Shrink: Faithful Ministry in a Church-Growth Culture

by Tim Suttle, Scot McKnight (Foreword by)

Overview

Among followers of Jesus, great is often the enemy of good.

The drive to be great—to be a success by the standards of the world—often crowds out the qualities of goodness, virtue, and faithfulness that should define the central focus of Christian leadership. In the culture of today’s church, successful leadership is often judged by what works, while persistent faithfulness takes a back seat. If a ministry doesn’t produce results, it is dropped. If people don’t respond, we move on. This pursuit of “greatness” exerts a crushing pressure on the local church and creates a consuming anxiety in its leaders. In their pursuit of this warped vision of greatness, church leaders end up embracing a leadership narrative that runs counter to the sacrificial call of the gospel story.

When church leaders focus on faithfulness to God and the gospel, however, it’s always a kingdom-win—regardless of the visible results of their ministry. John the Baptist modeled this kind of leadership. As John’s disciples crossed the Jordan River to follow after Jesus, John freely released them to a greater calling than following him. Speaking of Jesus, John said: “He must increase, but I must decrease.” Joyfully satisfied to have been faithful to his calling, John knew that the size and scope of his ministry would be determined by the will of the Father, not his own will. Following the example of John the Baptist and with a careful look at the teaching of Scripture, Tim Suttle dares church leaders to risk failure by chasing the vision God has given them—no matter how small it might seem—instead of pursuing the broad path of pragmatism that leads to fame and numerical success.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780310515128
Publisher:	Zondervan
Publication date:	09/02/2014
Pages:	240
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.85(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Tim Suttle is the pastor of Redemption Church in Olathe, Kansas and the author of Finding God's Story in the Midst of Extremes and Public Jesus. Tim and his wife, Kristin, live in Kansas City with their two boys, Nicholas and Lewis.

Read an Excerpt

Shrink

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By Timothy Suttle

ZONDERVAN

Copyright © 2014 Timothy Suttle
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-310-51512-8

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CHAPTER 1

SUCCESS

Perfect is the enemy of good. — Voltaire

On a chilly November night in 2011, an elite crowd of art aficionados and collectors gathered at Sotheby's Auction House on Manhattan's Upper East Side to try and grab a piece of art history. Sotheby's caters to the most discriminating of art collectors, and although the wine and cheese are free, the art can really cost you.

The auction was just a few minutes old when lot number 11 was called to the block. Named 1949-A-No. 1, this oil painting was the most anticipated item of the evening. Sotheby's had aggressively outbid their crosstown rival Christie's Auction House for the right to sell this and three other coveted paintings by the same artist. The massive canvas, nearly eight feet tall and six feet wide, was covered in thick, dramatic black oils, and deep, richly textured, velvety reds. A stunning photograph of the piece adorned the dust jacket of the auction's official catalog, and the bidding started at twenty-five million dollars.

The bidders: Christopher Eykyn (a well-known New York art dealer) had a mobile phone stuck to his ear with one hand, his other hand covering his mouth to avoid revealing the identity of the client on the other end of the line. Lisa Dennison (the head of international business development for Sotheby's) was on the phone with an anonymous bidder of her own. It soon became clear that Eykyn and Dennison were both representing buyers who came to play. As the bid passed forty-five million dollars, all other bidders fell by the wayside, and the price continued to climb.

When the gavel finally dropped, the crowd at Sotheby's erupted with applause for Dennison's mystery client, who had placed the winning bid: $61.7 million.

We are, of course, immune to any real shock when it comes to the world of high-priced artwork. What makes this story remarkable is not that a painting sold for over $60 million but that the artist is largely unknown. His name is Clyfford Still, and he is perhaps the most important American artist you've never heard of.

According to The Art Wolf, an online art magazine, the top ten most expensive paintings ever sold are by, in order, Cezanne, Picasso, Pollock, de Kooning, Klimt, Munch, Jasper Johns, Picasso, Picasso, and Andy Warhol. The royal family of Qatar reportedly tops the list of auction purchasers for buying Cezanne's The Card Players for a record $250 million. Rock and roll magnate David Geffen sold his prized and dramatic drip painting Number 5, 1948—by the original hipster Jackson Pollock—for over $140 million. Some think Geffen sold it merely so he could hold the world record for the most expensive contemporary painting ever sold at auction, a record he held for some time.

When the till tops $100 million, one expects to hear names with a bit of sizzle. Cezanne, Van Gogh, and Picasso certainly qualify, but Clyfford Still? Yet, by the time the auction closed that November night at Sotheby's, art collectors had coughed up a total of $114 million for four Clyfford Still originals. How is it that we've never heard of this guy?

Clyfford Still was a pioneer in a movement called abstract expressionism, which was the first chiefly American artistic movement to capture the imagination of the entire art world. Abstract expressionism, also called the New York School, represented a rebellious break with conventional painting techniques and subject matter. The break grew out of a postwar cynicism that eventually developed into the full-blown artistic, intellectual, and philosophical movement we know as postmodernism. The break also managed to put New York City at the leading edge of art for the first time in history. Clyfford Still was the movement's first great master.

Still grew up in the Pacific Northwest and settled in San Francisco, where he was teaching art and painting mostly agricultural themes. In the late 1930s, he began to experiment by simplifying the forms in his paintings. (Forms are the actual subjects, like barns, farmers, etc.) Still's forms became distorted—less realistic. Before long he abstracted the forms altogether, producing massive, dramatic canvases filled with pure emotive expressions of color and texture.

It was a revolution.

Still found instant success, with showings at the two leading galleries of the day: Peggy Guggenheim's the Art of This Century Gallery, and the Betty Parsons Gallery. The art world had finally turned its jaded eyes to New York City, and they were looking directly at Clyfford Still. Critics loved him. His work was emulated, and his paintings sold for more than that of any of his contemporaries.

He had everything an artist could want, when, at the very height of his success, Clyfford Still simply walked away. "To avoid confusion," he wrote to his agent in the fall of 1951, "I will tell you now that I am withdrawing my work from public exhibition."

Why?

The story goes that Clyfford Still's life was beset with insurmountable tension. On one hand, his entire artistic project called into question the culture of materialism, greed, and fame that personified the New York art scene. On the other hand, that self-indulgent, self-congratulatory bunch was celebrating him as their conquering hero. Still felt that the themes and purposes of his work were being undermined by his participation in the world of commercial art. To take their money, to receive their accolades, and to participate in the system would undercut the statement he was making with his art. Still felt he had no choice but to walk away in order to maintain his integrity. So he dropped out.

Still moved with his wife and family to rural Maryland, bought a farm, and spent the next thirty years painting and working in relative obscurity. For the rest of his life, he sold few paintings and held only a few gallery showings.

Here's where the story gets interesting. When he died, Still left a remarkable handwritten will, in which he ensured his legacy: he would give all of it away.

Clyfford Still's estate, including 94 percent of everything he had ever produced as an artist, 825 paintings, and over 1,600 drawings, would be given to an American city that would agree to a few conditions. They would have to build a museum in which to house Clyfford Still's entire collection, show it, and never sell or even loan any of it to other museums or collectors. His last will and testament ensured that his collection would never become part of the commercial art world he meant to critique. The museum, which opened in Denver in 2011, was not even allowed to have a cafeteria or gift shop. They were allowed, through what some saw as a legal loophole, to sell four paintings at Sotheby's auction house, which brought them $114 million—enough money to build the museum and endow it for years to come.

Clyfford Still had it all, and yet he walked away rather than compromise his mission. How does a person do that? I'm fascinated by that choice. This book is all about that choice; because it is the choice every single Christian needs to learn how to make—especially Christian leaders. How do I stop trying to chase success and chase faithfulness instead?

A NEW LEADERSHIP NARRATIVE

Pastors and church leaders spend hundreds of millions of dollars each year attending conferences, buying books, hiring consultants and advertisers and marketers, all trying to accomplish one thing: success ... read: bigger, better, more celebrated, and more talked about.

I'm convinced this is the wrong tack.

In the late 1980s, Bill Hybels began revolutionizing church leadership practices, taking principles developed in the world of business and applying them to the church. I remember sitting in a church leadership conference at Willow Creek in Chicago somewhere around 1995. I had been listening to Hybels speak for years via cassette-taped services. As a young church planter, I was buying everything he was selling. I sat enraptured as he cast his vision for what he called prevailing churches, by which he meant growing, successful churches who are reaching the unchurched. This guy had a church of twenty thousand people, a world-class facility, production staff, professional musicians, actors, writers, and directors. Everybody was so put together, so sharp—I was hooked. I began to aspire to ministry greatness. I was willing to do nearly anything to be a part of the kind of ministry he was building.

Here is where I should insert my cautionary tale about how I worked really hard, climbed the ladder of success, and gave it all away just like Clyfford Still. If only it were so.

The truth is I have never been great. I'm no Clyfford Still, and I'm no Bill Hybels. Yet I know what it means to strive to be like them. I know what it means to dream of success, to chase it with all my might, and to make great personal sacrifice—asking the same of everyone around me—and then watch people crash and burn when it doesn't come to fruition. I have succumbed to the temptation to try to become great, and I have sold out in so many ways. I have pushed myself and others to follow a vision of greatness that, I believe, in the end, runs contrary to the gospel story itself.

Here's the thing. I have come to believe that there is much more to Christian leadership than chasing success. I've come to believe that the most important thing about Christian leaders is not that they are leaders, but that they are Christian leaders. Leading in the way of Jesus is a particular mode of leadership that must adhere to the pattern of life Jesus recommended.

The Christian leader is called not primarily to be effective, but to be faithful and to practice leadership in the way of Jesus no matter what the perceived results may be. The Christian leader cannot simply take leadership principles from the arena of business and plop them down in a church or ministry, because the business narrative and the Christian narrative are built on two different foundations. The word Christian modifies the word leader in ways that should make it incompatible with most of the leadership principles found in the world of business, especially when it comes to the primacy of effectiveness and success.

Most of the church leadership conversation today has its footing squarely in the culture narrative, not the Christian narrative. Leadership today is about getting things done and growing a ministry we can be proud of. As a result, Christian leadership has come to focus solely on best practices. Leaders want to know what we can do to produce the kind of results we desire. We want effectiveness. We crave practical advice that will help us to be bigger, better, and so on.

I have come to believe that this entire line of thinking has little to do with the gospel, even less with the life of Jesus Christ, whom we have been called to imitate.

Here's the heart of my ethos and the foundation of everything I will say in this book: there's leadership, and then there's Christian leadership. Christian leadership is categorically different from any other mode of leadership.

If you have been involved in any kind of leadership conversation recently, you could probably teach a seminar on what the word leadership means. We all know the bullet points: define the mission, assemble a team, cast the vision, set goals, inspire everyone to work together, achieve the goals, celebrate success, adapt to changes, and grow the enterprise. Under this set of assumptions, the way to judge the effectiveness of the leader is by viewing the results. Success is about effectiveness.

Christian leadership operates with a completely different basic assumption. Our most basic conviction is that the kingdom of God has come and is coming in and through Jesus Christ. We cannot accomplish the kingdom of God; it is the work of God. Our job is to be faithful to the ways of Jesus, not the ways of our culture. The Christian leader does not pursue success or results the way the CEO of a Fortune 500 company does. The Christian leader pursues faithfulness. Results, success, and effectiveness are nice when they happen, but they are not the primary pursuit.

Christian leaders are meant to model their lives and leadership practices on the life of Jesus. This means that we can never have the assurance of predictable results. We lead in the way of Christ and leave the results up to God. Faithfulness, not success, is our goal. The goal of Christian leadership is always and only ever faithfulness to the way of Jesus.

I once heard a well-known church consultant say, "You can start a church without God if you have four things: entertaining preaching, great worship, a dynamic youth ministry, and a quality children's ministry." Everybody laughed at the joke, but the point was made: churches that build on the foundation of business leadership principles will prosper.

Many pastors and leaders bought into the idea that we had to do something important and successful. The church leadership culture taught us to aspire to be fresh, intelligent provocateurs—culturally relevant and upwardly mobile. I embraced these aspirations, dreaming of ways my ministry could be worthy of finding its way onto the big stage. With a deep sense of sadness and regret, I confess that I pushed myself, and even worse, I pushed other people to realize my vision of success. When it didn't happen to the extent that I'd planned, I felt like a failure, and I fear I made them feel like failures as well.

I'm trying to reject that narrative. I believe that churches that build on the foundation of business leadership principles are building on assumptions that are simply foreign to the gospel.

I know I'm not alone.

I'm part of a generation of leaders—and among them, again, I am truly nothing special—who have begun to catch wind of a different way to lead. We are tired of the old script, and we want to write a new one.

I have spent the last decade trying to disentangle myself from the church leadership culture, and while my transformation is still in progress, I'm beginning to learn how to talk about my experiences. I'm learning to dig deeply into some of the rich theology concerning what the church really is, what it's for, and what it means to be a Christian leader. I'm still trying to rewire my thinking about how to lead people toward Christ's vision of the kingdom of God.

So I'm writing this book not because I've got it all figured out but because I'm struggling with my own ambitions and my own sense of inadequacy. I'm trying to think more carefully about what I aspire to as a leader, especially when it comes to words like greatness or success. I hope you'll think these things through with me.

The church of the future will not depend on leaders who have been shaped by the church leadership culture of the past two decades. The church of the future will be shaped by leaders who are brave enough to make a Clyfford Still-type move—the courage to pursue leadership in the way of Jesus regardless of the perceived results or success.

I have become convinced that the Christian leader's first job is to become a good and virtuous human being and a good and virtuous leader, and then to leave questions of growth and perceived success in the hands of God. Sometimes all God requires of the leader is to do the small things faithfully for the rest of his or her life. How many of us have the tools to even imagine that, much less carry that off?

THE JESUS WAY IS DOWN

The church was never meant to mimic the world in terms of its approach to how we organize our communities and make decisions. This means that Christian leadership is built upon a completely different story than the story upon which leadership in other sectors of our society is built. Because we are completely committed to the lordship of Christ, we are committed to an alternate reality, one in which the last will be first and the first will be last; one in which faithfulness to Jesus and the pursuit of God's will for our lives both as persons and as communities require a relinquishing of ambition and an embrace of descent.

When Christians attempt to consider questions of leadership, we can seldom trust our own instincts, because in most cases they have been thoroughly formed by our culture, often in ways we are totally unaware of and are unable to discern. The Christian's relationship to power, structure, and decision making must be completely different because of our commitment to the lordship of Jesus. This means the most important impact the gospel will have on our leadership is teleological: What is the end toward which the church is committed? What is our goal?

I'm writing from a different assumption than most of the leadership books I have read. The typical assumption of most books on church and ministry—even those written more recently in the missional church field—is the idea that the church's job is to grow. A healthy church is a church that grows bigger. My argument is that this assumption is built not on the gospel but on the American narrative.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Shrink by Timothy Suttle. Copyright © 2014 Timothy Suttle. Excerpted by permission of ZONDERVAN.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Introduction: The Problem With ‘Success’
We tend to define ourselves by various metrics that determine success. But what if we aren’t called to be great at all? The leader’s first job is to become a good and virtuous human being and a good and virtuous leader, and to leave questions of growth and perceived success in the hands of God. Sometimes all God requires of leaders is to do a small thing faithfully for the rest of our lives.

01. Why Great is the Enemy of Good
This chapter opens with a narrative about the 2008 financial collapse. An entertaining chapter, filled with stories of those who pursue ascent while sacrificing virtue in the process (Nixon, Michael Vick, Jerry Johnston, Sosa and Mc Guire and others), contrasted with stories of those who choose the path of descent, and end up leaving a legacy of virtue (Bonhoeffer, Dirk Willems, Jean Vanier, Richard Stearns, and some unknowns like Thomas F. Freeman, Ed Stith, Rich Mullins).

02. The Failure of the Megachurch
The megachurch has been an amazing laboratory in which we have tested the limits of size on the body of Christ. The megachurch has yet another important lesson for us: there is such a thing as too big. Much of the drive to become bigger has been rooted in the desire to flee vulnerability. I talk about how the megachurch is like an athlete on steroids – any church body that succeeds in growing that large must result to artificial means which look good in the short term but lead to lasting harm. Church members never experience the natural ecology of relationships that exists in a smaller church body.

03. The Body, Not a Business
Body is a better metaphor for the church than business. The CEO model of leadership must give way to a more rabbinic model: tending the sacred words and building a sustainable community. The church has been trying to function like a business for so long that we’ve forgotten our first task is to simply be the body of Christ.

04. The Mythic Failure of Competition
Our cultural fixation on success is fed by our insatiable appetite for competition. Competition serves as the basis for much of Western Society: economics, politics, education, and even entertainment (see Grammy Awards, Academy Awards, Tony Awards, the Pulitzer Prize, and reality TV). In his classic book No Contest: The Case Against Competition, Alfie Kohn presents study after study to disprove the myth that competition produces the best results. Henri Nouwen argues that competition teaches us to shun virtues like compassion in order to win. The kingdom of God comes through collaboration, not competition. Collaboration actually forms people in the kind of virtues which draw their life from the kingdom of God.

05. The Broken Leader
Most of church leadership today is an attempt to teach churches how to be invulnerable. The thought which lies behind the drive to success is often, “If I’m successful, I won’t have to worry about making payroll, getting fired, people leaving, etc.” The story of God teaches us that vulnerability is necessary component of our discipleship; an essential leadership virtue which must be cultivated. A church is made beautiful not through triumphalist growth strategies, but in discovering the radical transformative impact of vulnerability (see Philippians 2 and Colossians 1).

06. Learning to Wait
For the children of Israel, the 40 years in the desert had to seem unbearable. But God had decided that everyone whose imagination had been formed by slavery would have to pass on before they could move forward as a people. When they did move forward, it would be with a new generation whose imaginations were shaped by a reliance on God for their daily bread (manna), as well as their direction (the cloud and the pillar of fire). Sometimes following God requires incredible patience.

07. Fidelity and Faithfulness in a Church-Shopping Culture
None of what I'm describing works without the assumption of fidelity – people mus

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

It takes courage to write a book like this. It also takes courage to read a book like this. Tim Suttle calls for a major shift in how we think about church growth. This conversation is challenging and empowering; unsettling and comforting; convicting and, ultimately, inspiring. That tension embodies the gospel itself, as does this refreshing perspective on congregational leadership. If you’re ready to explore ministry that is rooted in faithfulness and fruitfulness rather than culturally derived models of “success,” this is the book you’ve been waiting for. Shrink is full of life-giving good news for those who want to abandon the hamster wheel of western church culture and lead in the way of Jesus. — Rev. Erin Wathen, “Irreverin,” Senior Pastor, Saint Andrew Christian Church, Kansas City

In the tradition of the biblical prophets, Tim Suttle boldly but gently calls us out of our American obsession with bigness and greatness toward a vision of church life rooted in faithfulness. Shrink is one of the wisest and most significant evangelical books that I’ve read in the last decade; it is essential reading for every pastor and church leader! — C. Christopher Smith, co-author Slow Church and founding editor of The Englewood Review of Books

Tim Suttle has written a powerful, passionate, honest word to the church. He critiques a church too much seduced by American can-do culture. His gospel alternative is straightforward: * faithfulness, not success * story, not strategy * virtue, not technique * cooperation, not competition The book is directed toward evangelicals who lust after megachurches. But I hope his book will spill over into the world of “progressive” Christians where I live. It is a good word, one that the entire church needs to hear. It draws us back to the truth enacted by Jesus. — Walter Brueggemann, Columbia Theological Seminary

The megachurch is an attempt to free vulnerability through size” is just one of the astute judgments that informs this book. Church growth strategies are the death gurgle of a church that has lost its way. Suttle helps us see how God in our time is making us leaner and meaner. I hope this book will be widely read. — Stanley Hauerwas, Gilbert T. Rowe Emeritus Professor of Divinity and Law, Duke University

From the heart of a pastor, the mind of a theologian, and the soul of a prophet comes a word to Christians in North America: shrink. Be freed from ambition. Find God’s reign again in the daily faithfulness of living together in his kingdom. Few people could deliver this message with the same depth and piercing insight Tim Suttle has shown. In Shrink, he helps us face what we’ve been hiding from. He plows the scorched soil of the American church so we can take roots again and live. — David Fitch, Lindner Chair of Evangelical Theology, Northern Seminary, and author of Prodigal Christianity