Toolbox For Faith

I had a wonderful fourth Sunday in Advent children’s message that involved our children lighting the four candles on the Advent Wreath. When I went to invite the children forward to sit on the steps of the chancel with me, I suddenly had a horrible, sinking feeling. I had forgotten! I had forgotten that on the third Sunday at the church I am serving, they have children’s church and none of the children were in church. It was an excellent mistake.

As I looked around pondering what to do next, I noticed the top of the head of Jonathan, age two, in the back of the church. For some reason, he had stayed with his mother and father rather than going to Children’s Church. Abandoning all my plans, I asked Jonathan to come forward and help me light the candles while the congregation sang all four verses of the hymn we sing while lighting the wreath.. Jonathan and his mother came to the wreath. I took the acolyte’s stick, lit it from the altar candles and picked up Jonathan. Together, we lit all four candles.

When lighting the candles, his eyes were wide, wide open with one of the biggest smiles I have ever seen. When I put him down, he was jumping up and down, up and down. When he finally stopped, he gave me a high five and got his mother’s hand and danced up the aisle, pausing occasionally to wave at me. As he walked, he told everyone next to the aisle, “I lighted the candles, I lighted the candles.” I could see the smiles on the faces of all in the congregation. This was a powerful moment.

What a great lesson! God helps us at all times of life, even when we completely goof. God provided a little child to save me. That’s what Christmas is all about—a small child shall save us.

We live in a time when people are quick to call in an expert to solve our problems, but Landon Whitsett in his book The Open Source Church, asserts that statistically a group of normal people will outshine an expert every time.    Landon has lots of research to support this assertion in his book, so I won’t cover that ground, but if you accept this idea that a group of normal people has better wisdom than an expert, then I think it is wonderful good news for congregations.   It recognizes the power of the priesthood of all believers.  It affirms the gifts and resources God has given to each of us and to our congregations.  It invites us to use our gifts to share God’s gift of love with the world and to build up the body of Christ.

The key, Landon suggests to making use of these gifts and tapping into the wisdom of the crowd is to have the following four elements in place.

1. Diversity- Everyone brings something unique from their own experience.  The more varied the backgrounds of the people involved, the better wisdom you will garner.

2. Independence of Thought - Everyone must be free to share the specific information they have.  The leader of the group needs to create space for everyone to share their ideas, thus preventing the first or loudest idea from being adopted.

3. Decentralization - As the group is working, people in the group must be free to do what they need to do when they need to do it.  If you have a top-down, centrally controlled environment, you are not going to get the wisdom of the group.

4. Aggregate - A facilitator, team or methodology needs to be in place to gather, analyze, share and use the information and wisdom that is generated.

For me this looks like the volunteers in Micah’s Backpack redesigning the system for packing and distributing food.  As the ministry has continued to grow, volunteers have suggested one improvement after another to streamline and improve the way in which we pack food.  The way we pack today is entirely different than the way we packed when we started.  We didn’t call in a logistics expert to help us figure it out.  We trusted the wisdom and gifts of the people doing the ministry and created an environment where their suggestions could be heard and implemented.

I have discovered that most great ministry ideas are surprises that grow out of our attempt to be faithful servants of God. Almost by accident, we stumble upon an opportunity for ministry.

As part of the S. C. Lutheran Synod’s “Operation Inasmuch,” based on the scripture that says “In as much as you have done it unto…,” our congregation provided soup, sandwiches and ice cream to two groups about three months ago. One of the groups is composed of around 20 recovering addicts who live in a residential facility about seven miles from our church.

In appreciation, they showed up for worship the next Sunday. I was really confused when I saw two complete pews of men that I had never seen before. As one member said, “I first thought that’s the largest Pulpit Committee I had ever seen but I thought to myself, why would they be coming to see a retired pastor?”

I started that Sunday with what I call “100 seconds of fellowship” where people moved around to greet people they did not know. Afterwards, some of the men shared with me that they really felt welcome. Evidently, this was not the case at several other churches they have attended.

From that beginning, we have tried to work together to help their ministry. On the first Sunday in August, they were our special guests at our homecoming celebration. We are now providing them with bag lunches the second Sunday of each month so that they can get ready quicker for the family visits that only happen on Sunday afternoons.

I am convinced that God has given us a vision for ministry with this group. We fed them and they dropped in and surprised us at worship. From this beginning, ministry is happening. God is still surprising his people with wonderful opportunities for ministry.

How many hours a week to you typically work - 40, 50, 60 or more? I am writing this on the 4th of July from my office, so I have to admit upfront that I typically work more than 40 hours per week, but an article I saw on Huffington Post this week got me thinking about why? Historically, I think most people would have said that pastors work long hours because the church is understaffed or because there are always emergencies happening or because the pastor wanted to be involved in everything. According to “Top-Level Professionals View 40-Hour Work Week As Part-Time” (accessed July 4, 2011), 40 hour plus work weeks for pastors may simply be a reflection of the world around us. The article discusses a report by The Center for American Progress which found that “many top-level professionals, lawyers and doctors view the traditional 40 hour work week as a “part-time” job . . . . Many feel, with some justification, that a 40-hour week would be career suicide. This schedule is seen as ‘part time’ in many professional-managerial jobs, and tends to spell a less-prestigious and less upwardly-mobile career path.” (quotation from the Huffington Post article).

Since I believe that most pastors reflect the culture around them, it makes sense that 50 or 60 hour weeks are become the acceptable norm, not an unhealthy habit that we were warned about in seminary. Let’s face it, if key leaders in your congregation are professionals who work long hours, then that’s what they will expect of their pastor. When I interned outside New York City, I wore a dress shirt and tie to the office Monday to Friday, but when I took my first call in Lowcountry South Carolina, the ties went in the closet and now only come out occasionally. Pastors often talk of “being in the world, but not of the world”, however I’m afraid we have become fully “of the world” when it comes to the number of hours pastors need to work or believe that they need to work per week to be faithful.

Since I don’t see that expectation changing anytime soon, the question becomes one of balance. How do you create a balance between work and home? For me, balance comes through flexibility. My internship supervisor, Pastor Roger Spencer, once told me that “some weeks you go home and the church owes you money, but some weeks you go home and you owe the church money. Hopefully over the course of the year, it all works out. The key to finding balance,” he said, “was to recognize the weeks when you could get back an hour or two and go home.” These days, seeking balance often revolves around time when I am in the office. I typically go into the office when I drop my kids off for school around 7:30 AM, but I also typically pick them up when school is over around 2:30 PM. Some days I am back in the office (and so are they) after I pick them up and some days, I am able to head home. Day to day, week to week it changes, but my kids and my congregation have learned my patterns and understand that this is one way that I balance family and church. I’m sure I’ll have to re-balance things as my kids get older, but for now it seems to work for us.

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.

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

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.