Pastor: Don't Be Afraid Of Average
Moneyball & Small Church Ministry
I’ll admit it: I know a lot of my friends in the States enjoy it, but baseball remains a mystery to me. I’ve watched a few games but have been left scratching my head to understand it. It seems like someone throws, someone hits it, and there’s running involved. However, I’ve come to realise that there is significantly more to it than that. Yet a few years ago, I watched the movie Moneyball and was intrigued at the approach outlined as the story developed. After rewatching it a few weeks ago with my two eldest sons, I think it can actually teach us something quite profound. I also learned that my two sons want to just watch movies, not hear my insights as a running commentary! Yet, the lesson I’ve learned has been noodling it’s way around my brain since I rewatched it. That in ministry, quiet, reliable faithfulness can outshine flashy, headline-grabbing skill. My biggest realisation is that this matters deeply to any of us who pastor small churches. If you haven’t read the book or seen the movie, let me explain…
In 2003, Michael Lewis told the story of a baseball team, the Oakland A’s, with one of the smallest budgets in the Major League Baseball, and their coach Billy Beane. If you love baseball, I’m about to murder all the terminology so forgive me! Instead of chasing after superstar players who hit home runs but cost astronomical fees, they poured over data to identify players who simply hit the ball consistently, got hit by balls (?!?), and didn’t command high wages. Week after week, they placed dependable, but ‘undesirable’ players in their lineup rather than betting everything on the rare home run hitter. They simple ‘got on base’ as the repeated line goes. You get on base 4 times; you get a run. Rather than have a guy who might hit the ball out of the stadium for millions of dollars, you get four guys that will nearly always get on their bases. I’m stretched now at my understanding of baseball – as I’m sure you can tell! At the end of the season, they finished with 103 wins, enough to challenge teams that spent five or ten times their wages and fees. And initially this shook the conventional wisdom of sport, that bigger always equals better. However, the lesson of Moneyball is clear; when you value fundamentals that many overlook, you can compete with, and sometimes outperform, teams that boast far greater resources.
We don’t need to study baseball to see how this principle applies in ministry. Perhaps you pastor a congregation of thirty or forty people in a small town. You know firsthand how tempting it is to look at churches that are filled and have seemingly endless resources. We scroll through our social media feeds and watch professional videos of churches bursting at the seams or hear about a church plant in a nearby city doubling in size in less than a year. It’s easy to wonder, “Is this where true ministry happens? Is my small church missing out on something?” “Am I failing?”
However, the Moneyball lesson invites us to ask a different set of questions. What would it look like if we invested in the unglamorous but vital practices that consistently advance the Gospel in our context? How many lives are shaped by our regular, behind-the-scenes work, praying for people in our churches, showing hospitality to the lonely, holding midweek gatherings to share God’s word together, nurturing emerging leaders, making home visits to elderly saints, and discipling people one-to-one? If we treat those ordinary practices as simple faithfulness, might we find that our ministry outperforms expectations over the long haul by God’s grace?
Chasing Spectacular Moments vs. Cultivating Consistency
When we chase big, spectacular moments we risk focusing on results that aren’t always sustainable. I’ve written about this before, but often we are overcome by the need to compare and compete, the drive to always get bigger and louder. But what if true, lasting growth happens when we commit to the same basic disciplines over and over? When we measure our own faithfulness by other people’s churches and ministries, we risk becoming discouragement. More often than not, faithful ministry grows under the radar. It’s in the ordinary, and perhaps routine ministry of presence; simply showing up, teaching the Bible, praying, and being in community with God’s people. That’s it in nutshell. It might be difficult but it’s not complicated? However, what we often hear from ‘experts’ and believe to be true is that there is a silver bullet, or a ‘way’ we need to follow. I’ve studied this a bit in terms of past exceptional leaders, but it also applies to churches too. There was a specific set of cultural, political, and social realities in place, as well as the grace of God, that birthed a Martin Luther, a Charles Spurgeon, a Billy Graham, a Martyn-Lloyd Jones. Likewise, with some of the huge churches, or movements that have taken place in the last 200 years. Trying to reverse engineer them is impossible and indeed quite foolish. Yet, I and many others have tried it! Partly because we want more.
Today as we sit here, we might pastor a congregation of thirty-five, not a thousand. Our budget and church size might not allow for an eight-person worship band and two camera angles. Instead, our “team” might consist of one volunteer who prints bulletins on an old printer that feels like it prints 5 pages every hour. Another who arrives early to set out folding chairs that look like they could collapse any minute. And a teenager who switches on a second-hand PA system that has three buttons missing. On its face, that seems “average” and underwhelming. Yet those volunteers are the beloved members of our church, each of them a “player” who consistently shows up, week after week, to do the small but essential tasks that make Sunday morning possible. Over time, we realise that they are the same people who take notice when a newcomer arrives, to smile and welcome them, who remember their name. They quietly embody the Gospel long before any sermon is preached. They are the very people God has chosen to make up the local church in your area, and it is unbecoming of us as pastors (I firmly include myself in this!) to view them as anything other than extra-ordinarily wonderful parts of Christ’s body in our church. So why do we often feel otherwise?
The Pull of “Above Average” in Our Hearts
Many of us feel pressure to be “above average” from the moment we step into ministry training. Many of us arrived at seminary convinced we would preach like Spurgeon or plant a network of churches within five years. When I started out in planting churches in Northern Ireland in the late 00s, someone said I could be the “Irish Mark Driscoll”. That was a badge that felt weirder as time went on! Yet it made sense to a young man who wanted to ‘be someone.’ We see this all over the place in Christianity. Conferences parade big-name speakers who speak from their successes, their ‘home runs.’ We scribble notes, fill our notebooks with five-year plans, and imagine ourselves standing in front of a huge mega-church, as we whisper to our peers, “That’ll be us in two years!” Then we return home to our small churches, with a seating capacity of one hundred, yet seeing 30 people on a ‘good’ Sunday. We feel deflated. We wonder: what did I miss? Why does my ministry look different from that guy? What am I doing wrong? I have mentioned this to many friends previously, but I really struggle with attending large conferences. Don’t get me wrong, they can be encouraging to many, but they often lead me to a sense of inadequacy. I attended a mega conference a few years ago in the US, and sat beside one church’s staff team that was bigger than my local church! It made me feel like I didn’t know what I was doing!
But before we let discouragement overwhelm us, let’s pause and ask. Do larger numbers always indicate deeper impact? Could there be value in counting the still, small gatherings. Could those unremarkable moments reflect a far more enduring Kingdom advance?
Evaluating Our “On-Base Percentage” as Pastors
Back to Moneyball again. I actually had to Google a few terms in watching the movie the first time, but then it started to make a bit more sense. Particularly when they talked about valuing on-base percentage over home runs. I’ve since realised that baseball is a game of statistics in which a ball gets thrown once in a while. But then I thought about what corresponds to “on-base percentage” in our context in ministry? I thought I’d maybe give a bit of an overview of what this looks like in my context.
Each morning, I set aside time, sometimes fifteen quiet minutes before I get up to do my Bible reading, and pray a few names on my Prayer app. I don’t post my reading on social media, although sometimes I do if the graphic on YouVersion is interesting. I don’t wake up to fanfare or even celebratory texts from people whose lives have been transformed by my ministry overnight. I wake up to three hungry sons, and drive them to school listening to a podcast that teaches theology in an age appropriate way. Yet, over weeks, months and years of this practice I’ve come to see how my soul has become tethered to God, and the people He has called me to shepherd. I get in touch with those who God has prompted me to pray for and let them know they were on my list today.
On Tuesday, I have finished the first draft of my sermon and then realise that it’s around 3.5hrs long! I try to figure out how I’m going to cut it down for quite a while as well as hoping that another cup of coffee will stimulate some thinking in this regard. I then get sent the songs we are going to sing this week from the person who leads the music, and realise in their choices they probably have a better grasp on the sermon than me at this stage! My wife has her first night shift of the week, and I have restless sleep because I decided to watch a TV show before bed and I’m dreaming of being kidnapped.
On Thursday mornings, my wife and I set the counter in our kitchen with mismatched mugs, a flask of coffee, and whatever biscuits we have around. We know that, at precisely 10:30am, people will arrive, and begin filing into our kitchen, avoiding our crazy dog, Abbie, who doesn’t like people and barks a lot. We pour our tea and coffee, go to our living room, and talk about what we learned about last Sunday’s sermon. Today we discussed how God welcomes those who are outsiders, those who are overlooked in society. Then we pray and hang around talking about how that very truth brought joy in a brand-new Bible study in another local town where we are praying through planting a church. Then I spill coffee on my t-shirt, and my dog decides she would like to start eating treats out of someone’s hand than listen to our conversation. We pray for one another and then chat about how God is working in our lives. We laugh at my shirt stain, and then all go our separate ways. These moments are invisible to the global church, but they bear eternal significance.
On Friday, my wife and I will go to our nearby city for a date. On the drive in we’ll make a deal to have a time where we don’t talk about church and share our lives together. Only for us to remember 15 minutes later over lunch that it’s the birthday of one of the kids from church in two days. We walk around to get them a gift, chatting about the church, and the administrative tasks that are frustrating us at the minute. We drive home and have takeaway food with our sons, and then watch silly movies that make us laugh.
On Saturday morning, we will pack bags for church and leave things on the counter for me to inevitably forget on Sunday morning. My kids will help their Mum cut out crafts as she is teaching the children on Sunday morning. This is after two shifts as a nurse, and countless hours loving the people of our church. I will bake the bread that we use for communion, praying over the people who will come and share in this beautiful moment in our service.
On Sunday morning, we will gather for church. We set up the room in the hotel, and then a few of us will gather around a table to pray for the service, those serving, and those who might be sick that day. We will worship with our family of faith, and I will preach, thankful that the Holy Spirit will translate it into a semi-understandable message. We will go home, I will crash on the sofa, and then we’ll spend the rest of the day together until the week rolls around again…
Redefining What “Average” Means
We often hear that small churches lack resources. That’s true, but the beauty I witnessed in the Moneyball story is that it doesn’t require resources beyond what we already have. We don’t need a huge budget, a big building, a fancy sound system, or a staff team. We simply need to recognise the power of ‘ordinary’ practices done consistently, and the ‘ordinary’ people that our extraordinary God has place in our churches by His grace and for His glory.
What does success look like, then? It looks ordinary. It looks like a couple of men who meet up regularly to study the Bible and pray together. It looks like a group of families who keep an extra meal in their home freezer in case someone is struggling. It looks like a few children who pack away the Bibles after church while being encouraged by the adults around them. It looks like people praying for one another at the end of a church service with tears over the sickness of a loved one. These aren’t things that we would dream of boasting about it in an Instagram post. In short, success looks like faithful stewardship of what we have been given. When we stop measuring our self-worth by attendance figures or ‘impact,’ something liberating happens. We no longer have to compare ourselves to pastors, ministries or other churches. Instead, we can open our Bibles in the morning, love our families well, meet with people through the week, and stand in the pulpit every Sunday to preach a simple, Scripture-based sermon.
And realise that this is enough!
We see that our ministry truly matters, perhaps not to the broader world, but to the family who hears about God’s grace because a meal appeared by their front door. Or to the teenager who gets invited to chop wood with an older man in church and is treated like a brother in Christ. Or to the elderly lady who is shut in all week, but receives communion in her home from a few members of the church who come and visit her. This is the ordinary church expressing God’s extraordinary love.
We ask ourselves then; Is this enough for me? Am I maintaining the daily rhythms, praying, visiting, studying, sharing meals, that align with God’s vision for small-church ministry? Am I celebrating the small wins, memorising verses of encouragement and noting how lives shift, even when no one else notices? Do I recognise that every reliable “single run” we produce is worth more, amid our limited resources, than a rare but fleeting “home run” that costs everything? When we answer “yes,” we see that our calling is precisely this; to be faithful in small things, to treat each one as if it matters for eternity, and to trust that in God’s economy, ordinary faithfulness is never wasted.
An Invitation to “Average” Ministry
Many of us deeply know the struggles of small church ministry, the feeling of not being or having enough. Yet it’s precisely in these modest settings that God chooses to work. He gives us a handful of volunteers, a small budget, and a small but faithful congregation. And then He invites us to invest these resources faithfully, week by week, sermon by sermon, meal by meal. What I’ve come to realise in Ireland, and indeed globally as I’ve travelled, that this is the norm in ministry. Nearly all of us as pastors are shepherds of small flocks. Yes, we know of large churches, read their books, listen to their podcasts. Yet, these often leave me feeling empty and negatively aspirational. But when I’m with a group of small church pastors, there’s something wonderful about the shared experience. The knowledge of what it’s like to play guitar badly, lead the service, and preach a sermon all because it’s the summer and those who normally do it are on holidays. The blessing (and challenges!) of having your kids as de-facto deacons. The struggles of renting a room in a busy co-working space when someone walks in looking for the toilet in the middle of a sermon. And understanding the proper theological, ecclesiological and missiological reality of stacking and putting out chairs.
I pray that I (and we!) will begin to embrace our “average” calling, not as something lesser but as a blessing. I pray that I will begin to measure our effectiveness not by flashy moments but by consistent acts of faith. I pray that I will celebrate every small win, a new volunteer serving, a visitor attending for the second time, a believer who invites a friend to Bible study, because those wins matter deeply in God’s Kingdom. We do not need a large budget, a famous speaker, or a book deal to see the hand of God at work. We need only obedience to our initial calling: to feed the hungry, visit the sick, teach the Word, pray without ceasing, and live out the Gospel among “ordinary” people. As we do so, God will multiply our modest “on-base percentage,” and over time we’ll see not only attendance grow but lives transformed, and future churches planted.
I pray that we would encourage one another to celebrate the quiet acts of faith that seldom make headlines but yield lasting fruit. Above all, let’s remember that in God’s economy, ordinary faithfulness is never wasted.
Hi Jonny... I really think it's time you compile all the wisdom you have been sharing about pastoring small churches into a book.
It will help a lot of people
Thanks for this, Jonny. I love Moneyball. Granted, I’m a big baseball fan. We actually watched it with our small group after planting Gospel Life Church in Minneapolis—for a lot of the same reasons you describe here. I’ve thought a lot about how counterintuitive Billy’s approach was to the baseball establishment. That final scene with the Red Sox owner always stuck with me: “The first guy through the wall always gets bloody, always. And every time that happens… the people who are holding the reins, who have their hand on the switch—they go crazy.” It’s made me think, how often does the way Scripture calls us to make disciples look and feel just as counterintuitive?