Seth writes about bullying—something all church people are against in theory but often fail to recognize in practice. That’s how bullies thrive!
As Seth points out, good bullies have a knack for dehumanizing their targets. Victims’ cries, protests, and pleas cannot be heard. They are kooks and malcontents. “We have to trust the wisdom of our leaders” is the defense—even if it makes no sense. There is something (usually unnamed) very wrong with victims. They deserve what they are getting.
“Why don’t they accept things and move on?” is the easy question which is designed to justify their “moving on.” They count on people buckling under threats. Wounds may never heal but at least the damaged goods are out of the way. Bullies have a pretty good system!
2×2 has written about this before. Church people have a difficult time discerning that this is a topic that might include them. Ironically, the Church occasionally gives workshops about bullying, failing to see the characteristics among their own.
Bullying behavior in the church is wrapped up in a beautiful package of tradition, status and carefully chosen quotations from scripture to camouflage the ugliness. Hard to see. Hard to argue. Hard to stop.
Ask the hundreds of victims of clergy pedophilia. It took decades to bring the perpetrators to justice. The victims suffered the whole time, desperate for the people they trusted to take action on their behalf.
Bullying behavior reaches beyond this abominable reality. It permeates church structure, silencing the innovators and creatives —limiting them to acceptable creativity (good organ music). Even the Lutheran church with its proud heritage of sainthood and equality of all believers loses its way. If those who recognize the bullying move on, as even Seth suggests is one solution, the church is the loser. Congregations become similar in scope, style and service. Only the names and faces change. New people. Old roles.
Sound familiar?
Perhaps the church should calculate the cost of failing to deal with bullying in the church. Seth’s arguments are persuasive in this regard. It may very well be the root cause of mainline decline. Bullying in the church thins the ranks of the creative—the thinkers, the questioners, the givers, the risk-takers (which every organization needs!). It is theft!
Read Seth’s post today and ask, “Have our church leaders treated member churches this way?”
2×2 has been experimenting with Social Media as a ministry tool for nearly three years.
During this time, Social Media made significant strides in gaining stature in every walk of life. When we started our experiment, many in the business world and nonprofit worlds were still not sold on doing more than hosting a barebones website as their nod to the modern world.
It’s safe to say at this point that every business or service sector is now ready to admit that Social Media is here to stay and that smart operators are investing in their web presence beyond their static website. It’s all but universal. A major holdout is — you guessed it — the Church.
The Church remains outside looking in, unable to fit the new way of doing things into their outdated structure.
Here is the status of the congregations and social media in our experience.
2×2 is a project of Redeemer Lutheran Church in East Falls. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America claimed our land and decided four years ago that they are better stewards of our resources. While the property provided for mission by the Lutherans of East Falls remains idle and locked to all mission, the people of Redeemer have continued their innovative ministry with visits to other churches and experimentation with Social Media.
This is what we’ve seen in our 76 church visits to half the churches in our synod. (Some churches we visited house two ministries.)
About 90% of the Lutheran churches in our area have some sort of website. It is amazing that there are still ANY churches that have NO web presence. It gets easier every day and costs less than $50 per year.
In today’s world, a congregation’s failure to provide basic information online is advertising that they are not invested in evangelism. Failure to have a website is akin to a hospital staff “calling a code.”
Of the 90% that have websites, there are less than 5% using their site for more than a brochure about their church—the ALL ABOUT US approach to Evangelism. There is practically no inbound content—content that would attract seekers and is designed to be helpful to OTHERS as opposed to tooting the congregation’s horn. It is commendable that people in their neighborhoods can look up worship times and see who the pastor and staff are, but they are missing the true value of having a website—evangelism.
A few pastors have attempted blogs. Most quit after a few posts. The pastor at St. Andrew’s, Audubon, is one of the few pastors who seems to be ready to lead the church in using the web as an education and evangelism tool. One church, St. Michael’s in Unionville, invested in a modern web presence but opted to outsource the development of content—so it has a generic feel to it. It would probably be worth the investment of having a dedicated social media leader on staff to get full benefit of their investment. Trinity, Lansdale, hired a part-time communications director. That’s a step in the right direction.
A few churches actively use Facebook to create community. Most tend to use their Facebook page as a bulletin board.
Practically no churches use Twitter. Twitter has a great track record of “finding” people. This is a tool that is greatly misunderstood but which could very much benefit ministry.
SEPA Synod is trying to use Facebook but they haven’t been getting much traction. Interestingly they posted an article yesterday.
It starts:
Friday Food for Thought: What does an institution due [sic] faced with red ink and a dwindling, aging audience? Keep true to its core while driving innovation, embracing the possibilities of technology and reaching out to new audiences.
They pose this question and then point readers to a video clip from CBS’s 60 Minutes about the Metropolitan Opera’s solution to a similar challenge.
We know very well SEPA’s solution to their own question. They ignore congregation’s that innovate, sue their members and claim their land for their own enrichment.
It’s interesting, however, to see that they recognize innovation outside of their own sphere.
The challenge to virtually every congregation is in recognizing that Social Media has value requiring expertise that should be compensated. Frankly, Social Media will go farther to reviving ministry than even the best organists/music directors, education directors or even (dare we say it) clergy, in many cases.
Every month that goes by without any attempt to move all congregations in this direction is time spent talking about innovation and doing nothing to make it happen.
This is probably why innovation is so slow. In business, success depends on innovation and reaching people. Even CEO’s that are resistant to change can look at the numbers and make decisions that will keep their organizations viable.
In the Church, however, clergy play a leadership role that can go on for many years while the statistics of their ministry fail, without any pressure to change—until it is too late and the congregation can no longer pay clergy salaries. Then the congregations are seen as the failures. The clergy move on to somewhere they can continue doing things the same way until the money runs out again. When that gets too frustrating, they sign up for interim training.
Most clergy have no training in media. Failure to have these skills today is like not being able to read! Any church that calls a pastor who cannot use modern tools and is resistant to anyone else using this is doomed to status quo or failure.
Unfortunately, the role of Social Media director of communications director is likely to be seen as competitive with the role of clergy. So nothing will change.
Then there is Redeemer’s ministry—which SEPA was united in working for the last seven years to destroy. Redeemer stands alone in having made the investment in true innovation. Our work has positioned our congregation to truly lead in creating a platform and funding source for small congregational ministry.
We discovered that using Social Media IS transforming. It is not an optional “add on” but will shape your community and your potential. Church will be different. Ministry will be different. It is likely that the differences will be what the doctor ordered a long time ago!
We could help SEPA congregations join in our success to the benefit of all. But that would require that SEPA recognize Redeemer. Heaven forbid!
2x2virtualchurch doesn’t get a lot of online engagement. But people do contact us. We get direct emails and sometimes even phone calls about our posts. When I encourage readers to comment on site, they say it’s too hard from their mobile phones—which tells us something about how the world gets their information today! Easier to use that phone to autodial us!
Friday’s post drew a phone call that raised an interesting question. It is a question that no one has probably thought about, because there was little need.
The sermon, always central to Lutheran worship, is very ineffective for the purpose of spreading the Good News. Yet it is a focus of our expectations and budgets.
Most churches say something in their mission statements about reaching beyond that limited audience. Yet finding a way to do that has been a challenge, despite the tools in our modern hands.
Sermons—even great sermons—aren’t going to do it! Our post began exploring ways to maximize a congregation’s investment in providing a weekly sermon to a shrinking, limited and static audience of people who are predisposed toward the message. Our reader raises this question:
Who owns the rights to the sermon?
The caller is well-versed in both the corporate and church publishing worlds, especially the higher end of the Protestant Church. She commented that in the corporate world, if the corporation subsidizes the creation of content, the corporation owns the content. We are guessing the church world will argue that the pastor is self-employed and therefore owns his or her words.
I am self-employed but I know from experience that my clients consider my work to be their property. I often know that I have legal rights to the work product, but usually decide to not argue with clients. I value the relationship and the next job above the value of past work and insistence on accepted professional rights.
All this thinking may belong to the past—when publishing was the business of publishers. Today every evangelist or entrepreneur must publish if they hope to succeed. Hair dressers, chefs, dog trainers, roofers, lawyers, doctors—everyone will publish.
What roadblocks will congregations encounter when they try to get more mileage from their considerable investment in spreading the Good News? They will have to get content for their evangelism efforts. Can they rely on the cooperation of clergy? Will everyone be stepping on toes? Will congregations seeking to call pastors insist their candidates understand modern publishing? They should.
The question probably enters no one’s mind now. As it is, very few pastors publish. Those that do are likely claiming all royalties without anyone questioning who subsidized the time they took in writing the book.
Will pastors value relationship over work product? Will they argue that Jonathan Edwards published his sermons for his own benefit and therefore they have the same rights? I don’t know the answer, but it is something to think about as congregations — like everyone in the modern world — realize that they have the power and need to publish. Publish or perish, for real!
These will be refreshing legal battles after the church has wasted so much of its resources in arguing about physical property, land, and monetary assets. Maybe church leaders will at last realize that their message is a major asset!
This is a game changer. It can be the salvation of the small church. If we make it a contest, all will lose. Congregations should think about this now before their regional bodies start to tweak their constitutions to favor them and the clergy. Clergy are a pretty big voting bloc in that regard.
Congregations must become involved in any upcoming debate. They may have to spark the debate or watch decisions made for them — and not in their favor!
This has happened before. The Lutheran Church in America (the predecessor body of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America) forbade congregations from publishing. It was seen as competition with the national church publishing houses. Now there is no way to stop congregations from publishing.
Denominational leaders will be shooting their mission in the foot if they start to legislate these rights in their favor, but they’ve been doing this in their lust for land for years.
Congregations, think about this now! If your next pastor is uncomfortable with publishing and uncomfortable with others in the church becoming involved in publishing, they will be unprepared to bring your congregation into the future.
I’ve had the opportunity to attend many youth concerts in the last few years. I’ve noticed a remarkable difference from my school experiences.
Today’s young people have the ability to excel in skills beyond what was possible for all but the most motivated among those of us who were schooled 40-50 years ago.
They have constant exposure to the professional talent. We had the Mickey Mouse Club and the Ed Sullivan Show.
They have teaching tools that were unavailable to us as we learned to play our instruments. Online teachers are plentiful. There is a device that can play recorded music slowly without changing the pitch. How I remember replacing the needle on the high-fi, guessing that it was falling at the phrase I wanted to learn and trying to keep up with the pros as I practiced!
Suffice to say . . . the coming generations are better at many skills at an earlier age than we dreamed of being. The contestant age requirement on some TV singing competitions has dropped to 12. Twelve! The 12-year-olds are holding their own. The quality is there. Sometimes their lack of maturity causes them to falter, but several have made it through to the final rounds. The recent winner of The Voice is just 16.
Most of our talented young community members are not in church.
Could our style of worship be influencing apathy?
As much as we like to think of the worship experience as corporate and engaging, it really isn’t — not when measured against the potential.
Those who grew up in the church and have an understanding of what is going on in a worship service may take comfort in knowing the rationale behind the various sections of the liturgy and understand how it intends to engage them.
But these are fewer and fewer. As a result, worship becomes more and more passive. We exist in a world where our ability to express ourselves is exploding with potential. Yet in worship we are asked to behave as spectators. Today’s spectators have higher expectations!
For the last three years, Redeemer worshipers have been forced into a spectator role, denied access to our own sanctuary. In our own worship, we would all be involved. But that happens only on the first Sundays of the month now. Nevertheless, we take seriously our role as spectators, participating in the limited ways allowed as guests in worship.
We notice that the worshiping body is more and more passive. The larger the congregation, the more passive. Some even pay select choir members!
Congregations often seem to be content to be overpowered by an organ. The roles of worshipers are orchestrated. One will read scripture. Another will take the offering. Tradition.
Spontaneous expression is almost non-existent with the occasional exception of prayer— notably in the churches with more of an African or African-American membership.
In 65 visits, we have seen no dance (common in Redeemer worship). Choirs are fairly rare.
There was always something interesting and spontaneous happening in Redeemer’s worship. A nod from a worship leader was enough to let a worshiper know that they would be leading the next part of worship.
It was not unusual for a member to climb the sanctuary stairs on Sunday morning and say, “I’d like to sing a solo this morning.”
Sometimes it was embarrassing, but human. One week, (has to be six years ago) someone stepped forward to sing a solo as prelude. Her choice ended up to be the opening hymn. What are the odds of that! So she sang. And then we sang. It was memorable. The hymn was “We Have Come Into His House.” Do you remember what the opening hymn was in your worship last week?
As an observer, I wonder if the structure of the worship service might need an overhaul to allow for the growing talents and expectations of our community members. We inherited our worship from a time when one or two educated members of the community led mostly illiterate worshipers. The abilities and skill levels of the modern worshiper make us much less likely to be content as spectators. The modern worshiper may not understand that when they are asked to stand, sit or read the words that are printed in the bulletin in boldface — well, that’s involvement!
We have a tendency to substitute ritual and call it engagement. Are we really engaged when we all file to front of the church and hold hands out for communion?
There is a huge challenge in wondering about all this. We are not expected to ask such questions.
Put the right person in charge and everything will be fine. The right person will come up with great new ideas. The people will execute the ideas flawlessly. The church will grow.
The right person will write a book. Hundreds of other churches will learn from the great success and the Church will grow and grow as a model for organizational success.
When it doesn’t work this way — and it rarely does — the blame game begins, it usually begins and ends with blaming the laity, because they have the least say in the organization we call Church. Least say. Most to lose.
Part of the problem is finding that right leader.
Often, the leader is chosen by the regional body for reasons known only to the regional body. Having a call for a pastor is more critical than having a successful ministry. Lots of square pegs get put into round holes for bureaucratic convenience.
This is rarely part of any evaluation when things aren’t working out. And so the same mistake can be made over and over with the blame game being the sole survivior.
The blame game does not lead to success.
Success, which we all long for,
is built upon failure.
We learn from failure. But not if we ante up for the blame game.
This is the biggest obstacle to church growth and it is exacerbated when regional bodies are failing. Shh! Some of them are, you know. They are the ones that are grabbing property.
When the regional body is failing, congregational failure becomes their salvation. Property values, if assumed well before true failure, can plug a deficit for several years.
Regional bodies have incentive to strangle innovation.
When regional bodies are failing, they quickly lose their sense of mission. Self-interest stops innovation in its tracks. The blame game kicks into full gear. The blame game is the fastest route to acquisition of assets.
Lay leadership didn’t contribute.
Lay leadership didn’t support the clergy.
Demographics have changed. (Don’t they always?)
Congregational members are resistant to change. (Who isn’t?)
It is a predictable litany usually chanted behind closed doors, where unopposed, it gains advantage.
Behind the criticism is the reality that a congregation’s failure will give the regional body a short-term boost.
This is tragic. The congregation might be on the verge of important self-discovery.
Many of the congregations that are on the verge of failure today, could teach us all something if innovation were fostered. Every innovator knows you have to work through the failures.
But the tragedy in the Church is deeper. There is a big cover up. The cover up is the use of the Resurrection story to justify failure and ugly behavior. Regional leaders would have us believe that is necessary for congregations to die in order for someone else to live. Christ died so that we might die?
What we must do is examine every failure with brutal honesty. Why didn’t our good ideas work? What were the obstacles? Money is often the assumed obstacle, but sometimes that’s a convenient illusion.
How can we remove or overcome the obstacles? What is worth risking for revival?
If the list of requisites creates obstacles in our pioneering efforts, then that list must be examined.
Failure is something the Church must learn to work through if innovation is to result. Team work would help but is unlikely given the coveting of assets. (That’s why “thou shalt not covet” made the ten commandments twice).
Every congregational resource must be available for mission—not protected for the day the regional body decides the assets are theirs.
If that money is allocated only for tried but failing mission strategies, then it is being squandered.
Freeing congregational assets for experiments in mission is the only road to success. Are we strong enough to follow it? Or are we reserving our legacy money to pay today’s bills?
Comparing SEPA’s Largest Congregation with the Church SEPA Says Doesn’t Exist
What do Trinity, Lansdale, and Redeemer, East Falls, have in common?
We both engage with more than 700 followers each week.
According to Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Trend reports, Trinity, Lansdale, stands alone among Southeastern Pennsylvania churches in numbers. It has nearly 5000 members and an average worship attendance of 725. Most other large churches in SEPA — and there are only a few — average around 400.
Most SEPA churches are much smaller with about 100 or fewer at worship (many much fewer). ELCA Trend measures only membership, attendance, income and expenses (in various configurations).
There are new statistics that will mean more in the emerging church. Churches don’t have to worry about collecting the data. The internet tracks results for you. This is where Redeemer is breaking ground no other SEPA church seems to be seriously exploring.
Redeemer is no longer listed in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Trend reports, although the congregation never voted to close. We’ll take that up with the ELCA later.
Redeemer was growing quickly although we were still among the SEPA churches with fewer than 50 in average weekly worship attendance—the only engagement most churches measure. The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod seized Redeemer’s property and locked our doors in 2009—something about inability to fulfill mission. (They approved a $275,000 budget deficit at the same time they claimed our property.)
There was plenty to question at the time, but no one did. There is more to question now!
Redeemer has continued its ministry without our property. There is no rule that a congregation must own property.
Locked out of God’s House in East Falls, we took our ministry online with our blog, 2x2virtualchurch.com. We now have an average weekly following approaching 800 in new traffic and about 150 who subscribe to our site daily. We engage between 1000 and 2000 readers each week.
Redeemer may have the largest engagement of any SEPA congregation! The potential for effective mission is huge.
While the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the ELCA has tenaciously tried to destroy our ministry, we adapted — and grew!
2×2 is written with lay leaders in mind. Our experience as a small church is that lay leaders are the innovators in ministry. Most have part-time pastors. Growing churches is not part-time work. The passion of lay people (an undervalued resource) is keeping many churches going.
Small churches need resources that don’t rely on paid skills.
We had an additional challenge. Redeemer is multicultural and multilingual. No single age group dominates. That means we can’t just turn to a choir or a youth group or a Sunday School class to create interesting activities. We developed materials that could be adapted to any eclectic grouping.
When we still had our building we posted these resources on generic ministry websites.
Two years ago we began posting them on 2×2.
We posted an Easter play Redeemer performed for all East Falls churches in 2009. It was downloaded 300 times last year and 3000 times this year.
This tells us how we can further serve the large audience of small churches. Search engine analysis shows us that people are beginning to find our content by specifically plugging in terms specific to our site (“2×2 Easter play” — not just “Easter play).” Our content is gaining a following.
We post at least two features a week which congregations can adapt. Early in the week we post an object lesson intended for adults based on the week’s lectionary. Mid-week we post an analysis of art that complements the week’s theme. These can be adapted to multimedia presentations that some churches now show before worship (just as Redeemer did). We will continue to build on this foundation.
In addition, we offer our experience in using social media with dozens of how-to posts.
One large church recently wrote to us: “A lot is written about social media and the church, but you are the only church actually doing it.”
In all likelihood, Redeemer has the widest reach of any church in SEPA Synod with followers all over the world. We engage with them one-on-one. We share ministry problems and successes and rely on one another for prayer.
What does this mean for ministry in East Falls? It means our worldwide reach can now benefit our local ministry. We have a new potential source of funding for ministry.
Redeemer always was viable despite SEPA’s self-interested reports. Our day school, locked since SEPA interfered, would be generating upwards of $6000 per month. (That’s nearly $300,000 of squandered potential over the last four years.) The web site could begin to generate several thousand a month within a year of nurturing—plenty of resources to fund a neighborhood ministry without a single coin in an offering plate.
Redeemer has never had more potential.
If mission is the goal in East Falls (and it is definitely our goal) the best potential for ministry is to make peace with the Lutherans who have steadfastly maintained and grown mission during the last six years of conflict. The property should be returned to Redeemer. This would be in keeping with Lutheran polity.
Our journey has been a leap into the future of the church. We could still be a small neighborhood church serving a few, focused on survival and paying a pastor—as is the case of so many small churches.
We’ve learned that it is possible for a small church to grow. We are very aware that 2×2 can grow beyond our own vision.
Meanwhile, the largest church in SEPA and Redeemer, the largest online church, are both fulfilling their mission with impressive results.
God is doing something new at Redeemer, East Falls.
He describes ten reasons businesses die. They apply to churches, too.
1. As Yoda said, you just don’t believe it.
Luke Skywalker says, “I just don’t believe it.” Yoda answers, “That is why you fail.”
For all the talk about faith and belief, the Church often acts as if we do not believe our own message. We don’t believe small churches can survive, so we do nothing to help. Our leaders see no economic incentive in helping small churches. Regional bodies see themselves as better managers of money. They often are not. When the assets of one closed church dry up, they look for another small church to loot. The altruistic promises made to justify the seizures, are quickly forgotten. No one really analyzes where the money goes.
Bishop Almquist told us our assets were being put into a Mission Fund. It was later revealed that the Mission Fund fills the synod’s own spending deficits (which were frequently in the healthy six-figures). A few weeks ago we learned that Holy Spirit’s assets would go to The Bishop’s Emergency Fund. Does anyone know what that means?
Belief in the purposes of church—as in life—is foundational to success. More, when we believe in an all-powerful, merciful and gracious God. If we in the pew don’t believe and the regional body has self-interest in our failure — we have a problem.
2. Other people have convinced you of your “station.”
This brings to mind the school principal who fired a teacher when she learned that the teacher had told students from poor urban neighborhoods that they would never amount to anything.
We need this principal’s kind of leadership in the Church.
Any church leader who goes to a small congregation, accepting a salary, with the message that the congregation will never amount to much should be history.
Redeemer was lucky. Bishop Almquist had left us to die. “You’ll die a natural death in ten years,” he told us. He refused to provide even a caretaker pastor. But we found a part-time pastor who served us for three years. He told us we could be a flagship church. We believed. While SEPA was waiting out the ten years, we began to grow.
DiSalvo quotes Tennessee Williams. “A high station in life is earned by the gallantry with which appalling experiences are survived with grace.”
Disruption means that consistency, stability and certainty might get jettisoned for a time, and that puts our hard-wired internal defense system on high alert. Sometimes, though, you have to override the alarms and move ahead anyway. If you never do, you’ll never know what could happen.
Redeemer had put aside old expectations as we forged new ministry and began to experience success. SEPA allowed alarms to go off without ever sharing our successes.
We all want to leave a legacy. The Church feeds into this idea, too.
Our pastor in 2008 met with the bishop and never returned to our church. He sent word that rumors were being spread that he was leading a rebellion and he feared his reputation being ruined. A rebellion? A church defends its ministry and it is seen as rebellion! Bishop Burkat shamelessly used the fear of tarnished legacy to fuel her cause. She wrote in a letter to all pastors.
In the case of Redeemer, leaders did not cooperate with us and instead resisted tenaciously in an adversarial manner that publicly tarnishes the wonderful memory of ministry that has taken place in the East Falls community since 1891.
Small churches must learn to live in today’s world and guard against any appearance that protecting the past is mission.
6. You think there must be a pre-established role for your life.
This is part of the church model. We are who others tell us we are. Don’t dare step beyond your role — even if the role you played historically no longer has a need in today’s world. Instead of using our assets to explore new ways of meeting needs, the Church attempts to find new places where the old ways might still work. They call this mission and celebrate it as innovative. It is not; it is replication. Chances are such replicated ministries will fail soon after the publicity value wears off.
SEPA’s vision of Redeemer was that of a small family church. Redeemer started to transform from a small white congregation in a working class neighborhood to an international church in a growing collegiate neighborhood. SEPA was unprepared to serve us. They had been counting on our failure for 10 years!
DiSalvo writes that these pre-defined roles (agency) “is a figment our brains rely on to manage difficulty with as little trauma as possible. The first thing to do is recognize that….”
7. Your career appears to be well-established and that’s good, right?
We all know the role of the small church. Serve the immediate neighborhood with the message of God’s love. Support a pastor to the best of our ability. Maintain the property. (Not necessarily in that order.) But what if you stepped out of that role and began to serve in new and innovative ways? How would the church react? (It isn’t always pretty.)
8. You are afraid of losing what you have built.
DiSalvo ponts out that this is beyond our control. There is always a danger of losing what we have built. It should not determine your ministry. Unfortunately, in the Church, there are people ready to help us lose what we have built. This fear of being a victim of hierarchical greed is actually crippling the potential of the church. Lutheran congregations used to be fairly independent. It’s written into our founding documents as “interdependent.” But lately, congregations are looking to the bishop’s office for approval of decisions that are constitutionally theirs to make independently. This is what happens when you start forcing church closures. Congregations start to live in fear.
9. You think “maybe I’ve hit my ceiling.”
Many small churches stop trying. Pastors often stop trying. Synods encourage this when they use terms like caretaker and hospice ministries. Small churches must fight this mindset. But that, we learned, can be dangerous!
10. Confusion about where to go.
This is a huge problem in the church because the Church really has no vision for where it is going. Frequently, the people we look to in the Church as visionaries are people who have found a way to preserve the concept of Church as we understood it in the past. They are few. These pastors write books about their successes, hoping they will help others. Some of them are pretty good books! These successes are, however, often the result of a serendipitous combination of personalities and circumstances that is hard to replicate.
The Church, I suspect, is headed someplace very different than what we have known. At 2×2, we are excited to be part of it—even as we have been made to feel so very unwelcome in it.
Bishop Roy Almquist told Redeemer this at the turn of this century as a prelude for doing nothing to serve our congregation in his second six-year term.
He may have been very right.
It is no accident that small churches vastly outnumber large congregations. People are attracted to small congregations. Sociologically, an ideal congregation has about 150 members.
The model congregation must have 300 members to support the financial expectations of clergy and the regional body—and that’s before they do a lick of ministry or mission. When a congregation gets that big, it loses some of the qualities that attract many people to church.
A broader geographic area is needed to support this model which makes it more difficult for the congregation to stay in touch with the local needs.
The model is presented as economically desirable — fewer churches serving more people. But statistics show that fewer churches are serving fewer people. Statistics overall are down.
This model relies on the concept of a “settled pastor”— a pastor who serves a congregation for some seven years or ideally for decades. This is unrealistic today and is not likely to lead to church growth.
The epidemic of church closures is a result of a failure to adapt—hanging on to a dying model until it is too much work to turn things around—although it is probably still possible.
To survive in a diverse, quickly changing community culture, congregations need flexibility. They need to draw on professional skills that one person is unlikely to have. They may need these services for only six months, but they can’t get them because their money and fealty is tied up in one “settled pastor.”
Perhaps the growing number of clergy taking interim pastor training is a sign that they recognize that the “settled pastor” model will no longer advance the church from either the clergy or lay point of view.
The interim approach — a short-term plug for a hole which will eventually be filled more permanently — may need adjusting. It puts the management of congregations in the hands of the regional bodies—with which the congregations don’t have any day-to-day knowledge or relations. Similarly, regional bodies know only what they are told about the congregations by people with a vested interest. The odds for misinterpretation are good.
Congregational control of their own ministry — the Lutheran way — is slipping away. Attitudes are changing as the regional bodies rely more and more on their power and less on their sense of service. Congregations begin to defer decisions and rights that are constitutionally theirs. It doesn’t take long for this to become “the norm.” Congregations that insist on their rights are ridiculed and shunned—the Redeemer experience.
We will talk about this more in a later post, but this abandonment put us in an ideal position to experiment. And we were experiencing success.
The only answer many congregations hear is that they should continue to pour money down a non-producing hole until they are drained both financially and spiritually. Then, unable to meet the future, there is a grand celebration of the past as the regional body shutters the church and walks off with the spoils. Such a celebration is scheduled this week at Holy Spirit in NE Philadelphia.
Today’s Church exists amid a new and perplexing dichotomy.
Our world views bigger as better. Bigger means more money, more resources, more power. Better goes along for the ride.
This seems to go with the fundamental view of corporate church. It certainly goes with the traditional structure of church since the Middle Ages
The Church is not going to give up on this idea easily!
Within this bigness is a new power of the individual. Individuals do not have to be part of a big organization to fulfill needs which were once met ONLY through association with large organizations.
The FBI with all its state-of-the-art technology and the funding of the leading nation in the free world can be hacked by an adventurous school kid with no particular ill will, as easily as it can be hacked by an enemy.
Big brands with solid positioning in our culture can be challenged by a single new marketing concept. What is Woolworth worth today?
The same thing is happening in the Church. Those accustomed to being big and powerful are finding their secure position in society threatened by the small church and even perhaps by individuals.
Where do television preachers get their start? They rarely rise through the ranks of the organized church. They may have started out there but their ambitions outgrow church structure.
There was a time when it was difficult to exist outside denominational structure if you felt called to serve God.
No problem today. Raise some money. Get on TV. (Or write a blog!) The media of the day can make all the difference.
Soon they have created what modern business calls a “tribe.”
Nothing new here. Israel had its tribes. Moses had a tribe. Jesus had a tribe. Paul had a tribe.
The members of a modern evangelist’s tribe probably had roots in the traditional church, too. The difference today is that individuals within the tribe have more power. They can and will come and go from the traditional church. Meanwhile, they can pick and choose between involvement with multiple tribes. One tribe might interest them socially. Another culturally. Still another might be addressing a cause dear to their heart.
The Church must recognize this as it nurtures its own tribe. Your most loyal members are probably sharing their loyalties, time, talent and money.
They may attend worship (or not). They may serve on a charitable board or two. They pick and choose between the charities that do the best job of soliciting their help — usually on Sunday mornings.
There is no longer brand loyalty among Christians. People want to make a difference. If the Church cannot provide the diversity of opportunities to serve, there are plenty of organizations that will.
There is also individual power. A person can abandon the whole tribe mentality and go it alone and still be effective stewards of God’s gifts.
Mainline denominational churches can cry about this, fight and scheme for positioning, and grasp at what’s left of the old order.
Or they can fashion a ministry that attracts multiple “tribes.”
There are such things, you know. Mission Manuals. They tell us exactly how to start a church or revive a faltering ministry.
Frequently, mission is all about replication. We try to do the same thing that worked so well, perhaps just a few years ago, but in a different place.
We follow flagship ministries that succeed because of unique vision and herculean passion and try to pull off the same success with no unique vision and the part-time commitment of clergy.
At times we go so far as to attempt to import people into neighborhoods. That early “manufactured” success can be measured. It might attract the regional body’s interest and their investment (coin, time, or talent). Perhaps the statistics will attract some unsuspecting part-time pastor!
Why do we try to replicate—and call it innovation?
There is comfort in routine.
We know how to measure routines.
We know what to measure in our routines.
We already have the training to do things the old way and the training to do things in new ways might not exist.
Who doesn’t like a roadmap?
Neighborhoods are not the same. In decades past, there may have been more similarity and more stability within a geographic era. Church mission concepts are geared to such commonalities.
But neighborhoods vary greatly these days. Change used to be generational. Now it can be expected, especially in urban neighborhoods, within five years.
Look at Philadelphia. There are whole neighborhoods where virtually everyone is in their mid-twenties to mid-thirties with just a few toddlers in tow (Fairmount). There are ethnic neighborhoods that are shifting ethnicity (South Philadelphia, once heavily Italian, is now the home of Southeast Asian immigrants). There are collegiate neighborhoods (West Philadelphia). There are neighborhoods that are very mixed racially, economically, and socially (East Falls).
No amount of forcing will make neighborhoods stay the same. Congregations must learn this. So must professional leaders. We must also learn that a successful replication may have a life of only five years — if ongoing changes are not recognized as part of the mission model.
The act of replicating means that a great deal of energy and resources are devoted to recreating the same model. By the time all of the pieces are in place and showing the first signs of stability (if not progress) there are few resources or energy for initiative. Congregations may be locked into the leadership that brought them thus far but will not be able to take them into the Promised Land.
So how can the church foster innovation when so much thinking and resources are designed to protect the status quo or the initial investment?
If we want innovative ministries. we must stop measuring old statistics. New ministries can’t live up to them. But they CAN forge new ground and show impressive advances.
The day will come when you can apply the old measuring tools. But, if you wait for the old measurements to be in place before you innovate, nothing new will happen.
We can illustrate many of these points by looking at the recent history (15 years and counting) of the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod (SEPA) of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)’s attempts to do ministry with the people of East Falls. We’ll publish these separately. They are worth looking at if not for Redeemer’s sake (which would be welcome) but to learn what doesn’t work in the single-minded quest for transformation. There are many lessons to be learned from this one, largely misunderstood, ministry.
Join Bishop Ruby Kinisa as she visits small churches "under cover" to learn what people would never share if they knew they were talking to their bishop.
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Judy Gotwald,
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Redeemer’s Prayer
We were all once strangers, the weakest, the outcasts, until someone came to our defense, included us, empowered us, reconciled us (1 Cor. 2; Eph. 2).
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On Isaiah 30:15b
Be calm. Wait. Wait. Commit your cause to God. He will make it succeed. Look for Him a little at a time. Wait. Wait. But since this waiting seems long to the flesh and appears like death, the flesh always wavers. But keep faith. Patience will overcome wickedness.
—Martin Luther
