Have a laugh at your own mistakes

There are plenty of stupid things that church leaders can do, and Geoff Surratt does his best to remind them of this in his book Ten Stupid Things that Keep Churches from Growing: How Leaders Can Overcome Costly Mistakes. Each chapter ends with a set of questions called an “IQ Test”, so that the church’s whole leadership team can sit around and use them to explain to the pastor in detail just how stupid he or she is.

The ten stupid things, each of which occupies a chapter in the book, are: trying to do it all, establishing the wrong role for the pastor’s family, providing a second-rate worship experience, settling for low quality in children’s ministry, promoting talent over integrity, clinging to a bad location, copying another successful church, favouring discipline over reconciliation, mixing ministry and business, and letting committees steer the ship.

There are no prizes for having done all ten stupid things, perhaps because there would be too many winners. This is a light-hearted book with plenty of underlying serious wisdom. Not everybody will resonate with the author’s style of humour, although I personally laughed and laughed as I read. I found the book to be both helpful and easy to read.