Law One
The Law of Seven Impressions

The first law of seven is called the law of seven impressions. It is the law that guides the pastor and church to find the people God wants them to reach. Is this the main focus of the church? Well, at least, having a congregation does keep the doors open and pay the pastor! One has to ask the question, “What is the purpose of today’s church?” If you look at Metro Church you would say, “It must be to feed the hungry.” On the other hand, Suburbia Church depends on having a strong Christian school to fulfill its role as a viable church. Northside has a great music program and Southside is sending young people all over the world on summer short-term missions.

Every church has some different emphasis. Which one is really doing the right task? The answer could be all of them and, possibly, none of them. You see, it is not what each is doing that is important, it is what God has called that church to do that makes the church successful. At this stage we are sim-ply talking about reaching the potential flock for that church. However, at some point we will have to ask why the church wants to reach them? You may say it is to “win the lost,” but is it? The budgets and programs of most churches do not reflect “winning the lost” as their priority.

How then do we find who it is God wants the church to reach? There are at least three impressions that not only answer these fundamental questions, but these three impressions contain the seven impressions that help understand this law. These three are (1) the impression the pastor has of himself; (2) the impression the pastor has of the church he feels called to pastor; and, (3) the impression the people have of that church.

The Impression the Pastor Has of Himself.

To find the congregation God wants him to shepherd, the pastor has to know something about himself. What has God called him to be? Is he to be an evangelist, a church planter (like the apostle Paul), a pastor to pastors (such as a denominational leader), or perhaps a teacher of pastors as in a college or seminary. Maybe the pastor is to oversee a flock of thousands in the mega church setting like Bill Hybles. Perhaps he is to be a pastor to the average American church, which is much less than two hundred?

The only way a pastor can find the answer to this question is through prayer and by learning how God has equipped him to be one of His shepherds.

Ephesians 4:11 makes it abundantly clear that the shepherds in charge of God’s flock are gifted differently. These equippers have five different titles: Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Pastors and Teachers. These titles suggest to most astute readers not five different names for one office but five differ-ent roles. Admittedly some have argued for four by saying that “pastor and teacher” could be one title. The point here is not to debate whether there are four or five roles but that there is more than one way to do the work normally done by the person we know today as “the Pastor.” These five not only have different giftings, but they have different equipping roles. A more complete comparison of these roles can be found in my book entitled Spiritual Gifts, Your Job Description From God.

The name given the shepherd in charge of today’s flock, “the pastor,” is very confusing for one who struggles with this traditional role. The title sug-gests that he should have all the characteristics of someone with the “pastor” gifts, but not everyone who is pastoring a church has these characteristics. He might love to win souls as the Evangelist but he may burn out in giving in-depth one-on-one counseling that the Pastor, as designated in Ephesians, is so gifted to do. What the man who is shepherding the church needs to under-stand is that he does not have to play all five roles nor does he have to do all of the equipping ministry of the congregation.

Today’s pastor should be one person on a team, not the whole team. Paul had a large team around him and Jesus even surrounded Himself with twelve. How then can today’s pastor expect to do the work of all five offices? Ephesians four tells us that these five offices were given as gifts to the church after Jesus ascended to heaven. The reason for these gifts was to continue the work Jesus had started.

If today’s pastor knows which one of the equippers he is, he can then place around himself those who will fulfill the roles of the rest of the team. By do-ing so, he can be the “pastor” God gifted him to be and not be forced into a mold he was neither called to nor gifted for. By using volunteers and staff, he can place in his church the rest of the needed and gifted equippers. So the pas-tor’s impression of who he is will greatly effect his ability to run the church and choose team members to help him. It will also effect the team or staff he has, and ultimately, the growth of the church.

The Pastor’s Impression of the Church.

Now we will point out one of the biggest weaknesses in the church. It is the impression the pastor has of the church God has called him to lead. Often pastors even question if they heard God correctly. Surely God did not mean for them to come to this church! If they had only known before they ac-cepted the call what they now know, they would never in a million years have said “yes.” One pastor in Ohio is a good example of such a quandary. After months of negotiating and then accepting a position, he drove up in his rented truck and unpacked all his furniture into the parsonage. That night the parishioners arrived with food to stock their new pastor’s pantry only to find that the new pastor and family had repacked their furniture back into the same rented truck and left.

Before a pastor accepts a church or starts a church, he must receive from the Lord a clear impression of what type of church God wants at that location. This requires not only hours on his knees but some diligent homework. For example, from the city planning department the pastor can request plat in-formation of a five mile area surrounding the new church. This information will give him demographics such as number of homes in that section of the city, the cost of those homes, the dollar amount of mortgages, the number of persons in that area, age, sex, race, education and income per capita and per household. Cities have to have this information to plan for growth and devel-opment.

Understanding the type of people living in the community helps the pastor know how to reach them. If his church is located in an affluent area, mailing out a mimeographed flyer will not work. Conversely, a slick, shiny, colored, Madison-avenue style advertisement would be just as ineffective in a lower income, inner city type community. The type of music and the style of preaching must also be planned to fit the people the church hopes to reach. The size and location of the ethnic or minority makeup of the community must be considered if such is to be an important part of the church’s pro-gram. Strong children and youth ministries will be ineffectual if the demo-graphics show that few in these age groups exist in the target area. Single par-ent programs might be the more important need in that area. An area with young families moving in would be more receptive to a telemarketing out-reach than would an older, more established, affluent area. Facts like these help the pastor realize what God wants the church to do, whom God wants the church to reach, and, many times, how to accomplish God’s purpose.

When the pastor has completed his homework in surveying the community, he must then study the makeup of his church. Who are his leaders and what are their gifts? How can he work with these already established, God-given leaders to build the church? What is the strongest program in the church? What makes it strong and what can be done to use this program to help in other areas of the church? How can the resources used to make this program strong be used to build a dynamic church without destroying the original strong program?

Many times pastors will see the weaknesses of a church and will immediately start trying to strengthen those programs. When they do this, they automati-cally take resources from an existing program and demand the same few peo-ple, who are already overloaded, to go in a completely new direction. Conse-quently, even the one strong program or the program the people are the most gifted at doing will suddenly become weak. If a church has a good music minis-try through an adult choir, then starting a children’s program will create ten-sion for those being involved in the choir. Instead the pastor who has re-searched his church and community and determines that a strong children’s program is needed will do better at developing such a program if he begins it with a children’s choir. This would not necessarily deprive the talented adult choir but would involve their similarly-talented children and motivate the adult choir into music at a deeper level.

The Impression the People Have of the Church

The impression the people have of the church is just as important as that of the pastor. It is the pastor’s responsibility to share with his congregation what his study of both the church and community reveal. They need to know whom they should be reaching and why. In the end the pastor has to narrow down his impression into one short, easy sentence that is easily shared with and caught by his congregation. The sentence needs to include the demo-graphics and strengths of the church. For example, “The Baptist church reaching the military,” “The North Metro church ministering to the home-less,” or perhaps “Young professionals making a difference in Detroit?” Ob-viously, the church in Detroit would need to have a strong young professional constituency along with being in a situation where they can reach and involve the same type of professional audience.

Now the pastor must market this vision to the church and community. Whether on the church’s letterhead, in the newspaper, in the bulletin, or over the air waves, this vision of what God has called the church to do must be made known. It is not enough for only the pastor to know about it. The church must know and so must the community. Many times churches and pas-tors are scared to do this. They feel that some people will be turned away if they target a limited few. This could happen but more people will come who are looking for a cause to follow and become excited about, than those who feel ignored and leave. Furthermore, remember that such a vision has devel-oped by studying the strengths of the majority of the constituents already in existence in the church.

Next the church will need to get this message to its targeted audience—to those it is trying to reach. The Baptists tell us it takes thirteen invitations to get the average person to attend Sunday School. Studies have show it takes four invitations to get a friend to attend a home meeting particularly if the person is your friend invited to your home. The real estate companies teach that it takes six impressions on a person about their company before that person will use that company. It normally takes seven impressions about a church before a person will come to that church.

The church will need to get this impression or a vision over to the community through whatever means possible. This “seventh impression” can only happen when the pastor has six other correct impressions: the impression of himself, of his team, of his church, of the strength of his church’s program, of his church’s constituency, and of his church’s community.

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