Relationships, Dummy

You Have To Go Back to One Person At a Time

I just went through a season when I felt dried up and desiccated as a ministry leader.

I just couldn’t figure out what to do next.

We had built this big, beautiful, exciting waterfall of a faith community. One that flowed freely in the early years. Rushing living waters into the lives of the people we served… and into mine.

But lately — and yes, this is a bit of an exaggeration — it felt like the flow had dried up to a trickle.

A drought must have hit upstream.

Everything felt stagnant. And stale.

I’m sure other church leaders and community leaders feel this way sometimes too. I don’t think I’m alone.

So I did what leaders do when we’re scared and stuck.

I stared at the machine we had built.

I looked at our list of programs and services. I looked at our website. I looked at our social media. I looked at our advertising. I looked at our sermon content. I looked at the long list of ideas I had for doing more, more, more.

And none of it felt like the secret to unlocking the waterfall again.

None of it felt like the prayer that would bring a deluge upstream.

Then I looked down into the river and saw my own reflection staring back at me, screaming…

“IT’S ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS, DUMMY.”

Oof. There it was.

Ministry cannot be done only at scale.

The systems matter. The content matters. The programs matter. The events and marketing and mailings and ads can all matter.

But the moment those things outweigh the relationships… the humanness… the sacred connection… that’s the moment the environment gets out of balance.

That’s when the drought begins.

So I decided to go back to the basics.

Make phone calls. Do coffee meetings. Send personal notes. Ask real questions. Listen.

One person at a time.

And I started encouraging the other leaders in our ministry to do the same.

Make phone calls. Do coffee meetings.

It sounds almost embarrassingly simple.

Which is probably why I keep forgetting it.

I confess that I prefer the crowd.

I like the big picture. I like the big numbers. I like thinking about hundreds and thousands and maybe even millions of people somewhere out there.

I love scale.

But then I read this line from Luke’s Gospel:

“Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.”
(Luke 19:5)

And I’m brought back to reality.

Jesus is surrounded by a crowd. There are people everywhere. Noise everywhere. Momentum everywhere.

And then he stops.

He looks up.

He sees one man in a tree.

Not a demographic. Not a target audience. Not a growth opportunity. Not a number.

A person.

Zacchaeus.

And Jesus calls him by name.

“Come down. I’m coming to your house.”

That is the part that keeps knocking me on the head.

He is just like, “I’m coming to your house.”

How simple and clear is that? It’s so human. So beautiful.

Jesus does not reject the crowd. He does not despise scale. He does not ignore the movement forming around him. But (and this is important), the crowd reveals the person.

The many lead him to the one. The public moment becomes a personal one.

The scaled ministry becomes a personal one.

That is the slow work.

And it’s the work I keep trying to shortcut.

I keep wanting one message to reach everyone. One campaign to create belonging. One program to generate community. One great idea to break the dam and flood the whole river.

But sacred community does not truly flow from scale. It flows through relationship.

One name. One phone call. One coffee. One honest question. One person feeling seen.

So yes, build the website. Send the emails. Post the sermons. Run the ads. Launch the app. Use the tech. Create the programs.

But don’t mistake the channels for the ministry.

The ministry is still Zacchaeus in the tree.

The ministry is still the person hoping someone will look up.

The ministry is still the moment when someone hears their name and realizes they are not invisible.

So I’m making phone calls. I’m scheduling coffee meetings I’m focusing on individuals

And unsurprisingly…

…the water starts flowing again.

Not as a flood. Not all at once.

But flowing.