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.

In a previous time, congregations measured success by the number of people who joined a church. Today, I think a more helpful measure is persons served in mission - the number of people touched by the ministry of a congregation during the course of a year.

Last week, a member shared an excerpt from “WELCOMING NEWCOMERS TO OUR CONGREGATION” by Keith Anderson from Seeds for the Parish.

“‘Not joining does not equal failure. The end result of welcoming is not necessarily membership. If someone only comes for one Sunday, then we have ministered to them in some way. If people are with us for a while and decide not to join, we feel we’ve contributed to their discernment process. If you make welcoming only about membership, it’s a set-up for disappointment. Not everyone will join, and there will never be enough new members. Make it about ministry instead, and decide how you will measure success.’

For me, the term “ministry” puts a different light on welcoming.” (Spring 2011, pg. 5)
http://www.elca.org/Who-We-Are/Our-Three-Expressions/Churchwide-Organization/Communication-Services/Resources/Seeds-for-the-Parish.aspx (accessed May 6, 2011)

I absolutely agree.

When we focus on membership, we are focusing on what people can do for us. When we focus on ministry, we focus on what God can do for the world. As we go about sharing God’s love faithfully, the spill-over effect is that very often people join the congregation - either formally or informally. Since our call is to be God’s heart and hands and voices in the world, not to “make members”, I think it is important that we remember that our success as a congregation is not measured by the number of people who join the church, but by the ways in which we make Christ known to the world.

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.

Many years ago at a workshop, Lyle Schaller suggested a question that I have found invaluable over the years. He said always ask, “What year is it?’ when analyzing why certain actions occur in a parish. That question has helped me enormously in understanding the congregations I have served and it have been central in planning a strategy for that congregation to grow forward in faith and service.

When I have thought of this question at the congregations where my wife, Cheryl, and I have been worshipping over the past weeks, the results are puzzling. The congregations appear to have asked the question “What year is it?” in mission outreach but have stopped there. All of the congregations have looked at their communities today and appear to have a wonderful understanding of needed 2010 outreach into their communities. But in most other areas, they have taught me that they are using ideas that haven’t been useful since our society was a church culture in the 1950’s and 1960’s.

I am still attempting to figure out why this has happened—that only the mission outreach is 2010 and so much of the remainder of the congregational life is lost in the past. Perhaps it is due to the current recession that has caused so much change in the lives of many, many people but I am not sure. Please let me know if you have any brilliant or even semi-brilliant explanations.

I read a very interesting article in USA Today discussing research done by Paul Froese and Christopher Bader, sociologists at Baylor University for their book, America’s Four Gods: What We Say About God - and What That Says About Us. The researchers propose that in America today there are four predominate views of God. These views are not confined to Christianity, but encompass all people of faith. As soon as I read the four views, I immediately connected my own theology as belonging to one of the views and recognized each of the other three views as opinions I have encountered in my discussions with other people of faith. Froese and Bader define the views of God as:
• The Authoritative God - They see God as actively “engaged in history and meting out harsh punishment to those who do not follow him.” (28%)
• The Benevolent God - They believe “God is engaged in our world and loves and supports us in caring for others.” (22%)
• The Critical God - They believe “God keeps an eye on this world but delivers justice in the next” life. (21%)
• The Distant God - They believe “God booted up the universe, then left humanity alone.” (24%)

You can take the God Test to see which view is most closely aligned to your view of God.

While Froese and Bader are interested in how these opinions affect attitudes on key issues, I am fascinated by the ways in which these views affect matches between congregations and pastors and the health of congregations and denominational bodies. Obviously, without the specific research it is all speculation, but I wonder . . .
• How much conflict or disengagement arises when you have a pastor or denominational leader with one view - Benevolent God, for example - trying to lead a congregation or denominational body with another view - Critical God, for example.
• Could it be that conflict in synods/local judicatories arises when we try to gather congregations and pastors with vastly different views of God and try to convince them to act upon a single shared vision of God?
• Could it be that a shared view of God helps overrides denominational differences and allows local congregations to work together even when denominational bodies cannot agree on a national level?

Here are two possible application I see for the research on a synodical/judicatory level and within a congregation.
1. Imagine how helpful it would be when matching congregations and pastors to know if they shared the same view of God.
2. In planning for ministry, knowing in general how a congregation viewed God could help leaders determine which strengths to build upon.

Dr. Callahan wrote the following nearly 15 years ago in his book, “Building for Effective Mission,” but I when I came across it again last week, I was struck by how absolutely true it is. We are at our best as a people of God when we live as a mission movement, not as an institution.

Welcome to one of the greatest ages of mission the Christian movement has ever seen. Welcome to the first century. Welcome to the twenty-first century. Welcome to a mission time. . . . This is no longer a churched culture. I encourage you not to mourn its passing. Do not long for a return to those days when going to church was the thing to do. The church is never at its best in a churched culture.

The church is at home in an age of mission. . . . When church going was a staple of social conformity, the church was nonetheless ill at ease and out of place. Despite all the cultural status conferred on it, the church was restless and uncomfortable in a churched culture. Yes, it has enjoyed its prominence as a cultural institution and the pedestal on which it was perched. Yet the church has realized, albeit dimly, that it is not called to be admired by the world. Intuitively it has been restless to serve, not to be served.

Whenever the church accepts the perks and the prestige, it becomes a slave of the world. It is no longer a servant in the world. It becomes beholden to the world. The danger is that it will be distracted from its mission and become a pleasant irrelevancy in the culture. Its voice becomes muted, its message muffled. The good news of joy, wonder, grace and hope is stifled.

When the church allows itself to become a pleasant irrelevancy, it becomes simply an amiable activity for those few who may have an occasional interest. The culture can then simply ignore the church.

Fortunately God invites the church to mission direction, not worldly distractions. And, fortunately, the church retains a latent memory of how to share the mission. The church that endures beyond a churched culture is a church that knows best how to live in an age of mission. With God’s help, the church rediscovers its beginning and thus lives out its true identity as servant in the world.