Second time’s the charm. Last week we set out to visit St. Michael, Unionville, and ran into multiple detours and road blocks. We returned this week and experienced no problems.
St. Michael’s appears to be a thriving congregation that relocated to a 7-acre rural lot about 25 years ago and has undergone some major expansion projects since. We entered an unusual sanctuary, much wider than long. Attendance on this Thanksgiving weekend was probably a little over 100, although we didn’t tally.
Their worship was traditional with an LBW liturgy. A hostess explained after the service that the choir had a week off in preparation for the busy holiday season to come. Two members sang a beautiful duet. They introduced one new Advent hymn and used several other more traditional Advent hymns.
Their new associate pastor gave a nice sermon and children’s sermon and blessed the work of their knitters and crocheters who had made prayer shawls. They seemed to be in the midst of a stewardship drive — seems to be that time of year!
We also heard a talk from a son of the congregation involved in mission work in Mexico. He talked about taking an ethnocentric approach to spreading the Gospel and noted that their were 8000 ethnic groups or “nations” waiting to hear the Good News. He claimed that the Gospel is often best shared in setting geared to individual ethnic traditions. We talked with him extensively after the service and shared our multicultural approach.
We talked to several members after church and learned a good deal about their ministry experiences.
We inquired about their new web site project which we had reviewed before attending.
We had a delightful visit and enjoyed sharing our story and learning from theirs.
If your church has a blog — and you should — you will encounter the option in blogging software to list your blogposts in a “category.”
Categories are helpful organizational tools for three reasons (at least):
Categories give search engines more opportunity to find your blog.
Categories help readers wade through dozens of blog posts.
Categories can guide you as you develop your blog’s mission and help you keep content balanced and on topic.
Using Categories is totally optional, the option becomes desirable…and soon necessary to maintain sanity!
Categories can be described as a Table of Contents in a cyber sense. Unlike a book, this Table of Contents is not linear. Readers do not move from Chapter 1 to Chapter 2. Instead, categories organize the content in an interwoven tapestry. You, the author, get to choose where the information goes. It can go in both Chapter 1 and 2, and maybe even Chapter 30!
You can add a single post to any number of categories. For example, a 2×2 post on Social Media Outreach might be placed in a “Social Media Ministry” category AND a “Church Growth” category AND a “Transformational Ministry” category. Be judicious as you decide which categories to place your blogs. It defeats the purpose of Categories to place every post in every category!
Placing your blog in a Category does not remove it from the daily blog feed. It adds it to the collection of topics on the same subject. A reader can click on the Category and read all the other posts relating to the same topic without scrolling through posts which are not of immediate interest.
Placing your posts in a Category gives them longevity. As a blogger you may be writing on several topics of interest in no particular order or changing topics from day to day. Your list of blog posts will grow quickly if you are serious about publishing. You may have great posts on an important topic that you published months before. If you do not place it in a Category, it will be buried.
Using categories helps your readers focus on the content of most interest to them. Once you have a dozen or so posts, take time to create a set of categories and assign each blog post accordingly. Each new post can be assigned a category before posting.
Now sit back and feel satisfied. You’ve helped search engines find your content. You’ve helped readers find the content that interests them.
Tomorrow’s post will show how that same few seconds you spent placing your post in a category also helps you!
Redeemer (2×2’s sponsoring church) is in its third year of exile from the ELCA. As we approach Thanksgiving we remember that this sacred national holiday grew from our nation’s darkest hour — the Civil War.
Our bitter and divisive national conflict ultimately unified our nation and made us stronger. Nevertheless, we wonder what the thousands who died at the hands of brothers might have accomplished given four years of peace and nurture.
We do not know what will grow from our own civil war. This Thanksgiving, we reflect on what we have learned. We have learned that:
church community can thrive without buildings. Buildings are tools for ministry but not requisite.
church community does not depend on clergy. Redeemer remains grateful for the handful of unnamed clergy who have provided occasional pastoral care.
the secular community is often more helpful and spiritual than the Church. Secular organizations of East Falls have shared generously. Churches have been silent.
our quietest members sometimes have the most strength given circumstances that draw upon them.
individuals are more likely to take action than organizations. The support we have received has been from individual Christians, not organized Christianity.
we are not alone in our struggles, but it has fallen upon us to bear the standard.
Christian community can reach beyond traditional definitions as we begin to attract support from around the world.
the difference between talking our faith and living our faith. We encounter that difference each week.
it is possible to live our faith, but we cannot count on church leaders for guidance, encouragement or conscience.
This Thanksgiving — our third since being excommunicated from the Lutheran Church and evicted from our property — we give thanks to our anonymous supporters who have contributed generously to our defense. God bless you and your ministries.
Most important, we give thanks to God
for the strength He has given us to bear attacks from our brothers and sisters in Christ.
for the lives of those who passed through our community before us, setting examples.
for the lives of the named saints whose struggles teach us that the Way is not easy.
for the sacrifice of His Son, which makes our sacrifices seem insignificant.
for the challenges that have taught us things about ourselves.
for the opportunities which have led us to new ministries we might not have nurtured had we been focussed on the more traditional ministry.
for scriptures which mean so much more when facing hardship.
for His continued protection and love.
2×2 is taking a two-day Thanksgiving break. Happy Thanksgiving to all.
Interim Ministry is a fairly modern trend of assigning a short-term minister to a parish that has recently ended a relationship with one pastor and intends to call a new pastor. The process is described in a similar manner by various denominations as a time to minister to the people and help them identify ministry objectives.
One denomination described the interim period as a buffer between a congregation and its relationship with a former pastor and expectations of a new minister. One said, “The interim minister makes the necessary changes in a congregation. No reason to have the congregation get mad at the new minister. Let the interim take the heat.”
The days of a congregation enjoying the leadership of a single pastor for decades may be numbered.
This sounds like a good idea on the surface, but there is a danger that the practice could serve less noble purposes. Our recent visits to 34 congregations found a surprising percentage engaged in some stage of interim ministry. Some were just beginning the process. Some had been in interim status for more than a year. One had a new interim at our first visit and we learned a few weeks later that another interim was stepping in. “It didn’t work out,” the newer pastor explained.
Both the number of interim ministries we encountered and their length raised questions. We do not claim to have the answers but the questions could be important.
What other aspects of our lives have such long fallow periods? We change presidents and mayors, jobs (and even spouses) without months of interim work. An argument might be that presidents and mayors have long campaigns before they are chosen for their jobs. That leads us to consider the call process.
Perhaps it is the call process that needs changing? With the average length of pastorates fairly short — less than seven years — an interim ministry can be a frequent occurrence, adding to instability. The scenario could be 12-18 months of interim ministry, 12 months of honeymoon, three years of ministry, 12-18 months of interim ministry, etc. (Revolving door). While pastors may feel that the interim has eased the transition process, the lay point of view is that the process starts all over again every time the face in the pulpit changes — interim or not. The call process, at least in our denomination, can be unsettling. Candidates are given every opportunity to learn about the congregation, while the names of candidates are withheld from the congregation until a sample sermon is delivered. The approval process is often based on little more — yet congregations expect so much more!
Shouldn’t congregations undergo a constant process of self-examination? If ministry is to be effective, congregations will change constantly. Communities also change quickly.
Shouldn’t all pastors have skills to help congregations assess goals and strategize?
Does the interim process change the role of lay representatives? Who does the interim pastor report to and work for — the congregation or the regional body? In several of the churches we visited, the interim pastor announced that he or she would be making a report to the bishop that week. There was no mention of any lay involvement.
Wouldn’t it be easier to train one leader to handle change than to try to work with dozens of congregation members?
Is the interim process good use of congregational resources? Congregations pay good money to the interim for a very short-term investment. If this is a period where ministry concentrates on self-analysis, that translates to a long period of time when resources are spent on activity that is not, at least for the time being, outreach-oriented. Are visitors during the interim going to be attracted to a congregation in long-term transition?
Do interim ministries meet the career needs of pastors and administrative needs of regional bodies more than the ministry needs of congregations? Interim pastors are making short-term commitments. Short-term commitments are safer entry points for the many seminary candidates entering ministry as a second career. Interim pastors don’t have to consider the hassles of moving and relocating families. It’s an attractive opportunity for pastors who don’t want to make changes in their lives that may not match the career objectives of their spouses. But the congregations are expected to change!
Do interim pastorates change the political balance? An overlooked consequence of the over-dependence on interim pastors is the shift of power away from the congregation. Interim pastors have close ties and loyalty to the denominational body and its current leadership. When a high percentage of congregations have interim ministries, that has the potential to skew the decisions of representative governing bodies.
Why should the interim process, led by experts in interim ministry, take more than three months?
The Ambassadors set out with the best of intentions to visit a church which supported a Lutheran Retirement Home where a friend of our congregation lives. Circumstances conspired against us. The Philadelphia Marathon blocked major roadways crossing the Schuylkill and we ended up being close to on time, but we don’t like being late.
Instead, we took a tour of Luther House in West Grove, Pa. Our friend has lived there for seven years and enjoys it immensely. She led our tour.
We also enjoyed a breakfast and planned our Christmas worship. We do not look forward to being locked out of our church for a THIRD Christmas, but we make the best of things. Redeemer remains a faithful congregation called to action — not just prayer.
The year was 1998. A few representatives from SEPA Synod Council were meeting with Redeemer congregation.
They had just made their first attempt to close our church and seize our assets. Working with the congregation council behind the backs of the congregation, they had convinced leaders to resign en masse to create constitutional grounds (where none existed) for SEPA to step in.
On cue, seven council members tossed their resignations (drafted by a synod staff person) onto the table. A synod representative scooped them up and declared “synodical administration.” But three council members refused to be part of the scheme. With the help of two anonymous pastors, they re-established the congregational council — following the constitution — and successfully challenged SEPA’s plot.
SEPA’s interference damaged our church and the network of friendships that characterizes all congregations. The council members who had worked secretly with Synod were disgraced. They left Redeemer with their families. Some had been at Redeemer for decades. We learned that our Synod rarely measures the personal cost of their actions.
There was also damage to our congregation’s reputation. The conflict challenged giving and our ability to attract leadership. Branded.
At this meeting, a synod council member (a pastor from a neighboring church) started to talk to our members about statistics of small churches, patiently explaining that we couldn’t survive.
We pointed out that what congregations in the heart of the city were currently experiencing would become problematic for churches in outer city neighborhoods and suburbs within a decade or so. It was time to find answers.
A decade or more has passed and the churches we visit today on the edges of Philadelphia look remarkably like Redeemer looked in 1998, including the congregation of the pastor who was lecturing us 14 years before. Most congregations are experiencing serious decline, often in double digits.
We are learning through our Ambassador visits, that even suburban churches with fairly healthy worship attendance face financial challenges. Two of the largest congregations we have visited have liquid assets very similar to Redeemer’s and are carrying a similar debt load. A remarkable statistical difference is that Redeemer was growing in membership and attendance while TREND reports show that the larger churches are in decline.
If so many congregations are failing, why are we pointing fingers? Time and resources would be better spent looking for answers.
One thing stands out from our experience. The trustees in 2008 reported to Synod Assembly that we had a vibrant outreach ministry, but it was not run in cooperation with Synod’s Mission Director. In other words, Redeemer was growing without Synod’s help!
There is NO requirement for congregations to run evangelism efforts past the Synod for approval.That goes against Lutheran polity.
The persistent attacks from our denomination have given Redeemer a valuable perspective. We actively seek answers to modern ministry challenges. This IS Lutheran polity.
We recovered from the 1998 damage and were again growing in 2007 when Bishop Burkat, facing serious Synod financial challenges, decided to evict our congregation from our property, effectively excommunicating us. As we approach 2012, without a building or much in the way of money, we continue our ministry and have a glimpse of where churches must go to thrive in a dramatically different world. We continue to grow in ways we did not anticipate as we create a worldwide community, forging invigorating intra- and cross-denominational bonds.
Congregations must be encouraged to find their own answers to ministry challenges. The prescribed way — by every statistical measure — is not working!
Maybe Social Media Ministry isn’t right for you. There are plenty of good reasons to avoid it. 🙂
Religion is a mystery. Let’s keep it that way!
Let people form their opinions about our religion from the popular media. They do a pretty good job!
Social media allows for too much interaction between clergy and laity. It’s best to maintain boundaries.
We do not want to be known by our works. It’s a theological thing.
Why monitor our image? We have a great reputation. No one could possibly have a beef with us.
What if people who don’t know anything about us take cheap shots online? So what! Everybody knows the truth. No one will pay any attention to them.
We want the people who join our church to know as little as possible when they join. That way we can tell them what’s what! We don’t want their ideas to mess up something good.
Our congregation is a close-knit family. We are busy helping each other and don’t have time for other people’s problems.
Pen and ink were good enough for St. Paul. No need to make any changes there.
We think it is a bad idea to reach more people with the message of God’s love. What’s in it for us?
If we start writing with other people in mind, they may get the idea that we care more than we really do.
We can’t afford to serve any more people than we already serve. It’s just not in the budget!
Who has time for this Social Media nonsense? Our current members keep us plenty busy as it is.
We’ve written about this subject before, but it is important enough to tackle from a different angle. Pastors must start to learn and use Social Media if they are to minister effectively in today’s world.
If your congregation is lucky, you have a pastor who understands the power of social media ministry. It seems like a no-brainer for anyone with the objective of reaching more people with the Good News.
The reality is that many pastors were called and trained for the ministry long before social media was available. Even fewer have been ordained in the last five years or so when social media began to spread its roots all over the world.
Congregations must realize as they develop Social Media Ministry that it requires work — daily work. It is a discipline just like answering snail mail used to be. Your Social Media Ministry Committee (Evangelism Committee) will want very much to work with your pastor, but may encounter resistance. It’s not what pastors do!
Here are some tips.
You must convince your pastor that your Web Site, Blog and Facebook or Google+ presence is not for vanity. Communicating with and cheerleading your current membership is only the tip of the iceberg for your Social Media Ministry potential. Examples of going beyond this are few but growing. 2×2 is an example. We are a very small church reaching more than 100 new readers each week within only a few months of launching our site. We are finding our way, but we are a step or two in front of most and will readily share what we learn.
On the other hand, appealing to vanity might work! Pastors might enjoy knowing they can put a video or slide show on the web and be found in the search engines by thousands.
Convince your pastor that the Social Media is a powerful evangelism tool. It is not just a place to post sermons. It is about communicating with the neighborhood in ways that show the church cares about them. Ironically, the web allows you to reach the whole world while you talk to the guy next door!
Take the teamwork approach. While professional leadership input is helpful, it is not a one-person enterprise. Clergy and laity must work together.
Statistics can be helpful. Point out that your pastor can continue to prepare sermons that are delivered on Sunday morning to the same 50 people — or their insights can be condensed and delivered to 100s or 1000s every hour of every day.
Don’t overwhelm. This is where pre-planning and the editorial calendar become invaluable. If your leader can see what is expected during the week, it will help him or her to begin adjusting schedules and routines. Point out that people in all fields are rearranging their work habits to make room for the potential of Social Media. If CEOs of Fortune500 companies can do it, so can clergy!
Don’t let it go. If your church is like most churches, time is an imperative. This is a tool which can help churches move from where they are to where they need to be. You don’t want to wait years in hopes of someday finding a pastor well-versed in Social Media to take your church in a new direction. You need current leaders to embrace technology now.
Make education a regular feature of your Social Media Committee Meetings. Assign someone each month to research a topic of interest and present ideas and a list of resources found. Business support groups do this routinely. They hold weekly meetings and one member is given 10 minutes to speak on a business topic.
If you’ve found helpful sources online, please share them! We’re in this world together!
A Call to Action helps your reader take the next step.
As you get comfortable with blogging you will want to start creating more interactivity with your readers. If you want interaction, you’ll have to ask for it. That’s where the Call to Action comes in.
Calls to Action are so important to the business world that they have their own acronym (CTAs).
You see them every day in advertising: “Call 1-800 . .,” “Send $24.95 to . . . .”
Typically, advertisers try to create a sense of urgency — a reason for people to take action NOW! They know that people need incentive to get off their backsides and do something. And so you see the warnings! “Act now. Offer ends July 4.” “Supply is limited.”
This is not new thinking to Christians. Our whole faith is built on Calls to Action: “Follow me,” “Come and see,” “Do Unto Others . . . ,” “Love one another.” The challenge to the modern church is to translate biblical Calls to Action to reach modern Christians or seekers.
How do you create Calls to Action on your web site or blog?
Again, you see CTAs on web sites every day. “Click here,” “Download,” “Submit,” or “Enter.”
Churches can use the same tools. The goal is engagement with others and growth in Christian community.
Pace yourself as you build your community’s engagement and trust.
Your CTAs should be stepping stones to involvement in your community. Help people move from the anonymity of cyberspace to “what’s in it for me?” participation to “how can I help?” commitment. In other words, watch your interactions with your readers grow from anonymous participation to sharing an email, to providing a name and eventually a physical presence.
Here’s a plan described in tiers or levels of engagement:
Your first-tier or introductory Call to Action might simply be to pose a question at the end of your blog article.
“What do you think?”
“Can you recommend a resource?”
“Share your experience.”
“Do you know anyone who can benefit from this idea?”
At this level of engagement, your only goal is to get people thinking about their involvement.
A second-tier Call to Action might be to provide a way for people to answer those questions on line with a comment box. Another possibility is to engage readers in a simple poll. Blogging software makes this easy. Limit your poll to one question and suggest just a few possible answers. It allows your readers to test the water. There is no risk. They are not sharing any personal information with you. Keep it fun. Everyone wants to know how their ideas stack up to others. Report the results of the poll in an entertaining way.
A third-tier Call to Action might be to offer something for download. 2×2 offers the Editorial Calendar for example. You can have this information offered freely (as 2×2 does) or you can ask for information when they download and begin to create an opt-in email relationship.
A fourth-tier Call to Action might be to interest readers in some action that requires a bit more initiative from your readers. Tele-evangelists, for example, often ask for prayer requests.
Sign up for our Walk for Hunger.
Volunteer to work in the Food Pantry or Thrift Shop.
Join our Prayer Chain.
Join our youth on their Mission Trip to New Orleans.
Attend our workshop on Autism.
A fifth-tier Call to Action asks for information and offers something of value in return for the information (an incentive). Do not ask for more information than you need. An email address may be enough. A physical address might be desirable. Keep in mind that the less information you require, the more comfortable it is for readers to participate and the higher the response. If all you need is a name and email address — that’s all you should ask for.
RSVP for Our Community Thanksgiving Dinner by November 1 and receive a beautiful Advent Calendar. (Blogging software will allow you to create the form.)
Sign up for Hunger Walk by October 15 and receive a free T-Shirt at the starting line.
We’ll explore the nuts and bolts of how to create and use CTAs in a future post.
A huge obstacle to transforming ministries is the fear of failure. Some failure is to be expected on the way to success. A congregation’s failures in ministry initiatives should not be a death sentence.
Our most eminent inventors will attest that their greatest contributions came after repeated failures.
Multicultural Ministry is particularly risky. Bonding can be difficult within families! Across cultures there are bound to be problems. Prepare to use failure to improve your ministry. People need to know that it is better to try new ideas and fail then to do nothing. Create an environment that embraces the risk of failure.
Unfortunately, in ministry, critics line the sidelines waiting for signs of failure. Some want to justify inaction with a ready “I told you so.” Although it is a harsh view, the reality is that some are waiting for small churches to fail to boost the assets of survivors. Congregations have significant incentive to avoid risking failure that may attract negative attention. Catch 22. Do nothing and wither. Do something and risk catastrophic resistance.
We’ve written in previous posts about the importance of preparing a congregation for Multicultural Ministry.
No matter how well prepared your people are, someone someday is going to say or do something that could be offensive to someone else — probably without realizing it. It may be a simple faux pas. It may come from a member who rarely attends. It may come from a visitor or a child.
No matter how thoroughly you plan, you are still likely to learn at the last minute that your best ideas won’t work for one reason or another for a cultural reason you never envisioned. That’s the nature of Multicultural Ministry. Be prepared for these moments.
Learn to manage failure. It can be a stepping stone to success.
Regular evaluation of your ministry is the key to avoiding problems and overcoming the glitches which will occur. Weekly evaluation is not too much and the evaluation session should be as soon after an event as possible. You want to build on your strengths and minimize your weaknesses. You also want to be prepared to identify opportunities that sometimes arise from the most unlikely places.
Acknowledge: Don’t sugar coat failure. Call it what it is. Analyze: Figure out what went wrong. Adjust: Shift gears, dramatically if necessary.
The first two are fairly easy steps — uncomfortable perhaps, but easy. Just don’t dwell on blame. Be as honest as possible without discouraging those who have worked hard. Honesty means that all involved in the ministry are subject to review. If you are to find answers to your ministry challenges, you must deal with the good information. Include as many as possible in your analysis. Don’t allow a few with vested interests to define problems. That is likely to result in hurtful finger-pointing.
The adjustments you make must match the analysis. If your best information indicates that your visitors and new members aren’t relating well to an individual involved (including the pastor), your adjustments must fix that problem. Mission is the goal. Personal pride must be put aside.
From Our Experience
Redeemer’s success with our East African Outreach failed at first. We hosted a few successful services. Soon interest began to wane and after about a year we discontinued the effort while we worked on another initiative.
The idea never died. Our East African members wanted to resurrect the effort. First we spent a couple of council meetings analyzing why things weren’t working. Brutal honesty was necessary.
We identified three major problems.
The Swahili service was entirely separate from the English. Only a few existing members were aware of the outreach and the new people coming and going remained strangers. The entire church was not invested in the project.
Our first attempt to reach the growing East African community involved working with a pastor who traveled 90 miles to lead worship once a month. Bad weather, illness, scheduling conflicts made consistency difficult.
The project was adopted by one person in the congregation who was not East African and who worked independently. Neither the existing congregation nor the visitors knew how to contribute. Help was soon hard to come by.
The remedies were simple once we all agreed on what the problems were. We enlisted more members to help with the service in peripheral ways — fellowship, etc. We found two rostered, ordained pastors from Tanzania who lived nearby. We assigned leadership for the project to our East African members who enlisted help from others in the East African community. Within a few months the newcomers felt welcome and part of our community. A membership drive initiated by the first new members resulted in 49 joining our congregation. Within a few months, Swahili members suggested uniting the English and Swahili services.
Sadly, our denomination remembered the failure long after we had begun measuring success. This is something the church as a whole needs to address if they are going to ask congregations to invest in new initiatives. Make room for failure.
Second time’s the charm. Last week we set out to visit St. Michael, Unionville, and ran into multiple detours and road blocks. We returned this week and experienced no problems.
