I help churches navigate change. As a Transforming Church consultant, I meet with leaders of churches and non-profit organizations across the country and help them through a journey of discovery, vision clarity, personal transformation, and community impact. No matter how diverse their situations, they share one thing in common: they all struggle to admit certain truths. Here are five of them that, once understood, may set you free:

1. It's okay to say no.

We have made church too complicated. We do too much. We expect too much from people, who are busy and overloaded.

Even the best church can do only five things well. Every organization, whether it is a non-profit or a church, starts with one or two things in mind. As our organizations grow in size and complexity, we have a tendency to be less focused on the original intent. We keep adding things until the organization is so bogged down it can't help but be ineffective and slow to change.

For most churches these are the "Big 5": Worship, Teaching, Small Groups, Kid's Ministry, and Student Ministry. Before I start working with a church, they'll send me a huge list of things the church is doing. They wear this list as a badge of honor. But, the longer the list, the more work there is to do. As part of the process we guide them through an exercise called "Ministry Alignment." This process is designed to evaluate each ministry to see if it fits the church's core values, mission and vision. If it does not, we help them either reinvent it so it does align, or we help them do what Peter Drucker called "Planned Abandonment."

Knowing the church's main objectives helps to prioritize their budgets, their leaders and their facilities. The more aligned the church is with their core values and mission, the more productive and efficient they will be.

But culturally, we Americans don't know how to say no. The first church I was on staff with had a difficult time saying no. This was especially true when it came to the Wednesday night prayer meeting. Thirty years ago this meeting was a full-blown church service. The Senior Pastor preached, the choir sang, people were baptized. As times changed so did most of the church. The Wednesday schedule evolved to reflect these changes with one exception—the prayer meeting. By the time I began my internship at the church, there was only a small group still attending the prayer meetings, and the average age was well over sixty-five. I will never forget my first day leading this group. I walked in and one man asked me who I was. When I told him I was the new Wednesday night guy, he immediately asked when the Senior Pastor would be returning to lead it. It was an uphill battle from there.

Even as a young, inexperienced intern I knew the reason the prayer meeting was still going on was that no one had the leadership clarity and ability to say no. Instead it limped on. This small band of people had such great potential to be engaged in more meaningful ways. While we met in a small back room, there were hundreds of kids in another part of the building gathering for AWANAS. They were always in need of more people to care for kids, listen to them recite memory verses, and provide them with love and support. With a greater clarity of vision for these kids, I believe those prayer meeting folks could have been utilized to a much greater degree and at the same time been re-instilled with a feeling of value and purpose in their service to the church.

2. It's okay to have uninvolved people.

Many churches use the 80/20 rule and think, "We've got 20 percent of our people doing 80 percent of the work, and that's not right!" But this is a fallacy. It doesn't take 100 percent of your people to do what you do; about 20 percent of the group really can do most of it.

And that's good, because the mission of the church is much bigger than what happens inside the walls.

In many churches, though, a member who spends most of her time working with, say, Habitat for Humanity doesn't get counted, acknowledged, or rewarded for her service. Instead, she's seen as part of the 80 percent; she's too busy to help with the church's junior-high kids.

Leadership is not about finding more volunteers. It is about mobilizing people for ministry. However, most of the time, we are not focused on empowering people. We are managing people. We give them responsibility with no authority, and we give them only limited access. When someone wants to get involved in a church, they typically look at all the church has to offer and determine where they might fit. They jump in with both feet, and serve for a while until they realize that there is no real sense of ownership or the role they are filling is not a good fit. Then they quietly bow out, never to engage again and we view these people as the unengaged 80 percent.

When we empower people to lead in ministry, it doesn't matter if they do ministry within the church or the community. Both are equally valuable and important.

3. It's okay not to grow numerically.

We equate church health with church attendance. But if your church is in a high-turnover community, it might be a smashing success to stay level. There have been several churches we've worked with that struggled to sustain numerical growth. They see a lot of people come and go. For the church's leadership this has been frustrating and disappointing. Once we completed an assessment review, however, we discovered that their ministry was highly effective. They were reaching unchurched or dechurched people. They were seeing lots of people come to know Christ. They also happened to be reaching people that were highly transient.

Frontline at McLean Bible Church is one such ministry. They are located near the heart of Washington D.C. They attract thousands of young adults who come to the Capitol to learn, intern, and serve. Many do not stay in D.C. for long. The cost of living is high and the job opportunities are temporary. While Frontline is growing, it also loses a large portion of people when they move away. This same scenario is true for other church's that are successful in reaching college students and young adults. Often times the ministry wants people to come in the front door and stay. When they don't, the criticism of "losing people out the back door" is used. In reality, ministry to certain groups of people takes place in front of the church and the people are on a moving sidewalk at varying speeds. You minister to them as they pass by.

Not all turn-over is bad. Some people leave to take a job in another city, some get married and move away, others feel a deep sense of calling to join another ministry. When our members discover another place to serve, the church should applaud and celebrate them even if it means that our numbers are not growing.

This is one reason it is so important to measure other aspects of church growth and ministry effectiveness. Other numerical indicators may be much better indicators of health. Consider, for example:
--percentage of attendees in small groups
--percentage of people engaged in ministry and service, whether inside or outside the church
--the number of people going on mission trips
--the number of people fed through a soup kitchen
--the dollars spent meeting needs of those outside the church

4. It's okay to appeal to people's emotions.

Almost any pastor could make an appeal for the church to help starving children, and raise $20,000. And that's because the need is so emotional.

People join a church not so much for rational reasons—no matter what they say—but for emotional reasons. We need to appeal to emotion. I don't ask a church, "What is your church's code?" to discover their core values, but "Tell me your favorite stories about your church. What is your greatest memory? What are some of your favorite services your church does?" By listening to stories, we discover what matters.

Motivational speaker Zig Ziglar said, "They may not remember what you said, but they will remember how you made them feel."

In the current economic downturn, we might make a financial appeal and say, "I know this may not be rational, but I'm speaking to your heart." People rarely give sacrificially because it makes sense. They give to things they believe in, things that inspire them. They give to places that help them engage in something bigger than themselves.

Several years ago, when I was leading a young adult church in Denver, the war in Albania and Kosovo broke out. We watched in horror as thousands of people fled to safety. With the help of a medical relief organization we decided to step up and sponsor the shipping of a 40-foot cargo container filled with relief supplies. The problem was it would cost $40,000 to ship the container. The church had an average age of 25 and our average weekly gift in the offering plate was about $7 per person. In one week we raised $40,000 from a room of 20-somethings not because it made sense, but because people were emotionally moved to do something.

5. It's okay to ask for help.

Churches feel comfortable getting help for designing a new building: they hire an architect or design firm. Most feel comfortable getting help for organizing and running a capital campaign. But it's harder for churches to accept they might need help for leadership development, for organizational strategy, for ministry practice.

In general, I've found that mainline churches find it easier to ask for help. Perhaps it's because many mainline churches have struggled with declining attendance in recent decades, they want to change. And their connections to larger bodies—synods, presbyteries, and so on—have accustomed them to tapping into outside resources.

Many evangelical churches, however, feel "It's the pastor's job to figure this out." A request for outside help, in their minds, is an admission of failure.

Trevor Bron is Senior Consultant with TAG Consulting, a transforming church consulting firm. He has experience as a church staffer and planter, business owner, event planner, entrepreneur and speaker. (www.TransformingChurch.net)