What if you come to the church with an open source view of the world?
What if your entire life was one in which you experienced a collaboration of gifts, skills, and knowledge?
What if, almost every day, you experienced the coming together of seemingly disparate voices and ideas that resulted in beautiful and tremendously effective and meaningful events and solutions?
What if this was your world, and you then walked through the door of almost any church, where it quickly became apparent that your job was to sit down and shut up—that your job was to listen and be spoon-fed what you needed to think and believe?—Landon Whitsitt
This is not a big “what if.” It is actually our experience!
Part of the problem churches have in relating to their neighborhoods today is that collaboration and diversity are intrinsic to modern life. Its absence makes us feel a little lost, less than whole. Much of church life still revolves around similarity and control. Both have left the building.
Rather than find ways to engage new communities, church leaders throw up their hands, sigh, and mutter the handy excuse —“demographics.” Everyone nods in agreement, the thought that they might change with the neighborhood is never seriously considered beyond rhetoric. The Christian message is apparently for just one demographic—and then the property rights become a tug-a-war.
Even in a city of more than a million people (like ours), church leaders oversee the closing of one church after another and say with a straight and appropriately solemn face, “There is no population to support a church.”
If they are looking for people of northern European descent who were in the prime of life in 1960—they are right!
At some level, the notion of a “Wikipedia church” —or “Wikicclesia”— makes a lot of sense, even if we have never thought of it before.
Wikipedia: The encyclopedia that anyone can edit
Wikicclesia: The church that anyone can edit
He poses some good questions to the Church. How do we leave the comfort zone that has protected us for a thousand years? How do we enter the modern world that simply does not value the things that have so defined Church?
This does not mean that the tenets of the faith are no longer valued. This is more about the structure that has grown around our beliefs—that the “keepers” of the faith need to be somehow “certified,” and all capable people without this accreditation need to exist in subservience.
The system played an important role in a world where education was not widespread. There was always a temptation to follow religious “snake oil” salespeople.
We could argue that this is always the case—always a danger. Today, snake oil salespeople (even religious ones) are more easily exposed.
This is exactly the idea that Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, builds on.
Predecessor encyclopedias spent a fortune finding experts to annually update topics they defined. Consumers spent fortunes making sure these valuable fonts of information were in their homes.
Wikipedia invited anyone to pose as an expert on any topic that interested them and let everyone else edit their work. They made the information available to all. For FREE!
The result has been a surprisingly accurate and amazingly timely source of information.
People take their areas of expertise seriously. They don’t want bad information out there.
Let’s assume people also take their faith seriously.
Can the church trust this “open source” culture?
The Church may have no choice.
Our new age of empowerment is exposing the flaws of the Church that have long been hidden by the cosmetics of tradition. A lot that defines church is no longer needed.
The expenses of maintaining it are crippling.
It is increasingly less effective.
We are finding better ways.
Redeemer has unwittingly been an experimenter in the Wikicclesia concept. We set out with no other motive than to be the best Christian community we could, using the resources we have, while under attack from the very church that chartered to nurture us.
We learned that the way we traditionally “do church” is very limiting. In fact, it is turning off the modern faithful who find more fulfilling ways to live their faith.
As we used the internet, doors opened for us. Small as we are, we found we are able to make a huge difference.
The old way of doing “church” is all about pleasing others, doing things approved ways, showing team spirit, supporting the system that provides clergy and publishes hymnals and curricula—and works hard to maintain. Nothing wrong with any of this. It is just reaching the end of its viability.
Many churches today will never be able to be effective as Christian community “the old way.” That doesn’t mean they cannot be active in mission and serve Christ and be viable in the modern world.
The ways of measuring Church must change.
The challenge to the Church is to find ways to grow in the 21st century, not to find fleeting ways to sustain the Church of the 20th century. We will never return to that time. That doesn’t mean there are not halcyon days awaiting.
Our experience may point the way to the new Wikicclesia.
Presenting Redeemer’s 2013 Annual Report
We present our 2013 Annual Report, which is only a glimpse of our very active ministry.
We Live in A Visual World But Worship Mostly with Sound
Often our worship traditions are based on state-of-the-art thinking or at least what was state-of-the-art decades or centuries ago. Unfortunately, traditions sometimes become so embedded that we don’t realize that the reason we did things the way we did them 50 or 100 years ago is that this was the best we could do with the tools available at the time.
Stained-glass windows served an educational purpose in the Middle Ages when few could read and the worship service was conducted in Latin for people who didn’t speak Latin (another example of tradition outliving any value by centuries). Window artisans outnumbered printers back then. Other way around today!
In the New World, we kept creating stained glass windows because they were the state of the art in the lands of our heritage. They are still beautiful but they are a bit limiting. Our visual expectations are much different today. And while some traditions (Orthodox, for example) value meditation on imagery, that has never caught on in other denominations. We like our attention focused on pageantry.
There was a time when hymnals were the church bulletin. A church bulletin from the 1950s typically had little but a the bared-boned order of worship. No one expected much from a mimeograph machine. (I used to watch my preacher father make the stencils and attach them to the cylinder and crank away.)
Around this time church publishers realized they could add to the visual experience by publishing colored bulletin shells with an ad for a national church program on the back. (Designing them was my job back in the 1980s.) By this time, the mimeograph had been mothballed and photocopying became the norm.
By the late 1990s, color laser printing became more affordable and available. New printers could handle different sizes of paper, too. Many churches realized this is something they could manage without purchasing the shells. There goes a source of revenue for the national church!
Despite new possibilities, almost no churches are exploring the development of the church bulletin as a worship/teaching tool. (Redeemer was doing this!)
We live in a visually driven era. How things look makes a difference in how we learn, think and make decisions. Worship, however, still focuses on the ear. When churches say they are holding a contemporary worship service it usually extends no further than the choice of music. Everything else is right from the Middle Ages.
We’ve lived through the age of architecture being the visual communicator, to black and white printing, to pre-formatted color printing to the capabilities of custom-color printing and the exciting medium of the internet which encompasses word, image, and sound with unlimited potential and practically no cost! Really, no church has to print a bulletin anymore. Members can pull them up in cost-free living color on their smart phones or pads! But we are still telling people to turn them off during worship instead of using them to enhance worship!
Traditions are the priority. As far as visuals go, we are still preaching in Latin!
It’s time to consider how to communicate and express ourselves visually.
We worship the God who created the rainbow.
That’s why 2×2 features collections of images to accompany worship. It’s the tip of an iceberg!
One of the benefits of having a church blog is that you can find out what is on people’s mind. Blogs provide a list of the words people have plugged into their search engine (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) in order to land on your site.
Today someone plugged in “small congregation overworked, pastor lazy.”
Redeemer is a small congregation and our people are overworked at least as measured by any normal volunteer church efforts.
For many years we had no pastor. If lay people didn’t step up, no one would.
Maybe pastors saw our little part of God’s kingdom as too much work. Those words spoken by a Synod representative ten years ago are hard to forget. “Ministry in East Falls is not good use of the Lord’s money.”
We suspect that the deprivation of leadership was by design. Our assets were targeted for 25 years. Our assets provided incentive to create conditions for failure in East Falls. Accepting a call with any anticipation of success meant defying the prejudices of leadership. Redeemer was not a church to be served by any pastor with upwardly mobile career ambitions. Calls issued by God rarely do!
But were the few pastors we encountered lazy? Some of them were. Some of them were focused on their own ambitions and sense of purpose. But their reluctance was not necessarily motivated by fear of hard work.
Some of them found themselves serving with inadequate training. They arrived with established ideas and packaged formulas for urban neighborhood ministry. They would provide these services after they did the normal pastoral duties. They would structure their work-week around sermon preparation, clergy gatherings, committees and visiting the sick.
All of this is care-taking, not church-building.
Many of the pastors sent our way were ill-prepared for the realities of urban ministry. Cities tend to be very diverse and fast-changing. Pastors are trained with goals of longevity and traditions. There was often a sense that they would do what was expected of them, whether or not their efforts advanced mission.
Evangelism, therefore, is often relegated to the laity. If pastors have little training in evangelism, lay people are likely to have none. The mission work of the church becomes fund-raising for someone else to implement mission. Easier to fund bricks and mortar than community-building.
Sadly, there are never enough funds for the work that needs to be done.
I once worked for an editor in the LCA offices located right here in East Falls, before East Falls was removed from the ELCA map.
He had a poster on his wall that promoted the use of fewest words to make emotional impact. It went on to list examples of short but powerful phrases.
“I love you” topped the list. The example that remains in my memory is “Mom’s dead.”
My vote for most powerful three words in the English language goes to “Wait a minute.”
These three little words give us pause—a chance to consider where things are going and how we might still have a chance to influence outcomes. These three little words can stay our temptation to engage in “group think.” This rarely goes well even (perhaps especially) in the Church.
These words give us time to rein in power that is going astray. They give us a chance to consider the effects on the weak and give the less fortunate a foothold to a more promising future. A place in the pew.
They give us a chance to consider our personal motives and values when we are tempted to consider only ourselves and the easiest and cheapest alternatives.
Saying “wait a minute” opens the door for nurturing. That always takes time that the Church often doesn’t want to take. Why not? There’s only heaven waiting!
Thursday was chosen for a national day of Thanksgiving before the word “weekend” was part of the English language. It’s a little awkward today when all national holidays are assigned to Mondays. But this gives us a national “wait a minute” moment.
There will always be those who take this treasure and turn the focus on our national hedonism. Their efforts will rule the airwaves. News time will be spent photographing people tenting in big box parking lots waiting for sales that aren’t really sales.
But Thanksgiving still sits there in the middle of the week inviting us to do a good thing, a selfless thing.
Wait a minute.
Perhaps the Church should institute a “Wait A Minute” day.
Churchwide “Wait A Minute Day.”
One day a year to allow for course correction. All the past forgiven. Only the future ahead. Don’t put it on a Sunday which already has tradition and structure. Put it in the middle of the week. Employ the internet to share “wait a minute” thoughts that would never be published by the church and would take months or years.
Put Churchwide Wait A Minute Day well before Synod Assembly season, when the debating of the future is supposed to go on, but when there is no time for careful consideration or weighing of the future and the voices of only the chosen few are amplified.
This is part 2 of yesterday’s post about Malcolm Gladwell’s new book, David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits and the Art of Battling Giants.
Yesterday, we pointed to Gladwell’s observation that true innovation comes from the Davids who fight established practices and wisdom. We promised examples from our experience today.
The post by Sarai Rice answers a frequently asked question. What are the emerging trends in the church?
Here are her answers with our corroborating experience.
1. A congregation’s identity does not equal its building.
Lutherans teach “the church is not a building.” This is not the only thing we teach that we do not believe!
Buildings are tools for ministry. Their financial demands can also impede ministry.
Our denomination desperately uses property as a weapon. Give to the regional body the way we expect you to give, or we will take your building off your hands.
This is in total violation of Lutheran polity. However, it is hoped that congregations will lack the will to fight.
People don’t go to church to fight, however righteous. Most Davids flee at the sign of trouble.
Our property was modest but had appreciated in an upscale Philadelphia neighborhood. That should be good news for the congregation. We had equity.
We planned a renovation project that would put our educational building to work in mission and which would provide a healthy income to support ministry.
But our equity was coveted by our denomination — not to benefit the neighborhood that provided it but to benefit SEPA Synod and its recurring budget shortfalls — (still a problem by the way).
Without our property, Redeemer was expected to disappear. Easy pickings.
Taking our building was supposed to be the nail in our coffin.
But Redeemer turned to home churches and after a year reached an agreement with a neighborhood ally for rent-free space. This had the benefit of strengthening our neighborhood ties.
We took our ministry online and learned a great deal about a medium that all churches should use, but almost none are. While our own doors are locked to us, doors opened all over the world.
With our experience in this new realm of ministry we would be in very good shape to conduct our own ministry in our own building for the benefit of the whole denomination.
But Goliath knows best.
We would add a Part B to this point.
A congregation’s identity does not equal its pastor.
This is somewhat covered in Rice’s next point.
2. Pastor does not equal a full-time position.
SEPA Synod seemed to be unable to work with our congregation without a pastor of their choosing in control. This too goes against Lutheran polity. The congregation is supposed to be part of the call process, but small churches are often given few or poor choices.
This expectation drains ministry. Valuable resources are spent on professional help who have little invested in the actual work.
Redeemer was told in 2000 that we had to accept the pastor SEPA wanted us to call or there would be no pastor for a very long time. The pastor they were recommending was upfront. He wanted to provide minimal service—just ten hours per week, just enough to keep his ordination status and benefits active. He would be happy. SEPA would be happy. Under the rules of a regularized call, Redeemer would be endlessly obligated with no promise of benefit.
Wisely, Redeemer turned down this ultimatum. But SEPA required THREE divisive votes before they stepped away from their demand. SEPA walked away. We were supposed to wither on the vine. Bishop Almquist even said, “In ten years, you will die a natural death.”
We found qualified pastors on our own and managed to grow.
In 2007, we presented a resolution to call one of them. We had worked well together for seven months. He had overseen the acceptance of 49 new members. Bishop Claire Burkat did not respond to our resolution. She met privately with the pastor and he never set foot in our church again.
3. Resourcing happens via drop-down menus rather than denominational staff.
The internet is a treasure that can be used by anyone. “Even small congregations in remote communities know how to use search engines for everything from conflict management to curriculum choices,” Rice writes.
In other words, congregations don’t need to allocate great resources for help from the regional body. Regional bodies can and should downsize. This goes against our bigger is better thinking.
4. Group participation does not equal my congregation’s group.
Church members are loyal but not exclusive. Shunned by our own denomination Redeemer formed relations around the world. The amazing thing is that they have become intertwined. Denomination is never discussed.
Pakistan, Kenya, Sweden, Nigeria, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Boston have worked together in amazing ministry because they met us via our website. (None, except perhaps Redeemer, is ELCA!).
5. Worship does not equal Sunday morning.
Redeemer often meets on Sunday morning, but we also find reason to meet during the week.
6. Small groups and faith formation does not equal Sunday School in church buildings.
Redeemer follows the “meetup” concept. We have no place of our own but meet in homes, restaurants, trips, and theaters—even occasional bars.
7. Active membership does not equal weekly attendance.
Redeemer members stay in touch. We don’t have a church in which to take attendance, but we know that we have nearly 1000 people who read our website every week and participate in our various outreach endeavors. Our reach is broader than any other church in SEPA Synod that has a building.
We would add an eighth point to Sarai Rice’s observations.
8. Income does not equal offering plate.
Redeemer found ourselves suddenly with no church in which to worship and no offering plate to pass. Without a building or a pastor, we had little need to take offerings. But there were these pesky lawsuits (funded against us with our own money!). SEPA also threatened our members’ personal property. Money remained an issue. This is leading us down a new road to self-sufficiency. There is great promise in funding Lutheran ministry in East Falls with a combination of our school and a mission outreach with entrepreneurial potential. We’ve laid good groundwork!
Should SEPA ever rightfully return East Falls property to East Falls Lutherans, they would soon have a viable flagship church where they have created strife.
Malcolm Gladwell is pitching a new book, David and Goliath. If it is anything like his earlier books, (The Tipping Point and Outliers) he will change our cultural outlook with a fresh and statistical look at accepted wisdom and practices.
CBS’s 60 Minutes featured his new work today. Gladwell says that when large forces do battle with small forces there is a tendency to exaggerate the power of big and underestimate the capabilities of small.
This tendency is played out in the Church. How well we know!
The big and powerful Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America ( SEPA / ELCA ) decided it was wise to flex its muscles in our Philadelphia neighborhood in 2006.
They were struggling. SEPA’s 170 churches just weren’t contributing the way they used to. SEPA’s budget was regularly running a profound deficit. They were strategizing not so much with mission in mind but with their need to maintain staff and pay salaries.
Someone thought up the idea of forcing smaller, debt-free churches into giving up on mission and deeding assets to them. They tried this a few times with little resistance. Then they chose Redeemer as their target.
Problem: It’s against their governing rules. Churches are not required to bequeath assets to the regional body unless they were begun as mission churches.
Solution: Find a way to make small congregations that are not “mission churches” into mission churches and then force their hand. Failing that, find a way to get the church members out of the way.
And so SEPA started using the word Involuntary before the words Synodical Administration in their constitution which had been tweaked from its first reading to be in violation of its incorporating documents. They gave it added validity with its own acronym. ISA must be legal!
Involuntary Synodical Administration is not found in the synod’s constitution. Synodical Adminsistration in the original constitution was permitted only with the consent of a congregation. The intent of allowing Synodical Administration was to help congregations not bully them.
No one was supposed to notice. And almost no one has! The practice of forcing churches to close for the benefit of SEPA became accepted. Everyone could wonder which church was next. Tread carefully.
In East Falls, the resources of 170 churches were pitted against the resources of a small neighborhood congregation and a handful of individual members that Goliath SEPA decided to attack personally.
The strength of SEPA was exaggerated. Eight years later the mission of one small church is still being underestimated.
It hasn’t been easy. Courts didn’t want to be involved in upholding church law. Neither did 170 congregations, the synod assembly, the synod council or the national expression of the ELCA with law offices paid by congregations but working for the synods. Neither did very many individuals. Just turn the other way. Pretend to know nothing. Redeemer will get tired and disappear. The property can be sold. Rejoice! “Mission” accomplished.
SEPA took possession of Redeemer’s property in 2009 and locked out the members who donated the assets. There was no process, no negotiation, no mutual discernment, no thank you. Just bullying.
This brings us to Gladwell’s next point. When there is confrontation with vastly lopsided odds, the underdog is put in a unique position.
The underdog must innovate. Gladwell gives some examples of innovation coming from the smallest and most unlikely places. Each received so little regard from the establishment that they were free to re-invent. In some cases, they made enemies doing it, but were eventually accepted when egos stopped overshadowing results.
Interestingly, church leaders have been promoting innovation and change for decades. The bishop involved in this dispute even wrote a book about it—Transforming Regional Bodies. In this book Rev. Claire Burkat openly advocates that small churches should be allowed to die to preserve synodical resources.
But this doesn’t lead to transformation—just the shifting of resources and the eroding of mission.
The Goliath nature of the Church is unable to transform. It doesn’t appreciate its Davids.
Larger churches have no need to transform as long as their numbers can continue to support a couple of pastors and support staff. They define success even as they are starting to fail. Most large churches are in decline, too.
Middle-sized churches are preserving resources, hoping to reach the status of large churches or at least maintain church as they know it. Change might threaten their perceived stability.
Smaller churches have no luxuries. Many have minimal or inadequate professional help. Pastors seek calls in the larger congregations where they won’t have to do the evangelical work of building community. Consequently, each member of a small church plays a vital role in church mission. With less clergy oversight, they are free to experiment.
Redeemer was always a bit entrepreneurial in that regard. But without property, with no clergy, and while being entirely unwelcome in the ELCA, we forged ahead.
While SEPA and the ELCA pretend we don’t exist, we’ve accomplished a great deal.
We’ve become the church of the future, the church that can rewrite how small churches will survive.
Laity outnumber clergy in everything but attention. Here are some ways that churches dedicated to transformational change can change that.
1. Assess the Career Path of the Laity
Clergy have an established career path. They have to jump a maze of hurdles to verify their call. They spend three or four years under the watchful eye of mentors in seminary. Then they seek that call. Or is it seeking them? That’s the question.
Once a candidate has heard the call and there is agreement that he or she has heard the correct call—the career path is set. Some pastors will grow and mature with their congregations. Some will bide time as their congregations fail. Some will hop from call to call. Some may discover and hone new skills. Many will stick with their seminary initial training forever.
Here’s a cartoon describing the Methodist tradition. Every denomination has some form of “process.”
But what about the laity—the field of laborers, the financial backbone of the church.
They are a neglected part of church culture. Their career path starts with baptism and membership. Then what?
2. Recognize that laity change—as a group and individually.
Today’s laity are not the same as the laity of 50 years ago. Collective educational background is much higher. Our cultural experience has matured. The zeitgeist of the time changes. Yet, the church scans the pews and sees the past.
I was recently using a seminary library when I overheard an exchange between a seminarian and the clergy librarian. The student was expressing gratitude that a professor had pointed out how their congregation will view a certain theological point. “I’m so glad he pointed out to me how lay people think. Now I’m ready.”
How do we think? Someone should tell us.
The particular point they were discussing and the supposed viewpoint of the laity was so dated that anyone holding it today would be 150 years old.
Sometimes we get what we expect. If we expect laity to have shallow theological understanding, we will find those people.
This notion that laity are always the same is a cause of church closings. If we keep looking for cookie-cutter members to replace those lost to attrition, we will soon have a difficult time.
Many churches today sit in the middle of vibrant neighborhoods and lament that demographics have changed. That’s one thing that is never going to change!
3. The laity are encouraged to change but are not really allowed to implement change around the set structure of the church.
The churches that will survive the next two decades will have members and clergy who think entrepreneurially. Entrepreneurs have a “can do” attitude. The challenge to congregations will be to ensure that laity have the tools to implement new ideas.
Look at Steve Jobs and his product line, Apple and Macintosh computers. When retailers refused to stock his products, he didn’t adopt an attitude of contrition and defeat. He opened his own retail stores and sold through computer vendors. He soon ruled the market.
The Lutheran Church recognizes lay talents with their Associates in Ministry program. It requires 600 seminary hours and field experience before laity can tap into the church compensation programs. The field experience is in predictable areas (education, social services and music).
Perhaps this is a way of keeping order, but it tends to turn laity into little clergy and puts skilled laity directly under the oversight of clergy. Ultimately, that’s crippling.
What about all the laity that spend 600 or more hours in (or teaching) Sunday School and Confirmation Class and spent another 10,000 hours developing skills that seminaries don’t teach—and who are not looking for the Church’s seal of approval?
Their voice and talents are supposed to be equally valued in Lutheran structure.
They are not. And lay people sense that. And so they sit. Sitting does not produce change.
4. The Good News must be presented to God’s people today.
In today’s world, where life-long learning is expected, laity will not want to hear the same Sunday School lesson over and over. They must provide new and challenging avenues for service that begin with the interests and skills of the laity — not what the church thinks it needs at the moment.
The church must bring this kind of life into their faith communities or younger laity will be gone. They are on their way out the door now.
5. Nurture the attitude of leaders.
The culture of the church feeds off the attitudes of leaders.
When they appear to be self-protective, self-focused and managerial, only laity conditioned to that will respond. The attitude of modern clergy must be welcoming, positive and nurturing.
I was riding in a cab recently and the cab driver was listening to a dispatcher giving basic business coaching. “Remember to thank your passenger. They have choices.” Good advice for building the culture of church. Today’s laity have choices.
6. Find the laity’s strengths.
Too often the church seeks to fit laity into pre-established service roles. Do you want to sing in the choir, teach children or work in the food bank?
Every individual has at least one strength; some have many. What if it’s “none of the above”?
People like to play their strengths. If there is no opportunity to do so in church, they will find somewhere else to serve.
7. Give the laity ownership of their ministry.
Don’t we already do that?
Constitutionally, yes. Practically, no.
The challenges of today’s church have weighted the hand of hierarchy.
How’s this working for us? It’s not—but we keep at it anyway.
When clergy are assigned, not called, when congregational votes are bypassed, and assembly votes are rigged, the church is sapping the laity for managerial gain.
It’s a dead end. Wait and see. (It won’t be long!)
8. Let the call process work.
Calls are supposed to come through the congregations—not managed or dictated. Any church that is accepting a pastoral match without the skills necessary to nurture the congregation is pouring resources down the drain and sapping the spirit of the church. They are taking advantage of their laity. If there are not enough pastors with the necessary skills, the church professional leadership structure should work to remedy that ASAP, before dozens more congregations fail. Saddling congregations (usually, but not always the smaller ones) with pastors who have no intention of working to grow a congregation is dishonest.
9. Remember the past but celebrate your current culture.
If you have an annual homecoming, make sure you also have an equal celebration of your current history. Each year note how your culture has changed and improved. New people aren’t insensitive. They care about the history of the church. But it’s more important that they know that they fit into the culture here and now.
The Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (SEPA / ELCA) recently posted a link on its Facebook page from a Methodist Conference that discussed the role of clergy in church transformation.
Rogers found the implementers of new ideas broke into the following categories:
2.5% were Innovators. They were educated, had means and were risk-oriented.
Early Adopters followed them. They were young, educated and community leaders.
Then came the Early Majority. They were conservative but open to new ideas.
The Late Majority were older, less educated, conservative and less socially active.
Laggards were very conservative had the smallest farms and little capital.
The article argued that clergy could not be effective innovators within their parish role. They place the clergy somewhere between early adopters and the effective implementation that follows.
Perhaps this is true within Methodist circles.
The Lutheran Bell Curve would probably find clergy at the other end of the spectrum. It is probably a disproportionate number, eating into the hump of the Bell Curve.
Lutheran clergy, at least in our area, are older.
Lutheran churches in our area are smaller.
Lutheran leaders at every level are desperate for capital. That equity should be a tool for the congregation’s use, but regional bodies covet it.
Lutheran clergy, by some measure, are less socially active. (Search Lutheran clergy on LinkedIn and see how many are connected and how many of them post their profiles publicly.)
Lutheran clergy are becoming increasingly enamored with and dependent upon hierarchy which makes them less likely to explore risk. Innovation without risk is unlikely.
Given these factors, the Lutheran Church will lag in innovation if we depend on professional leaders. Clergy already turn to laity for implementation of most church work. But the control reins hold them back.
Add a few other factors. Lutheran regional leadership, desperate for capital, hover over member congregations waiting for signs of failure. The incentive to assist with innovation is not there. Innovation takes capital! Most of that capital tends to go toward salaries with inconsequential accountability.
Caretaker and part-time ministries rarely lead to innovation but they abound. Pastors inclined toward innovation must be careful. Would-be innovators do so in an unfair arena where leadership is protected by separation of church and state and lay innovators accept personal risk. They may not know it! Ask the laity of Redeemer in East Falls who were named personally in lawsuits by SEPA Synod, while the actions of clergy were protected under separation of church and state.
Laity step up when caretaker ministries are in place, but their leadership is often unappreciated by clergy, who even with part-time status want full-time oversight and credit for success. Failure? The laity can take the credit for that!
Beware! Laity inclined toward innovation do so at their own risk. They may even risk the mission of the church if their leadership threatens the perceived turf of professional leaders.
Yet transformation is not going to happen without a fully empowered laity.
Dedicated laity bring skills to the table that the church desperately needs. When they go unappreciated or are seen as threatening, innovation is squashed.
Laggards swim in the wake. They see the opportunity to sustain things as they are by seizing property, capital and equity.
Consequently, transformation will not happen any time soon. Talk won’t get you there! Visibly aligning with the few charismatic rising stars among the clergy won’t work either. Feature them at Synod Assemblies and Bishop’s Convocations and hope their energy fuels a local movement. Will it catch on without an infrastructure to support it? Not likely. Looks good, though!
This is 2×2’s (Redeemer’s) experience in the ELCA.
Our ministry was already getting attention for innovation back in 2006.
Enter SEPA Synod with its recurring six-figure annual deficit, legal team and locksmith.
SPLAT!
The Lutheran Church desperately needs to empower the laity. They just don’t know how.
In Search of a Better Vacuum Cleaner In Search of a Better Church
Gotta love those vacuum cleaner commercials.
The spokesmen are usually just that—men. I can’t speak for the whole world, but in my little corner, it’s the woman who mans the vacuum.
This woman has a long, mostly “hate affair” with vacuum cleaners. I wanted one desperately when I was five years old. It seemed to be my calling.
I got a pretty pink one for Christmas. My toy vacuum cleaner actually worked just like those silent ones used in restaurants. But as I came of age, I came to realize that real vacuum cleaners are fraught with design flaws—maybe because they are designed by men. The fancier they got, the more problems.
One brand makes sure you know that their namesake patented the technology. He’ll benefit from every sale for a few decades. His vacuums cost twice what other vacuums cost.
Designer engineers may test the suction technology, but do they use their vacuums every day? Do they know that the power of the suction isn’t everything? Do they lug them up and down stairs? Do they spend most of their vacuuming time knocking into furniture and wrestling with the power cord?
Come to think, what happened to the power cord?
Have you noticed the vacuum cleaners being pushed around by men in those TV commercials don’t have any power cords? Look! They swivel. They roll. What fun! They have no power cords. I want one of those!
Power cords create half the work.
Cords too long get in the way and get sucked into the machine. They wrap themselves around table legs and threaten to topple floor lamps. You try to get the cord off the floor and swing it across your shoulder. Now it is knocking things off tables.
Cords too short and they are a pain. Just when you think you’re nearly done, the power cord reaches its limit. You must stop and search for a new power source.
Canister vacuums are hard to find these days. Never a good idea. Push with one hand. Pull with the other. The original “pushmepullyou.”
I’m waiting for the day when a vacuum cleaner is designed by the people who actually use them. When that day comes, they will be wireless (just like power tools sold to men). They will not require the user to take them apart and clean the filters after each use. Whose idea is that, anyway? They will be low to the ground for reaching the dustiest place in the house. Do you guys know where that is? (Under the beds.) They will have settings that don’t require you to hoist the cleaner to the kitchen counter to read them. The hose will not fall out every three minutes. The attachments will be easy to use and won’t store where they add to the weight of using the cleaner.
And what does this have to do with church?
Church is an attractive concept that has gone awry in the hands of those with “patent” interests. Some day the church will be designed by the people who actually worship and volunteer their services. We’ll stop pretending power cords don’t exist in the perfect world we imagine. And then those power cords will be replaced with internal power sources that actually accomplish something!
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.
Undercover Bishop will always be available in PDF form on 2x2virtualchurch.com for FREE.
Print or Kindle copies are available on Amazon.com.
For bulk copies, please contact 2x2: creation@dca.net.
Contact Info
You can reach
Judy Gotwald,
the moderator of 2x2,
at
creation@dca.net
or 215 605 8774
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).
2×2 Sections
Where in the World is 2×2?
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
