How Leadership Dysfunction Holds Back Church Growth

Leadership dysfunction can be the silent killer of church growth, yet many leaders don't want to address it. In this episode, we explore four critical dysfunctions that might be holding your church back: poor conflict management, entrenched parties and processes, tolerance of disunifying behavior, and lack of shared vision. Learn how to identify these issues and take practical steps toward creating a healthier leadership culture in your church.

Full show notes available at malphursgroup.com/279

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Is leadership dysfunction holding back growth in your church? Let's
explore that now on the Church Revitalization Podcast.

(00:34):
Today. Alright, A.J.. We're talking about
leadership dysfunction today. What a great topic. This is,
you might say leadership dysfunction isn't just about bad decisions.
It's it's the silent killer of church growth
that many people don't wanna talk about. And so today we're gonna be
diving into some of these uncomfortable truths about how leadership

(00:57):
problems, directly impact your church's
ability to grow. And they're not
just organizational issues. These are spiritual barriers that
prevent churches from living out the Great Commission. So
we wanna identify these things, and root them out. So
we're gonna we've got four,

(01:19):
common dysfunctions, and we're gonna explore these
four things today. Yeah. It's really I mean, it's an unfortunate
topic. You know, we, Scott, a long time ago, we did an
episode about, toxicity pastors that are toxic.
And it's one of the most, watched videos
that we have. And I just find that to be really sad. And

(01:41):
most popular articles on our website and all kinds of things. Oh,
no. Yeah. Sorry. Good thumbs up. We got thumbs ups
on the video. My goodness. But, yeah, you know, I mean, I've just always
felt like it's it's just sad and unfortunate that that's one
of the most popular topics because people are searching it, and then they find that
episode. And so this is kind of along those lines again. You

(02:03):
know, again, I it needs to be talked about because we want churches to
be healthy, but it, I don't know how else to say it. It's an unfortunate,
necessary topic. Yeah. Yeah. Well, hey. Before we hop into
these four things, I wanna just give a quick shout out to
Healthy Church's toolkit. There's lots of if you're if you're
like, man, we wanna improve our leadership. We wanna get better. We don't wanna be

(02:26):
dysfunctional. We wanna get on the same page. And we're gonna be talking about a
lot of these, as we talk about these issues today, a lot of these
solutions, revolve around
building a leadership pipeline and getting a healthier leadership culture
and building a shared vision for the future. And there's a lot of
resources in the Healthy Churches toolkit that can help you do that, and you can

(02:48):
get seven days for free. Go to Healthy Churches toolkit dot com.
Register. Get access to all the goods, and you get access to,
leadership coaching as well, unlimited leadership coaching with all
plus accounts. So if you're like, hey. I I just need someone to balance ideas
off of and get advice and input from, when you sign
up for a plus account in Healthy Churches toolkit, you get access

(03:10):
to unlimited coaching, from our team.
So check it out. Go check that out. During normal business hours?
During the yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You, but, you know, you get access to a calendar.
We don't have a 247 call center. So That's right. Yeah. Yeah. No. But
you you you get access to a calendar and you can Yep. Set up set
up meetings. Yeah. That is a yeah. That that is a that is a good

(03:32):
value. Alright. Our first, topic that we're gonna talk about
today, our first point is poor conflict management. And
this is, I mean, this is just evident in a in a lot of situations.
Churches are no strangers to conflict. Right? I mean, everybody listening,
just gave an amen on that one. And, you know, they there's we talk
about this also when we, when we work with churches and we talk about

(03:54):
vision, shared vision, and, you know, when you hear
of a church that has no conflict, that's actually a
red flag, because, you know, it's that's just
not normal. Humans are challenging, creatures,
to to interact with one another. So, yeah, a
lot of times when there is a lack of conflict or in a

(04:17):
perceived, you know, abundance of peace is sometimes because,
we're not communicating clearly about perhaps what our direction
is. Church may just be directionless, and a
directionless church is more likely to have less conflict because everybody's just kinda doing
their own thing anyway and assume everybody thinks like they do. So when you
articulate, future plans and

(04:39):
and, you know, desires and things that we believe God's calling us to,
that's when conflict sometimes comes up. But it it manifests in a
variety of situations, from the most minor of
things to major decision making in the church. People just disagree.
And, unfortunately, a lot of people handle situations,
with an, a level of maturity less

(05:02):
than their years. And, it's it's,
astounding sometimes how, you know, perfectly,
who people you would think would be perfectly mature in handling things with
humility and, and a good dialogue choose not
to. And, and this is where, you know, some of that
some sometimes toxic behaviors, and,

(05:25):
unfortunately, even sometimes sinful behaviors come in. But
leaders in a church not handling the conflict
effectively, sometimes they're the ones that are in the conflict, but
you would hope that there's somebody with a level of wisdom and maturity
that can help, you know, intervene and have
parties work through things in a mature way. But, unfortunately, that doesn't

(05:48):
happen, and things are sides get taken, you
know, factions form, and we've got just something
getting worse and worse. Yeah. I mean,
conflict management is this might be the number one thing.
There's a few things behind this. I think, something like
60%, not only did these exact percentages, A.J., but something like

(06:10):
60% of all pastors
have the 's' type temperament, which
is like a shepherding, steady. Yeah, 's' stands for
'steady'. And you know,
by temperament, they hate conflict.
And so they often create an environment that is

(06:33):
conducive to passive aggressive
stuff and just conflicts,
bubbling just but maybe just beneath the surface. And there's a lot of peacekeeping,
but not a lot of peace making. And, and so
this passive avoidance of comp active,

(06:55):
and intentional conflict avoidance is
is maybe keeping the peace, but it's not making
peace. And Jesus didn't do this. Jesus was willing to
engage in difficult situations for the purpose of
reconciliation, right, and trying to make things right and for and to stand
on the side of what is correct and what is right.

(07:16):
And, in our culture today, our culture celebrates
peacekeeping. Our culture celebrates,
don't rock the boat. Hey. Don't don't say anything difficult. Don't Yeah. Don't say anything
that would make someone feel bad. And we have a lot of
pastors who just are temperamentally just predisposed to not
wanting to engage in hard conversations. And as a result, it

(07:38):
just the church can't move forward. And so
conflict avoidance is not the solution. It's healthy conflict,
saying hard things. We're gonna get into more of this, actually, because it's a similar
theme that kinda recurs. But, poor conflict
management, I think, is maybe just the baseline, and that
really undergirds pretty much everything else on our list

(08:01):
here, A.J.. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. So moving on to our
next point, entrenched parties and processes. So this is,
again, how that poor conflict management starts to manifest itself,
is that we've got people that that are dug in. So So on the one
hand, we might have people that, you know, they believe they're right. They're not
really willing to come to the table, can't see a a

(08:24):
point of view beyond their own. And then we've got,
a leadership structure in the church that is able
that allows it to continue. We don't have a structure
in which people, you know, can perhaps take grievances
into a neutral space, to be able to dealt be dealt
with in in a mature way that can, you know, hopefully lead to

(08:47):
reconciliation or, you know, some common ground
that we could move forward in. And this so much is you
know, has to do with, personal preferences
much of the time. You know? Just
instead of finding the commonality in what is God
calling us to and, and being able to move

(09:10):
together, you know, maybe with some not that everybody would
always have to have their way. I mean, that's that's kind of the thing. You
that's not gonna be the case. We want to be able to work towards a
solution that we're like, okay. This this kinda moves us all forward,
though it may not be my perfect solution. Yeah. I was trying to do
this, find this factoid, about

(09:32):
World War one and, the trench
warfare there. I think, I don't know. It's no one hold me to
this. Okay? But I think that in in the
last couple years of the war, the front lines
of, of of of both sides
only moved maybe within a handful of kilometers, in

(09:56):
all these years of fighting. And
that to me, that is stuck. That is stuck
leadership Yeah. Visualized. When you have these
entrenched systems and parties,
I mean, they are really dug in, man, and there is just no
movement. And we don't even know why. Why are we

(10:19):
fighting this anymore? Why are why did we why did why is this the hill
we decided to die on? Now I'm not a big fan of making change for
change sake just going, well, let's just let's just move the line,
just to move the line. I'm a big proponent of
let's figure out why this is here, why are we doing this. And if
there's a good reason for maintaining this method or this

(10:41):
process, you know, I'm I'm I'm,
I think you and I both, A.J., are on the record on this
podcast of of saying, yeah, we maybe went away from from
Sunday school too quickly, as a culture. So, I mean, I
think there's some room to say not
every old idea is a bad idea, but

(11:04):
we we also should not become so committed to our
trenches that we don't know why we do things anymore.
And, I was actually working with the church, A.J.,
not that long ago where I had I
said, hey, I have some feedback on this particular part of
ministry. And, the person I was talking to said,

(11:27):
I don't even wanna hear it. Until this
person isn't a part of, you know, this ministry,
or isn't leading this part of the ministry anymore, there's really not a point in
hearing any feedback. And I'm paraphrasing.
But, I thought, oh, wow. Like, that's not good. If
someone said, I don't even wanna hear don't bother

(11:48):
giving me the feedback. So long as, you know, this leader
is is leading this thing, there's really no point. I was actually I
was with a different church and not that long ago,
had a similar kind of conversation. I was like, well, now why is it that
we do this thing this way? And they go, this is the way.
Yeah. We don't we don't question it.

(12:11):
This is the way. And I thought, well, this isn't
this isn't good. And they They've had a lot of success, and so there is
a lot of question like, we don't touch it because it's been successful in the
past. So we don't we're not gonna push it. Yeah. I think oh,
yes. Oh, perhaps overall church success can
sometimes overshadow small areas of

(12:33):
stagnation. You know? Kind of assume everything
what what we're doing right now should all stay in place because it's
helping us achieve overall success when I just don't know that
that needs to be thought of as true. There can be improvements to
be made in specific areas that could contribute to even greater, you know,
growth and health in the church. But, yeah, often, you

(12:55):
know, longevity of doing something becomes like
that's just the measure. You know, that's that that
will determine if something is available to be
discussed for change. The longer it's been there, the less
availability that will be to discuss doing something different.
And it's and it's comes back to this preservation of

(13:18):
feelings, preservation of emotions and relationships.
And, you know, I mean, I'm sometimes accused of
perhaps not being as empathetic as I could be, but,
I still think we should ask why, you know. I mean, what is the intentionality
of doing this? Yeah. I mean, even
think about it from, you know, even here we go. Here's A.J.. From an analytical

(13:39):
point of view, you know? I mean, we have a church of 50 or we
have a church of of a 50 or 300 people, and
we're doing something that perhaps a handful of people
engage in, and somebody's been leading it for, you know, eight
years or twenty two years. And we keep doing it just because
of that. You know? I mean, let's you gotta zoom out a little bit.

(14:01):
Like, we're we're a a large congregation of people now,
and we're trying to achieve certain goals. And and, you know, maybe we could that
room could be used for better in a different way, or it's really confusing
to talk about what this person's ministry is. It doesn't fit necessarily with
our with our goals on on our vision. The I I
don't know. That's the wrong thinking to me. I mean, why are we why are

(14:23):
we doing that? And and I know some people push back and go, oh, if
it's that small, it doesn't matter anyway. Let let George keep doing
it. Right. But, you know, I don't know. What does that teach
what does that tell us about leaders leading
George? Let's just say George. You know, I mean, are we are
we leading George well to not be coaching,

(14:44):
to not be talking with him about the the results of his ministry.
He's putting in effort, you know, maybe that he really cares about.
You know, what he's been doing has been shrinking over the years. I mean, shouldn't
we be coaching George like we would the the 25 year old, you
know, assistant youth pastor? So, I don't know. I
think I think sometimes these decisions break down when you when you kind of dig

(15:07):
into them a little bit. Yeah. I mean, we we did an episode
not that long ago on ministry silos, And,
this is how they form, you know, where we just go, alright, you do youth,
you do you boo. You know, like, and, we're just gonna leave each other
alone. There's some data that says that 85% of
pastors said that the most common

(15:29):
source of conflict, was control
issues. And, I think that that it's not just
pastors. Like, it's not just pastors who have the control issues. It's it's a
matriarch or a patriarch in the church that you can't that you can't
cross. You know? I I worked out
on staff at a church. I think I told this story a few weeks ago

(15:50):
where, there was a guy who had been on staff for, like,
twenty or thirty years. He was not the lead pastor, but he was just on
staff. And, you know, that guy that guy got his way,
man. Well, it doesn't matter what it was because the idea was you can't,
you can't cross him. Like, the he's he's been here. He's earned his
stripes. He gets to call the shots. Even if it was nuts and it makes

(16:12):
no sense and it's not good for the whole church, it doesn't matter. He's been
there forever. You can't cross him. These things happen
in churches, and, it's not it's not healthy.
So and and when churches going back to the first point, when churches are
unwilling to engage in healthy conflict, these just become
the questions that you can't ask, the things that you can't say. And when you

(16:33):
start to identify those things, A.J., where you go, oh, that's a
person you can't approach. Oh, that's a topic we can't talk about.
That's when there's a problem and it's dysfunctional and it's holding your church.
I met a guy recently that, he I don't know what
his age is, but let me just say post retirement age.
Okay. And had been at a church for a long time and was

(16:56):
involved with, like, youth and student ministry
for long, long, long time. I don't know exactly what the
timeline was. We just had a brief conversation. But at some point in the not
so distant past, they came to him and said, maybe we could
have you work with our senior adults now instead of instead of some of our
youngest people. That's that's maybe somebody more

(17:18):
age appropriate. And not that, you know,
older people can't lead young people well. They certainly can. But all you know,
there's gotta be some relatability, understanding trends and language and, you
know, current, current situations. But he graciously made that
move, and he loves what he's doing still. And, and it's
a successful ministry area. But I I just thought that was kind of an interesting

(17:40):
situation and kinda fits in here. There's ways to do things and make changes
that it just works out great for everybody instead of maybe let
somebody wither on the vine, at the you know, with the
excuse of perhaps preserving their their, their
feelings. So, yeah, there you go. What's that quote?
It's true what they say. Old people. While

(18:04):
dangerous beyond slow and dangerous beyond the wheel can still serve a
purpose. I shouldn't I shouldn't be
able to quote them and our as well as I can. I wasn't going to
mention the movie, but but you were with me. We were on the same wavelength.
Okay. Our third point, here in, in,
dysfunctional leadership that could be holding back church growth is a high

(18:25):
tolerance for dis, disunifying behavior.
And even more so that which kind of
starts to step into the sin space,
which, you know, I think I don't know. Perhaps our
maybe our interest in extending grace
might, you know, perhaps go a little bit too

(18:48):
far. That's a little bit hard to say, isn't it? Based on what we, the
understanding of our savior that our
grace might have limits. But Jesus had Jesus had
limits on on what was tolerable as well and called for, you know, a
change of behavior. And so,
we also need to recognize when something

(19:09):
perhaps has gone too far and we we've gotta have a tough
conversation about a change of behavior. Totally. And I
I think that there's a difference. I think there's we have to have
the discernment. I this is a theme. I know I've talked about it with, like,
lots of churches I've worked with, and I've probably mentioned it on the
podcast several times. So but this is one of the bells

(19:31):
that I ring a lot, and I'll continue to, and it's relevant here.
There is a difference between
having an honest disagreement about a policy
or even be questioning why are we doing
something this way like we were just talking about. I think that's actually healthy and

(19:51):
right and good. Like so I'm not I'm
not against having difficult
critical conversations. What I'm am
against is inappropriate
conversations that's gossip,
or inappropriate in the sense that you are

(20:15):
complaining, to someone who can't do
anything about it. You know, you're and you're sowing discord
or rumors or
just discontent among the congregation
when the more appropriate thing to do would be to approach, you know, if you
are a leader, approach another leader. If you're not a leader, like, if you don't

(20:38):
have a title in your church, just approaching the pastor or the power
structures, and saying, hey. I have an issue with
this thing. I do have a problem
with with that behavior, that sinful behavior of
sowing disunity. It's on the list of things that God says He hates,
right? In Proverbs six, a

(21:01):
lying tongue, hands that shed innocent blood, a heart
that devises wicked plans, feet that make haste to run to
evil, a false witness who breathes out lies, and the last
one is and one who sows discord among brothers.
And it's the thing that Jesus prays for

(21:21):
John 17, right, that there would be unity,
among that they would be one, that the brothers would be one. And
so this is of huge importance. And
so we we do fire people in church's positions because
of moral failures, and that's well and good as they

(21:42):
should. But, we don't ever seem to
dismiss volunteers or board members or staff members
even from the behavior of
sowing disunity, and that's that's
equally offensive and bad. So
the you have to have the discernment to know the difference between

(22:06):
a a well intended disagreement about policy or procedure,
and someone who is intentionally trying to
railroad, the church or
gossip or disunify the church, which is
those are not the same things. And when you're on the back end of a

(22:27):
criticism, A.J., it can feel like someone is attacking you.
And so that's why it takes discernment to go, is this person attacking me
and sowing disunity, or are they just
disagreeing with me and we need to have a conversation?
And I think you can overreact, I
guess. But what I more often see is that churches

(22:49):
make excuses for people who are
sinning, and that's not good. Yeah. Absolutely. It's
not about grace. I mean, there's grace. There's plenty of grace. I mean, you said
we should be less great. I I think we should be plenty gracious if someone
says, hey. I did this, and I shouldn't have. You know, I'm
sorry. Like, we should restore that person. But if someone is

(23:10):
sowing disunity and they're not sorry about
it, we should not keep them around. Yeah. That's how I feel. Like, they
should be Yeah. Absolutely. Asked not to be part of the church anymore. I mean,
I I think it I think it's a good practice, and it's a biblical practice
for people to go to the source of things. You know? I mean,
don't don't make end runs. Don't, you know, drop

(23:31):
little things, little hints to other people. If you've got
something with a brother or sister, go to them and
and have that conversation with them. That's the quickest way
to solve issues like that. And making it
public. You know? Because sometimes a little, you know, a little
minor minor public, you know, like, still within the body,

(23:54):
can even go out beyond the body, you know, and become
public outside the church. And that's where, you know, it's
of grave importance to the John 17. The prayer in
John 17 is of grave importance because, I mean, Jesus gives a
reason for the necessity of unity in the church and said the world would
know that he was sent by the father, that he loves them,

(24:16):
and that he wants them to be, a part of,
you know, his body and his family. And so disunity in the church that
leaks outside can result in
somebody's, eternal damnation. If you really wanna carry this out
to the extreme, disunity in the church can keep people from seeing
Jesus for who he is. And, and that's a

(24:39):
that's a pretty significant consequence. So Yeah. I mean, that not
is a big deal. Yeah. And not to belabor the point, because we need to
move on to the last point here. I mean, when people talk about
church hurt and things like that, which I think is largely
overblown to some degree, people not taking personal responsibility.

(25:01):
But there's it's a real thing. Churches really
do hurt people, and I think a lot of it has to do with
these three things we've talked about so far, like a lack of willingness to
engage in healthy conflict, the fact that there are power structures in place that are
really entrenched and don't listen, and that we we allow
disunifying behavior to happen and people gossip and

(25:23):
people are, and we don't openly address these things.
These all lead to hurt and
pain. And to your point, A.J., there are some people, especially those who are
spiritually immature, that cannot handle this. And it and it and it
just you know, going to the parable of
the of the sower, You know? Like, these are these are the these are the

(25:45):
seeds that fell on that thorny ground that spring up
quickly. And then when when troubles come, they're choked out by it. And and,
like, far be it from us that we would be the thorns that would
choke out the faith of Yeah. Of a of a young believer,
where the gospel is just starting to to grow.
So Yeah. This is really important.

(26:08):
Yeah. Wisdom and maturity, I think, should should in
in us, put us in a posture of
maybe asking first or closer to the beginning of what
responsibility do I have in this? Am I, you know, what part
have I played in this? You know, I mean, I mentioned at the top of
the show, you know, our previous toxic pastor episode,

(26:30):
and we get we get emails about that. I mean, I've I've
with some regularity get emails with stories
that are just they're terrible, but a lot of times, it's, you know,
I've been to three different churches. Yeah. It seems people seem to have
toxic pastors everywhere they go. It
kinda makes you wonder a little bit, you know? It's a hard thing to admit

(26:53):
to be like, is the toxic pastor in the room with us right now? Like,
you know, if if you go to five different churches and there's a toxic
pastor at all of them, every single one Yeah. What's the common
denominator there? Yeah. So, you know It's
like it's like having five divorces. It's like, man,
you can't pick them. Yeah. I can't I can't take very good ones. Like It's

(27:15):
like, wait. Hold on. You're the you are half of the
spouse. Half half of the spouses in all of these
marriages. Yeah. I'm not I don't I shouldn't make light of that, but I
and I'm not suggesting the church hurt isn't real. Right. Yeah. It
is real. All of a more reason for us to
be to have healthy leadership cultures so that we can deal with things

(27:38):
rightly. Exactly. And I'm suggesting that we don't.
And it it can compound. It can take
something where someone has a legitimate issue on their own, and you're giving them
now the the green light to complain about
your church because you didn't handle your end of the thing Yeah.
Wisely. Right. And so they deceive themselves and go, it's

(28:00):
all them. Mhmm. They never dealt with their own stuff because
you didn't you didn't handle your end of the leadership equation the right way.
Yeah. Yeah. We need to be introspective in all things. Yeah. For
sure. Okay. Our last, our last leadership dysfunction,
point that could be, you know, restricting growth in your church,
I would consider, like, dysfunction by omission.

(28:23):
And that is a lack of shared vision in the church. Mhmm.
I think, you know, healthy healthy leaders that are pursuing,
you know, something bigger than themselves, feel called by God to
to, you know, gather his people and and move forward together, have
gotta communicate that well. That's gotta be clearly defined. What's

(28:44):
our what's our vision? You know, and also mentioned at the top, sometimes
the churches that don't don't have conflict aren't pursuing a shared
vision. And so, you know, it's that it's a
little funny to say that, you know, I don't know if you'd call that a
double edged sword. Like we have peace, but we don't have vision.
Now we have vision and we've lost some of the peace.

(29:05):
I would contend though that a true God focused vision that you've
perceived God has established your church there to to work
on, you're you will have a strong
majority of people that feel that way, see it, and wanna pursue it
together. And, you know, perhaps only those that that
don't, you know, maybe have have a pure heart towards the things

(29:27):
of God would would push back against that. There's still gonna be
personal preferences, and that's fine. There's a lot of lot of different places that
people could per perhaps get connected that's a better fit. But,
but we've got to to be a healthy leader, we've got to be pursuing,
a shared vision in the church. You know, I was just as
you were talking, I was thinking,

(29:50):
what's the difference besides age? And, obviously,
age is the number one factor here. But Between me
and you? No. I was gonna say
between the scouts
and, like, the army. But there's badges. Uh-huh.
There's training. There's camping. There's

(30:13):
Like, survival skills Yeah. Learned and gained. I'm spending grace to
you right now to carry this analogy out and, find what your point is.
Yeah. Now, obviously, there's one's for children and
one's not, but Yeah. Beyond that, what's the key differentiating
fact? Between the Boy Scouts and the army? Well, there's certainly a lethality
quotient. For sure.

(30:36):
I was just thinking about how Jesus
said that the gates of hell would not prevail against
his Church, which implies an offensive
maneuver here, that there's a
mission of the Church to break down the gates of hell,
right? And which means the

(31:00):
church ought to be much more like the army than the scouts. But there are
a lot of people who really just want, like, I want
the badge, I want the camping,
I want the training, I want the survival skills, but I don't ever want to
actually have to apply it. And, I think
that what a shared vision does is it starts

(31:22):
to to shift the focus from
scouts to army where we go, Okay, what is it that we're here to
accomplish? What which gate of hell are you
know, which which gate of hell are we going to be breaking down as a
church? What's our battle plan? What are we actually doing? What are we doing
all of this for? Like, if we're we're we're just gonna sit and soak in

(31:43):
this information and look at all the stripes I have on my on my jacket,
are we gonna actually apply all of
this to beat down the gates of hell or not? And I and to me,
that's that is a difference between
a healthy church and a dysfunctional one. It's one one dislikes the one
dislikes the patches, and the other wants to beat down gates.

(32:05):
Gotcha. You finally brought it back or brought it around. I I I
gotcha. You know, like, my analogy, I was formulating that analogy as you were
talking about it. I gotcha. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So not a good time? You're not
advocating teaching the boy scouts to kill. You're instead
wanting to people to be I'm insinuating that you got you got some guys
and gals, you know, who metaphorically

(32:29):
are beyond the scouting age, but they still
like the patches. And then, you know, you really should at this point, this is
not what we are. Let's put our training into into action.
Yeah. Right. Yeah. They don't want that. They just want they want
all the accoutrement, but they don't want they don't want the mission. They don't really
nice uniforms. They're pretty nice. Yeah. And going back to, we had an

(32:50):
offline conversation earlier today, me and A.J.,
about revelation,
the seven letters in revelation to the churches
and how every single one of them is written to the one who conquers, to
the one who's victorious, to the overcomer. Like, I just
love that language, you know? Because that it's all offensive,

(33:13):
not like I'm offended, but, like, on offense. Yeah.
Language and our churches, man, they're just dead, like, they're just like, I don't know.
And and that to me, it's it's a function of dysfunctional leadership.
Yeah. Yep. Absolutely. Yeah. You
yeah. Yeah. Perhaps, you know, they they take that overcome
as just stand still and be able to survive

(33:37):
bad things that happen to you. And that, unfortunately, is sometimes the posture
of churches. Instead of pursuing something
forward and overcoming obstacles that would prevent
you from achieving the goals God has set before you. And I
think the latter scenario is where God wants us to be,
moving forward, always on mission, in action.

(34:00):
Yeah. What is it, Christus victus? Is that right?
Is that it? Victory in Christ?
Christ is Victor, right? That is the image in Revelation,
right? Not fluent in Latin. I don't
know. It's true. You're surprised. It's it's a theological concept
of, you know, Jesus defeating death and sin.

(34:24):
Yeah. Even evil powers. I agree.
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. There you go. Four
points on how leadership dysfunction can hold back church growth and
certainly church health. One has to come before the other.
A healthy church will become a growing church, but not every growing
church is a healthy church. So, we need to work on these in

(34:47):
tandem. Alright. Scott, any last
thoughts? Healthy churches toolkit. If you want some
resources to get a shared vision,
if you would like some leadership we have, like,
vision audits, leadership audits. I think,
maybe one thing that would be helpful, maybe just to wrap this up and

(35:09):
to tie in the toolkit, is
that sometimes these kinds of conversations can be difficult
because they feel personal. And when you have a resource or a
tool or an audit or an exercise, this is why having on-site
consulting even is so helpful. But when you have something
third party or external to go through,

(35:33):
it depersonalizes it so then you can we can both be
looking at something different. Like, we can be both be looking at the problem or
the solution as collaborators rather than against one
another. Yeah. And so, you know, I really do
yes. I'd like for you to sign up for the toolkit, but it's because there's
stuff in there that will help you. You download one of these audits, work on

(35:54):
it together. Now we're talking about the audit rather than talking at each
other. And, that's, I think, very valuable. So so definitely
go to healthychurchestoolkit.com. And, again, we won't tell any
money if you sign up for free for seven days, get the things you need,
and cancel. But there's more in there than you can enjoy in seven days, so
that's why we want you to subscribe. Be ashamed of you, but that's okay. We've

(36:16):
we made that available. That's true. But, you know, this is actually though a
really great point though, Scott. I guess we we didn't build an application point into
today's episode, but this is, I think, this is certainly part of it.
Having systems in place, we talked about that, having dysfunctional processes
in the church that allow bad things to kind of take root. But
having, a leadership pipeline that is designed to

(36:38):
have people accountable and to have,
evaluation points in place and training,
is when things can be kind of nipped in the bud and
not allowed to fester. So, the toolkit also
has our training content for leadership pipeline design in there
and, building that into your church where conversations

(37:01):
can can happen and, you know, minor corrections
can take place before they blow up is a really important
aspect of a healthy church and one that is functioning well. So
jump in there and take advantage of it. This was Episode 279
of the Church Revitalization Podcast. So today's show notes
are at malphursgroup.com/279. Video is

(37:23):
over on YouTube if you wanna see our smiling faces, and we are
glad that you're with us. We will be back again next week. We'll see you
then. That's right. Hey, enjoy our let us know what you
think about this different music. Oh, I haven't
even heard it. I'm anxious. Yeah. Yeah. We might try out a few things. It's
been the same one for a long time. So let us know what you think

(37:44):
about this. Here it comes right now. Go play. Right now.