This Is Why Your Church Isn’t Growing (And It’s Not What You Think)
There’s a simple yet overlooked reason why your church may not be growing.
It is because you are exerting a ton of energy working in your ministry, and not on your ministry.
First of all, when I say you are working in the ministry, I mean you’re spending the bulk of your time doing the everyday church work: preaching, praying, visitations, leading services, counseling, and running programs. You’re busy doing the ministry itself.
Working on the ministry, however, means you’re building and improving how the church runs. You’re pouring your energy into training and coaching your ministry leaders, planning your preaching calendar ahead of time, creating a clear path for how new guests can become disciples of Jesus, and so on. You’re making the ministry stronger, healthier, and more sustainable.
WHY DOES THIS EVEN MATTER? 3 REASONS.
1. You won’t always be there.
There will come a time when you might fall sick for longer than a week or desperately need a break from ministry for an extended period. Working on the ministry, by building what’s known as church systems, allows someone else to step in and pick up where you left off, without chaos, because you’ve created a structure and plan in place. It quite frankly is also one of the easiest ways to multiply the impact of your church.
Listen, your ministry should not collapse because you are not around or because you are dead. That’s how you end up with the situation in the book of Judges, where it says, “everyone did what was right in their own eyes.” Moses gave them the law and trained Joshua to carry on the mission after he died. Joshua did the same too. Judges 2:7 says, “The people served the Lord throughout the lifetime of Joshua and of the elders who outlived him and who had seen all the great things the Lord had done for Israel.”
So, it turns out it was the leadership team Joshua had trained that failed to plan for the next generation. You could say they focused on working in the ministry, but not on the ministry. This may be hard to hear for some of you pastors, but if your church can’t survive without you, then it’s not built on Christ, it’s built on your personality.
2. Your team needs to know what to do without calling you every 10 minutes.
In our pastoral training course on burnout, this has been identified as one of the main external factors contributing to burnout. People in our churches seem unable to make decisions without calling the pastor every 10 minutes. But face it, that’s not their fault. It is because we trained them to rely on us for every decision.
Working on the ministry and building systems will allow them to know: for these issues, call this person; for thatissue, here are the three steps to take, and so on. It’s not just about putting a notice on the church bulletin wall, it’s about creating a church where people actually practice it.
Be careful if you’re the only one responsible for making decisions in your church, otherwise, your people will forget how to think.
3. God is a God of order.
The very creation He made has structure and system. God didn’t just create pretty trees, He created fruit-bearing seeds so that when they fall to the ground and are planted, they can reproduce. That’s a system. Your body is a system. So is the Church.
When Jesus walked the earth, He didn’t just preach and heal, He discipled and raised up other men to carry on the work long after He was gone. He replicated Himself (the work of the Gospel) by delegating His authority to His disciples. If Jesus could delegate the Great Commission (as important as it was), then, dear pastor, you too can delegate that upcoming event you’re holding on so tightly to.
HOW DO YOU KNOW IF YOU’RE WORKING IN YOUR MINISTRY INSTEAD OF ON IT?
Here are 4 signs to pay attention to:
First-Time Visitors Aren’t Returning
On any given Sunday, you may have a handful, or a dozen first-time guests walk through your church doors, but the following week, they don’t return. No follow-up. No next step. No relationship formed? If this is happening, the problem isn’t always your style of preaching or even the atmosphere. Often, it’s that there is no clear assimilation path, a system that helps newcomers move from visitor to church family.
Yes, plan an engaging service with strong preaching, and no, don’t make your church service five hours long. Atmosphere matters, but your energy shouldn’t only go to the service. Jesus was an engaging preacher. Miracles happened during His meetings, but He didn’t just focus on the crowd experience. He called individuals by name, invited them to follow, and showed them where they belonged.
If this language and tone of creating church structures and systems makes you feel uncomfortable, please understand that systems don’t replace the Spirit, they create space for the Spirit to work consistently through people. A great worship service may impress people, but a great system helps them stay and grow.
You’re the answer to everything
If your leadership team and volunteers constantly come to you for direction, it’s likely because you trained them to. In so doing, you’re not empowering a team, you’re just maintaining control, and that, my friend, is a recipe for burnout.
Remember what Moses’ father-in-law, Jethro, told him? “What you are doing is not good… you will wear yourself out.” (Exodus 18:17–18). Leadership without delegation is not biblical faithfulness, it’s ministry overload.
Working on the ministry means building decision-making structures, clarifying roles, and creating leadership pipelines so others can grow, and you can breathe. Listen, if you are the only one leading your church and the only one with a map for where it is heading, then don’t be surprised if your church gets lost without you.
You Don’t Know What You’re Preaching Until Friday
If your sermon is determined week by week and you don’t know what you're preaching until Thursday or Friday… that’s a clear sign of system failure. Now, of course, there will be weeks when you need to shift plans last minute, that’s okay. Ideally though, you should have a preaching calendar visible on your wall or team planner that outlines themes at least three to six months ahead.
Some pastors say they don’t plan ahead because they don’t want to “cage” the Holy Spirit. My brothers, preaching calendars don’t lock God out, it stewards your energy, aligns your team, and builds discipleship momentum. Contrary to what you are feeling, the Holy Spirit isn’t threatened by your planning, He’s just waiting to breathe on it.”
Volunteers Keep Burning Out or Dropping Out
The fourth sign is that you have a high volunteer turnover. In other words, your volunteer teams are either burning out or dropping out. A high turnover in your volunteer teams usually reveals one of two things: either you’re overworking the willing, or you never gave them a clear, life-giving role in the first place.
When people don’t know what’s expected, don’t feel trained, and don’t see growth, they disengage. Jesus didn’t just call His disciples; He trained them, sent them, and gave them space to fail and learn. That’s what a good system does: it turns volunteers into ministry partners by setting expectations, providing training, and celebrating growth. If you are losing volunteers at your church, it’s not because they’re lazy, it’s more than likely because they’re lost in your system (or even worse, you don’t have one!)
So now that we have clarified all that, let’s go back to the question that started this all.
HOW CAN PASTORS BEGIN WORK ON THEIR MINISTRY TO CREATE LONG TERM SUSTAINABILITY AND GROWTH?
1. Build Leaders, Not Just Schedules
Many pastors spend hours planning services, prepping sermons, and organizing events, but little time building the people who will outlast those events. Working on the ministry starts when you prioritize leadership development pipelines: identifying, equipping, and releasing others to lead.
Remember, Jesus didn’t just perform miracles, He multiplied leaders. He sent the 72 out before the resurrection and gave them authority to act on His behalf. Paul told Timothy, “Entrust what you’ve heard to faithful men who will teach others also” (2 Tim. 2:2). If you want to grow your church, don’t just think in terms of just adding more services or a second location. Think in terms of multiplying disciples!
2. Create Systems That Make Discipleship Predictable
Discipleship isn’t just an altar call or a random small group. It requires a clear pathway, a step-by-step paththat helps people move from visitor → connected → committed.
Working on your ministry means asking yourself: If someone visits this Sunday, do they know what to do next? And do we know how to help them grow?
Maybe your first-time guests get a small welcome gift, something warm like puff-puff or tea. Then you invite them to a midweek prayer meeting. At that prayer meeting, they see a list of small groups they can join. When they find a small group, the leader can invite them to serve on a team. That’s a discipleship path clear, relational, repeatable.
Even Jesus had intentional steps: the crowd, the committed, the twelve, and the three. It wasn’t favoritism, it was formation. When you systematize spiritual growth in your church, you increase fruitfulness, but if you can’t even describe how your church makes disciples, then it probably isn’t making any.
3. Align Your Calendar with Your Calling
Many pastors are busy, but not effective. That’s usually because their calendar is filled with urgency notstrategy. Working on the ministry means creating rhythms, like a preaching calendar, planning days, and review sessions, that ensure the church isn’t just moving, but moving in the right direction.
God created the world with a rhythm: six days of work, one day of rest. Jesus lived by rhythms of retreat, teaching, healing, and prayer. In Acts, the apostles said no to waiting tables so they could say yes to prayer and the Word (Acts 6:2–4). Please hear me on this, if you don’t plan out your schedule, there are 101 people in your church and around it who have clear ideas on what you should fill it with! If you don’t make your schedule serve your calling, it will slowly strangle it.
ONE LAST THING:
While systems and working ON your ministry is important, there’s another layer many pastors overlook: You also need to work on your own soul.
The reality is that your ministry, your family will be impacted by an overflow of whatever is going on in the secret departments of your heart. At the end of the day, the people you lead will imitate not just what you say, but who you truly are! If that strikes a nerve, it should, because I believe it’s true for every pastor, including you.
That’s why I wrote a book just for you.
It’s an upcoming New Release called, UNSEEN BATTLES: The Urgent Need for Soul Care in the Private Struggles of Ministry.
Some battles you face as a pastor will never be understood by your church members. Sometimes, even your family doesn’t know the secret burdens you carry. Yet, every Sunday, when you show up in Church for service, there is an expectation that you should be filled with anointing, there should be a smile on your face, a prayer ready on your lips and a blazing fire in your spirit that you are ready to pour out. When the truth is, there are some Sundays when you are so mentally and emotionally tired, you don’t even want to be in church!
Sometimes, as a pastor, you may not even be sure what is going on in your mind, you just know that there is a disconnection between what you should be and how you feel. Sometimes, this may be due to internal factors like, hidden addictions, compassion fatigue, chronic envy and comparison of yourself to other pastors/churches. Other times, what you’re experiencing is due to external factors like, burnout, lack of clarity and vision, or marital strain in your own home
This book pulls back the curtain on the private wars pastors face in a raw and honest way, with fictionalized real-life stories, and biblically grounded reflection. It also offers pastors a lifeline and a clear path to experiencing joy in ministry through deep, Spirit-led Soul Care.
My goal with this book is to remind you that before you were called to be a preacher, you were called to be a beloved son, and the healing of your soul still matters to Jesus. If you’re a pastor or ministry leader, this book is what your soul has desperately been longing to read but didn’t even know to ask for.
