Harnessing the Big "M" (Momentum) by Dale Galloway

The New York Central Railway Company claimed that its largest locomotive thundering down the tracks at top speed, could crash through concrete five feet thick. That same train on public display was held in place by a one-inch block. What made the difference? Momentum.

When sufficient momentum swells in a church, the congregation becomes unstoppable. The members believe God for the impossible. They become excited about bringing their neighbors into the life of Christ's Body. They find great spiritual joy in being involved in a cause that's greater than the humdrum activities of daily life.

How to Identify It

Momentum is a belief that transcends the everyday into the extraordinary. According to Alan Nelson, "Momentum is often like the magical pixie dust that transforms ordinary people into superheroes, and otherwise mundane events and activities into divine phenomena."

Momentum originates in the power of the Holy Spirit. It is the result of the whole church's buying into a positive attitude of faith.

There's a certain mystery about momentum, just as there is about the Holy Spirit. Yet most leaders can quickly recognize when they have momentum and when they don't — even if they're not quite sure how it got there!

How to Create It

Leaders must not only understand momentum but also know how to create it. Heb. 11 provides a vivid illustration of how to produce faith-building momentum: You center on marvelous things that God has done and will do. Similarly, a Christian can't read the Book of Acts without being caught up in the momentum of something great happening in the Church.

Faith is seeing something before it becomes reality. Without that kind of vision, you won't have momentum. Similarly, without passion for souls, you'll lack momentum. If you focus on negative circumstances and all that's wrong, you'll look in vain for momentum.

Instead, a pastor generates momentum by keeping the church focused on what God wants to do, not by getting bogged down in the junk. In other words, see it big and keep it simple.

The leader is the person able to focus the congregation on God and what God wants to accomplish. Elmer Towns says, "When they buy into your dream, they buy into your leadership."

As a leader, you have to be more like a thermostat than a thermometer. A thermometer simply measures, but a thermostat sets the climate. A church leader functions as a thermostat by

• Casting a vision of faith
• Focusing people on God
• Sharing testimonies of what God is doing
• Helping people live in positive expectation of future events planned for their church
• Being enthusiastic about everything God has done to date
• Believing God for the impossible in the future

As a leader, be optimistic. Express enthusiasm. Plant dreams in the spirit of your congregation. Spark fires in members' hearts. Lead them into further positive experiences by putting "wins" under their belts. As you equip people for ministry along the way, you will build momentum.

Certain times of the year, such as Easter and Christmas, readily lend themselves to creating momentum. Church milestones and corporate spiritual victories can also provide launchpads for producing momentum.

When I was pastoring, I looked year-round for fresh ways to spark momentum. If I couldn't find an immediate example, I'd simply state, "This is the First Church of Where It's Happening." As a result, during my pastoral experience of 32 years, only about 3 or 4 years were not characterized by momentum.

How to Build It

Leaders understand and consciously build momentum. You build and multiply it by centering on the positive and ignoring the negative.

When Margi and I started New Hope Community Church, we had no people, no money, and no building. We met rain or shine in an outdoor drive-in theater, preaching on top of the snack shack roof and trying to sing along with
prerecorded organ music that was regularly miscued by one of our previously unchurched helpers. (Since he had never been to church before, he couldn't recognize songs by their tunes.)

We could have talked about what we didn't have, but instead we emphasized what we had: lives being transformed. There's nothing like a changed life to build momentum. Celebrative worship also helps build momentum. Small group community likewise helps build it. Spiritual happenings create strong momentum. So do statements of faith like "Someday God is going to . . ."

If you want to build momentum, get your people praying. Fill your sermons with positive affirmations like "Nothing is impossible with God." Then watch how God uses that environment to build confidence in what He will do through you.

Momentum, like a snowball, feeds on itself, picking up more and more ground as it moves along. The excitement about church bubbles over as your people bring more people and those newcomers introduce the church to their friends.

Leaders are perceived to be better than they are when they have high momentum and worse than they are when they have low momentum. When you don't have momentum, the stuff of life tends to take over.

How to Use It

"Momentum to an organization is like adrenaline to the human body," says Alan Nelson. It helps you turn corners and handle surprises that might otherwise cause trauma and insurmountable hurdles.

Once leaders know how to create and build momentum, they can use it to bring about needed change. For instance, successfully relocating a church or changing the style of worship is impossible without momentum.

I currently worship at Southland Christian Church, a thriving congregation in Lexington, Kentucky. The new senior minister, Mike Breaux, whose respected predecessor Wayne Smith had been there 40 years, hit the ground running when he came. During his first year he implemented many changes designed to make it more seeker-friendly. Both the worship and the preaching styles went through major adjustments.

This newcomer from Nevada, with the blessing of the previous minister, was successful in the transition because he had the momentum. The church was excited and attendance increased. "Momentum is the greatest of all change agents," says author and communicator John Maxwell.

One of Robert Schuller's books is called Peak-to-Peek Principle. It describes building on one point and from there using the ground gained to stretch for the next peak. This approach enables maximum stewardship of momentum.

Similarly, John Maxwell wrote a book called Success Journey. One of its implications is that if you get a church living together to build a dream, you'll have positive momentum.

How to Kill it

Momentum is no respecter of church size or church finances. If you're not a good steward of momentum, you lose it. With momentum, people follow the leader. They're excited and bring other people. Without it, they hesitate, become distracted, and too often become critical. Momentum dies when people lose confidence in a leader.

In smaller churches, one major problem can distract everyone's focus, while in larger churches it's hard for one issue to kill forward progress. Instead, only when five or six problems come together in a short period of time will momentum be negatively affected. In bigger churches momentum is like a big ship; it may be slow to gain speed, but it's hard to stop once it starts moving.

When you don't have momentum, people will center on insignificant things. Bad attitudes become more predominant, people's problems grow bigger, and people pick on each other as well as the pastor.

Success is an unending process. Whenever a church thinks it has arrived, the momentum will slacken. If you're living on yesterday's successes, your momentum is dying and you don't even know it.

How to Bridge It

In the early 1970s, a pastor I knew went through a tragic divorce. Yet that year ended with the highest attendance and conversion gain that this 75-year-old church had ever experienced. How was this possible? All the momentum built from previous years took several months to be killed by the fallout from the marital breakup.

Ken Blanchard's book Mission Possible talks of CEOs living in two worlds: improving the present paradigm now while also living in the future, creating the new paradigm.

Effective pastors today must learn to live in both worlds, improving the present world while planning for the future one. Start where you are and be realistic. At the same time expect great things from God and do great things for Him. You will be surprised by all that can happen as you build confidence in what God is
going to do.

___________________

Excerpted by permission from On-Purpose Leadership by Dale Galloway with Warren Bird (Beacon Hill Press, 2001).

Click here to learn more about this and other resourses.

___________________

Dale Galloway is Dean of the Beeson International Center for Biblical Preaching and Church Leadership and of the Beeson Institute for Advanced Church Leadership, both at Asbury Theological Seminary in Wilmore, Kentucky.