Jeff Wiesner@JeffreyPWiesner
Something I appreciate about my time on staff for a prominent megachurch was the care for excellence in aesthetics, branding, hospitality, communication, and more.
Now I pastor a smaller church that emphasizes the means of grace over programs. And I wonder if there's a tendency for like-sized and like-minded churches to overreact against mega-excellence by wearing mediocrity as a badge of honor:
"We just preach the Word."
But must the means of grace and care for excellence be mutually exclusive? May it never be!
It's not a mark of spiritual maturity for someone to look past an outdated, circa-1998 website, undrinkable coffee, and chilly non-hospitality and conclude, "But hey! They preach expositional sermons!"
We should want all kinds of people to come into our churches—not just those who are already pre-disposed to our confessional commitments—be blessed by what they experience and want to come back a second time.
It's okay to want LOTS of visitors in our churches and desire for our membership rolls to grow!
To that end, it's a good thing to make our "front door" attractive and hospitable.
It's good to have a clean, updated website.
It's good to have clear, well-designed signage to help visitors know their way around.
It's good to invest in fresh branding that graduates from clip-art logos.
It's good to brew the very best coffee you can.
It's good to create well-trained ministry teams tasked with serving visitors with excellence.
It's good to rehearse transitions in your order of service to avoid unnecessary awkwardness.
It's okay to expect our people to read, sing, or play instruments with excellence to the extent of their natural abilities.
To my skeptical, eye-rolling friend, that's not "church growth" philosophy, but wisdom and worship. True, nobody gets saved by these things. But it all communicates care or the lack thereof.
Is the God who arrayed lilies with beauty beyond Solomon's comprehension unworthy of comparatively trivial care for excellence on our parts?
All to say, I think small churches have a few things to learn from mega-churches.
I've long left behind a programmatic ministry philosophy for means of grace ministry. I'm as concerned about worldly pragmatism and fleshly consumerism as anyone.
And this isn't about having mega-budgets and mega-staffs. Excellence will be relative to the resources God has entrusted to each congregation.
But hear me out: What if some people never step foot in our churches the first time or return to our churches a second time NOT because they're shallow "consumers" but because we appear as careless stewards?
Amen! We should care about the Word and sacrament above all. But the Lord's appointed means of grace shouldn't discourage or dissuade us from caring about excellence in all things.
If anything, it should make us more excellent, all by his grace and all to his glory!
