Toolbox For Faith

Standing committees are designed for ongoing programs that have already been developed but new ideas require a champion or a task team led by a champion to develop. Committees have their hands full doing what they have accepted as responsibilities which means that when a new idea is presented, most often the new idea is put on the back burner.

A new idea prospers when one person or a small group of people take responsibility for making sure that the new idea becomes reality. The next step is to form a task team that has a specific responsibility and a shorter, limited term of service. The limited term of service is especially important since around 85% of all people do not want to be involved in a long term commitment of time which is how most committees function. The same people who do not want the long term committee will volunteer for a short term project in which they are interested.

Most people tend to look at weaknesses rather than strengths. When your strengths become stronger, your weaknesses are less apparent. When you attempt to solve weaknesses, the strengths that you had grow weaker.

When the Chicago Bulls were beginning to challenge the Detroit Pistons for dominance in basketball, they had a playoff game in Chicago. With around three seconds left, the Bulls got a rebound and called a time out. After the time out, the Bulls were going to take the ball out of bounds at mid court, behind by one. During the timeout, the radio announcers were discussing what to do when one said, “If they do not get the ball to Michael Jordan, they should fire the coach.” They got the ball to Jordan who hit a 3 point shot and the Bulls won by 2. They went with their best player.

In the church, we call a timeout which is a board or committee meeting and most often give the ball to the water boy—the area where we are weakest.

Go with your strengths. Do even better what you are already doing the best.

Dr. Kennon Callahan was the one who introduced me many year ago to the 80-20 rule and it has been a wonderful revelation. The way that I understand the rule is that 80% of the effort create 20% of the results while 20% of the effort create 80% of the results.

If you have ever attended a committee meeting, you understand the principal. A great example of an 80 percenter is the worship committee who spent 30 minutes discussing how to deal with the acolytes who were chewing gum in church. They finally agreed with the pastor that the pastor would ask the acolyte to take out the gum before entering to light the candles and not to chew gum during the service. That 80 percenter was important to only the few anti-chewing-gum members of the committee.

At the same church later in the month, the property committee dealt with an important 20 percenter, parking at the church. The town had made a decision to enforce a parking ordinance that would have eliminated 40 parking spaces near the church that were used each Sunday. The committee was looking at every option to replace the spaces because they knew that the lack of parking would impact the Sunday attendance. That was a 20 percenter

When the 80 percenters tend to get just as much attention as the 20 percenters, many opportunities are missed. Look for the 20 percenters.

We live in a time when people are quick to call in an expert to solve our problems, but Landon Whitsett in his book The Open Source Church, asserts that statistically a group of normal people will outshine an expert every time.    Landon has lots of research to support this assertion in his book, so I won’t cover that ground, but if you accept this idea that a group of normal people has better wisdom than an expert, then I think it is wonderful good news for congregations.   It recognizes the power of the priesthood of all believers.  It affirms the gifts and resources God has given to each of us and to our congregations.  It invites us to use our gifts to share God’s gift of love with the world and to build up the body of Christ.

The key, Landon suggests to making use of these gifts and tapping into the wisdom of the crowd is to have the following four elements in place.

1. Diversity- Everyone brings something unique from their own experience.  The more varied the backgrounds of the people involved, the better wisdom you will garner.

2. Independence of Thought - Everyone must be free to share the specific information they have.  The leader of the group needs to create space for everyone to share their ideas, thus preventing the first or loudest idea from being adopted.

3. Decentralization - As the group is working, people in the group must be free to do what they need to do when they need to do it.  If you have a top-down, centrally controlled environment, you are not going to get the wisdom of the group.

4. Aggregate - A facilitator, team or methodology needs to be in place to gather, analyze, share and use the information and wisdom that is generated.

For me this looks like the volunteers in Micah’s Backpack redesigning the system for packing and distributing food.  As the ministry has continued to grow, volunteers have suggested one improvement after another to streamline and improve the way in which we pack food.  The way we pack today is entirely different than the way we packed when we started.  We didn’t call in a logistics expert to help us figure it out.  We trusted the wisdom and gifts of the people doing the ministry and created an environment where their suggestions could be heard and implemented.

When my oldest son first started to play in a baseball league, the idea was just to have fun. Everyone got a chance to bat. They didn’t really keep track of outs and they didn’t keep score - officially. Even through there was no official score, my son and all of his friends knew exactly what the score of the game was and they were quick to declare a “winner” when the game was over.

My son and his team were not unique. As a nation, I am convinced that we keep score of just about everything, because we are a little obsessed with knowing who is winning and, just as importantly, who is losing. The numbers, as some people like to say, don’t lie and so we keep score. This week, however, I began to wonder why we feel compelled to keep score in church. You don’t see Jesus asking Peter to get a count of the crowd gathered to listen to the Sermon on the Mount, but each Sunday ushers, interested parishioners and pastors, invest time in counting how many people are in church. We record the numbers. We track them and analyze them, but why?. Why do we count how many people are in worship on Sunday mornings or how many members are on the rolls or how many persons we serve in mission?

I like to believe that we track these numbers so we can measure the progress and impact of our ministry, but sometimes I wonder how often we count simply so we can keep score, so we can create a leaderboard that shows statistics like: who is the largest and who is the smallest or who is growing the fastest and who is falling apart the quickest. Once the leaderboard is established then we can find our place and compare ourselves to others.

What would happen, do you think, if we stopped counting for a month or two? Would we find another place to direct that energy? Would we start to look for new ways to measure progress? Would our priorities and the ways we invest our time begin to change? I’d like to think all of these things would occur, but I have a feeling that in most cases we would secretly keep score, just like my son and his team did, so that when the experiment was over we could announce a winner.

I am working my way through a wonderful new book entitled, The Open Source Church by Landon Whitsitt. When I ordered the book, I assumed it would be a call for congregations to share their resources and ideas with the world - a call to post everything online and freely give it away for the building up of the body of Christ. What I discovered as I read was much more valuable. Whitsitt applies the principles of Open Source Software to the Gospel and the church. He uses these principles to highlight the freedom of the God’s love in Christ Jesus and to lift up an organizational paradigm for churches that encourages drawing on the wisdom of the community in place of experts. Here are a couple of experts that touch on his ideas and writing style.

“I believe that as the people of God, we have an opportunity to proclaim a timeless truth: To proclaim Jesus Christ is to proclaim freedom, and to proclaim freedom is to proclaim Jesus Christ. . . . The church in many places has changed from an institution that teaches postures, approaches, and behaviors that lead to freedom to an institution that teaches postures, approaches, and behaviors that will maintain itself. . . . But the gospel is not concerned with maintaining structures or preserving doctrine. The gospel is concerned with freedom.” (pg. 10-11)

“Congregations should quit trusting and expecting that pastors know everything about how to conduct the business of the church. A pastor’s area of expertise is actually quite narrow. If we continue insisting that pastors be our resident church experts, we will find that our expectation causes more problems than it solves. If we continue trusting one person to expertly address all areas of church life, things will begin to fall apart. A better (and I would argue, more faithful) plan of action is to begin tapping into the wisdom of the priesthood of all believers.” (pg. 81)

I am still processing all of what Whitsitt has to say and trying to figure out what it can mean for me and my congregation, but I’d highly recommend the book to anyone looking to explore alternative leadership models.

I received an email last week from a friend about potential factors involved in dealing with reduced giving in a congregation. As I thought about the situation, these five points came to mind.

1. Attendance - if attendance is trending down, that may explain part of the problem. People who don’t attend, typically don’t give - unless you have an automated giving system in place.

2. Increased Giving offset by Missing Families - Individuals may already have increased their giving, but that increase may be offset by families who have left or reduced giving. If you don’t see an increase in giving in response to a direct appeal, it doesn’t mean that people don’t want to respond, it may simply reflect the fact that the people who are present are already giving at their highest level, but it isn’t enough to offset what is lost. A detailed analysis of giving patterns could help bring clarity to this question.

3. The “If you want to see a change in the congregation, feel free to make two changes in yourself first.” Principle - Often people are more willing to make a change if they see change already happening around them. A clear announcement of an increase in giving by leadership combined with a small spending cut or a new source of funding, could encourage other people to act as well. Simply announcing we need to make a change probably won’t be enough.

4. Increased ministry = increased giving. Increased shepherding = increased giving. Often the best way to increase giving is not to send a letter, but to celebrate the ministry being done and to increase the amount of shepherding (caring/visits/conversations) taking place in the congregation. If I found myself in a congregation with a declining giving pattern, I would celebrate a “ministry success” loudly and then start making my way around to visit folks (in person or by phone) and simple ask how they were doing. I wouldn’t ask about money, just life. This is a long-term solution, not a quick fix.

5. How often are you saying “Thank You”? If you aren’t doing so already, I’d start sending (at least) quarterly giving statements with a thank you note in each one. Again, don’t ask for money, simply report what has been given, say “Thank You” and connect that gift to a ministry taking place within the congregation. This too is a long-term solution, not a quick fix.

The headline, “IPhone confession app gets church approval,” intrigued me even though I do not have an IPhone. The article explained that the app approved by the Roman Catholic Church had a custom examination of conscience based on your age, gender and marital status as well as a confessional walk thru including a place for people to add their custom sins. All of this for only a cost of $1.99.

For a person who pushes “O” constantly while listening to pleasant recorded messages giving me every option but talking to a real person when I call most businesses, the app reminded me how impersonal our society has become. Just this week I was reading about the high school football star who chose a different college than his mother wanted him to attend so he texted her the news and didn’t tell her in person or even by a call because he knew she wouldn’t approve. He took the easy way out which is what apps, texting and email can become.

I sincerely hope the IPhone confession app helps some people realize that they have moved away from God but I am convinced that our Christian faith is best demonstrated when we share it in person—when we can laugh together, cry together, talk together and support each other. I know the world is changing but our personal witness is still the central starting point in the midst of all the transformations happening in the world. That is something I never want to forget. Apps and modern media can help but they can never replace each of us personally sharing the faith.

And just so you know, pushing “O” constantly usually get me to a real person much quicker than waiting for it to be a last resort.

In an article entitled, “Film School” Chris Anderson proposes that the rate of change in society is being accelerated by the ability of millions of people to view and respond to online videos. In the past, an idea may have been limited to a small circle of people, but now millions of people with differing resources, perspectives and experiences can witness, analyze and improve upon the idea. Anderson believes that innovation has always been a group activity. He says “most innovation is the result of long hours, building on the input of others. Ideas spawn from earlier ideas, bouncing from person to person and being reshaped as the go . . . . Throughout history, the best creativity has happened when groups of artist, reformers, writers, or scientists connected regularly with one another.” Anderson refers to this process as Crowd Accelerated Innovation.

Crowd Accelerated Innovation, Anderson points out, is not new, and certainly we can see its impact in the history of the Christian movement. Look at how the disciples solved the problem of the widows who weren’t getting fed or the work produced the the various early church Councils or the impact of the group of people surrounding Luther during the Reformation. Throughout Christian history we have seen numerous examples of the crowd - the body of Christ - developing new and powerful ways to go and make disciples of all nations.

In today’s world, Christianity faces a number of challenges, problems and opportunities. I know there are wonderfully talented people in various corners of the church working in these areas, but it seems to me that the best way forward for the Christian movement is to tap into the variety of gifts which make up the body of Christ - to take advantage of the “crowd” God has gathered together and allow the body to innovate, problem solve and lead. Crowd Accelerated Faithfulness lacks the control that top-down solutions might offer, but think of what we might accomplish if we use the resources which exist in today’s world to connect huge segments of the body of Christ and invite them to work together to build up the whole community. Moving in this direction will require leaders to relinquish a certain amount of control, will require us to embrace new and emerging technologies and may require us to modify the way we have always done things, but to me the potential of Crowd Accelerated Faithfulness is simply too powerful to ignore.

I had the opportunity a few weeks ago to participate in a webinar presented by The City with Reggie McNeal, author of books like The Present Future: Six Tough Questions for the Church. The webinar was entitled, “Changing the Scorecard for Church.” I was extremely impressed by what Reggie had to say. He emphasized the need to be a misssional church, the need to be faced outward in mission and his belief that we need to stop measuring program participation and start measuring the impact our ministry is making.

Here are my notes of a couple of the questions that were asked and his answers.

If historically we have been church centric, what are the shifts in thinking in the local church that need to take place to be a missional church?

1st Shift - move from internal thinking to external thinking. For example, how much of the spending plan is consumed by “putting on Sunday worship.” Congregations need to begin to believe that our core activity is to be turned outside - to bless the community. Our call is to bless everyone who is not part of us - to bless the rest of the world.

2nd Shift - move from a program driven model to a people development agenda. (Most difficult in his opinion) We have been very good at manufacturing programs. Pastors have been good at producing sermons. The metrics by which we measure our progress and success are tied to program participation. If we switch to a people development agenda, then we begin to ask questions like “How are the people?” “How are their lives growing and improving?”, instead of asking how many people showed up for the program. McNeal says several times that he is not against programs, he is more interested in what the point is - what the goal is than what the program is.

3rd Shift - move from church centric program leaders to leaders of a movement. Requires a shift to a community orientation. We have been really good at inside the building stuff, but in today’s world we need to because missional leaders in the community, not simply in our congregations.

Changing the scorecard. How do you decide what to measure and how do your measure it?

The metric needs to grow out of the soil where you are planted, the context and what you believe God is calling you to do. Work your metrics backwards from the results you are trying to achieve. You may not be able to measure the long-term outcome, but you can figure out how to measure progress and engagement.