LEAD June 2025 | Page 16

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While the culture cancels you— some within and others outside the church— your reputation is negatively impacted. Your influence is greatly diminished. Someone said,“ All you have is your word.” It takes a lifetime to build a reputation and a minute for the match of cancellation to set it ablaze( Proverbs 22:1; James 3:6). I felt the flames burn to my very core. Moreover, when the narrative about a church in the community goes from positive to“ canceled” it impacts future growth as well as the church’ s current reality.
1
Dictionary. com, Pop Culture Dictionary, s. v.“ cancel culture,” July 31, 2020, www. dictionary. com / e / pop-culture / cancelculture /.
2
Brian Jones,“ The # 1 Secret of Church Growth,” Senior Pastor Central, accessed July 30, 2024, https:// seniorpastorcentral. com / 918 / 1-secret-church-growth /.
Taken from Leading Through Storms by Geoffrey V. Dudley Sr. Copyright( c) 2025 by Geoffrey V. Dudley Sr. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www. ivpress. com It’ s not just the narrative of the church, it is also the narrative of the leader, the senior pastor. The church has more time to overcome a cancellation, but a senior pastor only has a finite period of time to grow a church. The fruitful period of a senior pastor is not without a shelf life. 2 Therefore, while my cancellation was somewhat comparable to Gideon’ s given our aggregate numbers, the impact is relative. My tenure as senior pastor was at its pinnacle. I didn’ t have much time to surface on the other side of the cancellation. I would need God to add more years to my season of overcoming the growing narrative in the community.
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Bishop Geoffrey V. Dudley Sr.( PhD, Regent) is the founding and senior pastor of New Life in Christ Church, one of the fastest growing churches in the Metro East area of St. Louis, Missouri( O’ Fallon, Illinois). Originally from Goldsboro, North Carolina, Dudley began ministry at the age of thirteen, was ordained by the United Holy Church of America in 1986, and is a retired Air Force chaplain and lieutenant colonel. He is also the CEO of iLead Enterprises, a leadership development platform for staff and workforce development. He and his wife, Glenda, have two adult children who are both ministry leaders. 16