Toolbox For Faith

With great fear and trepidation, I emptied the contents of the very large box labeled “utility dump cart” with the added note “assembly required” on the garage floor last Monday. I have been traumatized for life by “assembly required” boxes. I remember the utility building I put together for my mother. I put in 641 screws—not counting the over 200 I put in the wrong place and then removed—and this was before electric screwdrivers. And then there was the first swing set I assembled. It said “5 minute frame” on the outside but I discovered that even Superman could not have put it together in five minutes. And then there were the directions for the swing set. They included instructions for 9 different sets, none of which were the one we purchased, and were written by someone who had English as a very distant second language.

With shaking hands, I pulled the instructions from the heap of parts and started reading. These instructions had special rubrics—written in red—for the assembly challenged people like me. The first read in very large letters, “If you read and follow these instructions, this product can be assembled in 55 minutes or less. If you don’t read these instructions, assembly may take over two hours!” Simple and to the point which made sense to me. Then all the parts you were assembling in each stage were highlighted in red. Even with a break to get a large ice tea on the 90 degree, record high day and with another break to talk to my neighbor and corral one of our cats for the neighbor girls to pet, I finished in a personal best, amazing one hour and ten minutes.

As I reflected on the experience, Ken Callahan’s words came to me, “Give just enough help to be helpful!” The instructions did that. It is a wonderful lesson for life. Always give just enough help to be helpful. If we give too much help, we create a dependency relationship that is never helpful. That is a hard lesson to learn but my congratulations to Sears—you did it right this time. The instructions were easy to follow and made sense. I am still traumatized but I have hope.

Seven Words of Grace

God blesses us with grace. - Psalm 23:6
Strong, healthy congregation live in the grace of God. - 1 Cor 1:1-4
Grace is grassroots. - Luke 2:7
Grace is generous. - Mark 16:6-8
Grace is gentle. - Eph 4:2
Grace is mutual. - 1 Cor 13:3
Grace finds us, and we find grace. - John 1:14

- Kennon Callahan

Dr. Callahan suggests that we advance our congregation with these steps.

1. We claim our strengths.
- not in analytical ways, but in rejoicing ways . . .
- Oh - we do this well.

2. We expand one or two current strengths.
- pick one or two, don’t worry about all of them
- save three and four for the coming years

3. Add one or two new strengths

4. Sustain your current strengths
- the foolishness would be . . .
- we have a current strength in worship and plan to add a program strength
- we divert resources from worship to program and have zero sum gain

5. Act swiftly on our present and future
- time horizons for swiftly depending on the congregation and the ministry

This morning, Dr. Callahan is talking about the different languages that individuals speak in a congregation and noting the importance of learning and speaking the language of the grassroots of a congregation. He proposes five possible languages.

1. Athletic, Physical
2. Intellectual, Cognitive
3. Extracurricular, work project
4. Social, relational
5. Music, arts

The problems that some pastors, congregations, synods and institutions face is a gap between the language and learning style of the leaders and the grassroots. The art is to learn and use the language of the people gifted to you by God.

Sometimes we build momentum in ministry by focusing on three out of five of the following:

1. Motivations
- match motivations and people
2. Leaders and Key Objectives
- excellent match with leaders, compelling key objectives
3. An Effective Long-range Plan
- matches our gifts, strengths and competencies
- Clear and achievable
4. Excellent Mistakes, Objectives Worth Not Doing
- higher level of excellent mistakes, higher level of creativity
5. Memory, Change, Conflict and Hope
- sometimes we need to help people deal with memory, overcome conflict and discover hope

- Kennon Callahan

Strong Healthy Congregations deliver three out of the five qualities on the list and God will bless you as a strong, healthy congregation

Strong, Healthy Congregations

1. Live in the grace of God
2. Build on their strengths; then tackle any weakness
3. Compassion, Community and Hope; then, Challenge, Reasonability, Commitment
4. Excellent Sprinter Possibilities; some Solid Marathon Runner Possibilities
5. Act Swiftly

- Dr. Kennon Callahan

I am at a week long continuing education event with Kennon Callahan as he discusses the second edition of his book “Twelve Keys to an Effective Church: Strong, Healthy Congregation Living in the Grace of God.” Starting tomorrow, I am going to try and post a few of the most interesting ideas that come up during our sessions.

I was doing some work for a presentation and came across some helpful resources for small congregations. I haven’t read all the books listed on this page, but they looked interesting, so I thought I’d share.

http://www.congregationalresources.org/ShowCat.asp?TC=108

If you can find a copy, another interesting book is, “24 Effective Ideas for the Small Membership Church” by Steven M. Murray. The book is a little dated, since it was written in 1996, but it still has some good suggestions. Here’s an article by the same author: http://www.gbod.org/evangelism/programs/offeringchrist/small_church.html

The best book on the topic I have read is “Small, Strong Congregations” by Kennon Callahan. If you are serving a small congregation, it is immensely helpful.

Jesus and the disciples were a movement.  The early church was a movement.  Constantine started the process of turning the church into an institution.  The Reformers started as a movement, but over time, the reformation churches became institutions as well.  In a time of institutions, being an institution was good.  Today, however,  is a time for movements.  When the church is at its best, we live and behave as a movement.  Dr. Kennon Callahan has a helpful word about the difference between a movement and an institution in his his book, “The Future that Has Come”.  In the following document, I have excerpted a few helpful ideas from the book.   Movement or Institution

As most of us know, the research says that there is very little chance that a long-term inactive member will ever become active again.  With that in mind, consider exchanging your inactive list with another local congregation for Christmas.  Perhaps an invitation to a Christmas Eve Service from a different worshiping community will be just what is needed to help someone reconnect with God.