Over the course of his entire career, NBA legend Larry Bird hit 649 3-pointers. Famous for being one of the most deadly long range shooters in the game, he was reported to have shown up to the 3-point contest and asked "Which one of you is coming in second?" For perspective, the 2016-17 Houston Rockets hit 1,181 3-pointers, breaking the 15-16 Warriors record of 1,077. The style, nature, pace, flow, and analysis of the game has completely changed. Bird's season high was 90 made 3-pointers, which would put him 8th just on the Rockets.

What can we take from an obscure basketball stat for churches and leadership? I believe the biggest takeaway is that growth and change are linked together. Churches that find themselves on the slow tick towards death are churches that aren't growing. They're also churches that are unwilling to embrace change. Not the superficial changes we usually think of, like music style or branding. But the philosophical, deeply-rooted change that affects a church's DNA.

I sat in a crowded room interviewing for a student ministry position when a question came from the back "What are you going to do to get our youth group back to the way it was?" My response was simple: "I'm not." What that person, and later I learned the entire church, wanted was to recapture the magic in the bottle that had happened 10-20 years before. They wanted to relive those glory days. But those days were long gone. The people who were part of that had moved on, the community had changed, the leadership had changed. But by trying to relive the glory days (including singing the exact same songs they had for 20 years) they couldn't see why their efforts weren't working.

Whenever there's growth, change will happen - You can't escape it, if you bring new people in they're going to have new backgrounds, new experiences, new baggage, new ideas, new gift sets, etc. One thing we're often too guilty of in churches is demanding that new members acquiesce to who we are, rather than adopt them into a family dynamic. When you start seeing young families attending, there will be an increased emphasis on next generation ministry. New leadership will bring their personalities and giftedness into their position. Most visible is the music ministry - It never ceases to amaze me that churches are aghast when worship leaders do things different than the previous guy, especially if there's an age gap between them.

Change is a two-way street - The other day I tried getting a shirt on one of my kids that they loved (and had picked out). When my wife came in she saw that the shirt was way too small. Rather than adjust to his growth, I tried making it work. A lot of churches, and leaders, do this when they fail to adapt to the rhythms of a local congregation. Leaders who try to replicate whatever they did in a previous assignment are no different than a toddler who tries to hammer the square peg into the round hole. Every context is different. So the nature of change has to work both ways. A leader has to be willing to embrace making adjustments and changes just as much as a congregation should. After a few weeks I had a church member approach me and ask why I didn't preach from the Bible. I was floored and said "Well I do, I keep it and all my notes on my iPad." Lovingly, he shared that it gave a bad impression, so the next week I made sure to have a Bible (and my iPad) on the platform. Something small like that made a big impression and was a big deal.

Yesterday was our quarterly Membership Orientation, and I had one person there. On the surface, that'd be disappointing. Putting in time and effort to coordinate a meal, space, materials and resources is a lot of work. But beyond the surface, behind what's visible, is a really beautiful picture of ministry: one.

We lead one at a time. When you're sitting with a prospective member who's excited about what's going on, who has a love for the Lord, who has a desire to jump in and serve, it's a nice reminder that God's up to something all around us. So rather than seeing it as a "waste of time" I came away from that lunch excited about who God has been bringing to us, and the joy from hearing her testimony of God's work in her life. Coolest fact: she got saved at a Billy Graham crusade and found a church "because Billy said to find a church that preached the Bible."

We lead one at a time when we invest in a hurting family. I never believed in the "ministry of presence" until I became a pastor and made ICU and hospice visits. My training is in words, but more important was me being there. We're leading by loving, by serving, and by hurting with those families.

We lead one at a time when we disciple. I wish it worked like a factory, where we could mass produce disciples like Apple makes phones. But it's not mass produced, it's organic. That means you can only do it one at a time. I look back with gratitude at the guys who discipled me over the years. They gave their time and energy. And when we disciple others, we're leading them well.

We lead one at a time when we cast vision. Vision doesn't happen from the platform (although it's important to communicate regularly), it happens as we have conversations in the hallway, over lunch, on visits, and more. That's when we share what God's put on our hearts, how we've sensed His leadership in the church, and what the future can hold if we'd trust Him enough.

We lead one at a time when we're preaching/teaching. When you look out to the crowd, hopefully you don't just see faces. Hopefully you're seeing stories, people who need a word from God that morning, people who are longing for hope, who are teetering on a decision to follow Christ, or more. I'm not saying you tailor your message to Sally or Fred, but as you're preparing and something jumps out because you're dealing with a person or issue related to your passage, pray for wisdom and grace and boldness and compassion as you share. This past Sunday I spent some time sharing about letting anger go, knowing there were several who I'd talked with with long-reaching grudges or past hurts.

​How else do you lead one at a time?