Mission or Maintenance?
Balancing the gospel mission of the church with the maintenance work necessary to keep the church doors open
A little over three months from now I’ll join a group of people from our church and catch a flight from South Carolina to Houston, Texas. After a short layover, we’ll catch a second flight to Lima, Peru, where we’ll spend several hours at the Jorge Chaivez International Airport before boarding our third plane for the short hop up to Trujillo, Peru. A medium-sized city sprawling on an arid plain between the Andes Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, Trajillo is famous for the grand yellow cathedral that dominates the city square.
The Southern Baptist Seminary of Peru, located on the outskirts of Trujillo, is neither famous nor grand. In fact, it’s struggling to keep its doors open. But it’s the bustling hub for evangelistic ministry throughout the region and where I along with two other members of the group will stay for three days teaching courses to the faculty and students. The students will in turn reach out to towns and communities in every direction—even as far as the Andes Mountains—with the mission of winning people to Jesus and forming new churches.
Meanwhile, the rest of our group, accompanied by our Peruvian hosts, will make their way along the long, dusty road northwest to the town of Chepen. Our church here in South Carolina supports a church plant in Chepen called La Iglesia Fuente de la Vida, the Fountain of Life Church. Ronald—a young man who came to Christ after growing up as a gang member living on Trujillo’s rough streets—serves as pastor of what is mainly a female congregation because the fathers, husbands and sons spend much of their time scrambling for work at the surrounding farms or in the small businesses lining the streets of the city. The mission of our group will be to teach and mentor the large number of women who have recently received Jesus through Ronald and his wife’s ministry, helping them to understand how to be Christian wives and moms. Our church understands that planting new churches is the best way to reach people with the gospel and is happy to invest in La Iglesia Fuente de la Vida.
Peru isn’t the only place where our church will invest in mission trips in the next few months. Two more international groups will travel to Nicaragua during the summer to build houses and do evangelism. A third will travel there in November to lead VBS for children. On the national front we have groups going this summer to a suburban area of Portland, Oregon, inner city Jacksonville, Florida and New York City. The Portland and Jacksonville groups will help local churches reach their communities with the gospel. The Jacksonville trip is interesting because it’s a family trip (one of the Nicaragua trips is a family trip as well) because we’ve found that many of our young parents want their children to learn early on what it means to minister to people outside the comforts of their ordinary lives. The trip to New York City will be directed toward ethnic ministry among central Asian people.
A third missional outreach this summer is closer to home. It will be to River District Church in West Columbia, South Carolina, an urban area just outside of Columbia. A few years ago the First Baptist Church of West Columbia, once a thriving congregation that in the changing landscape of the surrounding community had declined to just a few dozen people, approached our church about the possibility of a partnership that could revive their attendance and restore their ministry. After a lengthy season of prayer, discussions and planning, we came to an agreement that would allow our church to take the lead in their ministry. We would “replant” the church—that’s the word used to describe the process of helping older, failing congregations move into a new season of growth and health. Renaming the church “River District Church” in order to identify it with the surrounding community of the same name, our church was excited to get to work—the same work that we’re doing in Peru, Nicaragua, Portland, Jacksonville and New York City—only in a more familiar setting.
It took longer that we thought, with Covid almost closing the doors and a number of leadership issues along the way. But over the last year or so, River District Church has begun to grow in amazing ways. Without much fanfare, publicity or innovative outreach programs, the ministry is attracting new people from such diverse backgrounds, nationalities and races that we can only conclude that the Lord has a special ministry ahead for them. What was just a few years ago a church on the verge of closing its doors is today a vibrant, missional church with a great future. Later in the summer, a group will go out from our church to River District Church to join a community outreach.
But mission trips away from our church are only one part of our efforts. In and through our own buildings we reach out with the gospel to our immediate community. English as Second Language offers free English lessons to internationals living all around us. Large scale events are offered that attract crowds of people to our campus and give great opportunity for direct gospel conversations between our people and lost people who live around us.
We follow a simple principle in all our missional outreach based on Acts 1:8, where the resurrected Jesus tells his fledgling church to take the gospel message first to the local level then to the national level and finally to the international level:
But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth. (Acts 1:8)
In practical terms, Jesus’ message translates into church planting locally, nationally and internationally because church planting is the best way to reach lost people. And that’s what we’re seeking to do. We’re not the only ones, of course. Churches of every size, shape and denomination all around us as well as throughout the country are following the same pattern. Indeed, there’s nothing special about what any of us is doing since it’s nothing more than the mission Jesus gave all churches.
But the mission of the church doesn’t stand alone. It doesn’t exist in a vacuum and can’t move forward of its own volition. Mission trips like what I described above—indeed, the mission of the church as a whole—are possible only when local churches maintain an organizational, financial and leadership structure adequate to sustain them. There’s nothing unspiritual about that truth. In fact, the apostle Paul spends much of his writing to various churches dealing with this very subject. For example, he tells the Corinthian church to pay attention to orderly worship so that unbelievers won’t be confused. He instructs the Ephesian church to pay attention to the different spiritual giftings within the congregation as the way forward in achieving its mission. His message to the Thessalonian believers is to live in the power of the Holy Spirit so that the gospel message could be proclaimed to the whole region. In the book of 2 Corinthians, he commends the church for its sacrificial giving in order that his ministry might proceed. The care and maintenance of the church’s insitutional side, according to Paul, is necessary for the accomplishment of the church’s mission.
The principle is still true today, even though (as most pastors know), the balance between the two is often hard to figure out. Institutional maintenance is a cumbersome phrase but simply means the time, energy and resources necessary to keep the institution functioning. It also takes into account the resources and time necessary to maintain the confidence and good will of the congregation. And it takes a lot. Casting vision. Committee meetings. Leadership recruitment. Managing the budget. Keeping the staff on track. Making sure the buildings are kept in good repair. And the various “developments”–staff, budget and organization–that while never fully completed can’t be neglected.
Missional investment on the other hand involves the time, energy and resources necessary to fulfill the mission of the church. There’s no argument about what that is because all of us—at least in evangelical circles—can quote Jesus’ Great Commission in our sleep:
“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
The reason most pastors went into ministry in the first place was because we wanted to see people come to faith in Jesus. Mission lies at the heart of our call.
At least in theory. The truth is that the institutional demands of the congregation we know are often more immediate and pressing than the missional needs of those we don’t know. While I may feel an obligation to share the gospel with my lost neighbor whom I do not know, the committee chairman who needs to meet with me at church is someone I do know. In the tension that follows guess who usually wins? I’m using that personal situation just as an example. The truth is that the tension between institutional maintenance and missional investment is played out on the corporate level in a thousand different ways. We tend to assign the most desirable meeting rooms to the longest-standing church members instead of guests. We devote the lion’s share of financial resources to meeting the needs of the congregation instead of investing in evangelistic initiatives. We spend more time managing organizational problems than developing strategies to reach lost people.
What I’m trying to get at is that the distinction between mission and maintenance isn’t as simple as it seems. It’s not like we must choose between one or the other because to a large degree the two are so closely linked that it takes one to make the other possible. The problem is when the two get out of balance or the tension between them gets stretched too thin. If either problem occurs you get, on the one hand, a missions ministry that’s compromised by maintenance needs; or, on the other hand, maintenance problems that aren’t taken care of because of missional commitments.
Nobody’s really at fault in the tension between mission and maintenance. An overwhelming majority of evangelical churches are filled with godly, sweet and generous people just as the overwhelming majority of evangelical pastors are sincere and passionate about the gospel. It’s just that without constant attention, institutional needs usually trump missional needs. Without intentionality, pastors and congregations alike lose sight of the big picture.
The list of challenges facing America’s churches is as long as it is diverse. Declining attendance. Financial needs. Negotiating the complex political landscape. Shifting moral standards in the surrounding culture. Choosing what style of music to use in worship. Resolving congregational conflict. Dealing with difficult people. Denominational decline. But the greatest challenge isn’t so obvious. It’s something more basic and vital, with more ripple effects than most churches recognize; or, if they do recognize it, often don’t know what to do with it. The greatest challenge is find the right balance between mission and maintenance so that our gospel witness in the world remains strong and stable because the infrastructure beneath it is able to bear the weight.
So how do we do it? How do churches and pastors balance mission and maintenance in a way that honors the Lord, loves the lost and builds up our congregations? It’s not an easy question, but Will Willimon gives some context for finding an answer by contrasting what he calls maintenance congregations with mission congregations. His seven points are challenging for pastors and congregations alike, but I think they capture the tension between mission and maintenance in a way that can help all of us better understand what’s at stake and some of the changes that may be necessary for pastors and churches to better negotiate this crucial and tricky issue:
1. In measuring the effectiveness, the maintenance congregation asks, “How many pastoral visits are being made? The mission congregation asks, “How many disciples are being made?”
2. When contemplating some form of change, the maintenance congregation says, “If this proves upsetting to any of our members, we won’t do it.” The mission congregation says, “If this will help us reach someone on the outside, we will take the risk and do it.”
3. When thinking of its vision for ministry, the maintenance congregation says, “We have to be faithful to our past.” The mission congregation says, “We have to be faithful to our future.”
4. The maintenance congregation seeks to avoid conflict at any cost (but rarely succeeds). The mission congregation understands that conflict is the price of progress, and is willing to pay the price. It understands that it cannot take everyone with it. This causes some grief, but it does not keep it from doing what needs to be done.
5. The leadership style in the maintenance congregation is primarily managerial, where leaders try to keep everything in order and running smoothly. The leadership style in a mission congregation is primarily transformational, casting a vision of what can be, and marching off the map in order to bring the vision into reality.
6. The maintenance congregation is concerned with their congregation, its organizations and structure, its constitutions and committees. The mission congregation is concerned with the culture and tries to determine their needs and their points of accessibility to the Gospel.
7. The maintenance congregation thinks about how to save their congregation. The mission congregation thinks about how to reach the world.