One time I heard a pastor describe church like this:

When you are first planting a new church, being in leadership is like being a triathlete. You need to have skills in multiple areas, because you are mostly doing everything by yourself. But eventually, as the church grows it becomes more like a golfing foursome. There are several people doing ministry and leadership. None of them are too particularly specialized, but it’s a team and you are working together. Eventually, the church grows more and becomes like a basketball team. At this stage, there are multiple people working toward the mission, and some of them begin to specialize in certain things. The point guard doesn’t have the exact same job as the other players. Finally, a church becomes like a football team. Football teams have a large roster of players who are all on the team to accomplish the same thing. But the team is so large, there are teams within teams (offense, defense, special teams) and sometimes there may be players who serve on the same team but don’t know each other very well. There are coaches whose job it is to just lead one segment of the larger team, and some of the players focus on just doing one or two things really well.

The pastor who used the analogy said that every time a church “switches sports” there is a bit of tension that develops. And sometimes, there will be people who drop out, because they liked playing the old sport better. For instance, when a church is under 100 people, it would not be uncommon for almost all the members to have the pastor’s personal cell phone number, and for them to be able to call him and easily get a hold of him whenever they want to talk to him about something. However, as a church grows that system becomes impossible to maintain. Such a system could easily overwhelm that one guy. And so new leaders will have to be put in place and a new system developed. And it is often true the new system is a much better way to handle things!

But, even if the new system is superb, there still could be some people who say, “But I liked it back when I could just call up my pastor on the phone at any time!” And some of those people might even leave the church to go find a new pastor (at a smaller church) with whom they can do that. In other words, not everyone is willing to switch sports.

When I first heard all of this (most everything above is just me paraphrasing someone else) I thought it was interesting, but it didn’t exactly apply to me at the time. Now, several years later, I can totally relate to what he was describing! I’ve seen it happen right before my very eyes here at Good News Church.

We used to have services where we’d cram 180 people into a room that was designed for perhaps about 110.

If you are new, let me give you some background. When I came back to Ocala to start Good News, there were about 25 people from Ocala interested in being a part of it, plus about a dozen friends of mine from the Leesburg area. From there we grew to 100, then 200, then 300 and so on. Last Sunday, there were about 500 people in attendance between our two church services, and plenty of regulars were missing.

And there are things that have changed from those early days until now. The first semester that we did community groups there were three of them. This upcoming semester we are expecting to have around thirteen of them. We used to have services where we’d cram 180 people into a room that was designed for perhaps about 110. I remember there were people who wouldn’t even get coffee during intermission because it wasn’t worth the effort navigating through the crowd. We used to have three services and we would beg people to show up at the 8:00am service to make room in the other two. Now we have a new building that if you are a newcomer and you show up a little late, you don’t have to walk in front of the front row (in full view of everyone) in order to check your kid into KidZone, and you don’t have to sit in a separate row from the rest of your family on busy Sundays.

The way we handled Kidzone in those early years was to simply hand kids over to workers who would have to remember who their parents were. When the parents came to pick the kids up, they didn’t have to “check out” their kid with a card that proves that they are the rightful guardian. They just took their kid, and we just hoped nobody ever took the wrong one.

We used to have just one pastor who did every funeral, wedding, baptism, and several other things that people usually want a pastor for. Now, we have two. Also when people get to specialize in certain areas they tend to do a better job. Someone who focuses on training community group leaders without having to write a sermon every week can do a better job at it. Someone who can focus on vision-casting and preaching can probably do a better job if he doesn’t also have to do ten other things.

Most importantly, we now reach more people with the truth of God’s Word and the love of God’s people than we used to when we were smaller.

So, yes, things have changed as we’ve grown. And many more things will need to change as we grow.

So, yes, things have changed as we’ve grown. And many more things will need to change as we grow. In fact, as best as I can tell, we are still somewhat behind. For the past year or so, we have mostly been a medium-to-large church that has been operating like a small-to-medium church. And doing that has been difficult for some of us working behind the scenes. There were growing pains this year, some of which I’ve already explained in our church newsletter in the past. As many of you know, the reason Isaac Johnson was brought on staff was to help us begin to transition to the next stage of effective ministry for a church of our size.

Ok, Mario, why are you bringing all of this up?

Good question. I’m glad you asked. I’m bringing it up so that many of you will see what is coming and embrace it rather than resist it. Yes, basketball is different than golf. And yes, you may have liked golf. But basketball is the stage we are at now. And we definitely need people on our team who are willing to play basketball.

I realize that some people might say, “Well, why don’t we just stop growing? That will take care of this problem. Let’s just not change sports! Let’s stay this size forever!”

There are two problems with that. One is practical the other is theological/relational.

Practical: It’s too late. We already grew. We already switched to basketball and just haven’t fully adjusted all of our systems to match. A lot of people would have to leave for us to go back to golf.

Theological/Relational: The goal of our church, as stated from the beginning, is to lead people into worshipping and loving God, caring for and helping each other, and reaching people who don’t know Him yet with the gospel of Jesus Christ. It seems to me that, even if some people think that it’s easier or more pleasant, it still wouldn’t be right to simply lock the doors and not take in any new members. Think about it, what if we had done that the week before you showed up for the first time? To become an exclusive club that doesn’t accept newcomers and doesn’t reach out to outsiders is a great way to destroy a church, by getting it off track from its original mission.

So, my question for you is this: Will you play basketball with us?