Toolbox For Faith

I came across an excellent article last week from the Alban Institute entitled Tending the Vineyard by Paul E. Hopkins. Hopkins makes the case that there are four elements which are keys for creating what he calls “enduring pastoral fruitfulness”.

He suggests that for pastors to have healthy, fruitful lives and ministry, it is imperative that they have (1) a systematic commitment to livelong learning, (2) an intentional connection to communities of shared practice, (3) a careful stewardship of the leader’s own self, and (4) strong roots and active exercise in a growing faith. While none of these four suggestions is revolutionary or a totally new idea, my own experience in ministry resonates with these suggestions. I am at my best as a pastor and a person, when I am intentional about learning, when I am connected to a group of caring colleagues, when I am seeking balance between family and call and when I am taking time to nurture my connection to God.

In the future, I might use Hopkins four categories as a tool for self-evaluation. I could imagine taking each of his four categories and creating goals in each area to help me maintain pastoral fruitfulness and balance. If I actually put a tool together using these categories, I’ll try to remember to post it.

I am in the middle of reading Switch by Chip and Dan Heath. Switch is a wonderful book which focuses on how to accomplish change when change is difficult. When I finish the book, I’ll post a more complete summary, but for now I want to focus on one of their points - “Follow the Bright Spots.” In essence, they are suggesting that you take a look at your ministry, discover what you are doing well, learn from that success and apply the knowledge to another area of your ministry.

For example, if you have great success with Vacation Bible School and limited success with weekly Sunday School, the question becomes what can you learn from VBS and how can you apply that lesson to Sunday School. Perhaps you have great storytellers at VBS and simply including those storytellers will strengthen Sunday School. Obviously each congregation is different, but I think following the bright spots will help us identify our strengths and help us to use our ministry gifts more effectively.

If you are interested in learning more about Switch, you can check out the Heath Brothers website.

We just finished a retreat with our congregational council and we used an idea that I read about over a dozen years ago that has really helped create action. Over the years, I have been the pastor of congregations that set what I thought were excellent goals but nothing, absolutely nothing, happened. I kept wondering what we were doing wrong. I’m sure that many of you can identify with that problem.

The idea that I have been using centers on creating active language in expressing goals. They key is expressing goals in a “How to…so that…” format which creates action. The statement begins with “how to” and continues with “so that.”

The church I am serving as interim noticed a drop in attendance at Sunday School and several leaders responded by observing, “Our attendance is dropping.” I noted that this was not a goal but simply an observation. They then stated their goal, “We need to increase attendance at Sunday School.” The goal sounded good but was so vague that it did not create any action. Finally, they expressed their goal in the “How to…so that…” format–“How to make our Sunday School exciting and fulfilling so that people can’t wait to come to their classes!” Expressing the goal in that format helped them realize that one of their weaknesses was how unexciting and predictable their Sunday School had become. The plan is to have a series of activities and events to create excitement and increase attendance. When the members of the Sunday School become excited about the program, their enthusiasm spreads to others. The “How to…so that…” format is already resulting in action.

An old proverb says: If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll probably end up somewhere else. The action format lets you know exactly where you are going rather than having a vague statement of your destination and ending up somewhere else.

See if it works for you. Express your goal in a “How to…so that…” format. Action will follow!