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Church Outreach

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

Understanding How Size Is Part of Your Congregation’s Brand

Recognizing the influence of size on their mission prospects is tough for many congregations.

Size determines your relationship with your regional body more than with your community.

Your perception of your congregation may be at odds with that of your regional body.

When you create your congregation’s brand (your mission/vision statement), you are usually thinking about your relationship with your community. The perception of your regional body can make or break your attempt to move your congregation in the direction you want to go.

Congregations need to do some work before they turn to their regional body. Many lay people don’t know how their regional bodies think.

Regional bodies have an agenda that must be recognized. They need to find gainful employment for their pastors, matching them with existing congregations. Most of their function involves fitting clergy pegs into congregational holes. Theoretically neither pool is finite but the fact is that few new clergy positions are made and recruitment of pastors to fill new ministry roles lags behind need. Regional leaders often settle for working with what they have and like everyone else in the world, they work to make their jobs easier.

At the same time, congregations imagine that there is a large pool of pastors with the skills they need, eager to serve their efforts to transform their ministry. This is not realistic in today’s church.

Regional bodies do not have great firsthand knowledge about the congregations they serve. Regional leaders change every 4-6 years and may not have visited with your parish in decades. They know what they hear from pastors, who have a vested interest in what they share. They collect annual data on giving and attendance without information to explain the data. Your congregation may have a very thick file of anecdotes from previous pastors who may have been disgruntled for any number of reasons as they interacted with your regional body. Often this interaction comes when pastors are seeking a new call and no longer feel any loyalty to their existing congregation. Their carefully recorded observations may have nothing to do with your current situation. They may have been self-serving, untrue, or less than the whole story. But this private record carries a lot of weight. Your regional leaders will consult this file before meeting with you.

Too often that private dialog between pastors and regional leaders creates prejudicial branding for a congregation — for better or worse.

Congregations need to take control of their image. Reversing prejudice is never easy.

Congregations must learn to tell their own story without the clerical filter. Ideally, they must look for ways to stand out in the denomination. We’ll cover some ideas for this later.

For now, it is helpful to understand how regional leaders think. They think in terms of church categories. There is a place for each existing congregation in a prescribed structure that relates to size and therefore budget and the available pastors willing to serve as you plan your mission.

These are the four general categories.  

1. Family Church

A family church is small with less than 100 members. Leadership in these churches is often influenced by family heritage. Clergy serving these congregations must recognize that members value the viewpoint of a few patriarchs or matriarchs who may have provided continuity through many pastorates. That’s a challenge for many clergy who want to be viewed as “the CEO.”

Regional bodies often consider these churches to be dying. Nevertheless, it is how most congregations start. They have a strength and social structure that can outlast many a larger church.

Family churches will likely have to settle for part-time clergy and receive very few choices in the search process.

2. Pastoral Church

Pastoral churches have about 100-200 members, too big to be controlled by family groups but still small. These congregations rely on pastoral leadership. There will be a council or vestry. It’s strength or influence will vary with the relationship they build with their pastor.

Pastoral churches are likely to be given the names of seminary graduates, second career pastors, part-time pastors or pastors winding down into their retirement years. Regional leaders may also try to place pastors who have failed elsewhere in this size congregation (beware!).

Most churches in the United States fit into these first two categories. Most regional bodies and clergy think that viability is in the next two categories. 

3. Program Churches

The next larger churches have up to 500 members. Clergy love this size church because they can support one pastor and a small staff. They are often popular with new families or people in transition because (as the title suggests) they offer programs to fit specific needs. Regional bodies wish every church were this size or bigger! It would give them stability, too. The problem is that they are few in number with clergy vying for their calls and the career trajectory they offer.

Congregations of this size will be given several candidates to consider.

4. Corporate Church

Corporate churches exceed 500 members and may have up to 3000. These churches have little need for a regional body, but they get a lot of attention because they are able to contribute the bulk of the regional body’s budget. They are plum positions for clergy who want prestige. They always come with the responsibility for facilities and staff. Most churches this size have multiple clergy with specific skill sets and lay staff. Their challenge is to provide the personal touch that small churches have. They constitute a very small percentage of the total number of churches, but there is a tendency to assume that all churches aspire to be like them.

Corporate churches will have no trouble finding clergy interested in serving them.

In between each of these groups is a transitional category. Churches can grow from one category or shrink to smaller category. It is during these transitional stages that congregations are harshly examined or judged.

Your community is not thinking about where your church fits into this structure, but your regional body is. Their perception of your size influences your access to professional services, which influences your ability to meet your ministry potential.

Tough words but true. Congregations working on a branding strategy must grapple with how they are already viewed by their own denomination.

Is your congregation trying to move from one category to another?

If it is, seriously consider how you will tell your story to your regional leaders.

Do you see why the last step we proposed (self-study) is important? Too often congregations turn to their regional leaders for help with this process without realizing the prejudices already in place. Do some work before you turn to your regional body.

05 Oct 2012

Branding 101: Know Thyselves

In yesterday’s post we talked about the branding of Christianity and pointed out that Christians carry some heavy historical baggage.

Let’s move on.

Most Christians regardless of denomination feel pretty good about being Christian. They may feel less sure of their place within the Church. Such uneasiness inhibits evangelism or outreach.

Spending some time on branding should help.

The most common advice of church analysts is to write a mission statement or vision statement. Frankly, most mission and vision statements are variations on the same theme and state the obvious.

Mission statements are part of branding. But the process for arriving at mission statements can be dry and even threatening.

Thinking in terms of branding will either help you write a clearer mission or vision statement or make them unnecessary.

Remember, branding is about how we are perceived—first by ourselves and then by others.

Start with some kind of self-study.

The temptation in attempting a self-study is to begin to rehash congregational history and statistics—the good and the bad. These days it is often the bad. This can be a technique of hierarchy to make your situation feel hopeless. That makes their job easier and they might get the value of your assets. (Sorry to be so blunt, but self-interest is part of that long history of the church we talked about in yesterday’s post.)

You’ve probably already been this route. How has it worked?

We’re betting that it led to self-criticism that eroded your congregation’s self-confidence. We’re also betting that it helped you stay mired in the past. If you started the process with a dozen people, you probably ended up with one or two finishing the job as others fell away.

So, don’t spend a lot of time on this. It is fuel for the naysayers.

Knowing yourself is the first step in telling your story. Ask some questions that will teach you about your congregation.

Here is one idea to help the process of self-examination in a positive way.

Create a survey.

This should be totally un-intimidating and should be plenty of fun! Keep the questions upbeat.

Give people enough time to think about their answers. Let them study them during the week, if necessary.

Write your own questions, but here are some ideas.

  • What are your most memorable three verses from the Old Testament?
  • What are your most memorable three verses from the New Testament?
  • Can you remember the favorite Bible verse of one of your parents?
  • What is your favorite quotation of Christ?
  • How would you describe Jesus to someone who had never heard of Him? or Describe Jesus in ten words or less.
  • Write a haiku poem describing our church.
  • What are your three favorite hymns?
  • What is your favorite church season?
  • What makes you proud to be a member of our congregation?
  • If you could change one thing to improve our congregation’s mission, what would it be?

Notice how the questions stretch people’s thinking. If you asked them to choose just one hymn or verse, you’d get weaker results.

Also notice how there is nothing in these questions that will wear away at people’s confidence the way statistics and history can. The questions concentrate on strengths, spiritual gifts and hope. They allow for the introduction of negative but in a way that won’t bog you down.

Collect the results and discuss them together. Hold a survey party. Let people tell you why they chose their answers. Quote the scripture. Sing a few of the hymns. This should reveal something about the priorities of your people. You will soon understand why they come to church faithfully and they will be practicing telling their story! Tricky!

This process will help you define your mission.

For example, a hymn choice such as “There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy” or “O Zion Haste” reveals an interest in mission work. “A Church’s One Foundation” might reveal an interest in teaching doctrine. “Just As I Am” or “Peace Like A River” may point to an interest in social justice. Let the people discover themselves.

In the end, ask people to summarize what they’ve learned. Pose the question something like this:

I’ve learned that our Church is capable of the following great things:

1.
2.
3.

Understanding yourselves is the first step in branding your congregation. Have fun! Be proud!

05 Oct 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

Mission Churches with No Web Site!!!

God is doing something new and the church is Out to Lunch. We are tempted to say Gone Fishing, but that might have theological implications that do not apply.

Redeemer Ambassadors always turn to the internet to plan our visits. We check service times, read newsletters and find out as much as we can before we visit.

We follow the process any newcomer to a neighborhood in 2012 would take when searching for a church home. They would Google their neighborhood and the word “church” to see what comes up.

Our search process reveals that neighborhood church seekers will have problems finding Lutheran churches.

Since we are looking for Lutheran churches, we start with the ELCA Trend Reports web site and use their Church Finder. We plug in 15, 20 or 25 miles for the radius and press the LOCATE button. Up comes a list. Then we click the link provided to each congregation’s web site.

We are now preparing for our 50th visit. We’d like to visit a nearby church tomorrow morning. Some of our ambassadors have afternoon plans. There are several possibilities. We’ll look for a church with an early service.

THIRTY of them have NO WEB SITE!

Several of those with no web site are mission churches under the direction of synodically appointed leaders. Note: These are just the churches in a 15-mile radius of East Falls.

A MISSION CHURCH with NO WEB SITE!

We Google the name of one nearby congregation. Maybe they have a web site that isn’t listed in the national database. Great! They have a Facebook page. We check it. It has NO information beyond the church’s address.

Really, SEPA churches, what are you thinking? Are you serious about outreach? Are you part of your communities? Do you open your doors on Sunday morning and expect the neighborhood to flock there by magic?

A church can have a nice looking web site for an annual investment of $25 and no more than an hour’s set-up time. Facebook is FREE, for St. Pete’s sake! 13-year-olds know how to use it.

If you don’t have a web site, you are not serious about serving your community.

Most of these congregation’s have pastors who could set up a basic site and at least have a community presence.

Even Redeemer, the church that doesn’t exist according to SEPA and the ELCA, has a web site.

In the world of the ELCA, these churches, that are not serious about ministry, feel they have the right to take votes about the ministries of other congregations and gain from their actions. (They don’t have this right under governing laws, but that hasn’t stopped the churches and clergy of SEPA!)

God is doing something new in the Southeastern Pennsylvania Synod and many churches are not equipped to perceive it—much less take advantage of it!

We’d like to think they have Gone Fishing for Men, but the evidence is they are Out to Lunch.

photo credit: bobfranklin via photo pin cc
08 Sep 2012

A Pastor’s Secret Transformation Weapon

The Children’s Sermon As Catalyst

A pastor may think that a children’s sermon is a waste of time. The children might be better off somewhere else, engaged in age appropriate activities.

The children’s sermon time is so much more. It is a golden opportunity to introduce change to your congregation.

Many pastors do little more than talk at the children—a watered down “trailer” of the 20-minute version about to come.

It is painfully obvious in many cases that the pastor has little experience talking to children. All those years of seminary study so you can expound to five-year-olds!

The children’s sermon is a time when you can communicate to everyone. Many adult Christians have not been well-schooled in church matters. This is an opportunity to not only reach the children but to review basic church teachings without “talking down” to the adults.

You can experiment in the few minutes you spend with the children. Few will object. It is a chance to create the experience modern worship so desperately needs—something that people will remember and talk about when they go home and off to work.

In the business world, this is called creating a “remarkable” experience. Business people know that their best advertisers (evangelists) are customers (congregants). They aim to provide the best service possible so that the customer/congregant talks about his or her experience.

Most worship services are fairly predictable in format and even in content. They are no doubt meaningful to the congregants, but few are anything anyone will talk about during the week or even remember a few days later. (Quick! What hymns did you sing in church last week?)

More people will be tuned in for a ten-minute children’s lesson than for the full 20-minute version. Use this opportunity to create a “remarkable” experience.

This is a pastor’s opportunity to introduce change without objection. Congregants may not even notice that the praise song you taught the children last week is the sermon hymn this week.

The children’s sermon is an excellent opportunity to introduce media, teach the kids (and adults) to move in liturgical dance, practice a new prayer technique, read a story or poem, or perform a little drama. Don’t put a stopwatch on the activity. Some sermons may be five minutes long. But if people are engaged, milk the moment.

Here is a list of guidelines.

  • Don’t treat the adults as passive bystanders. Engage them in music, question and answers, or other activities. Enlist their help. They will be more likely to step up to help the children then if you asked them to do something for their peers. Ask a choir member to lead or teach a new song, for example. Or have an usher explain what happens to the coins the children put into the offering plate. It will strengthen your congregation’s sense of community.
  • Don’t be afraid of repetition. Kids love it. Adults learn from it, too.
  • Don’t be afraid of interaction. Throw out a question to the adults. Better yet, have the children ask questions. Imagine one of your older members telling the story at work: “In church yesterday, a little girl asked me a question . . . .” 

It’s all about story-telling. We all love to tell the story. The children’s sermon can be the vehicle for congregational story-telling. And this can lead to transformation.

photo credit: Jenn Durfey via photo pin cc
07 Sep 2012

Why Don’t More Churches Blog? Answer 2!


Here’s another answer to the question “Why don’t churches blog?”

Church leaders don’t understand the reach and impact of the internet or the new definition of community.

Congregations, by tradition, are geographically bound. For several decades, congregations which had support from people who lived some distance from the church building were criticized. Membership was considered “scattered.” The regional or centralized church didn’t care about this as long as offerings were flowing, but if there were any signs of fiscal trouble, a “scattered” congregation was in trouble with its judicatory.

Geography is no longer as important as it once was. There are definite benefits to physical community, but it is not the sole criterion.

Community is a group of people with common interests. People, today, are discovering people with common interests all over the world. Just because this was not possible from 35 A.D. to 1985 A.D. doesn’t mean it has no value in 2012 A.D.

Recognizing that the Church and its sense of community has changed WILL redefine Church and its structure of support and service.

2×2 is on the frontline exploring this new definition of Church. We are learning every day. Our effort, barely 18 months old, has taken our ministry to places we never imagined.

Our regional office considers us “scattered and diminished” and worthless.

Scattered? Not when they made this claim, but today, maybe. But now it doesn’t matter!

Diminished, not at all. 2×2 (Redeemer) is reaching more people every week than it ever reached on a weekly basis at any time in its history. We can prove it!

Some contacts are fickle accidents. Others are developing into true friendships. That’s really not so different than the neighborhood church that reaches many visitors with only a small percentage actually joining.

We made all of these connections by blogging daily on diverse subjects, analyzing the wealth of online data, and producing content that answered the needs revealed in search engine data.

We did it on a shoestring budget — less than $100 per year. We followed our own members’ interests and talents.

We’ve only just begun. We’re here to help and serve.

Contact us if you need help developing an online ministry.

05 Sep 2012

Niche Churches — Hmmm!

This is from a blog by the Rev. Larry Peters, a Lutheran pastor from Tennessee. He was commenting on the writings of Terry Mattingly.

If churches want to reach millions of independent-minded young Americans they should learn a thing or two from craft brewers. . . . It’s time, he said, for “craft churches” that reach niche audiences.

This is an astute observation. Small churches have been serving niches for some time.

Our Ambassador visits reveal that most churches, large or small, serve a niche, but probably with little intent!

The largest church we visited (non-Lutheran and twice the attendance of the largest Lutheran church we visited) was a congregation of 25-35-year-olds.

Birds of a feather . . .

Small churches know their niche. Any intention of being all things to all people, though tempting, is out of reach. Even if people wanted that kind of ministry, (and most mission statements sound like they do!), finding leadership is daunting.

Church leaders often view small churches as failures—undesirable places for pastors to serve. Part of this is economics. All churches must rise to the same budget expectations, which in the modern era have priced many communities out of the faith business. Pastors assigned to small churches often view their role as care-taking, never bothering with outreach. Some even use the offensive term “hospice ministry.”

Perhaps it’s time to seriously examine the economics of church.

People will make their church home where they can see their offerings and efforts at work. They will neither participate nor attend a church where they do not feel fully welcome.

We at Redeemer know the difference between being welcome to attend church and being welcome to participate. Our bishop made it clear that we are not welcome to participate in SEPA Synod. She seized our property and pledged to close our church and reopen it under new leadership. She wrote to us that current members could attend this new, improved Lutheran church but former members would not be permitted to participate. She unilaterally denied us vote or voice. When we started visiting churches she sent a letter to pastors warning them!

How’s that for a welcome statement!

Redeemer was welcoming East African immigrants who were moving into our community—not just to use our building, which is the more common outreach approach, but to join their traditions with ours. We saw our unique niche ministry as adding to the mosaic of the greater church.

But SEPA was determined that one population had to die before a new population could be fully welcomed. As Bishop Burkat said, “White Redeemer must be allowed to die, black Redeemer . . . we can put them anywhere.” Control of assets was the objective.

Religion is not supposed to be a spectator sport.

Part of the problem with niche ministries is that few pastors are trained to serve niche populations.

Defining a niche (while recognizing the likelihood that niches will change every decade or so) may not be such a bad idea. It will take decades to recognize and train leaders to actively serve niche ministries and not view them as “hospice” assignments.

Another problem with niche ministries is that the “niches” that are most in need (the ones the Bible talks about), often can’t support them.

The true mission of the church is defeated by cost—at least with today’s budget and funding expectations.

Meanwhile, rejected and criticized by our denomination, Redeemer has created a niche ministry. You are visiting it now. Today, two months into our third year, we are reaching more people every week than the largest church in our denomination’s local region. We are just getting started.

photo credit: Grant MacDonald via photo pin cc
29 Aug 2012