Toolbox For Faith

Have you ever stopped to think about what statistics your congregation tracks and what that says about your priorities? In a previous time, congregations primarily tracked membership and worship attendance. In today’s world, membership numbers may tell you little or nothing about the health and life of a congregation. To me a more helpful measure of the ministry of a congregation is called Persons Served in Mission. Persons served in Mission equals the total number of people directly touched by the mission and ministry of a congregation during the course of a year. This includes people in worship, educational ministries, youth ministries, senior adult ministries, community helping ministries and any people directly helped or involved in the various ministries of the congregation. When combined with worship attendance, Persons served in Mission begins to capture the impact a congregation is making in the world.

For example, last year at St. Michael our average worship attendance was 136 people per Sunday and our Persons served in Mission totaled 4025, while at the same time our membership dropped from 408 to 320 because we realized that 90 people who had died or moved had never been removed from the roles. If you only look at membership, you might think St. Michael was in trouble, but when you look at the number of Persons served in Mission, you get a much clearer picture of the vibrant outreach ministry of the congregation. It takes a little time to get into the habit of collecting Persons served in Mission data, but it my experience it is a helpful way to measure the health and life of the congregation.

Developing Keys to an Effective Church: Strengths, Shepherding and Generous Giving
★ Learn to build on your strengths
★ Discover possibilities for the future
★ Learn what motivates people to act
★ Strengthen shepherding in the congregation
★ Grow generous giving

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Some sermons and Sunday School lessons stick with people for a lifetime, while others are forgotten almost as the words are spoken. Chip and Dan Heath in their book, “Made to Stick,” explore the reasons why some ideas are sticky and others are not. The book offers a model for how you can make your ideas (read sermons and teaching) more engaging and more memorable. I have tried using a few of their six principles in my writing and speaking and they work. The six principles are known as the SUCCESs model: Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional and Stories. The book is wonderful and their website contains lots of free helpful resources.

We talk often about what it looks like to live as God’s people in the world. Pastor Michael Foss in his book, “Real Faith for Real Life,” gives helpful suggestions for living out six marks of discipleship. He identifies these marks of discipleship as: Daily Prayer, Weekly Worship, Daily Bible Reading, Serving, Nurturing Relationships and Generous Giving. He offers helpful suggestions for integrating these marks of discipleship into your personal life and into the life of the congregation. At St. Michael, I taught a series we called “Wordshops” on each of these marks. The summaries and questions I used for the classes are available at St. Michael’s website on the Marks of Discipleship page.

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 woke up yesterday morning worrying about finances. Like many ministries, we were counting on a strong December to fully support our 2009 spending plan, but harsh weather required us to cancel one service and dramatically reduced attendance at three others. Unlike Rick Warren, I did not, and cannot, put out a plea to raise $2.5 million dollars in a few days, so we finished 2009 with a deficit in our Core Ministry Fund. We have reserves to cover the shortfall, so we aren’t in trouble, we simply aren’t where we want to be. We have done excellent ministry in the past year - completed a facilities expansion, expanded a community feeding program, served more people in ministry than ever before. When you include designated giving, our overall giving was as strong as ever, but still I worried about dipping into the reserves.


Now I have often heard it said that God acts in many and various ways, but Sunday morning was the first time in my life that God ever acted through the words of a song from an Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. As I was doing a little work between services, I started thinking of a song from Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat where Joseph is telling the Pharaoh that his dream means that seven good years will be followed by seven years of drought. Joseph instructs Pharaoh to save food during the good years and then use the stored food during the lean years (Gen 41:25-36). Now I certainly hope that St. Michael’s ministry doesn’t experience 5 financial lean years following five strong financial years, because we didn’t save as much as Pharaoh did, but Joseph’s wisdom helped ease my mind about tapping into our reserves. God’s people gave generously and allowed us to build up an appropriate reserve over the last five years and now when we experienced a lean year, we were blessed with the ability to continue our ministry uninterrupted because of that generosity and stewardship. As Joseph counseled Pharaoh centuries ago, being a good steward when you are abundantly blessed can prepare you for those times of scarcity.


Now let me be clear - I am not advocating hoarding cash. As the Israelites discovered when they started hoarding manna in the wilderness - hoarding stinks. In fact, once we reached a level of reserves that we were comfortable with at St. Michael, we used any extra giving at the end of the year for extra benevolence gifts. I am suggesting, however, that it is wise for congregations to maintain financial reserves and, here’s the important part, to be at peace about using them when needed.

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