As I stared into an aft storage locker crammed full of
apparently useless detritus and surveyed a ship’s fantail cluttered with more
junk—a rusted-out barbeque grill, alleged spare parts that didn’t seem to
belong to any of the ship’s installed equipment, and big sealed metal cans of
who-knows-what. Rust covered the deck and all the deck fittings and equipment I
surveyed. In the background, I could hear Miguel Rivera, our crew’s boatswain’s
mate first class petty officer, whistling the theme song of “Sanford and Son,”
a 1970s television show where Red Fox played the owner of a junkyard. Pretty
appropriate. How could a commissioned U.S. Navy ship have gotten like this?
Just two days before, Petty Officer Rivera and I, along with the rest of
our California-based crew, had been assigned to a slick, fast, and
well-maintained coastal patrol ship. For the past year, I had been proud to be
the captain of that ship—the finest in the Navy, as far as my crew and I had
been concerned. Now we were in Bahrain, assigned for the next six months to—so it appeared to me—our
previous ship’s evil twin.
I had become the captain of a
floating junkyard.
The Bahrain-based ship was also a coastal patrol ship, identical
to our California beauty—except that everything was broken or rusted.
Technically, it was half a year newer than our previous ship. But hard use and
poor maintenance—and not a little of what I saw as not giving a darn on the
part of prior skippers and crews—had taken its toll on this poor hunk of
salt-covered steel.
A few days after we first took custody of the ship, we
headed out of Bahrain for a first “shakedown” and familiarization voyage in the
Persian Gulf. Powered by four massive diesel engines, our little ship was
supposed to be able to travel at speeds greater than 35 knots—and
I had seen our California-based ship do a little better, even than that. Our
“new” ship hit 19.5 knots before numerous alarms and equivalents to a “check
engine” light came on—on all four engines. The vessel was bristling with
.50-caliber machine guns. Now, guns are supposed to go “click” and, almost
instantly afterward, “boom!” But, as we went to test them, these guns went
“click”—and then promptly jammed. Same for the big 25-millimeter guns. Both of
the surface search radars promptly failed during that short trip. We struggled
to communicate with our radios, which all seemed to operate poorly. Further, my
chief gunner discovered hundreds of rounds of unusable ammunition that did not
appear on the ship’s inventory.
A strange one-off modification to this particular ship
allowed us to launch a standard U.S. Navy rigid-hull inflatable boat (or RHIB),
which was larger—and more capable—than the boats with which the coastal patrol
ship class had originally been fitted. Small boats are critical to Navy
operations, such as smuggler interdiction, personnel transfers, and other
useful functions, and, theoretically, having the larger RHIB was a boon to our
operational flexibility.
The contraption that allowed our ship to operate a standard
Navy RHIB was a real Rube Goldberg-looking device. It reminded me of one of
those flat-bed trucks that wrecker companies use to haul disabled cars. The
whole truck bed tilts up and onto the ground. Then the operator hooks a cable
to the vehicle and winches it onto the truck bed, lowering it back down to haul
the car away. It was the same principle for this device, which tilted into the
water and hauled up the RHIB similarly.
The trouble was this device was notoriously unreliable. More
than once—starting with that first daylong voyage out of Bahrain—the thing
would just stop, failing to raise the RHIB back onto the ship. This left the clunky rig
trailing behind us, hindering our ability to maneuver—with the Sailors manning
the RHIB stuck there, unable to get back aboard the ship until our mechanics
could coax the device into working.
Worse still, the ship’s potable water tanks were clearly
rusted, and our drinking water was orange with rust. Talk about unappetizing.
The occupational health laboratories said it was safe (I even got a second
opinion from the U.S. Army). Still, I refused to let the crew drink or cook
with it, so we went to sea with pallets of bottled water strapped to the ship’s
weather decks and adding further to the ship's ugly-baby look.
Two further days after this trip out of Bahrain, we were to
head to the coastal waters of Iraq where—blind, deaf, dumb, limping, and even
looking pathetic, what with all our rust—we were expected to work with U.S. and
allied coalition warships to protect Iraqi oil platforms from terror attack,
keep an eye out for pirates, and be on the ready for aggression by the
ever-present Iranian Revolutionary Guard Navy. To say I did not feel confident
sailing into a warzone is an understatement.
This ship was an ugly baby—and if it had been a person, only its
mother (maybe) would have loved it.
This story has a happy ending. Even with a few incidents
that got me into some hot water—one regarding a gun that finally went “bang,”
but when it wasn’t supposed to, and another (self-inflicted) precipitated by my
hitting “send” on an angry email to the boss—we executed our mission and,
praise the Lord, no one was injured. The ship did suffer further equipment
breakdowns, but overall, its appearance and mechanical condition improved
vastly during our six-month stay. The water tanks got fixed. Guns went boom
when they were supposed to. Engines operated at full speed. Junk and clutter
disappeared, as did the rust.
When we turned the ship over to the next rotational crew and
returned to California, it was in the shape I wish it had been when we got it.
Certainly, our spare parts supply situation improved drastically during the six
months we were in the Middle East. I’m thankful to the senior officers and
their staff members who supported us by making that happen. But even then, the
ship’s condition would not have drastically improved without one essential
ingredient.
The key component in this turnaround was my highly-motivated
young crew, most of whom were leaders in their own right. I
believe that, for all our faults, my officers, chief petty officers, and I had
provided our crew with opportunities to learn, lead, and grow—and the team took
advantage of those. We gave them responsible jobs—usually beyond what was
expected of their rank and experience—and empowered them to act.
Given the opportunities to use their talents, skills, and
abilities, motivated, take-charge people can take the worst situations and turn
them around. I believe this holds true for every organizational context. Great
people can turn an ugly baby into a pretty one. I saw more than a few ugly
babies in the Navy and learned to love them—because I know what they can become.
An "ugly baby" church turned pretty
At this point, you are not wrong to wonder where I’m going
with this. What does a rust-bucket, ugly baby ship have to do with a dying
church? Well, that ship helped me mentally frame the task of revitalizing an
ugly baby of a church.
At its heart, revitalizing a declining church is an
organizational turnaround. It involves fixing broken systems and damaged
relationships. Organizational revitalization means returning an organization to doing
what it was created for in the first place. At the same time, the one leading
the organizational turnaround must focus on developing leaders who can help share
the load, making the comeback more manageable. These emerging leaders will also
be the ones to prevent the organization from backsliding into the old bad
habits in the future. Moreover, church revitalization—and the attendant
leadership development—includes spiritual dimensions that are absent (or at
least unacknowledged) in the turnaround of a secular organization.
Every organization represents a unique context. The Church—indeed
every individual congregation—represents a distinctive set of circumstances, a
problem set peculiar to itself.
So, when I first assumed the pastorate of a struggling
church in suburban Tampa, I saw parallels with my ugly baby ship. The most
direct comparison was probably the amount of deferred facility maintenance in
the church—the air conditioning units kept me up at night, as they were on
their last legs, and, let me tell you, Florida summers are hot and humid! You
name it, it needed work. Overgrown landscaping, painting, dated décor, worn
pews, smelly old carpet, rough parking lot, bugs and rats, junk and clutter. The
church facilities needed a tremendous amount of past-due maintenance.
Church systems and ministries had also fallen into
disrepair. From bookkeeping to guest follow-up—even keeping an updated list of
active members—no administrative system in the church was in order. Evangelism
was non-existent—except for my predecessor working in another ministry’s booth
at a flea market and handing visitors a card for the church. To my knowledge,
only the pastor engaged in anything like outreach. Simple things were neglected,
like someone deliberately welcoming newcomers on a Sunday morning and maybe even
handing them a church bulletin. It seemed to me that my exhausted predecessor
and his wife had, to the best of their abilities, picked up every baton that
someone else had dropped. But after picking up a few of someone else’s batons,
your hands get pretty full.
More than that, in my view—not unlike my ship when I first
got it—the church was also not really mission-capable. It pretended to be a
church but was not engaged in the spiritual battlefield in its surrounding
community. It did not engage wholeheartedly in what I would say is the church’s
most concise biblical mission statement: Love God, love others, and make
disciples.
Yes, some individual church members still showed remarkable
love and generosity for their neighbor—but as a church body? I’ve since seen
worse, but yeah, not so much. And I guess, at this point in my life, I’m unclear
as to how one genuinely demonstrates a love for God without loving their
neighbor. Making disciples? Not by any standard that I’ve typically seen. No
new converts, no baptisms, no evangelistic outreach, no small groups—and even
the children’s ministry, with what few children were there, wasn’t very
successful in instilling biblical principles.
Like my ugly baby ship, the church was in rough shape and
wasn’t performing its mission. The similarities started to fall apart from there.
It would have been much more analogous to the church if I had received my
poorly maintained ship with an understaffed, largely untrained, unmotivated
crew not interested in going into a war zone. The analogy would have been even
more complete had the leaders under me been unwilling to follow their captain’s
direction.
Not all ugly babies are the same kind of ugly.
The most essential difference between my ugly baby church
and my ship was this: While the Navy hadn’t allowed me to pick my crew—I had no
hiring authority—they did send me motivated and trained young people to work
with—and paid them! At least for the time the Navy said those Sailors had to be
there, they were compelled to be there. Moreover, my crew—especially the
leaders under me—required no convincing that things needed to change on that
ship. What’s more, had they disagreed, they had no choice in the matter—I was
the captain, and while I had no desire to be a tyrant, what I said, went. The
phrase “all-volunteer” means something completely different in the armed forces
than in the church!
The church revitalizing pastor has to find, recruit, train,
develop, and motivate the leaders and usually can reward them with little more
than a kind word and undying gratitude. Moreover, the pastor must achieve
buy-in from leaders who aren’t convinced that the church needs to change.
No leaders were left in the church when I began my tenure as
pastor. We had one deacon left—and under 40, too—but the truth was, he was my
predecessor’s son. He, his wife, and children no longer lived within a
reasonable commute of the church, and they had stayed on out of that good old
familial loyalty. I hated to see them go, but I completely understood their
reasons for doing so.
A gentleman in his sixties came over with us from the church
where I had been on staff. For years, he had been my Sunday adult Bible
fellowship class leader and volunteered to help lead Sunday morning singing.
While he was not a young leader, I thought he could help develop them. You
think you know someone. After less than a year at the church, he left his wife
for another woman and moved to another state. So much for the idea of him
helping develop leaders.
None of the older men in the church were concerned about
leading or developing leaders. I caught a “been there, done that” vibe from a
few of them. I couldn’t help but wonder, in the case of one or two of them, if
they hadn’t stayed to watch me fail. Some of these men exercised leadership by
their influence—and not necessarily in an entirely positive way.
Thank goodness, at least, for the senior adult women in the
church. Their prayers and encouragement were a lifeline. And thank goodness for
the blind, autistic-savant young man who played piano and sang throughout my
tenure, even as the church moved to a more contemporary worship style—his
talent, prayers, and friendship were a tremendous blessing. Through their influence,
these dear people also exercised a more informal type of leadership, but in a
positive fashion. Whether it’s good or bad, never ignore the influence wielded
by informal leaders that no one ever formally installed in the church.
Like the ugly ship, this church turnaround story also had a
happy ending—or rather than ending, the story is still being happily written.
Eventually, younger leaders took charge of the worship, technology, children’s
ministry, a men’s group, holding neighborhood block parties, and welcoming
guests. Hand-in-hand with older adults who worked alongside them, handing down
their skills and wisdom at the same time, these young leaders took part in
major facility renovations. The church came alive again. Yes, a larger more
prosperous church stepped in to help, adopting the church as a satellite campus.
But that would never have happened if these next-generation leaders hadn’t first
stepped up to the challenge.
Thanks for the stories, but…?
I told you a sea story and then a church revitalization
story for several reasons. First, I want you to understand that organizational
turnaround is possible in any context. Second, turnaround—in a military unit, a
stagnant corporation, and even in a struggling church—requires developing next-generation
leaders who will own the revitalization and ensure that the momentum
continues long into the future.
Third, I want you to understand some vital differences
between the dying church and other organizations—especially those in secular
government or for-profit contexts. No leader is likely as under-resourced in
any respect as the church revitalization pastor. Finances and volunteers—especially
willing and equipped next-generation leaders—are scarce.
If you get nothing else from this chapter, understand,
pastor, that you’re going to be the one to find, recruit, disciple, develop,
and empower these next-generation leaders.
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