Filling Slots

“If we just get a good youth leader (or music leader or children’s coordinator) then our church will really grow.”

Too frequently, pastors and other leaders, especially in new or small churches, see the problem of getting the church started or growing as an issue of the positions, or “slots,” that need to be filled. This is a corollary of the “template” approach to churches described in The Shaping of Things to Come. (Michael Frost & Alan Hirsch; Hendrickson Publishers, 2004)

We take the model of another church’s programs as the template for our church. Since the other church has a dynamic youth leader, that’s just what we need. Then things will start happening.

The biggest problem with the template, slot-filling approach is that sometimes it works. The great youth leader (or music leader or other gifted person) does have a positive impact and injects new energy and creates an exciting new the program and people respond. The reason that this “success” is a problem is that it reinforces an approach to ministry that is less than the best. In this sense, the good is the enemy of the best, in that a little external success (“the youth group is really growing”) distract us from basic principles of ministry.

The specific problem with slot-filling is that it inverts our approach to ministry. We apply a template and its associated slots, and the goal of the persons filling those slots is to build a program to help the church grow. The template defines the slots, and the slots define the programs. Then we can attract people who like our programs.

But starting with needs stands that inverted process right-side-up. We prayerfully ask God the Holy Spirit to show us the needs of people around us and how He might use us to meet those needs. Maybe a person already in the church (or small group, or para-church ministry) has gifts that could be applied to a particular need. Continued prayerful ministry to the person will likely show us if a particular program would do even a better job of helping that individual (as well as others with a similar need). As the program increasingly meets a common need (or group of needs) we may find someone who can devote more time or even full time to that ministry. (It might be the person who originally had the vision, or someone else from inside or outside the church.) That is the time to think about “filling a slot.” Starting with filling slots turns the process on its head. The program growing out of the filled slot may or may not effectively meet the needs of the people it is supposed to minister to. Slots should be created in response to what God is doing in people’s lives.

If the slot-generated program does not meet people’s needs, it can usually be adjusted, but there are almost always defined limits. In the template approach, the template and its associated slots and their programs are mostly static. Things can change a little, but if we get too far outside the template, we are uncomfortable. That is perhaps the main attraction of templates. They are familiar, they are comfortable, they don’t require much risk. Templates are safe.

Starting with needs is risky. Needs are unpredictable, messy things. Our experience in other churches has prepared us well for operating out of a template. But the needs of people (individual, fallen, images of God; C.S Lewis’s “future glories or future horrors”) often take us off guard, make us uncomfortable, create awkward silences in the group. We don’t immediately have three steps to solve that problem.

Or maybe a program that God has used mightily in the past no longer fits changing, dynamic needs. We might have to scrap the program and plead with Him to show us new ways to meet the needs. Maybe that happens in the middle of a meeting or conference. If we only know slots and templates and programs, we can only forge ahead. But Spirit-dependent ministry growing out of needs can have the flexibility (including the risk) of changing a program in discerning response to His leading.

Starting with needs, building our ministry to others around their needs instead of our programs, is risky. Templates are tame and safe. Our Good God is not safe. He wants us to desperately depend on Him, not our programs or our templates to care for the people He has put into our lives. He wants us to be willing to risk not having a programmed answer and instead to seek answers from Him that will truly minister to people. The question, “How would your ministry be different if there was no Holy Spirit?” can get pious responses from any Christian with a template mentality. It will create momentary terror in the eyes of a person who is committed to meeting needs in absolute dependence on Him.