You Must Become Smaller

I would say succession is something that uniquely preoccupies my mind. I am the first, or the first in a long time, to do a lot of things on both sides of my family. And I am definitely a first-generation Christian. The changes I’m bringing to my family are things I want to last, and that goes for my community as well. So succession, for me, is about lasting change and growing change. Or, if you want to put it differently, it’s about a legacy that continues.

But there is an odd paradox at play that I’ve discovered. If a man’s legacy is to grow the right way, he will become a smaller part of it. Maybe an integral part, but still, what once was pages about him will, Lord willing, become a sentence or maybe two.

Let me explain. Take East River Church. In terms of the means God has used, East River exists because of me. I fell in love with church planting and the east side of Cincinnati right around 1998 or so and had long planned to end up over here doing exactly what I’m doing now. I did all the initial work and took all the initial steps. But even before the church launched, other people started getting involved.

Probably most central to those early days was David Pryor, who has long been my co-laborer and ministry partner. Emily and I decided that we would not go forward with the church plant if David and Becky wouldn’t join us. And they did. Immediately, the vision I had for East River broadened to include David and Becky’s personalities and gifts. He and I are both particular in our own ways, and one of the reasons East River has a very different vibe is because it’s not the product of a single individual.

As the church has grown and matured over the last six years, more and more people have become integral to it. More and more people are part of East River’s story. And while I may have been the one who got this thing started, I am not the one who keeps it going. There are a lot of us.

And if this church should achieve my hope, to be an intergenerational church that maintains its commitment to doctrinal orthodoxy in the place God put it, I will become a smaller part of its story. Thirty years from now, I will be retired or with the Lord. East River will be under the care of a different pastor. Maybe a couple of elders will remain who were there while I was there. But for most people, I will be, at best, a name that comes up in a membership class or something.

I don’t think that’s a failure. I think that’s success.

Succession requires that you sacrifice your hubris and ego so that something else can grow and involve other people. It is one of the great tests of whether something is about you or about others and the Lord.

There have been some high-profile failures in my theological circles over the last ten years or so, where one man, or a couple of men, pulled down an entire ministry when they fell. G3 seems to be an example of this. I don’t know all the facts about that, and I don’t really care to. But I am willing to go out on a limb and say they wanted a great legacy, yet they entangled it with themselves, and therefore it could never grow past them. They became their own limitation.

Sometimes the limitation isn’t a matter of size but longevity. You can build something very big and still have it all be about you. But it’s rare for those sorts of things to last very long.

So as I build a church, build a family, build a company, and build a legacy, I know one of the things that will help protect it is simply focusing on succession: preparing the next generation so they can prepare the next generation, who then prepares the next generation.

I do want to build big things, but that requires me to become a smaller part of them. And the more resigned I become to this, the easier it is to enjoy the awesome things God is accomplishing through others.

If my great-grandson tells my great-great-grandson that he never really knew me, but he knows that I was a hard worker who loved Jesus and loved his people, I think that will be a fantastic legacy.

To see the work increase, you must embrace decreasing. And there’s a lot of freedom in that.