numerically. At its best church growth is an outward expression of a desire for a local congregation to attract as many people as possible into the Kingdom of God and into their congregation with its discipleship practices.

Church growth at its worse is a self-serving, competitive desire to win. The other side of the will to win is a willingness for other congregations to lose. Church growth zeroes in on individuals you want to participate in your congregation. In so doing church growth risks treating these persons as objects rather than as persons of worth created in the image of God to live and to love.

Growth can shape a congregation into a business that is trying to make a profit. Church growth sells meaning to achieve profit or to close the gap between the current size of the church and the potential size of the church. But Kingdom potential is not about closing the gap.

Church Health

I am not interested in the health of your congregation. Church health has at least two current meanings in the North American church. Church health can mean emotional or family systems health. The emotional quotient of a congregation is important. Congregational members need to be persons who are healthy psychologically and spiritually. However, an overemphasis on this type of church health can result in a healthy congregation in neutral with no sense of destination or journey. Health becomes an end result.

Church health can also mean a congregation with a healthy balance of worship, evangelism, discipleship, fellowship, and ministry. Such a congregation has the programs and systems of congregational life aligned with theological understandings of what a congregation ought to be. Some of these congregations soar with great excellence and effectiveness. Church health approaches may lead to emotionally healthy congregations and healthy, balanced congregations who have closed the gap between being unhealthy and being healthy. But Kingdom potential is not about closing the gap.

Church Faithfulness

I am not interested in the faithfulness of your congregation. Congregational faithfulness often focuses on the past. It centers attention on what the church has always done, always believed, or forever refused to do. It presents present patterns of the congregation, its denomination, the historic Christian church, or the core values of a movement within the denomination or historic church. Congregational faithfulness is seldom a proactive position. Rather, most often congregational faithfulness becomes a passive position seeking to protect that congregation from patterns of thought or action that do not fit the paradigm of the long-term leadership of the congregation. Faithfulness is often the rallying cry of aging, plateaued, and declining congregations.

Church faithfulness forgets that faithfulness alone is insufficient. It must also have effectiveness and innovation to be complete. Faithfulness focuses around substance. For faithfulness to be complete, congregations must also close the gap with effective structures and innovative styles. But Kingdom potential is not about closing the gap.

Church Success

I am not interested in the success of your congregation. Church success usually focuses on the organizational success of the congregation and not the spiritual fulfillment of the congregation. Church success often relates to management goals such as reaching the budget, achieving a certain membership or attendance size, surviving another year to minister, or thriving once again as the congregation did in the past.

Church success forgets that success is nothing without moving from success to significance in ministry on one hand, and surrender in service to God’s Kingdom on the other. But Kingdom potential is not about closing the gap.

Church Transformation

While I may be very interested in the transformation of your congregation, this is not the destination I see for your congregation. Congregations do need to transition, change, and transform. These three concepts are highlighted throughout this book. Chapter 6 will particularly focus on them. Transformation, however, implies a destination. It is an act or process that can be finished. Once done, it does not have to be done again in the eyes of many people. Thus, a transformed congregation claims permanent transformation. Following the transformation, it does not have to continue to work on transformation issues.

Many congregations have used transformation processes borrowed from the outside or those developed internally. Eventually most churches reach a point where they feel the transformation process is complete. They stop following the act or process of transformation. They do not realize that transformation is an ongoing spiritual process that is leaving them behind. The transformed congregation loses track of its ever-changing context and no longer follows a sense of spiritual vision. Soon they discover or ignore a gap between where they are and what it means to be transformed. But Kingdom potential is not about closing the gap.

Transformation within a congregation is very similar to the individual Christ-centric, faith-based journey. If a person stops a personal transformational journey at the point he or she discovers and embraces what it means to have a life-changing relationship with God through Jesus Christ, then that person remains spiritually immature and shallow, never experiencing the joys of a life fully dedicated to a spiritual strategic journey focused on the Triune God. But Kingdom potential is not about closing the gap.

It’s All about Your Full Kingdom Potential

Church growth, health, faithfulness, success, and even transformation all tend to have a focus on closing the gap between where congregations are and where they want to be. This is a philosophy known as Gapology. Gapology is the constant desire to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be, which is primarily transactional change. It may also be transformational change if transformation is seen as a static destination. Gapology certainly does not empower your church to live continually into your full Kingdom potential.

In economics, Gapology relates to supply and demand. For a company to realize profits, the gap between supply and demand must always be as small as possible. Theologically Christianity falls into a Gapology approach when it seeks to define God as being in the gap between the known and the unknown. Such a God only fills in the gaps scientific knowledge leaves. Such an approach reduces and marginalizes our understanding of God.

Strategic approaches often seek to push forward or close the gap in congregations. They are often problem-solving approaches that reduce and marginalize a congregation’s core mission. These approaches seek to discern and discover what is wrong, weak, and missing and then make them right, strong, and present. Dialogue is around the number of “No’ votes present rather than the number of “Yes’ votes present.

The tendency in many approaches is for the destination to be a static location. These approaches look for the areas of deficiency that need to be corrected in order to bring the congregation to its desired location. Often these actions focus on issues of programs and management. For example, the youth program needs fixing, the worship services are dead, the finances are static, the membership and attendance have plateaued, or long-tenured members are controlling the direction of the congregation.

Gapology focuses on what is thinkable, doable, and controllable. As opposed to this, a spiritual strategic journey toward a congregation’s full Kingdom potential can lead congregations to focus on the unthinkable, the undoable, and the uncontrollable. Such focus comes not by following strategic approaches but by following the leadership of God. Kingdom potential pulls the congregations forward rather than pushing it forward.

Empowering Congregational Futures

I am interested in empowering congregational futures. I am interested in helping your congregation pursue, perfect, and be pulled toward its full Kingdom potential. This involves a spiritual strategic journey toward God’s ideal or perfect destination for your congregation. I am interested in helping your unique Christ-centric, faith-based community. I want your community to utilize fully its collective spiritual giftedness, its life skills and strengths, and its personality and cultural preferences so you can soar in response to God’s ideal or perfect leading. This means you must visualize God’s future for your specific congregation.

The full Kingdom potential for congregations must be discerned, discovered, and developed one congregation at a time. Each congregation must follow God’s leadership and find solutions in a manner unique to the opportunities and challenges they face. While God’s eternal mission for congregations remains the same, the everlasting historic purpose, the enduring core values, and the empowering vision of each congregation is unique.

I am interested in your congregation being reimaged in the image of God. All too often we find congregations being reimaged in the image of the latest church growth, health, faithfulness, success, or transformation process of humankind. I am interested in helping your congregation understand the context in which you find yourself and then to fully, sacrificially, lovingly, and unconditionally minister among the people in that context. At times that is a geographically defined context; at other times it has a cultural, affinity groups, or target group definition. Any of these are fine as long as they are the context to which God has given you gifts, skills, and preferences for exceptional ministry.

I am interested in helping your congregation walk in the spirit of 2 Corinthians 5:7 that calls for Christians to “walk by faith, not by sight.’ That involves being embraced and captivated by God’s ideal or perfect will for your congregation. This involves placing more emphasis on visionary leadership and relationship experiences with God, with one another, and with the context in which you serve than it does on programs and management of your congregation.

Foundationally, my interest in this book is all about your full Kingdom potential. Full refers to that which is comprehensive, far-reaching, and thorough. Kingdom implies that which embraces the reign of God as a focus rather than the realm of humankind. It implies a broad Christian worldview rather than being concerned only about a single local congregation. Potential refers to that which is impossible except for the promise of God.

Are These Congregations Reaching Their Full Kingdom Potential?

How do you know a congregation is reaching or has reached its full Kingdom potential? What are the signs or characteristics? How is this measured? The reality is that full Kingdom potential must be defined one congregation at a time and probably cannot be objectively measured. Even if you know the full and final story of a congregation’s life and ministry, you may find it difficult to know if the congregation ever reached its full Kingdom potential. A combination of congregational participants, sister congregations in a same or similar context, and other outside observers might be able to discern if a congregation ever reaches its full Kingdom potential.

Probably no congregation ever truly reaches its full Kingdom potential. It may have periods of prime in its life, but each prime or summit represents a beginning point for the next dimension of ministry challenge. Study the following stories of several congregations as examples of those who strove to reach their full Kingdom potential.

New Region Congregation

During the generation following World War II, a major Protestant denomination started a new congregation in a region of the country where they had never had congregations before. This congregation was primarily composed of people from this denominational tradition. Their jobs and education programs had taken them to this region. From the beginning this was a reproducing congregation. It would regularly send out groups from within its congregation to start new congregations throughout...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Other Books By This Author
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Editor’s Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction - What Kind of Journey for What Kind of Congregation?
• Chapter 1 - Understanding the Full Kingdom Potential of Your Congregation
• Chapter 2 - Preparing Your Congregation for a Spiritual Strategic Journey
• Chapter 3 - Navigating the Spiritual Strategic Journey of Your Congregation
• Chapter 4 - Identifying Congregational Issues for a Spiritual Strategic Journey
• Chapter 5 - Recognizing the Life Cycle and Stages of Your Congregation’s Development
• Chapter 6 - Taking a New Look at Transition, Change, and Transformation
• Chapter 7 - Spiritual Relationships and Discernment as an Essential Process
• Chapter 8 - Future Storytelling for Your Congregation
• Chapter 9 - Choices for Congregations
• Chapter 10 - Living into the Future Story of Your Congregation
• Chapter 11 - Coaching Congregations to Pursue Their Full Kingdom Potential
• Chapter 12 - Pursuing the Full Kingdom Potential of Your Denomination
• Notes