In conferences I sometimes share a personal story of my wife’s journey with chronic back pain. The story reveals a true miracle of God. But the reason I share it is to relate it to a fallacy in leadership in the church, businesses, and other organizations.

My wife, Pam, suffered from chronic back pain for several years. At one point it became severe and was interrupting her life, health, and well-being. For two years we drove the sixty mile round trip to see her doctor at the pain clinic. It was during this time I realized why a Health Maintenance Organization actually exists. The doctors kept telling Pam they were trying to help her manage the pain. To this she replied, “I do not want to manage the pain. I want to get rid of it.” The doctors tried different types of therapy and pain management techniques in the first few months to no avail. Afterward they began giving Pam injections of different medications.

Every four to six weeks Pam received another injection, different from the last. Epidurals, blocks, everything was a mask, not a potential healer. The injections were attempts to mask the pain, to keep Pam from feeling the pain. One danger that I feared was that Pam could easily cause more damage to her back without knowing it, from the few injections that actually did “mask” the pain.

When I asked the doctor why they were only treating the symptoms and not trying to treat the cause or correct the damage, his reply to me was, “That’s not what we do here. We help you manage the pain.” Perhaps this is why they call it health maintenance organization instead of healing or curing.

We began researching with a friend who had similar back problems ten years earlier and corrective surgery in India. He and Pam located a back surgeon who had changed his technique a few years back. He was performing the same type surgery our friend had in India. Only this doctor was less than two hours from our house.

Pam had four bulging and herniated discs in her lower back. The surgery was to be completed in two parts. Two discs would be repaired on Tuesday and the remaining two on Thursday. On Wednesday (two discs completed, two to go) for the first time in two years I saw my wife with no pain on her face. The other two discs were completed the following day. Not only was it successful, the surgery was done as outpatient surgery both days. There was no incision, only four small puncture marks. All four discs were repaired. My wife has not had one minute of pain or other back issue since the surgery in April 2006. She was cured, completely healed. How? This surgeon treated the cause, not the symptoms.

I share this story because leadership and church life often become much like the first set of Doctors treating Pam’s health issues with her back. We look for symptoms and think we can “fix” the problem by addressing the symptoms. Oftentimes, like the doctors all we are doing is hiding the pain. Our attendance is down. We realize the church is in decline. So we try the latest gimmick and a new event because we heard of another church that tried it and it worked for them. Surely this is the injection we’re looking for. Our emphasis becomes more on events and gimmicks to try and get people in the door. The fact that our attendance is dropping is a symptom. We need to be asking why our attendance is down.

The cause of my wife’s back issues was in her back. It was not in the drugs or gimmicks they were injecting. These could never bring about the cure. In our churches the cause for our issues (be it decline or something else) is likely within the church itself. We need to look for the cause. I realize this can be painful, but without addressing the cause we will never reach a cure.

The surgeon who performed Pam’s surgeries was not within the purview of our insurance, so we paid for it out of pocket. Surgeries are not cheap, but this was the best money we ever spent. In scripture we are counseled to count the cost. In the church unfortunately we sometimes count the wrong things as cost. There is no way I would have let my wife, my bride, continue to suffer simply because I did not want to spend the money. I was going to pay the cost to get to the cure. Oh, that we would be so diligent with the health of the bride of Christ.

Portions of this post are from Reaching the Summit: Avoiding and Reversing Decline in the Church, pages 46-47.

For more on this topic contact George Yates and visit SonC.A.R.E. Ministries.