What’s Driving You?

Hosts: TJ Freeman, Joe Wagner, and Josh MacClaren

Summary: In this episode of Rural Church Renewal, TJ, Joe, and Josh discuss the significance of deeply held convictions in driving church growth and health, rather than just following plans or models from large churches. They emphasize the importance of being motivated by biblical convictions and genuine love for Jesus and the congregation. Their conversation includes the pitfalls of envy and pragmatic approaches, advocating instead for aligning church activities with core convictions like spiritual fruit, stewardship, and spiritual giftedness. They conclude with the notion that real growth is a consequence of focusing on these biblical principles.

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Transcript

Joe: Do you think you found the perfect plan for church growth and health? You got it started. Things were looking good for a little while, and then it all fell apart. Well, let me tell you, you're doing it wrong. It's not about the plan. It's about your deeply held convictions that motivate you. 

TJ: Well, thank you for joining us for another edition of Rural Church Renewal. My name is TJ Freeman and I am a rural pastor. That means that just like you, I live in the middle of nowhere and so do these dudes. 

Joe: Hey, I live in the same town as TJ does. I have been in rural ministry for a long time. 

TJ: And your name is?

Joe: Joe. I'm discipleship pastor here at Christ Church. 

Josh: Hi guys, this is Josh. I no longer live in the same town, TJ and Joe do. I now live town over in Mansfield, pastoring a rural church there a whole 12 miles away. Woo. Different community though, and a bridge construction now separates us.

TJ: Yes. Well, it's good to have you brothers here today as we talk about, um, really. The sounds like, Joe, you're bringing to our attention the growth of the church, but it sounds like maybe you're pushing back against some of our temptations. 

Joe: Not just growth. I don't think we're just talking about growth, but we're talking about health is all. And what I'm pushing back is when you go to a conference and you, and you hear great speakers and they lay out everything that they did and what other churches have done, and all of a sudden you've got this.

Really what Church Envy, a little bit of church envy, you want your church to be like just like that, just as healthy, just as growing as what they are. You come back with a whole bunch of different things to do and it looks great on paper, but then when you start actually putting those things into practice, it all kind of falls apart.

And I guess what I would like to say is it's not necessarily all about the steps that you do, it's about the convictions that you're driven by. 

TJ: So is it. Right or wrong for somebody to want their church to grow? 

Joe: No, I don't think that that's wrong at all. Um, and I think that that is a great conviction for your church to grow, like to be pushing back against the kingdom of darkness, bringing new converts in, sharing the gospel. The people in your church growing spiritually in their health, in biblical knowledge, in their prayer life.

Those are all fantastic and great things, but I really do think that unless you're driven by biblical convictions and make sure you get those things in there. You're missing a big giant step. So that it's not necessarily the plan that's driving your actions, it's actually what the Lord has revealed to you to be truth, that you wanna follow that. And you're deeply convicted of those particular things. Like those are principles that drive everything.

TJ: Can you sum that up in a sentence before I ask Josh if he likes church growth or not? 

Joe: Yeah. Boy, that's a tough one. Rather than being driven by culture. Be driven by your convictions. 

TJ: Ooh, snappy. I like it. That's good. Josh, are you for or against church growth? 

Josh: I think church growth is some of the best growth we could have. I don't know why I just decided to try to do a Trump impression. 

TJ: Is that what you were trying to do? 

Josh: That's what I was trying to do. 

Joe: Now that you told us what it's, I'm terrible. Alright. 

Josh: Uh, yeah, I'm for church growth, but I don't think our ends should justify any means. 

TJ: What does that mean?

Josh: Well, the ends of hundreds of people being, say, converted, quote unquote by praying a prayer or coming forward or being baptized. So I'm for church growth, but we can't allow ends to justify means. So, some ways churches have done this is, take really the holiness out of their service and choose to use secular songs or, secular means by which to bring people in.

But what you win people with is what you win them to. And if we're not winning them with conviction driven from God's word, then we're not gonna keep them. And they're not actually going to grow. 

TJ: So, we've all watched YouTube and we know that churches out there somewhere sometimes use secular music to draw people in.

Do you think any of our rural church friends are thinking that that's the right idea? 

Josh: Well, I think there's a temptation to see what the big church does, see how big the big church is, and try to do what Joe had said. Copy what the big church does, because clearly that's the answer. We just need bigger worship team. We need better songs. 

Joe: So you're, you're sharing one side of the problem where, uh, leadership in a church or a church might wanna be, we're gonna be better, so because we want to be like them.

Yeah. We wanna make a bunch of changes and be like them. There's the opposite side of the coin too, and probably this is the one that we deal with more in rural churches. Yeah, that's good. They look backwards and they will see, look how good we did 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 50 years ago, let's clinging to those things and then we'll be back good again. And you've got a war with that as well. 

TJ: Yeah. So both sides of those are some dangers. So I, I guess what I really wanna probe at a little bit more still is, is it wrong or is it right to have a desire for your church to grow? And then what you got, what we're, what we're hitting on is, hey, there's definitely wrong approaches to growing a church, but just fundamentally, is that conviction truly justifiable? 

Joe: Yeah, it's justified to have that conviction, but why do you want your church to grow? And what is it that you're truly aiming for? Are you truly aiming for the people in your congregation to have a deeper and greater love for the Lord Jesus Christ? To know him better?

Or does that kind of come secondary to filling up the seats? Does that come secondary to everything running really smoothly? Because I tell you, man, if you are really desiring for everybody in your church to have a healthy, growing relationship with Jesus Christ, two things, it's not always gonna be easy to do because you're gonna have to confront some things and plea and implore folks to change according to scripture.

Doing that really, really well. So it's, it's not always super easy, but it's necessary. But when they are growing, when that love for Christ begins to grow. The natural consequence of that is that they want to share their relationship with Christ with other people. They have found that as God has ordained in the church, and so then they wanna bring other folks in, that is the absolute best way to market, quote unquote, your church is through the growing relationship of the people that you have with Jesus Christ.

TJ: How much control do we have over the growth of the church? 

Joe: We really honestly have no control over that at all. The Lord does that. 

TJ: Is it possible that we could manipulate and get bodies into a building through means that would not honor the Lord? Is that what you were getting at John? 

Josh: That's what I was getting at. Yes. Especially 'cause I think about Paul's warning to Timothy, you know, soon a time is coming where people having itching ears will accumulate for themselves, false teachers to suit their own passions. I think we see that all over rural America and otherwise where people are just filling a building to have their ears itched instead of actually receiving the word.

Joe: I've got a, a short story that will illustrate that, so I. I visited a, uh, a very small rural church and they had a great desire to grow. I loved the pastor there. He, he preached faithful sermons and he wanted the church to grow as well. I went in and I visited beautiful building, beautiful stained glass, beautiful steeple, beautiful pews.

And as I was talking with some people, one of the, uh, leaders of the church. Grabbed me by the arm and said, Hey, let me show you something that we're proud of. He took me down to the basement fellowship hall and pointed it and said, That right there is the oldest operating dishwasher in the entire New England area.

He wanted to take me down there and show me the thing that he was most proud of, and it was a dishwasher. What did it look like? It was stained glass. Not stained glasses. Yeah, that'd be awesome. What kind of dishwasher are we talking? Stain dishwasher ever. Stainless steel hoses and, and sinks and levers and dials all over the place.

There was a even post posted up on the wall was a newspaper article with the headline. Church has the oldest dishwasher in all of New England. Pastor just hung his head because he knew right then and there. The same thing that I had picked up. Like we could have implored them, begged them to change up their liturgy, change up their worship singing.

And in this case, they had a beautiful pipe organ, but it was played so slowly. It was so difficult, the worship. We could have implored them to have greeters. We could have done all of those particular changes, but it wouldn't have done anything because the thing that they were most proud of was the dishwasher and not Jesus.

And so their convictions were so far out of whack that it was, it was not a bastion of Christian hope and salvation. It was a bastion of absolute tradition and things that they were inherently proud of in themselves rather than their faith. 

TJ: So I know you're not advocating for growth by relics or old dishwashers.

And nobody's going to go to that church because the dishwasher's in the basement. But behind that is the, the reality that people could come for the wrong reasons because they're chasing a traditional view of church? Is that what you're arguing for? 

Joe: Th that's one of, that's definitely one aspect, yeah.

That they're dealing with. But whether it's tradition or whether it's new, the heart of the matter is, is that you're trying to attract people with something that may be surface at Attractional. Okay? There may be somebody who read that newspaper article and said, I want go see that dishwasher. Or there may be somebody that said they played an ACDC song to worship, right?

And I want to go see that. But I think Josh said this a little bit earlier, if you tr attract them with that, uh, that's what they're gonna stay for. And they're gonna want some more of that. And we want to attract them with Christ. 

TJ: Okay, so now let me drill down a little further. If you think it's right to have a desire to see the church grow, is it true that the church, if it's healthy, it will grow?

Joe: Oftentimes it will. I think that I don't think that we can make the concrete declaration that a healthy church will grow every time because we do not know the mind of our sovereign Lord, and he may at that point choose for those saints in that church to continue growing in faith. And maybe he's called them to be Jeremiah Prophets, maybe he's called a pastor there to pastor them and shepherd them into the grave and it would be a sweet and glorifying thing that you would be called to. What an incredible purpose then that the Lord has called you to.

So I'm not saying that if everybody in your church has the greatest and deepest love for Christ, that your church will grow because it might be our sovereign Lord's plan for it not, or for it to grow a little bit or to grow in different sorts of ways, however he has planned it. But I would say that generally it is the Lord's plan to bring people into churches that are more healthy, that are able to disciple them and for others to be able to grow.

I think that generally the Lord's plan for areas is for his glory to spread further and further and further. But again, it is the Lord's work and we need to consign ourselves to his work, not ours. 

TJ: And that's why your topic is so important, because if we're just thinking I'm supposed to grow a church and healthy things grow and like it just seems assumed by so many that I need to find out how to make this church grow and churches hire pastors thinking maybe this young guy and his family will come in here and our church will finally grow. 

Joe: He can talk to my kids who are not coming to church. Let's get a young guy to bring my kids into church. 

TJ: Right? So there is maybe an assumption about growth that I've, I have focused. I've zoomed in on here because I want to expose it a little bit and talk about the fact that it's not just right or wrong to think about growth or like our strategy for growth isn't just subjective and up to us, and the fact that growth truly isn't even in our control matters because there are gonna be some people listening who are in a church that's not grown in 20 years and they're gonna give their lives to this church and it may not grow, and what you're bringing up, Joe, is good undergirding, is that the right word? 

Joe: I think we can say that. Your loins were, Yes, were undergirded in those things. 

Josh: Gi up, gird 'em up, baby. 

TJ: Stronger underwear. That's what this episode is gonna give you and help us understand what you mean when you say, I'm not chasing growth, I'm pursuing convictions.

That in many cases will lead to growth because we're doing what the Lord's called us to do in his word. But what are the, what do you mean when you say we need to have a convictional approach to ministry? 

Joe: All right, let me just share, uh, a really great core conviction for you to hold, for you to put this up on the wall in your office, to post it where people can see it in the foyer.

A great conviction would be for the, uh, display of spiritual fruit in your people. That is something tangible. We can grab a hold of that particular thing. We want people to grow in their love and their kindness and their patience and in their self-control that is a command of Christ. It's very simple.

It's very clear. He is glorified when those things are growing and in displayed in our people. And so that I think is a conviction that you're able to, to grab a hold of and run with and see. And that really, yeah, peripherally, it has to do with church growth, but it has to do with you leading the people that the Lord's brought to you right then and there.

TJ: Okay, so I'm hearing you say that there are some objective ways we can look at God's people growing in scripture, but I don't know if I totally understand what you're saying when you mean we need to have convictions that drive what we're doing. So I feel like every pastor listening has convictions. You know, maybe they're reformed Baptist and those are their convictions, or they're Presbyterian and those are their convictions, or they're Methodist and those are their convictions.

They have convictions like, I love God and I wanna honor him. What do you mean when you say, as a leader in the church, we're supposed to be convictionally driven? What are the outcomes or the convictions that are driving what you're saying? 

Joe: So if that is your conviction. I think that it will motivate you to spend time with, to disciple, to teach on that particular conviction rather than spend a lot of time aiming towards church growth. Is that what you're looking for? 

TJ: Well, I'm, I'm trying to understand. Yeah, and I'm, and I'm trying to help our listener understand what do you mean when you say convictional?

Joe: When I say convictionally driven, I, I'm not necessarily talking about like what might our distinctives be or, or what our individual theological positions might be. I'm talking about are you in your heart as a pastor or a shepherd or an elder or a deacon? Are you motivated? Does your heart beat for the people in your church to love Jesus more?

Sure. You know that you would love to have a better worship team. You would love to have a better greeter team, you'd love to have better liturgy. And like, those are all like fixes, repairman sorts of fixes. But before you go into those, uh, Mr fix it mode, uh, let's just use worship team for an example.

Let's say you've got just a, an incredible worship leader who's super, super talented. They're great on stage, but you are really not sure about how much they themselves love Jesus. And so, you got a couple different things that you need to do there in that case. Disciple that person, lead that person. You bend your will rather than to have a great worship leader team.

Your love for that person trumps that. And so you say, Hey, this person, uh, really needs somebody to pour into them. And you begin pouring into them and sharing with them and praying for them and being in contact with them or finding somebody else in your congregation to be able to pour into them so that when they get up there, they are able to.

And that might be two or three years down the road where they are able to pour into the love and pour out of love for the people and love for Jesus as well. And so I think the heart of what I'm talking about is a love for Christ and a love for the people, and being biblically grounded and sticking really, really clearly to, to what Christ has called us to, and that spreads across almost all denominations.

Do you love the people and do you want them to love Jesus more? 

TJ: So I'm hearing, you know, we have to have this foundational understanding that the church belongs to the Lord and the Lord's given us actual work to do in the lives of these people. And it's not at our discretion to just figure out, what do I want this church to look like?

This church needs to look like what God wants this church to look like. We have some convictions that we actually talk about regularly in our church with our congregation. Can you, either of you, talk to how those convictions help shape the way that we do ministry in, in rural place?

Josh: One of the things we understand from scripture is that God intends to be glorified everywhere. That's why we focus on rural ministry.

He wants to be represented by faithful churches in all places. So that means he's gonna do that through all of Christ's people, not just professional holy people, not just missionaries who are paid to go and do this, or pastors who are paid to go and do this, but all of Christ's people. So if he's gonna do it through all Christ's people, then we need to grow our people in something like a love for God.

Like Joe had mentioned, if our people aren't loving God and we're trying to get a better worship leader or a nicer sanctuary space or a better worship team, and that's our goal and not getting our people to love God, then we are not operating off of convictions. 

Joe: Here's the perfect example and we'll, we can hone right down to a razor point on this one.

I'll go back to the worship team example that you just used. If one of our convictions is that we're gonna glorify God through all of Christ's people, then that conviction has shaped how we do worship. And it is not so much that the person on stage is leading the worship. They're the loudest, they're the most talented.

The most important thing there is the congregation who is singing. It's the people of God who is singing. Who up there loves the Lord and loves the congregation and can lead them so that their voices actually drown out the worship team? Our goal is for everybody in that audience and in the congregation to be worshiping the Lord, all of Christ's people, not just a few.

TJ: Yeah, that's super helpful, Joe. And so that's a great example of how convictions help us make decisions, and that's the essence of what we're talking about today. As you make decisions, they need to be based on core convictions that you're driving at that will lead to certain outcomes. So if you think that whatever God wants to do in the world, he wants to do through all Christ's people, and it's the spiritual giftedness of the whole body and the way that the entire body has things like their voices to steward for the encouragement of the group. Whatever. You have these core convictions, now you're going, okay, we do special music.

We don't do special music, but. If your church does and a lot of rural churches do, you could be frustrated because you're thinking Sweet Aunt Edna doesn't know how to sing on key, and it's embarrassing when she's up there. No one wants to come to the church. Or you can be convictional and say, no, I think that singing is meant for the mutual encouragement of the body.

It's work that the congregation does, not something that somebody performs in front of us. So I'm gonna lead toward stopping special music because I have a conviction, or our church has a conviction about what God means to do through his congregation. That has to drive what we're doing. And I think in the rural church, it's. 

Joe: So what you're saying is I just don't want to have Sweet Edna up there because it embarrasses people and they get secondhand embarrassment from them, which.

That's a powerful motivator. Right. But the conviction there is, I don't care if it's papa up front or Chris Tomlin up front. 

TJ: That's right. Yep. 

Joe: Yeah. We're not here just to hear one person sing and worship the Lord that way. We're here for the entire body to sing. 

TJ: Yeah, absolutely. So having some core convictions that drive your understanding of why you do what you do in every part of your church life is so essential, and I think we so easily drift from convictional leadership to pragmatic leadership.

It happens all the time, and we don't think we do because we're, we're convictional people. We wouldn't be pastors if we didn't have strong convictions, but sometimes our theology is over here and our practice is over here and we're not. Marrying them through the convictions that then drive the outcomes we're pursuing in the life of our church.

And 

Joe: it's a whole lot easier to convince Sweet and Edna not by saying, you're not that greatest a singer, but by saying to her the reality and the truth of the convictions that we have, we want everybody to be singing. 

TJ: That's right. So you, I think you need to know what your convictions are as a pastor and as a leadership team.

And with those convictions you can go into almost any setting. Any rural church and work toward them because these convictions that I think we would advocate for are not denominational. So, you know, you want your people to have intimacy with God. That word's been hijacked today. Intimacy is not a sexual term here.

In this case, it is saying, I want to be close to the Lord, to actually know him, to spend time with him, to listen for his voice, speaking through His word and the power of the Holy Spirit. I wanna actually be driven by a love for God because I'm. I have an intimate relationship with him. Or saying, okay, well I believe that God actually has a plan for creation and it's for the spread of his glory to the ends of the earth.

So my job is to empower God's people because I'm an equipper as a pastor to go do that work. And God doesn't wanna do it through professional holy people as God said, but through all of Christ's people. Um, you know, I believe that God has worked in the lives of my people in a way where he would wanna show his grace.

Through them. So I need to train the people in my church to share the story of God's grace through their own lives using the word. These kinds of things, you can go in any church context and start steering that congregation in the direction that God would have his people walk in regardless of their denomination or whatever.

And that, I think changes the, the tone from, I really want this church to grow to I am. On a mission from God, use the Blues Brothers quote, I am here serving the Lord by playing my part in mobilizing his people to get after his desires for his creation. 

Joe: And now to reiterate something that you said in the beginning of what you just shared, which was really, really good.

When you have these biblical convictions identified, it makes your decision making so much easier because you don't have to make a pragmatic choice. You don't have to split the baby. You say, this is our conviction, and this particular thing that somebody has brought up, or my particular idea that I've been thinking about all night long, that doesn't match that conviction.

So I don't think we should do it, or we've gotta make a hard decision to do the, here are our convictions that come from scripture. What matches up with those convictions? We'll talk more about this when we talk about the specific convictions that we would, uh, share with you, and you just mentioned some of them, but it really makes your decision making easier.

That's great. 

TJ: Josh, you have some convictions pulled up in front of you right now? 

Josh: I do. 

TJ: You wanna just read those off and then I think we'll. Sure. Probably wrap up this episode. 

Josh: Yep. Core convictions. Whatever God is going to do in the world, he's gonna do through all Christ's people, the church. 'Cause of that whatever God is going to do in the world, through all of Christ's people, he's gonna do primarily through decentralized structure. Meaning, it's not going to be one core team in the church doing everything. It is the leadership equipping saints to go mobile, to be the church militant, to not come and see, but go and tell.

A third whatever God is gonna do in the world, he's gonna do through leaders who empower his people in their giftedness as their first priority. Not leaders who are only administrators, not leaders who are running a Fortune 500 company, or CEOs, but shepherds who are equipping saints for the work of ministry, as Paul says in Ephesians four 12 and 13.

Then finally, whatever God is gonna do in the world, distant from any local churches circle of accountability, he's gonna do through the resources of churches that are telescoping or being globally intentional in joint venture with the Holy Spirit and with indigenous leaders.

Basically what you're doing, in your locale, driven by convictions, you go and you teach or encourage someone to do the work in their place. Whether or not it's the town across from you, whether or not it's the county across from you, whether or not it's a country across the ocean. You are not expected to do the work there. God has gifted people there to do it.

You just need to help encourage and equip them. 

TJ: And out of those broad bucket convictions, you kinda zoom in and we have some outcomes that we're pursuing in the lives of our congregation. You've heard me mention some of them. One is a pursuit of God. You know, if we're meant to have intimacy with God, then our people need to be in regular pursuit of him and so do we.

Another is demonstration of the fruit of the spirit. You know, if God's Holy Spirit is in you. It should be made visible in a way that looks very different from the works of the flesh, like you see in Galatians five. So your people need to be walking in the fruit of the spirit, which means you need to help cultivate the evidence of that. Stewardship of life.

Whatever you see, whatever you look at, whatever you hold, whatever you touch, it belongs to the Lord. We're not owners of anything. We're stewards of all things. And God wants to employ resources that he's entrusted to you for the advancement of his kingdom. So you need to stewardship not just your money, but all of your life.

Your grace story, the fact that God has given you. He's, he's worked his grace in your life in a way that he means to be a display of his glory so that it is made visible everywhere. And what's the last one? Which one did I leave out guys? Spiritual giftedness. Yeah, spiritual giftedness. So God has equipped every person in some way, in, in a way that's unique from the rest of the people around them for the building up of the body.

So you need to cultivate a congregation that walks in spiritual giftedness. And so if you have those outcomes in mind, driven by those convictions we mentioned before, now you're chasing after the kind of health that God wants to see in the life of the church. And it's not about, you know, were the people coming in, thrown off by the fact that we have paneling in the lobby, even though you may wanna change that someday.

It's not, oh, I'm so mad that that business meeting didn't go the way I wanted it to. 'cause Melvin wouldn't shut his yapper. It like you have a plan to drive these people with his help toward outcomes that God has clearly laid out in scripture for them. And you're motivated by convictions, not by what's happening from day to day in the life of your church.

That's gonna change everything. Does that sound like what you were saying in the beginning? Beginning, Joe? 

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. That's what I was driving at. Those are the things I, I don't think I can even say it better than you. I can just reiterate it. If those are the core convictions that you have, then that's what drives and most motivates you.

Books are good. Conferences are good. You can take some of those other steps, but make sure that the steps that you do take are driven pri. SI was gonna say primarily even more than primarily by the convictions that you have. 

TJ: If you want more information about this, there is a really good book called Renovation written by a guy called Dwight Smith, and you could head over to Saturation church Plantings website. SCP north america.org.

That's SCP for Saturation Church Planting. Yep, north america.org. Tons of information there. These guys have been super helpful to us as we've walked through. Convictions and values and outcomes. I think it'd be helpful to you as well, dear listener, and just think about applying it in your rural context as you go through that information.

For now, though, we are outta here. Thanks for listening to this episode. I hope it's been helpful to you as you think about how to live and function as a pastor by conviction, not by any other pragmatic means. We'll see you next time. 

Josh: Adios. 

Joe: Raise your Ebenezer.