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Church Growth

Making Your Mission Statement A Living Document

Whew! We got the Mission Statement out of the way!

Now what?

Now the work begins. The Mission Statement is an accomplishment. But if you want it to be effective in your ministry, you must start using it.

The Mission Statement is always in danger of becoming trite or taken for granted. You must keep the Mission Statement alive.

Start using the Statement immediately!

  • Publish it on the website,
  • Recite it in worship,
  • Print it on stationery,
  • Have a temple talk about it,
  • Read or recite it before every governing meeting.

A press release should be written and sent to local papers. Write about the process, quote the people involved. Have them answer questions such as, “How do you think the mission statement will affect your ministry?, How does it reflect your history?, How will it make a difference?”

Make a video montage of your members discussing their mission and post it on YouTube, linking it to your website. Break them into short videos and post them on Facebook. (Videos attract traffic more than any other type of post.)

Make a greeting card with the mission statement. Set the words in nice type and use a photo of your church or sanctuary. Send it with a welcome note to visitors.

(Use a service like sendoutcards.com, which allows you to use your own photos to create professional quality, custom cards. You can register with 2×2’s vendor number 85519. Call or email us and we’ll walk you through the process the first time. It’s easy and inexpensive!)

Sounds like a lot of work!  But the work is just beginning.

The Mission Statement must be APPLIED to your ministry.

This might seem like a boring proposition. “How long are we going to dwell on this?” But it can bring your ministry alive!

Mix it up! Plan special sub-emphases and celebrate them on a monthly, quarterly, or seasonal basis (calendar or liturgical).

Examine your statement. How does it affect the various emphases of parish life?

  • worship
  • witness
  • education
  • evangelism
  • social ministry
  • fellowship and
  • stewardship

Don't mothball your Mission Statement! Use it!You can add biblical concepts to this list

  • Our mission and faith.
  • Our mission and justice.
  • Our mission and reconciliation.
  • Our mission and our community.

Emphasize one of these for the period of time you’ve decided on. Rotate the topics.

  • Make one Sunday each month Mission Sunday and choose hymns and prayers that complement your Mission as it relates to the special emphasis.
  • Ask each committee of your congregation to plan an activity or event around the emphasis.
  • Preach about it.
  • Create content for your web site or newsletter that addresses the special emphasis.
  • Adopt a service project that complements the emphasis.
  • Have the congregation memorize a hymn which complements the emphasis.
  • Hang banners in the narthex, sanctuary and over the main door that point everyone’s attention to the special emphasis.
  • Every time the emphasis changes, celebrate it. Write a press release. Keep your mission in your community’s consciousness.

The Mission Statement begins to define your mission. It creates a structure that motivates your congregation and shapes your ministry. The Mission Statement becomes a working document, a blueprint for your ministry — exactly what it is meant to do!

photo credit: code poet via photopin cc
14 Oct 2012

How Denominations Can Derail Your Mission Efforts

Branding When Ministry Is in Decline

Denominations are well aware that the structure of the church faces challenges. As you work on branding your ministry consider these realities. Your mission/branding efforts have the best chance for success when all leaders are on the same page.

This is not always the case and lay members are often the last to know. Leadership in changing this is likely to come from lay Christians.

Church leaders know:

  • the church is playing a smaller role in community life.
  • the traditional membership base of the Church is dwindling.
  • for the first time in history the neighborhood demographics are shifting every ten years or less.
  • the mission of the Church is to embrace all populations.

Knowing all this, church leaders are dedicated to the existing structure. Until recently, it has supported them reasonably well. Mission strategy was simple: replicate the same ministry in neighborhood after neighborhood.

Today, many of the solutions they present to their congregations are both destined and designed to fail.

Church professionals come to congregations and point out that if they think they are going to reach more people like them, they are mistaken. They elaborate on what is obvious to the people living in the neighborhoods: their neighborhoods are changing. They preach a future of gloom and act surprised when people don’t jump on board.

Meanwhile, congregations see opportunity. They live and work every day in their changing neighborhoods. Their children play and attend school with the new neighborhood children. They recognize that they need leaders with different training. Help is hard to find.

The Church as a whole has been caught unprepared. Changing an institution is more difficult than changing a congregation. The Church diverts attention from its own shortcomings by concentrating on the failings of lay people.

The temptation for denominational leaders is to facilitate failure.

Finding and training leaders for congregations facing modern changes is their job/mission, but it is difficult. It is often easier to just give up on congregations that are dealing with the toughest demographic changes.

They are squandering legacy — which has enormous value!

Denominational leaders are actually taught to neglect certain parishes and allow them to die. Using Church jargon, they assign “caretaker” pastors who, unbeknownst to the congregations, are expected to do nothing but hold the hands of the faithful until they quit, move or die.

Conflict results when the faithful do not cooperate with this undisclosed agenda. Suddenly, they are “the enemy.” The only way to spread the Gospel under this “mission plan” is to destroy the existing faith community and start fresh. This buys the denomination time. They do not have to provide ANY services while they work on a mission plan. Church doors are locked for a while (weeks, months or years) until the community forgets that a church was there. This, too, is part of the plan.

The problem with this approach, outside of it being wholly unChristian, is that it is fairly easy for the people making up the new demographic to see the Church behaving at its worse.

  • They can see the disregard for the lay efforts of their neighbors who talked to them with pride about their church.
  • They can imagine where their own commitment to any “new” church might find them in 20 years or less.
  • They will sense that they are of value to the church only as long as they can contribute.

This must be recognized. The Church which was in serious decline before the recent recession is now in severe crisis. The lure of small congregations’ endowment funds and property values is tough to pass up. It has created predatory practices that are thinly disguised as “mission.”

  • The hierarchy has no confidence in its own message.
  • Predators soon turn to questionable, selfish strategies.
  • The people who have sacrificed for ministry are expendable. If they don’t leave on their own, displace them. If they resist, sue them.

We now have enough experience to know this approach is not working. Church members, during peaceful times, are taught to believe and trust in God. It is difficult to teach allegiance to God and suddenly demand allegiance to man.

Your pastor is the first person you must convince to embrace your plan. You must appeal to the passion (which may be dormant) that led him or her to seminary in the first place.

  • Make sure your pastor knows what your leaders envision and what you expect from leadership.
  • If your pastor thinks he or she may need more training, try to set up an “internship” for a week or two with a mentor that is practicing the type of ministry you now need. You may have to go outside your denomination or region.
  • Stress that mission is the goal. Do not let any differences become personal. If you do, your regional office will have a very long memory for any resulting problems.
  • Let your pastor know that lay representatives are expected to accompany him or her on any visits with the regional office. You want to be seen as a team.

 

13 Oct 2012

A First Step in Branding: The Mission Statement

We’ve discussed the need to look over your shoulder and include your denomination’s regional offices and other congregations.

We’ve discussed how branding helps your members understand their mission.

Now you are ready for outreach to your community.

A typical starting point in any branding campaign is to craft a mission statement.

The mission of every church is defined in the Bible.

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. —Matthew 28:19-20

There are other verses you can focus on, but this one encompasses a great deal.

The task of each congregation is to refine this directive in a way that will keep your people on a chosen track of implementation.

We all know how easy it is to become distracted from our mission. This is a special challenge for small congregations. We small churches are so busy putting out fires that it is easy for us to lose our way!

There is a tendency to measure all congregations against some standard that, frankly, isn’t very well-defined. It may be a typical suburban church or a church with a well-known pastor. It is never the small church — although we outnumber larger churches!

This can be a shock to a small congregation’s self-confidence. There the driving force is often a dedicated and changing staff of lay people, who juggle uncompensated mission and ministry with work lives.

In defining your mission be true to yourself. If you are a family church, concentrate on the values of a family church—the warmth, the intimacy, the ability for newcomers to assimilate quickly. If you are a pastoral church you might have an emphasis that is a “trademark” of your leadership. That might be reaching a particular ethnic group or operating a daycare program. Your mission should express whatever binds you together as a people.

Mission is a huge task and one that was never intended to be performed solo. (2×2!) The task of congregations is to answer the question How? (We’ve talked about the Why? question before.)

How will your group of people—with all the things you have going for you (taking into account your limitations)—fulfill Christ’s directive? In short:

How do you reach, how do you preach, and how do you teach?

You might start by asking each member this question. Their answers should help shape the “official” mission statement. Having been included in the process, they will own the mission.

Once a mission statement is adopted put it to work.

  • Feature it on your web site, on your stationery, and on your signage.
  • Hold a service to celebrate the adoption of a mission statement.
  • Invite several people to speak to the mission. Do this regularly!
  • Have a pin made or give out refrigerator magnets featuring your statement.
  • Make a congregational T-shirt featuring your mission. Declare T-shirt events (service projects, for example) when members should come in “uniform.”
  • Hang a banner over your door. (Outside where people can see it.)
  • Begin every service or meeting by reciting your mission together.
  • Write a press release and send it to local papers.

Keep your mission front and center.

But remember, your mission can change. Review it every few years to make sure you can still live up to its directive, and that, in focusing on it, you are not ignoring new opportunities. Actually, we live in such a fast-changing world that proclaiming a special mission emphasis each year might not be a bad idea. (Next post!)

11 Oct 2012

Building Your Relationship with Your Regional Body

We’ve spent some time discussing the politics of church relations and how they related to a congregation’s branding or sense of mission.

In the business world branding and advertising go hand in hand. What can the church learn from this?

Advertising is getting the word out. Evangelism is getting the Word out.

Congregations must learn to tell their story.

We have identified that the audience is not just the current members and the unchurched in your community. A primary audience for a congregation’s branding effort is its regional body, including the regional office, its officials and governing councils and every other congregation in your denominational territory.

Why is this important? Each congregation is vying for the same professional resources. Remember a primary task of your regional body is to fit clergy pegs into congregational holes. Making your ministry known to your regional body is an investment in making sure the peg that is placed in your congregation will move you forward.

Fact: a small church’s ability to serve—or even exist—depends on its relationship with its denomination. This runs counter to how congregations think. Church members will strategize for hours, weeks and years about how to reach and serve their communities. The regional body is out of sight and mind.

Here is a rarely discussed reality. All pastors are not created equal. Your regional body must find places for poor pastors along with the great. They will place poor pastors in the churches that are of the least perceived value to the regional body. You want them to know why your ministry, however small, matters.

Small churches must take extraordinary steps to attract the talent needed to serve members and fashion a ministry that will sustain a presence in the community. (That means meet the budget.)

This is great failing of the hierarchical church. Most communication between a congregation and the regional body is among clergy. It is usually prompted by sudden need or conflict.

Regional offices notice the big things. They will notice:

  • If your church burns down.
  • If the treasurer embezzled a few thousand.
  • If the congregation receives a major bequest.
  • If the pastor is unhappy or in trouble.
  • If a congregation stops sending benevolence (They won’t ask why! They will assume you are in dire straits! You must tell them!).

Regional bodies won’t take special note:

  • When your congregation rallies to help a family with a seriously ill child.
  • When your congregation supports a local charity fundraiser.
  • Votes to supplement a staff salary package during a trying time.
  • Teaches art and music to neighborhood children in an after-school program.
  • Does any number of small initiatives to improve the faith lives of their members and reach out to the community.

Ironic! These actions are the heart and soul of ministry.

Congregations must regularly communicate these things no matter how mundane or obvious they seem. An added challenge—so much of a congregation’s work must be done anonymously. All the more reason to be intentional about what you can share—and it’s all part of branding.

A Few Action Steps

Make sure your regional leaders and any staff assigned to your region are on your newsletter mailing list. Send it in a large envelope with a cover letter pointing to your most outstanding news. Even if you’ve gone internet with your parish communications, print a few and mail them to your regional office. Don’t rely on them looking up your newsletter or website!

Send invitations to events to church leaders and the pastors and church councils of neighboring congregations. Even if they don’t come, they will be impressed. They might start talking about you in a positive way! (It’s called buzz marketing).

Schedule events worthy of attention beyond your membership. In the past, hierarchies initiated events worthy of broad interest. That doesn’t exclude congregations from taking the lead. Consider a topic. Choose a format: guest speaker, workshop, panel discussion or webinars. Such initiatives will brand your church as thought leaders regardless of size. Does this seem impossible for your small family church? Think about a presentation on the value of the family church!

Use your website to address issues that concern your congregation and others. This is another common shortcoming of congregations. Their web sites are little more than online brochures. Think beyond your property line! You will be building your image as a mission-minded congregation.

Use photos. When you hold a successful events, follow up with a card with a photo to every participant and your regional office. Personal greeting cards are great communication tools that are underused.

Insist that lay leaders be included in dialog with the regional office. It is absolutely critical that regional leaders come to know lay leaders. This will take some doing. Regional offices like to expedite all meetings. They will attempt to deal with the leaders that make their goals easy to achieve. Make sure your pastor understands that you expect your elected lay leaders to be included in the dialog.

Encountering Resistance

You may encounter resistance among your professional leadership, but it should be easy to point out that such efforts boost their image with the regional office along with the congregation’s.

The biggest obstacle is that the time and energy spent on this activity are not part of the usual pastoral routine.

But then, the “usual” doesn’t seem to be working very well these days!

08 Oct 2012

A Challenge for Church Transformers

A Challenge for Church TransformationIn the last two posts we talked about how regional bodies categorize churches and provide pastoral leadership for congregations according to their size.

Here is a resulting problem.

Regional bodies demand that congregations transform at the same time they are evaluating them by their past—sometimes ancient past. They want congregations to move from being a family church to a pastoral church, from a pastoral church to a program church and so on.

Growing to the next bigger size is a symbol of mission success and financial success, a feather in the hierarchical cap!

Most congregations are what they are. If they transform to the next level they will lose their identity and possibly their strongest lay talent. (Think about it. If growth were the measure of success, those corporate congregations would be pressured to serve 10,000 members not 2000. The pressure to “transform” is only on smaller congregations.)

Most pastors are what they are as well. Some like serving family churches. Some, by nature of their personalities, must serve corporate churches.

Regional bodies tend to place pastors where they are comfortable serving. They then expect them to lead the congregation to become something neither the pastor nor the congregation recognizes.

If regional leaders are serious about congregations transforming, they must provide leadership that can function for the time being at the current level while they bring the congregation to a new level of ministry. This flexibility is rarely seen.

The transformation process lays a foundation for discontent and/or conflict that is helpful to no one.

Often, the change needed to achieve transformation is a change in pastoral leadership. The current pastor may not have the skills, time or resources to lead a congregation in a new direction.

Changing a pastor, at least in the Lutheran Church is cumbersome. It requires two thirds of the voting body to be unhappy. It helps if the pastor is unhappy, too. This is not a formula for success. But it is the system. And all this discontent, however merited, will go in that congregation’s file to be pulled out by a new regional leader a decade from now! (Read our parable—Undercover Bishop).

Perhaps we should applaud our congregations for being very good at the type of church they already are. When people feel good about themselves they are more likely to grow.

Take away the aura of criticism and Church might once again be a place lay people choose to spend Sunday morning. If they feel good about spending Sunday morning in church, they are more likely to invite others.

What does this have to do with branding?

There may be things congregations can do to ease this friction. Regular attention to mission and branding their mission may help a congregation attract the leadership needed to change. It may also help the congregation see themselves as part of a bigger picture — a mission!

This ball is on their side of the court, but often they don’t play it.

More to come!

07 Oct 2012

Interesting Video on the Future of Church

A missionary team from Sweden shared this link with us. We think it’s worthy of discussion in every congregation. Enjoy!

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvJR_SIiPl4?rel=0]
27 Sep 2012

Rebuilding the Church: Is It Worth it?

I’ve been following the daily blog of Pastor Jon Swanson, 300 Words a Day. This week he has been retelling the momentous story of the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, told by Nehemiah. The story is gripping — all the more because it cuts to the “Why?” of ministry.

  • Why look upon destruction that is so vast that no one bothered to clean it up much less rebuild it.
  • Why cry for it?
  • Why, when given the opportunity, petition a foreign king for permission to rebuild?
  • Why face the opposition that you know is plotting against you for daring to organize efforts to make things better?
  • Why record the details of the work crews that rebuilt each gate and wall?
  • Why be bothered? No one else seems to care!

Perhaps today’s church needs some of Nehemiah’s passion.

We have become very brazen about the state of our church. Attendance down? Oh, well. It’s time for ministry to die. Is attendance down in 90% of a region’s churches? It’s just a sign of the times.

The quote from church leadership should be alarming:

Congregations that will die within the next ten years should receive the least amount of time and attention. They should receive time that assists them to die with celebration and dignity. Offer these congregations a ‘caretaker’ pastor who would give them quality palliative care until they decide to close their doors.  It is the kind of tough-minded leadership that will be needed at the helm if your organization is to become a Transformational Regional Body.” — Transforming Regional Bodies, by Claire S. Burkat and Roy Oswald, a guidebook used to train leaders of regional bodies

The most troubling part of this quote is the time frame. Ten years! In the Lutheran Church that’s almost two terms for a bishop.

Our regional leaders are encouraged to stand by, implementing a ten-year plan to DO NOTHING (and get paid for it).

A ten-year time frame is enough time to revitalize a ministry, to rebuild its foundation. But the plan advised to leaders of regional bodies is to help only the churches with a proven cache of money. Go where the work seems easiest.

Church leaders need to reread Nehemiah until they can shed tears for the temples within their charge. There can be no dignified celebration of church closings when the closings have been brought about by designed neglect. (Click to Tweet)

This trend continues in the church unquestioned because the blame is placed on the people with the least voice or sway — the lay people. Wisdom of church leaders should not be questioned. Regard for their professional status outweighs regard for lay volunteers.

When we are busy protecting church leadership, we forget to ask the “why” questions. Why are we here in the first place? Why does anyone care?

It is time for this to change.

photo credit: UGArdener via photo pin cc
21 Sep 2012

Small Churches Have Great Advantages

One of the great things about being relatively small and unknown
is that the cost of failure is not that harmful. — Srinivas Rao

This business writer goes on to explain why innovation comes from small companies.

Small companies have the leverage to dare.

Small churches have the same leverage—the leverage to dare.

Would the big flagship church in the mammoth building on the corner of Broad and Main change the liturgy dramatically? No, too many people who like things just the way things are would leave with ruffled feathers.

Do bigger churches start innovative outreach ministries? Sometimes. But they are more likely to use their resources to add another pastor or tie into some established social ministry project supported by other big churches.

Small churches have the power to rock the world—the same power once placed in the hands of 12 disciples.

  • We small churches can change the worship time and survive the grumbling.
  • We can include non-English words in worship and not worry about losing 10% of the congregation.
  • We can do one-on-one ministry because we are more likely to personally know the life challenges of each person facing the altar.
  • We can fund a small foundation and charge it to do spread innovative ideas on the web without a pastor feeling his or her territory has been invaded.

Wow!

photo credit: Nina Matthews Photography via photo pin cc
20 Sep 2012

Involving the Church or Engaging the Church

A recent blog written for nonprofits addressed the difference between involving supporters or engaging supporters. Read it. It applies to faith communities.

Congregations have levels of involvement.

  1. Attendance at functions.
  2. Attendance at worship.
  3. Involvement in education.
  4. Support with offerings.
  5. Greater support with offerings.
  6. Participation in worship (reading the lessons, taking the offering, communion assistance)
  7. Participation on committees and governing boards.

And then we come to outreach, a most fundamental reason for gathering together in Christian community.

There are levels of involvement here, too. Many congregations never pass levels one and two.

  1. Attendance.
  2. Support with offerings.
  3. Active support to raise money. (Bake sales, car washes)
  4. Support of social service agencies. (Walk-a-thons, Charity runs)
  5. Assisting organized charities or social service agencies in events (helping with a building project for Habitat for Humanity, traveling to disaster areas to help with clean-up)
  6. Active involvement in a cause (running a day school, organizing a food pantry, visiting a prison, cooking and delivering meals to the homebound)

This last level reaches the highest level of commitment—hands on engagement in ministry.

In the Church, we often settle for coins in the coffer when sweat on the brow is better stewardship.

It’s the difference between involving people in ministry and engaging them. It may make the difference in the vibrancy of your congregation.

Think about it! No one talks about their offerings. People talk about the things they actually do! What a great way to tell the story!

How might your congregation engage your members in ministry?

photo credit: Plan for Opportunity via photo pin cc
13 Sep 2012

The Problem with Vision Statements

Seeing What We Want to See

These days it is a common for regional offices to request congregations, especially congregations searching for a new pastor, to draft a vision statement.

This is always done by a group. Sometimes a special committee is named.

The problem: groups rarely have vision. Vision is a gift that usually comes to the masses via an extraordinary person. With luck, your local visionary is also a godly person and a communicator with some leadership skills and the ability to work hard. With real fortune, your visionary will be someone people like and will listen to.

If you think this is the job of professional leaders, think again. Pastors are not required to be visionaries. Most aren’t.

This is nothing new. Jesus chose 12 disciples. Only a few, maybe only one — or maybe none — can be said to have been men of vision. Their leadership skills were nurtured and tested over time.

So what happens when congregations draft vision statements.

They end sounding remarkably the same, the better to please regional offices.

We are going to call a dynamic, charismatic pastor. We are going to reach out to the community and they are going to love us and support us.

That’s not vision. It’s wishful thinking.

08 Sep 2012