5 Roadblocks to Missional Momentum

I once attended a regional conference led by a skilled denominational leader.  He outlined the group’s new mission, laid out a strategy, and initiated its implementation in one afternoon.  Those in attendance got on board with a cooperative and eager spirit.

One hopes that such momentum will trump everything that gets in its way.  However, that’s not the case. As a consultant who works with hurting churches, I’ve discovered that threats to missional traction often reside in a church’s past, rather than its future.

Historical hindrances take many forms but the effect is the same: Each can lead to a roadblock, an ultimate shutdown, of God’s blessing on a group’s mission.

1. Unaddressed church discipline issues:  Achan caused a lot of pain for himself, his family and the family of God.  Until Joshua addressed Achan’s sin, God’s blessing on the mandate He gave them went missing (Joshua 7).

We find struggling churches often tolerate misbehaving people like Achan.  Spiritual leaders need to see how such things can derail a divine mandate.  Have you been overlooking an Achan or two?  Perhaps God is waiting for you exercise biblical church discipline before he will bless you with missional momentum.

2. Unaddressed abuse by former leaders can break trust and create lip service to your mission.  One of the most common things we see is congregational resistance to a new leader because the previous leader broke their trust.  In churches where abuse has occurred, articulating a new mission or vision actually reopens the unhealed wounds in the body by requiring the congregation to trust. They will say they want to fulfill God’s mandate, but they will not follow the one who attempts to lead them to it

3. A series of short lived pastors sets your church up for mission failure.  We know of one church that had 15 pastors in its first 20 years.  How do you think that shaped the culture of the church?  Why should they pursue the mission of their newly minted minister when they don’t know how long he’ll be with them?  Before talking about your new mission, you may need to go back and treat your church’s serial abandonment.

4. Violating “ancient” covenants:  In 2 Samuel 21, about 30 years into his reign, David seeks the Lord about the cause of a three year famine.  He discovers the reason for the famine was Saul’s violation of a covenant established by Joshua four centuries earlier to protect the Gibeonites. God hindered their progress until David made amends.

Similar key decisions could have been made by previous leaders in your church.  One church with which we consulted discovered a fifty year old board decision not to accept African-Americans into membership and to discourage them from attending. Not until the board decision was rediscovered and repentance effected did they put the past behind them.

5. Questionable “church DNA” can undermine your church’s missional readiness.  Do you know how your church started?  I mean the real story.  In our consulting ministry we’ve come to see that churches don’t always start for the right reasons.  They are often birthed by unjustifiable splits, rebellion, or the expansion of personal kingdoms.  Does He “who searches the minds and hearts” overlook such formative DNA (Revelation 2:23)?   We have found that how a church starts has a lot to do with how it carries out its God-given mandates…or not.

If your church struggles to do what God has called it to do, often a pattern of dysfunction exists in the history of your church. That dysfunction will evidence itself through various symptoms that include a lack of mission/vision fulfillment.  To gauge your church’s health explore our free assessment tool.

What roadblocks to a church’s missional momentum have you encountered?

Mark Barnard serves as President of Blessing Point Ministries and is the author of The Path of Revival – Restoring Our Nation One Church at a Time and co-author of the Healing the Heart of Your Church Facilitator Guide. Follow us on Facebook.