How does your church compare to other churches in your neighborhood?
Are you friendlier?
Do you have more money?
Are you more grounded in Scripture or tradition?
Are you more active in mission?
Are you more attractive to families?
Are you more appealing to clergy?
How does your ministry stand in the minds of your regional body?
Small churches know very well, the power of comparisons and the competitive edge they can give larger churches.
One problem with comparisons is that they begin and end with current experience and definitions of church work. If you are forging new mission ideas, there is nothing to which outsiders can compare your congregation. If this describes your church, prepare to be discounted.
The remedy in this case is to draft your own comparisons. Compare your ministry to
other ministries,
past ministries (your own and others)
secular efforts in the same ministry areas,
a scriptural ideal or
an ideal of your own definition.
This gives the small church a chance to shine!
Your shining light will grow in brilliance if you control your message. That means using your own media network to define your successes.
TELL YOUR OWN STORY. Use your own words and pictures. Channel the message through your own social media (Facebook, Twitter, Blog, Pinterest, YouTube, etc.).
Don’t rely on your regional body to take notice and help you build your reputation. Regional bodies often have their own agenda and current experience is that it is not in supporting small church ministries.
Small churches are well positioned to minister in their communities in ways that would be ignored by larger church ministries.
Small churches, build on your strengths. Don’t allow larger ministries to grade your papers!
Church people don’t like to think about competition. They like to think it’s a “live and let live” world.
They are wrong.
Church is very competitive. At its very foundation is the need to overcome evil. Christ took care of that…but we still build prisons.
Within a denomination there is competition for members.
One of Redeemer’s members tells the story of how, when their family was considering joining Redeemer, a pastor visited from a church several neighborhoods away. At the time, that pastor was serving on Synod Council which had designs on Redeemer even then (1998). The pastor asked them why they would want to join a little church that had never had Black members. (He was wrong about that, by the way.) You’ll be happier in a church that has more Black members, he advised. That family didn’t heed his advice. They joined Redeemer and became cornerstone members of a new ministry that began to grow the church—growth that went unrecognized by Synod.
Roman Catholics try to solve the problem of competition for members with a parish system that counts all Catholics within a geographic area as members of a designated parish. Exceptions include ethnic congregations. This makes for less “shopping” when Catholics relocate, but in this system, if people aren’t happy they just stay home. Many do.
There can be competition within the parish. Whose running the day school? Who will sing that solo? Who has the pastor’s ear?
Pastors compete for more than members. They also compete for calls, usually to the richer congregations. Funny—in the Bible, when God called people, it was usually to undesirable service.
Competition extends to denominations. All are looking for members and support.
In America, the competition goes beyond that to competition between faiths.
Competition is part of the human spirit. You will never be able to extinguish it. Best to recognize it and use it in a way that brings out the best in us.
Everyone in church is a member of one big happy family, right?
Church veterans know this isn’t true. Church conflict happens. And it’s a good thing, too. Generally, people fight about things that matter to them.
The Church goes to great lengths to hide conflict.
Church leaders begin by analyzing conflict. They look at the players (often excluding themselves) and classify them into “types.” This combatant is a “thinker.” The other is a “feeler.”
Oh, that explains it! Now the conflict should go away.
It doesn’t.
Then, the Church moves to Plan B. Ignore the conflict. Wait for it to go away. The Church is actually very good at Plan B. They often wait for decades.
The problem doesn’t go away.
The most important question to ask in church conflict is “Why do God-loving people care enough about an issue to fight?” Dig, dig, dig for the answer to this question.
Religion is about the hearts and souls of the faithful. When we invite people to join us in worship and community, we invite them with all their sensitivities. We ask them to live their faith and that means being willing to take a stand. Without this, every Christian may as well stay home.
When conflict erupts, embrace it. You have people who care. Look to their motivations. Why do they risk peace? Why do they care to come to church and face unpleasantness? Why not stay home with the multitude of people who don’t care? (Counterproductive as this is, it is often the chosen remedy.)
It’s your turn to care. Care about the people involved in the conflict. Caring will motivate leaders to ask the right questions. Listening to answers increases their knowledge of their community, and they are better able to serve. Conflict serves a purpose!
Caring is more important than resolving the conflict. In the end, caring will resolve the conflict.
2×2 recommends signing up for this five-part workshop on business blogging. Don’t let the word “business” scare you off. Blogging is blogging and the leader of this workshop understands and explains it well. You can easily apply what you learn to evangelism.
The five-session workshop begins July 10. All sessions are recorded for replay and transcripts provided, so you don’t have participate live.
You can get in for 50%-off until this Thursday. This is a step-by-step course designed to help your business quickly implement effective blogging techniques, attract great customers and gain a unique competitive advantage.
And it’s fully online!
Your instructor is Michael Stelzner, the founder of one of the world’s largest business blogs: Social Media Examiner and author of the book Launch.
WANT TO KNOW MORE?
This workshop is a live systematic study course where each session builds on the previous one. This allows you to master a discipline under the guidance of a single instructor.
And the cool part: The workshop is very affordable!
Here’s what Blogging Fundamentals for Business will cover:
* Blogging strategy
* Creating great content
* Blogging metrics and technology * Launching (or relaunching) your blog * Blog promotion tactics
Remember, you can get in at half price if you register by this Thursday June 7th.
During the month of May in 2011, 2×2 had 34 visitors to our three-month old web site. This May we surpassed all previous records with more than a 1000 visitors in May. The web site now has 86 subscribers/followers who receive posts by email. In addition, a growing average come to the site daily. That number is currently more than 40. Combining subscribers and daily visitors, 120 readers visit 2×2 each day or more than 800 every week. Except for the fact that we are excluded from Lutheran fellowship, Redeemer (2×2’s sponsor) is one of the largest Lutheran ministries in SEPA territory.
Gospel for this Sunday (June 3, 2012). John 3:1-17
“The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”
Object: With children, precut a paper pinwheel and pin it to a straw. With adults, plug in an electric fan.
Talking points: Wind is a wonder. On a hot summer day, we turn our faces toward the wind for relief. Come winter, we shield our faces behind our mufflers. We know there is power in the wind and we try to harness it. We try to create comfort in our environment by adding air conditioning or directing fans. We build windmills on top of our hills to channel its power. Now and then, when storms blast and break the limbs of our trees or tear off the roofs of our firmly constructed homes, we are reminded that the wind is more powerful than we are.
Wind is a challenge to us. There is little we can do to control it — but still we try! “So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
Nicodemus joined Jesus in the night on the roof garden, just trying to make sense of things. He was an old man, a respected authority on scripture. New ideas were turning his world upside down like a tornado. The rooftop garden was a good meeting place, away from public scrutiny. But in the hot Palestine night, it was probably a place where Jesus hoped Nicodemus would feel the gentle—or not-so-gentle—breeze of the Holy Spirit.
In the church, we call it a “call.” It is really a sort of contract. Sometimes there is a bit of mystery to the process as a pastoral candidate describes the moment he or she decided to enter the ministry. That is rarely part of the laity’s call process, but a heart-to-heart with most hard-working lay members will reveal they, too, feel a sense of call that should not be taken lightly.
There is a difference in a clergy call and lay member’s call. It has to do with priorities or needs. The two are often in opposition.
This is not scientific, but here is a table that compares a professional church worker’s priority of needs and a lay member’s. The order will, no doubt, vary from circumstance to circumstance, but generally this chart represents the differing priorities.
The qualities are similar—almost the same—but the order of priority is often nearly reversed. Is it any surprise that conflict often results!
To make matters more difficult, in church work, it is often the case that neither side operates with concern for the other.
“I don’t understand why a person with a college-education has trouble finding work,” the older pastor commented after encountering a middle-aged parishioner, struggling with a mid-life job search.
The Church may be the last organization on earth to understand the changes facing the modern work force.
The Church, entrenched in the past, is dealing with the same problems with less success.
For countless decades or even centuries, mid-life was the pinnacle of a skilled worker’s career. Knowledge and experience positioned them as authorities. They commanded handsome wages. Life was good and the retirement years were looking sweet.
Today’s middle-aged, college-educated, skilled workers face a different world. Their skills are less valued. Newer skills of the connected age are not difficult to master, but they take time, effort and a continuing investment. Unlike youth, who can set aside the demands of independent living for four to eight years, the middle-aged workers are retooling while caring for teenagers, aging parents and still paying mortgages. Retirement is far less certain.
How does this affect the world of Church?
The Church still honors the system of hierarchy to some degree — even if they don’t call it “hierarchy.”
The people currently elected or appointed to leadership positions earned their credentials the traditional way. Their positions are less market-driven. It has been enough in many cases to foster a reputation among a very narrow group of similarly trained and credentialed colleagues. They have been able to avoid the demands of the rest of the world — but not without consequence.
Change is every bit as imperative, but can be avoided until situations are dire with no damage to reputation. There are plenty of places to deflect blame for poor performance (economy, demographics, media, culture, lay people).
The great influx of second-career clergy may be adding candidates to the clergy roster who find the ever-changing demands of the secular world to be daunting. A major role of hierarchy is to keep the pool of available leaders active in ministry, regardless of their skills. Bottom line: the Church has incentive to stay the same to complement the skill sets of leadership–most of whom have very similar training and experience.
Sustaining clergy is a purpose of hierarchy, although it is rarely presented that way. Hierarchies want the available jobs to match the skills of available clergy. The Church is going to have to do a good bit of wiggling to loosen that stick from the mud!
This creates a division in expectations of laity and clergy. Laity, who must change or perish in their secular lives, grow impatient with clergy leaders, who roll out programs based on ministry models that used to work. The people at the top, most likely well into middle age, are disconnected from the lives of the laity. Empathy has not been the Church’s strong suit, especially since there is a LOT less money to work with.
Survival becomes the standard for success. Laity are not flocking to sacrifice for an organization in survival mode–especially one that threatens the local expression of faith with the strong arm of ecclesiastic power.
Survival standards are used to judge congregations. “We just don’t see how you can survive,” they are likely to say, even as they are dealing with the same or even more severe challenges.
There are ways to survive. There are ways to thrive. They are ways to reach out. But they will require new methods, new technology, new vision, a respect for younger blood and lay talents and lifelong learning for Church leaders. Church leaders cannot ask congregations to make changes if they, themselves, are unable to change.
Laity are pretty busy making changes in their own lives.
Congregations are often criticized by others in the Church as being “unwilling to change.”
The need for change is universal. It applies to small congregations, medium congregations, large congregations, clergy and hierarchy. It applies to groups and individuals.
It is a criticism that is hard to refute. After all, it applies to EVERYONE. Change of some sort is always desirable, so it becomes a card to play to achieve ulterior motives.
The ability to embrace change is going to become the saving quality of every congregation–even those that seem to be ministering comfortably. Unrelenting change is going to be the norm.
When confronted with the need to change, congregations must take steps to make sure that their interests and ministries are respected.
Ask for change to be defined.
What are the desired goals? (It is easy to say you need more members and more income. It is always true.) Demand clear goals.
Ask what help is available? Change is not likely to happen without something added to the ministry mix.
Do the congregation and pastor need training? Is a necessary skill missing? If your neighborhood is changing, you may need help with culture and language differences. If you want to serve youth, you may need to find help with youth ministry skills.
Does the demand for change have a timetable that is realistic?
Is there a plan? Was the plan created by the congregation or mandated?
Is the congregation on board with the plan?
Creating an environment for change is a group effort. It will not happen by edict, nor will it happen in an atmosphere characterized by superiority expressed in criticism.
Change takes time, patience, tolerance and most of all love.
The vista as we sit in our deck chairs overlooking Lake Erie even on this beautiful May day is a study in gray. The water and sky are almost the same color with the horizon line barely visible.
Behind us is a beautiful home with well-manicured, terraced gardens in full spring bloom. But still we sit looking at the gray horizon.
Water is a magnet drawing our attention. No wonder it is such an important part of the Christian message.
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.
MISSION INSPIRATION OFFER
A visual and biblical guide to help congregations define their missions.
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).
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
