He said: ‘God hates visionary dreaming; it makes the dreamer proud and pretentious.’ In our present context, we might translate these words as something like dreams of ministry success.

In the same paragraph, Bonhoeffer goes on to write about the dangers of visionary dreaming within the Christian community. Bonhoeffer writes: ‘He [the leader] acts as if he is the creator of the Christian community, as if his dream binds men together. When things do not go his way, he calls the effort a failure. When his ideal picture is destroyed, he sees the community going to smash. So he becomes, first the accuser of his brethren, then an accuser of God, and finally the despairing accuser of himself.’

More than 80 years on, the words of Bonhoeffer are more relevant than ever. ‘Visionary dreaming’ is a disease within our churches, and for the most part it goes completely unchecked.

As a young Christian leader, I was indoctrinated with the belief that church growth was an essential task of the minister. This indoctrination happens in both subtle and overt ways. It happens throughout ministry training and at ministry conferences. It happens in conversations with peers. As ministers, when we get together, we talk much more about ministry (that is, how to do ministry) than we ever do about how God is changing us and conforming us to Christ.

In training courses and conferences, ministry success has a triumphalist edge, with more than a hint of bravado. It’s the apparently successful ministers (who happen to almost always be men) who are invited to speak to other ministers about how we can become just as successful as they are. We’re told to do the right things, run the right programmes, and church growth will inevitably happen.

I was taught repeatedly that healthy churches grow. Rick Warren’s famous line is oft repeated: ‘If your church is healthy, growth will occur naturally.’ The corollary is that if your church isn’t growing, then it isn’t healthy. We’re led to believe that numerical growth is the indicator of church health. Just don’t tell anyone that most of the recent scandals (and there are many) in the evangelical world have happened in large, ostensibly successful churches, led by charming, successful men.

In our quest for success, we’ve imported secular practices and beliefs, particularly from the business world; effectiveness, metrics, KPIs, strategic plans, vision statements. All of this is done under the guise of wisdom. After all, isn’t it foolish to not learn anything from the business world? Isn’t wisdom all about learning from others and their success, especially if that success has involved generating financial profit in a secular space?

Yet our willingness to be syncretistic has led us to ignore Isaiah 55:8-9, to gloss over the stinging critique of worldly wisdom in 1 Corinthians 1, and to disregard the profoundly challenging discourse about weakness in 2 Corinthians. Instead, we’ve adopted an inexorable and unspiritual pragmatism. We do what works, so long as it brings ministry success (or at least makes us feel successful). We’ve failed to recognise the Trojan Horse of secular wisdom and ‘success’ that has entered our church gates. In short, ministry success has become an unchecked idol.

Our desire for success has made us obsessed with gimmicks and silver bullets. One of the most prevalent gimmicks is the so called ‘5M model’ of ministry (also called the Purpose Driven model), initially pioneered by Pastor Rick Warren in California, but increasingly adopted by many churches in Australia. The 5M model promises ministry success to its adherents, by breaking up a church’s ministry into portfolios. In essence, it dramatically shifts a church’s focus away from people, to focusing on five areas/ portfolios of ministry.

In a leadership course that I recently undertook (that was compulsory for all new Sydney Anglican lead pastors/rectors) one of the visiting lecturers – himself an experienced rector – spoke to us about a knock on his parish office door that he received. At the door was an older man, a member of his church. The older man asked him if the rector could visit his close friend (who was also a member of his church) who happened to be dying in hospital. The rector spoke to the man at the door and told him that he was sorry that he couldn’t visit his friend, as pastoral visits weren’t a part of his ‘5M’ portfolio. The older man vigorously protested, but the minister was adamant. He wouldn’t go. He could send one of his other ministry staff, but he himself wouldn’t be going to visit. Such is the price of success.

What struck me when this rector was telling us his story, was that this rector is a godly man that I respect. I still consider him a friend. Yet he was telling this story to us with the assurance that this was still the right thing to do. It seemed that the old man and his friend were collateral damage for a church that was going places. The other thing that struck me was that no-one in our cohort (including me) spoke up and challenged this. As young leaders we drank it up, accepting it as gospel.

As ministers, we want to feel successful and to be seen to be successful. We want others to know that we’re leading a church that’s flourishing and bursting at the seams. We intuitively know that it’s not enough anymore to be faithful to Christ; we must now be recognised by others as being successful. All for the gospel, of course.

Yet the elephant in the room is that many churches – perhaps most – are still not growing, despite the best efforts of ministers and ministry staff. Many churches, despite following the right mathematical equation for church success, may even be in decline. After many years of training ministers in the finer points of pragmatic ministry success, are many of our churches more successful?

This obsessive focus on success in ministry leaves a long (and often hidden) trail of carnage behind it. The church growth movement has over-promised. The weight of expectations can be a crushing burden for ministers, and many ministers struggle with lingering feelings of insecurity and failure. As Bonhoeffer notes, the visionary dreamer who fails either blames his congregation, God, or himself. For many ministers, it seems that the only way out of this is to keep pushing and trying harder. This invariably leads to pastoral burn out, depression, anxiety, and a lack of joy in ministry.

Moreover, insecure Christian leaders can so easily take their insecurity out on others, including their staff teams and congregations. Insecure leaders demand success from those around them. Bullying is an emerging problem in ministry teams, and I can’t help but feel that our unhealthy obsession with success in ministry is a significant factor. The Christian author and therapist K.J. Ramsey writes: ‘Spiritually abusive churches and leaders don’t set out to be abusive. They set out to be amazing.’

Many church goers are also sick and tired of the latest fads (including the 5Ms) adopted by their church leaders. They’re exhausted by lofty strategic plans, vision statements, and absurd numerical goals. They’re tired of feeling like they exist, and serve, and turn up to church each week, only to help the minister/s look more successful.

There’s an objectification that happens when success is the goal; people in the pews rightly come to recognise that they’re no longer loved for who they are, but because of what they do for the church. That is, they sense that they’re a part of an agenda, and many church members understandably grow to resent it. They’re tired of all this, not because they hate the gospel, but because they have the spiritual maturity to recognise the spiritual vacuousness of what they see and hear. They want to swim in deep spiritual waters, yet every week they’re thrown into the kiddie pool of pragmatism.

I suspect that some may respond to this article by questioning my own commitment to The Great Commission. Let me assure you that I certainly do long for and pray for people to be saved! Yet, the Church Growth movement has become so ubiquitous, that imagining a different kind of church seems almost impossible.

It’s interesting that in Jesus’ letters to the seven churches in Revelation chapters 2-3, church growth and church size are never mentioned. Instead, the churches are critiqued for forsaking their first love (Ephesus), for syncretism (Pergamum), for tolerating evil (Thyatira), for being spiritually dead (Sardis), for being self-sufficient, prideful, and lukewarm (Laodicea). Conversely, churches are commended for enduring afflictions (Smyrna), and enduring patiently (Philadelphia). Christ’s letters in Revelation 2-3 give us more than a hint about what our Lord Jesus cares about when it comes to church health. Clearly, it has nothing to do with feeling or looking successful, effectiveness, metrics, strategic plans, or following the latest ministry fad.

Revd Matt Paterson is the Assistant Minister at St John’s Anglican Church, Darlinghurst, Sydney. Prior to that, Matt and his wife planted a church in inner-city Sydney.