Science documents that expectations play a powerful role in laying the groundwork for success.

Good parents know this.

If we expect nothing of our children, they are likely to fail. Expecting failure takes less effort.

If we expect great things, we go to work for our kids. We cheer for them and help to create the conditions for success. We are not surprised when they change the world.

The same science works on adults and in communities. Jesus did his best to build up the people he encountered. He loved them. He showed them he understood them. He challenged them. He gave them the opportunity to fail. He showed them how to pick up the pieces and try again. That’s the training by example that he gave his disciples.

Many church leaders today have given up on the Church. They look through the statistics and see declining attendance, membership, and giving. So sad. Too bad.

A prevailing attitude among today’s church leaders is to accept failure as the norm. Bishop Burkat even recommends doing nothing to help small churches in her book, Transforming Regional Bodies.

The malaise is contagious—and deadly.

Redeemer will never forget Bishop Burkat’s first visit to Redeemer in December 2006. Bishop Burkat likes to claim publicly that she worked hard with our congregation for an extended period of time to no avail. This is what really happened.

It was a study in the power of low expectations, fueled by prejudice.

She walked into our Fellowship Hall. Gloom filled the room.

No bishop had visited Redeemer to talk with our leaders in nearly a decade. In 1997, Bishop Almquist came to break the 18-month term call (contract) he had made with us and one of his staff members just three months earlier. We were bitterly disappointed. (Bishop Burkat likes to claim that Bishop Almquist worked long and hard with us, too, but he was largely absent and he confiscated a sizeable amount of our money for two years.)

We went without a pastor for a year after that and for most of the following decade. Our lay leaders had worked hard to find ministry solutions on our own with mixed success. Still, we were enthusiastic about our prospects, especially since things seemed to be poised for significant change.

The memory of synod’s abandonment was still fresh for our leaders if not for the many new people who had come to Redeemer. We weren’t sure what to expect from the newly elected bishop, whom none of us had met, but we came ready for a fresh start.

It didn’t take long to dash our hopes. Bishop Burkat greeted us with what sounded like a rehearsed string of criticism.

She walked into the equivalent of the living room of our home and complained that the place looked junky. “No visitor will want to return to a place that looks like this.”

We explained. Epiphany, a neighboring church whose building was condemned, had just moved their things out of storage and into our fellowship hall. We were trying to help our neighbors.

We moved on.

Next. “You have no parking lot,” Bishop Burkat noticed. “A church with no parking lot has little chance of survival.” Our Ambassador visits have proved that the size of the parking lot has nothing to do with attendance at worship, but we answered defensively.

We pointed out that parking at Redeemer had never been an issue. The school and library, which share our intersection are closed on weekends and in the evenings when most church activity takes place.

The conversation continued.

Churches have personalities, Bishop Burkat said, with the clear implication that Redeemer’s personality left something to be desired.

What could we say? We turned the attention to our ministry efforts. We talked enthusiastically about the number of East Africans who were showing an interest in our congregation and the multi-cultural environment that had been fostered by one of our part-time pastors. We wanted to continue in this promising direction.

Bishop Burkat said a puzzling thing, “You are not allowed to do outreach.”

Huh? Say that again.

We told the bishop that we were disappointed in SEPA’s treatment of our ministry and very hurt that Bishop Almquist terminated our call agreement for his own convenience. That was a pivotal loss (by design, we think) for lay people to overcome, but we rose to the challenge.

The meeting ended abruptly. The bishop had a serious family emergency and we urged her to go to be with her family. Bishop Burkat promised to schedule a meeting in three to five months to talk about our concerns and try to heal some wounds. (Never happened,)

We sighed with relief when she was gone.  She exuded negativity. We were glad that only our key leaders were at that meeting. Her attitude would have dragged down the entire congregation. It would have undermined all the work we had done.

Our next encounter with Bishop Burkat, eleven months later, was similar. There were more people present. Redeemer had grown significantly during that 11 months of neglect, accepting 49 members! We came to that meeting with our recently completed 20-page ministry plan and with a resolution to call the pastor who had been serving us for about seven months.

Bishop Burkat began this meeting by ranting that Redeemer was “adversarial.” She used that word repeatedly in her opening statement. We still don’t understand her wrath!

The rant was undeserved. Only three of the thirteen people present had met the bishop before — two of us briefly, a year before. The third was the pastor we hoped to call who had been a member of her seminary class. All but two had joined the church within the last 10 years and knew nothing about ancient problems, which synod seemed ever-ready to resurrect.   

The meeting lasted more than two hours and we were able to turn the tone around, ending, we thought, on a very positive note. The bishop promised we could work with her newly appointed mission director, Rev. Pat Davenport. Our people began to sing a hymn together as we rode down the elevator and crossed the parking lot. We were excited and united.

And then NOTHING happened.

After four months of silence, including numerous unreturned phone calls, we all received letters from the Bishop announcing she was closing our church.

We wonder how many other churches have experienced such low expectations from leaders.

If this is how every church is treated, it is no wonder there is so little progress.

Our leaders have no faith in their message.

They don’t seem to care about or even like the people they serve. They don’t model their teachings about peace, repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, love, justice, humility, or transformation (though they talk about this a great deal).

Pastors and congregations soon begin to avoid the regional body. They may even fear it.

The only transforming that takes place is destructive.

What would happen if we expected success—if church leaders went into congregations and asked one question: “How can we help you serve?”?

What if pastors—and bishops—were held accountable?  

What if we believed in the message we preach?

All things are possible.