There is a perennial debate about how a leader, director, supervisor, line manager, coach or pastor should best spend their time: working more with their A players or their B players.
Theory Number 1: the A players will do fine without our help, thank you very much. So, best to apply our energy to the folks who, with a little attention and encouragement, might be able to step up to the A level. Ken Callahan was famously an advocate of this strategy - he used a Little League team as an example. Let the top three players (A players) do what they do - their dads are coaching them already. Work with the next three, the B players. And let the bottom three (bless their hearts, our C players) show up and do their best without expending much coaching energy there. This approach focuses on increasing the percentage of high capacity players: getting as many as possible to what you would define as Good Enough. This is about expanding the number who surpass certain thresholds of competency.
Theory Number 2: Call it the Good to Great approach, based on the fact that the real A players are often the most coachable folks around. It is easier to double their output (and impact the organizational bottom line metrics) than to do remedial work, and the wins come faster. This was what I learned directing church development for a judicatory region. If you want to get the region in the black, and you have, say, 100 churches, helping the five healthiest to live more fully into their potential will pump the overall numbers up faster. It will, so to speak, help you run up the score in the short term. If you followed the work of Paul Borden a quarter century ago, this was exactly how he turned around the regional stats for American Baptists in Northern California.
So which way is right? Both are winning strategies - and there is no rule that says we have to pick only one. They just present us with two very different kinds of programs - one that focuses on developing more widespread capacity for fruitfulness, getting more wins on the map. The other focuses on helping a few giants secure a net win for the whole.
I once helped a United Methodist Annual Conference discover net membership gains four out of my five years on conference staff. Theory 2 all the way! I learned that Theory Number 2 is not only helpful to denominations, but also to the careers of denominational leaders. And yet, not long after I left that post, after we had pumped up the churches most ready to scale up ministry, the conference net gains evaporated. The average church was still aging and shrinking. The bigger churches were sailing into changing times, a bit cocky in their conviction that their strategies were the best, and they fell behind. Some of the churches that used to run 1000 in worship now are happy to see 1/3 of that.
It is easy for a declining denomination to become dependent on a few churches to carry the load.
Just before my birth, 64 years ago this month, good ole’ Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points in a single basketball game, leading Philadelphia to best the New York Knicks. Kobe Bryant got to 81 points many years later. But Chamberlain’s single game record will probably stand for a very long time. Get a Chamberlain or a Bryant on your team and you will win games… but you risk becoming dangerously dependent on one player - so that if they tear a ligament or trade out to the Lakers, you are up a creek...
A Good to Great approach doesn’t necessarily change the culture of the overall organization: it simply builds on the healthy culture of a few points of light within the organization. So, which is the healthier situation? One where a few churches thrive but most atrophy or one where thriving is normative, and the fruitfulness (scoring) is spread more evenly? I think the latter represents a healthier reality. The latter was certainly the reality of early Methodism, where the fruitfulness was systemic and far flung.
In a growing local church, there might be a couple ministries that are soaring. One church I served had two signature ministries: music and youth ministry. The church was growing off the power of those two. But we diversified. We became good at other ministries - so that when crises eventually hit in both youth and in music ministries, the church could keep moving forward.
If you are going to play a long game, if you wish to have a legacy of ministry growth that continues long after you move on… I think Callahan had the wiser approach. Build your middle players. Increase the points of light. Make winning normative across the organization. Once certain habits and values are in the ground water, the organization will be much more nimble and resilient as ministry contexts change and as leaders move.
Happy Easter!
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