Almost Everything I Learned About Growing a Church Was Wrong
A pastor’s journey from platform to presence, and what I found on the other side of church growth
What if success wasn’t the goal, and healing was?
In 2008, I was a young pastor leading one of the fastest-growing churches in our denomination. We followed the Willow Creek model: sleek branding, powerful worship, relevant sermons, clear pipelines for growth. Metrics mattered, and we were crushing them.
Then cancer came.
I shaved my head before treatments began, preaching that Sunday with courage and a lump in my throat. The next week, around 100 people disappeared. Gone. No goodbye.
One person pulled me aside and whispered, “I know you can’t help it, but your bald head and bloated face… it reminds me of when my mom was dying. I just can’t handle being sad at church.”
Another said, “It’s just not the same anymore. It used to be so energetic. Your illness changed the whole vibe.”
And then a group left altogether to plant a new church.
“It feels like our church is dying,” they said.
I was, too.
The Dissonance That Broke Me
There were loving people who took care of us, who showed up with casseroles and prayers, who became lifelong friends. I’ll never forget them.
But what echoed loudest was the unspoken fear: Our pastor can’t be weak.
I had poured my life into churches built on energy, excellence, and upward mobility. But my illness exposed something we rarely admit in church growth circles:
The attractional model doesn’t know what to do with weakness.
And that’s a problem. Because the gospel is full of weakness, cross-shaped, grace-soaked, suffering-servant weakness. But when your church brand is built on triumph and charisma, you begin to believe that strength is what makes the gospel work. Weakness becomes a liability. Illness becomes a threat. Vulnerability becomes something to stage-manage or avoid.
And when weakness becomes unwelcome, so does lament.
In many contemporary churches, lament has been edited out of the liturgy, if it ever made it in at all. The worship set is all positive praise. The messaging is upbeat. The branding promises transformation, victory, and breakthrough.
But in that framework, there’s no space for sorrow. No room for doubt. No language for struggle.
And when the church becomes a place of toxic positivity, it may grow fast, but it becomes spiritually fragile. And when adversity comes, as it always does, the walls begin to crack.
Is that what we’re seeing?
In the absence of lament, we lose touch with the real Jesus, the one who wept at Lazarus’ tomb, shed tears over Jerusalem, sweated blood in Gethsemane, and cried out on the cross, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
Instead of forming people in the way of Jesus, we’ve curated experiences that protect us from anything that feels like Good Friday. But when the music stops, and the crowds thin, and the metrics decline, we go searching for a version of Jesus who can save the show, who can stop the bleeding and get us back to being shiny, happy people.
But the real Jesus doesn’t promise success.
He promises resurrection.
And resurrection only comes after death.
Walking Away (and Walking Toward Something Truer)
After remission, I couldn’t go back.
Not because I had lost my faith, but because I was finally beginning to see Jesus more clearly.
And He didn’t look like the one we had platformed.
He didn’t speak with the polished voice of our branding.
He didn’t show up in metrics or strategy decks.
He was quieter. Gentler. More real.
I hadn’t built the machine, but I’d spent years trying to manage it. I played my part, hoping to keep the gears turning. But in the end, I had become just another cog in a system I no longer believed in.
So I stepped away.
I accepted a call to a small congregation back home.
It wasn’t slick.
It wasn’t impressive.
It wasn’t scalable.
But it was real.
And in the quiet presence of that little community, I started to find Jesus again.
The Jesus I Met on the Road
I’ve come to realize: I had been preaching about a Jesus I didn’t fully know.
In the years since, I’ve met so many others who’ve left the church, not because they stopped loving Jesus, but because they couldn’t find Him there anymore.
They were told:
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Jesus wants you rich (Prosperity Jesus)
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Jesus votes red, white, and blue (Nationalistic Jesus)
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Jesus is disappointed in you (Judgmental Jesus)
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Jesus only loves people who look and believe like us (Exclusive Jesus)
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Jesus is here to meet your every need (Consumeristic Jesus)
But when life falls apart, those false versions collapse too.
That’s when the real Jesus begins to appear, not in the spotlight, but on the road of pain, confusion, and unexpected grace.
Deconstructing Isn’t the End
Deconstructing is the Road to Emmaus
When I left the big church system, I didn’t leave Jesus.
I met Him, on the road of confusion and grief.
Like Cleopas on the way to Emmaus, I didn’t recognize Him at first.
But He walked with me. He listened. He taught. He reinterpreted the Scriptures, not through fear or formulas, but through Himself.
“Beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.” - Luke 24:27
From Growth to Healing
For years, I thought church growth was the goal.
More butts in seats.
More giving.
More services.
More momentum.
But I’ve learned that healing is the new growth.
Not numbers.
Not buildings.
But people becoming whole again in Christ.
I don’t know how to grow a church anymore.
And I think that’s the point.
Because Jesus never told us to grow a church.
He told us to follow Him.
To feed His sheep.
To make disciples.
To love one another.
To take up our cross.
I’ve traded clever strategies for quiet faithfulness.
I’ve traded upward mobility for downward love.
I’ve traded performance for presence.
Our Beautiful Mess
Now, many years later, I have experienced the church in her imperfection, and she is beautiful.
Not because she’s polished or perfect, but because of the vulnerability that shares our wounds and finds healing in the realization that we’re all a mess.
I’ve seen people enter into each other’s sorrow and discover that Christ is already there. I’ve watched communities become safe havens, refuges in the storm. Not because they had all the answers, but because they embodied Christ’s love in the way they made space for one another.
The church, when it leans into that vulnerability, becomes a people of hope and healing.
A people who open the door and shout, “Everyone belongs.”
And she is beautiful.
And she is a mess.
This church, our church, is our beautiful mess.
And Love is right in the center of it all.
A Final Word for the Wounded
If you’ve walked away from the church, or if the church has walked away from you, please hear this:
You are not alone.
You are not crazy.
And Jesus hasn’t left you.
Maybe what you’re feeling isn’t failure.
Maybe it’s the Spirit.
Maybe it’s Jesus, walking beside you on the road.
If this resonates, I’d love to hear your story. Or just let me know you’re out there.
We’re all walking this road in our own way, but we don’t have to walk it alone.
