That's because nobody paid attention to the barriers to ministry that can exist in any congregation, says Peter Reese, a lay consultant to congregations.

Most churches have organizational barriers that prevent a congregation from pursuing its true mission, says Reese, a principal presenter for an organization called T-NET, which emerged from the Evangelical Reformed Church in America and now is under private ownership.

His workshops point out the barriers and tell church members how to jump over them, burrow under or break through so that mission can be re-established.

The first barrier, Reese says, is that some churches expect the pastor to do all the work, make all the decisions and take all the blame.

"In some churches, pastors are the alpha and the omega of the congregation," Reese says. "The organization grinds pastors down. Eventually you will find the pastor has lost his or her vision. And the pastor will be saying to himself that he once believed that he had a calling. But all the administrative stuff - it's like there are two people: an administrator and a pastor. I tell them to remember what they said yes to."

The second barrier to healthy ministry is how the church sees its role in society, Reese says.

If a congregation believes it has influence in society, it will probably find a way to be influential. But if a congregation believes it is being dwarfed by society and sees itself as a wimp in a world of champions, then it will probably become missionless.

"Church has lost prominence as a place you go socially, as a place you go spiritually and as a place of activity directed at others," Reese says. "The people who come to our seminar want to rediscover their own communities. As leadership goes, many church leaders are burned out, tired and discouraged."

What Reese and his organization are after is rejuvenating church leadership so that congregations are being led by committed people.

"I want them to hang in there, keep trying to break through the barrier, until they can see what their church looks like when it's working," he says.

Reese, who also is a small-scale farmer raising hay and hogs in New Market, Minn., says everyone feels overbooked and overwhelmed. But that doesn't mean they can't find time to be good church leaders. People are feeling pressured to give more to the job and less to family and other pursuits. When it comes to choosing more time or more money, most people would choose time, Reese believes.

T-NET International, headquartered in New Ulm, Minn., was founded five years ago as a way to pump up congregations in the Evangelical Reformed Church in America. Now the educational organization works with 40 denominations and has trained more that 4,000 church leaders.

Congregations generally send four to 10 leaders, including their pastors, to the two-day seminars. The first thing T-NET does is teach the leaders to create a mission statement because, Reese says, many congregations don't know why they exist.

The workshops include time for reflection and response. And church leaders will have ample opportunity to plan together for their congregation's future.

This is a critical time for evangelical and main-line churches. Sometimes the future looks dark as society more and more often rejects traditional religion. But in many cases it depends upon a congregation's attitude.

I've said many times that every leader in a congregation has to have a burning desire to be healthy and growing. If they don't, you can take all the growth programs in the world and nothing will happen because a key negative person will block every attempt to get on the right track.

Clark D. Morphew
May 10, 1997