Toolbox For Faith

I always look forward to attending other churches and learning from the experience. For over three years in the congregation I served in Illinois, four council members and I would attend another congregation once a quarter and take the pastor out for lunch and learn from his or her expertise. That was a fantastic experience where I learned many excellent lessons.

That was not the case in my latest episode of sitting in the pew. We were on vacation and went to a nearby Lutheran congregation. The experience painfully taught me some great lessons about what not to do. So that your congregation does not make the same mistakes, I have made a list of “make sures.”

1. Make sure that you have friendly, smiling ushers who speak to the people arriving. The usher gave my wife a bulletin but did not speak. He only spoke to me after I said, “Good morning” but never smiled.

2. Make sure that the announcements are done in an excellent manner with planning, enthusiasm and complete information. The pastor started the announcements by looking around and finally said, “I guess you are wondering what I am doing. I am looking for…” but never said why that was important. He never welcomed guests so my assumption was that he did not expect guests. He rambled on and on. A member made an announcement about a Crop Walk and she had it written out, definitely had practiced it and did an excellent job of explaining the program. The pastor could have learned much from her.

3. Make sure that your choir director selects music that is appropriate for the choir. This church had 22 people in the choir but the director had selected a very difficult piece. The anthem had a section where they were unaccompanied during which the harmony resembled, in my wife’s words, “fingernails on a blackboard.” I really felt my wife was being generous. Ironically, I do not feel that the choir was that bad but the selection was much too difficult for their abilities as it would have been for the vast majority of church choirs.

4. Make sure that choir members realize that they are on view for everyone in the congregation to see. I tried to concentrate on the sermon but my thoughts wandered as the pastor rambled so I noticed the choir. Two choir members took a short nap during the sermon, one gazed at the congregation and never the pastor, another looked like she was checking phone messages and no one smiled.

5. Make sure that your ushers do not skip people when taking up an offering. O.K, I admit that should be a given but not in this congregation. I had my contribution ready when the usher came to our pew. I was the third person down but he did not want to let go of the offering plate and motioned to the other end of the pew. Sure enough, an usher came to that side of the pew but never slowed down for my offering even though my arm was extended. The woman who had spoken about the Crop Walk said that she would be in the narthex following the service so I thought I would give it to her but she was not there when I exited the church.

6. Make sure that everyone speaks to guests so they feel welcome. After the service, the woman in front of us turned around and stared—probably because I have great fun in singing hymns—but never said a word even after I smiled and said, “Good morning.” On the way out, the pastor shook our hands and welcomed us. One member who was one of my wife’s former teachers spoke to us but that was it. We definitely did not feel welcomed.

We Christians have the greatest cause in the world and I feel that demands excellence. Make it happen in your congregation. This experience has made me more determined than ever to do a better job in my interim congregation. I am going to “make sure” excellence happens.

This week I came across helpful advice for for folks who are writing a letter to the congregation about stewardship. The article is from The Columbia Partnership and offers tips for writing a letter that focuses on mission and invites the congregation to support that mission generously. The author, Rubin Swint, offers ten helpful and practical tips. You can read the article at: http://columbiapartnership.typepad.com/the_columbia_partnership/2011/09/the-annual-stewardship-letter.html

Almost instinctively, St. Michael tends to make decisions by consensus. The desire for consensus may reflect lessons which were learned by the congregation during a previous time of conflict or it may simply reflect my leadership style, but regardless of why it is happening, consensus is our current form of decision making. The leadership of the congregation has worked to be transparent and has built a strong level of trust. We work hard to share information broadly and to solicit a variety of opinions in order to create a helpful way forward. As Martin B. Copenhaver noted about his congregation an article entitled, “Who Is Robert, Anyway?” in Congregations, Fall 2007, “votes may be a part of the process, but they are not the end toward which the entire process proceeds. Instead, voting is a way of testing consensus, of asking, ‘Do we sense that we discerned the mind of Christ on this matter?”

Given the nature of our culture, congregations often follow a “majority rules” approach to governance. The ones with the most votes win, but as I told a friend of mine recently, just because something is legal, doesn’t mean that it is right or the best way to handle a situation. In my experience, there is nothing to be gained and a great deal to be lost in a congregation by creating win/lose votes on an issue. When we are at our best as a people of God, we, as Copenhaver suggests, “seek together to discern what Christ would have us do.” Trying to discern what Christ would have us do and working to building consensus isn’t always the neatest or most expedient approach to decision making, but I find it to a helpful way to build a healthy leadership team and congregation.

If you are an Alban member, you can read the entire Copenhaver article here: http://www.alban.org/conversation.aspx?id=5026.

I came across a story this week about a church that ran a sermon series, service project series and advertising campaign around the theme, “Jesus is _______ .” While the scope of the project is a little beyond anything my congregation could pull off on its own, I am impressed by the interconnectedness of the campaign and the way in which it invites people from inside and outside the congregation to engage in a conversation about Jesus, to learn more about who Jesus is and to act on their beliefs. You can read an interview with the communication manager behind the project at:
http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/2011/03/jesus-is/
and you can visit the “Jesus is ______ .” website here:
http://jesus-is.org/.

Some congregations develop mission statements. Some congregations coalesce around the personality of a leader or leaders. In a very interesting post on churchmarketingsucks.com, Brad Abare asks the question, “What’s the essence of your congregation?” It’s a short post, but I think it helpfully invites us to try and discover what the essence is of our ministry.

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.

I was in a meeting last week and Pastor James Armentrout of St. Mark Lutheran Church in Roanoke, Virginia who shared a story about his desire to create a culture of gratitude at St. Mark. I thought James had a simple and helpful way of saying “Thank You”, so I asked him to write about it. Here is what James had to say and an example of what his “Thank You” space looks like.

As a pastor new to my current congregation I have worked very deliberately to develop a culture of gratitude. One of the first things I did after I arrived was to create dedicated “Thank You” space at the end of the weekly worship bulletin. Here I list, by name, every person who has been involved in some facet of congregational mission or ministry that week. The list includes the folks who folded bulletins or the newsletter, helped with the food pantry or clothes closet, those who came and read to or prepared lunch for the children in our preschool, prepared a meal after a funeral, etc. I keep a notepad handy at all times so that when some individual or group is doing something mission/ministry related I can write their names down. I’ve done this enough in my five months at St. Mark that now when ministry coordinators see me coming with my notepad they know right away what I’m doing and make sure I haven’t missed any names. In the bulletin I list everyone alphabetically with their names in bold type. At times, I do miss a name, but we simply acknowledge the mistake and print the name the next Sunday. Not surprisingly, people respond well when you express your gratitude publicly.

Thank You

Most churches do some sort of advertising at Christmas. This year, I am adding advertising on Facebook to our toolbox. Here’s a link to an article on a church communication website that provides details on how to create and place a Facebook ad. The article also includes a coupon code for $50 in free advertising. I followed the steps outlined in the article and used the coupon to create a targeted ad that will run in the days leading up to Christmas. We’ll see how it goes.

http://www.churchmarketingsucks.com/2010/11/facebook-ads-for-your-church/

The best part of election day for me was the end of all the political commercials and phone calls, but an author named, Kevin Hendricks, found a series of lessons that churches can learn from the politicians about how not to communicate the Gospel. You can read the article here: Lessons from Political Marketing.