Yesterday I mentioned that I was pursuing my Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership because I believe that the greatest hindrance to the advancement of the kingdom of God (apart from spiritual factors like prayer, the ministry of the Holy Spirit, spiritual warfare, etc.) is the lack of leadership capacity in those who currently lead our churches. That's a rather bold claim so let me explain what I mean.

In Exodus 22:27-31, Moses quotes God saying.

“I will send my terror ahead of you and throw into confusion every nation you encounter. I will make all your enemies turn their backs and run. I will send the hornet ahead of you to drive the Hivites, Canaanites and Hittites out of your way. But I will not drive them out in a single year, because the land would become desolate and the wild animals too numerous for you. Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land. “I will establish your borders from the Red Sea to the Sea of the Philistines, and from the desert to the River. I will hand over to you the people who live in the land and you will drive them out before you."

In other words, God promised the Hebrew people that He was going to give them an incredible gift, a promised land, but He could not do that all at once. Why? Because they didn't have the capacity at that point in time to be able to handle all that God wanted to give them. Instead, he said, " Little by little I will drive them out before you, until you have increased enough to take possession of the land." They could have had all night prayer meetings, organized mass media campaigns, fasted for 40 days, had a weekend worship fest, etc. and still God would not have given them all of the promised land. It had nothing to do with spiritual issues. They simply lacked the capacity to handle that much land. It is this passage that has led me to what I call "Capacity Theory", which simply stated goes like this:

"God blesses us in direct relationship to our capacity to handle whatever it is that we seek to be blessed with."

This theory handles just about every area of life: from relationships to finances and from career options to athletics. God cannot give us more than we can handle or it will be wasted and cause even greater problems.

Likewise, in the church today, God cannot bless us with more people than we can handle. If a pastor can only handle 120 people, God will not entrust him with 300 people. If a pastor cannot handle 300 people, then God will not entrust him with 500 people. And if a pastor cannot handle 3000 people, God will not entrust him with 5000. God always blesses us (and our organizations) just a little beyond our capacity to handle whatever he blesses us with so that we'll trust Him. But He does not entrust us (normally) with an amount far beyond our capacity because to do so would be foolish (which is something God does not do).

I'll follow up on this concept in the days to some, but for now, may I encourage you to just change the question you've been asking yourself, Instead of asking, "How can we grow?", maybe a better question would be, " How can we increase our capacity to handle the blessing God already desire to give us?" God already wanted to give the Hebrew people the promised land, but He knew he couldn't because they didn't possess the capacity to handle it. Likewise, God already wants to bless your church with more people (remember, He wants none to perish), but He cannot do so until you possess the capacity to handle the people he wants to bless you with. Hence, my claim that the greatest hindrance to the advancement of the kingdom is the lack of leadership capacity. The better we as church leaders become at this thing called the leadership, the more God can bless us with the people He already wants to entrust to our care. How about that for a life-changing belief?