You’re working so hard to run a church, to research absolutely everything you do to make sure it lines up Biblically. It’s a tireless effort, one you enjoy, but also take INCREDIBLY seriously and that’s GREAT!
But some things slip through the cracks, as they always do. This post’s intention is to show you those mistakes your church is making without even realizing it so that you quickly and efficiently solve them and glorify God more in your ministry. ❤️
20 Mistakes Your Church Is Making Without Even Realizing It
There are, of course, some common mistakes that churches make, and I’ll get to those toward the bottom but right now, I want to show you some things that you’re doing that may not be so apparent.
1) You’re putting volunteers in the wrong positions
I remember first starting my local church and the very first thing they did was try to shove me into volunteering. My first thought was, “That’s great, I love to help, I want to serve, awesome, where do I start?!”
They wanted me to work in the nursery.
Cue…the horror.
Listen, just because I have children and I’m a mom does not in any way mean that I’m good with kids or qualified or even have a love for children. Honestly, since I was a little girl, my peers (kids at the time) annoyed me. I never really cared for children. My heart was more set on the elderly and those who were older than me. I could glean from them, listen to them, and learn from them. Children taught me nothing. I wanted to be where the elderly were. I wanted to care and help them. They are often overlooked and mistreated in our society.
When I graciously declined this “opportunity”, I was asked several…SEVERAL more times about it, in which I KEPT declining. It wasn’t my gift, nor a desire of mine, it just isn’t the right fit for me. Put me with the old people! 😆 I love it there!
They decided that I didn’t have a love for serving, which was completely wrong.
I asked about other places I could serve and was shot down each and every time. The only thing they’d let me do was clean and take care of babies. It’s really offensive, to be honest. And I believe that, in time, God will show them that there’s WAY MORE TO ME than changing a dirty diaper or cleaning up juice when a kid spills it.
I’m not knocking those tasks. My daughter LOVES babies and kids and all that. She always has. It’s her personality and I think most moms DO have that personality. They love to be around kids. I don’t, and I can’t pretend to be something I’m not.
Instead of getting to know me for a millisecond or even trying to find something else I could do, they just wrote me off as unwilling to help and there was “nothing else I could do.”
Eventually, wanting so desperately to be used by God and not having a place to serve in my local church, guess what I did…
I started a blog. 😆 I reach millions of people worldwide. I found my home, my place of serving. So, maybe it was God who purposely allowed all that to happen so that I’d have TIME to blog, I don’t know, but in any event, it actually helped me.
It may not help others. Don’t just quickly shove people into ministry or into something they are not familiar with or don’t like. It’s offensive to the person. It makes them feel like you could care less about them at all and I’ve seen it happen a lot.
2) You’re charging people to come to your church
Now, I know this one I’m going to get reamed on, but, it MUST be said and stood up for boldly.
I don’t know how it is where you go to church, but in my local city, we are charged to go to church in various ways. And it’s not okay.
A common “stunt” they pull here is in Vacation Bible School (VBS). They make you pay $10-$20 for each child who attends. They give you a “free” shirt when you go and some even say you’re just paying for the shirt, but honestly, I’ve worked VBS and had my kids go to VBS enough to know, those shirts they give free anyway.
Another common “stunt” some churches pull is making you pay for Mother’s Day Out programs. They watch your kids, you pay them money to do so. Some people don’t mind paying, but the church should be free. Programs are going on, we’re teaching children the Word of God, we should not be charging to offer these services.
VBS SHOULD BE FREE!!!
Mother’s Day Out programs should be FREE.
Special events at your church should be free!
If you host a sewing group, the supplies should be free.
If you host a tea party for women, the tea party, the tea, the refreshments, and all food, and everything else should be free.
If you have a concert at your church with a special band, the concert should be free. Stop charging a cover charge.
Listen, did not Jesus Himself go into the temple and see them selling things and turn over tables and get upset about it?
Yet, we are letting these vile things creep into our churches little by subtly little and Satan is pleased about it, sure, but God is NOT!
We are never allowed to force someone to buy something to hear the gospel. Pay to hear the Word of God. WOW! That’s insane. But it’s happening within our church walls in subtle ways.
It happens online too, some bigger sites charge people to use the site or block them from accessing their content, which is wrong, but within the church walls seems all the worse.
If you want to sell things, have a bookstore. If you’re online, offer your blog free of charge to access your Christian content and have a shop or a bookstore or something to sell things. That’s fine. That’s optional. They are not forced to pay to hear the Word of God.
Same thing within church walls, have a yard sale to raise money, do group fundraisers with your teens, all that is optional. People give because they want to, but these big huge churches charging for VBS or Mother’s Day Out and things of that nature is just greed.
3) Your women’s Bible study is a glorified gossip group
I call it GGG to my kids.
Glorified
Gossip
Group
I’ll be extremely honest here, I’ve been in church all of my life and I’ve never once, not even one time, found a women’s Bible study that is not full of gossip.
Maybe they exist. I’ve not seen them personally, and it’s detrimental.
I remember being in the last women’s Bible study I went to and the group leader told us about a lady that had a secret surgery, a very EMBARRASSING surgery, and she had just had it. I remember being so shocked, absolutely stunned and mortified hearing it. I was thinking if I had that happen to me, I’d never want to show my face in the church again. How embarrassing. And the lady didn’t even know it. She walked around thinking no one knew, meanwhile, everyone knew.
Still to this day, I can’t believe the women’s Bible study group leader told this.
After that, I said enough is enough, I will not go to another women’s Bible study group again, and to date, I haven’t.
I’m not here to gossip about others or talk about people behind their backs. I’m far too busy running for Christ like Paul to worry about things like that.
Watch your Bible studies. There really should be a male leader present in all the private studies, even the women’s, to keep them accountable and held to the high standard of what Christ expects of us!
4) The Pastor passes the buck
There was a woman who came to the church in need of help. I was there. I saw. She was looking for someone to talk to.
The Pastor of my previous church quickly turned her away, and would not even hear of her or anything about her situation. He just said, “We don’t do that here” to her.
I’m sorry, so, when someone comes to you for help, you don’t help them. What DO you DO there in that church then???
I asked him why he did that. He said, “She probably wanted money. That’s what they all want. We don’t help outsiders. Only members of the church.”
Wow. So I guess Jesus not having a membership in a church, He would have gotten turned away when He came to visit too.
It’s not the right mentality at all.
What about the verse, Hebrews 13:2? What about hospitality?
Was that what the early saints did?
Think of Abraham.
Three men were coming and he RAN out to meet them (Genesis 18). In that day and age, running for an older man was not what distinguished men did. They did not run. So by running, physically running, he was literally disgracing himself.
Also, I don’t know how to put this delicately, but at that time, Abraham had just been circumcised. So, when the Bible says he was running to meet them, uhm, that HAD to hurt.
So here you have an OLDER man, who just had surgery, and he was running to meet STRANGERS.
He had Sarah give them SO much food. They had plenty and not the bad stuff, but they gave the strangers the best food. The choice stuff.
Ultimately, one of the strangers was God; the other two were angels.
And yet, the Pastor of MY previous church rushed to shut the door on a stranger.
Does the Pastor of your church pass the buck? Does he turn people away?
5) Your church has lost its fire and you will soon too
After I left my previous church because of some major conflict and their massive, public sin that they would not repent of or turn from, I went to another church in my area.
I went there for about a year, but the church was so dead. No one had any fire, it was all going through the motions. And I found myself quickly losing my fire too.
Once my fire was gone, I left the church. I decided that it was better to go somewhere else than to lose MY fire because they were all dead. It took me several YEARS to get my fire back AFTER I left that church.
It happened. I got my fire back, but it derailed me for several years.
Your church cannot become loveless, heartless, or dead inside.
If it is, there’s not really a reason to exist, you’re just harming your members more than helping them!
I promised earlier to give you some more common mistakes your church is making.
Here are those more common mistakes…
6) Not encouraging your members to join groups/studies – Christians need to learn, grow, thrive, and form relationships and once a week on Sunday isn’t enough.
7) Neglecting church outreach – getting into the community to reach the people.
8) Promoting the wrong people – I rarely ever promote anyone. I’ve learned very quickly that once I do, they usually get greedy and change or show their true colors all along. We must be careful who we promote.
9) Voting on church leadership based on popularity instead of the character of the man, and yes, I said man (not woman).
10) Elders and church leaders not bold enough to speak up when the church is doing something wrong and they see it – if ANYONE sees anything that is going against God’s Word, we are called to come around the offending person lovingly and privately.
11) Church leaders overcommitting to projects and ministry – we all need a balance. Ministry is necessary but if one person is doing all the work, it can’t work.
12) Failing to lead leaders – a church should not only be training the people in the congregation but raising up leaders within its midst. I was constantly shut down and told I was being irresponsible for starting this ministry online (my blog) from my own Pastor. Yet, see how God has used it!!
13) Giving grace and precedence to the wealthy while disregarding others – showing preference to influential members and neglecting everyone else.
14) Not having enough financing – it’s difficult to start and run a ministry if there’s not enough money coming in regularly and through savings accounts being built up to cushion blows like church building repairs, staff, etc.
15) Lack of direction – sometimes churches don’t know what their ultimate end goal is, which can be detrimental to all.
16) Allowing outside pressures to creep into the church – things like legalism, heresy, fads, and so on.
17) Neglecting prayer groups – if prayer is our biggest power as believers (and it is!), all churches should put a priority on more prayer time.
18) Failing to recognize people’s gifts and skills – oftentimes times church fill positions just based on a warm and willing body, not necessarily, the most qualified or skillful person. Getting to know your congregation and the people is of utmost importance.
19) Selecting leaders without training – just shoving them into a position and hoping they’ll “figure it out” is not what’s best for ANYONE.
20) Having no discipleship training – Bible studies and groups are great, but I was trained by a Pastor’s wife PERSONALLY for two years, week in and week out, privately. THAT was the best training I got and look at all the fruit that has come out of it…this blog! I learned so much during my time with her, there were so many jewels of wisdom shared, and now I’m doing my part to pass them on to…well, the world! 😊 Group training is great, but some (like me) thrive way better in one-on-one interactions.
God talks about the mistakes of churches in Revelations also:
- The Loveless Church (Revelation 2:1-7)
- The Compromising Church (Revelation 2:12-17)
- The Corrupt Church (Revelation 2:18-29)
- The Dead Church (Revelation 3:1-6)
- The Lukewarm Church (Revelation 3:14-22)
Every church has problems. Every church will have a little doctrinal error. Every church does something wrong. Churches are, of course, run by sinful humans.
Many churches try their absolute best, but there will always be errors or things they do wrong. That’s okay. We’re not looking for perfection here, we’re looking for a hunger and desire to do the will of God regardless of anything contrary to it. To line our lives up, both personally and corporately, to the hope that is in Jesus Christ and to allow Him and His love to filter through the halls of the sanctuary in which they lead so many people.
The church that sees the problems they have or listens to them and fixes them immediately is a church that is well to follow.
If you want to dive deeper and you’re struggling to find a local church in your area, let me suggest a great resource for you, How to Find a Good Church. After reading it, you’ll know exactly how to find a good church in your area and what to do in case you cannot find one there locally!
