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Small Church Ministry

Ambassadors Visit Immanuel, Norwood

Immanuel, Norwood muralSmall Church Faces Demographic Change

Three Redeemer Ambassadors set out on a new adventure this Sunday morning. We hadn’t been in this area for a year or so. We never plan our trips before the prior Saturday afternoon, so it’s always a surprise to us.

Immanuel Lutheran Church, Norwood, Delaware County is celebrating 125 years. We told them they are just a bit older than we. We are in our 122nd year.

Redeemer is not closed. We are locked out of God’s house by SEPA Synod.

We read their Trend statistics and website thoroughly before our visit. This was very interesting to us. It is one of the many enigmas we encounter on our visits.

Redeemer was falsely represented to the Synod Assembly and in court as having only 13 members (they counted only our white members). Our situation in the courts, without any opportunity for us to witness otherwise, has been repeatedly termed “dire.” We were not operating with a deficit budget. Synod was!

Our true statistics laid beside Immanuel’s make us look rich indeed. We had an endowment three times theirs in 2009 and more than 15 times theirs in 1997. Legal fees dealing with the Synod in 1997 and 2008-2013 ate up a lot of our resources. The Synod has cost our community dearly and they aren’t finished with us yet, we suspect.

Immanuel’s membership and attendance are dropping at the same rate as most other churches. In contrast, Redeemer was growing. We accepted 52 members in the 18 months prior to Bishop Burkat’s interest in our assets. They didn’t count. “White Redeemer must be allowed to die. Black Redeemer . . . we can put them anywhere,” said Bishop Burkat to our stunned East African members—some of whom had been members for a decade. Some were born and baptized into our faith community. As one young lady commented at the time, “This synod is great on supporting Tanzanian ministry as long as we Tanzanians stay in Tanzania.”

A difference is that Immanuel has a pastor. SEPA strategy in dealing with Redeemer was to isolate us from the standard relationship of church/synod. Bishop Burkat chased two of our pastors. Bishop Almquist chased one and refused to help us find a replacement for six years.

In 2008, we had just presented a resolution to the bishop to call the pastor we had been working with successfully for seven months. After months of trying to reach the bishop to ask for an assignment without so much as a returned call, he suddenly was given an interim job in the northern frontier of the Synod. Redeemer continued to find our own leaders. One of them was with us this morning.

This was our Ambassador’s 70th visit. It amazes us that more than a third of the churches we visit are no stronger than we, but they still felt comfortable voting to take our property.

They are in the same boat. We’ll hand them an oar! We’ve been down the rapids that they are about to take!

We are very familiar with the challenges they face.

  • Astronomical utility bills. Immanuel is already soliciting contributions for an anticipated $10,000 winter heating bill. Ours was $8000 when we used the building daily and about $6000 when we heated the building only a couple of times a week.
  • Enormous insurance bills. These bills are crippling a lot of small churches— the price we pay for living in a litigious society (including church culture).
  • Changing demographics. We actually solved this problem!

They have a two-story educational building with a gym. We had one without the gym. It was a good source of ongoing revenue for us until SEPA Synod interfered. Redeemer was very much self-supporting.

I asked why they weren’t hosting a school. It seemed to be an obvious solution to their financial problems. The building, a member shared, isn’t handicapped accessible and they couldn’t open a school without that. They said it was just too costly to make it accessible.

If this is the only thing keeping a church from worthwhile programs that would contribute to their mission and ministry, one might think that all churches, through their hierarchical interdependence, would find a way to help older congregations solve this problem. Instead, our leaders wait for their older neighborhood churches to die so they can benefit from the spoils. They discourage the use of equity to solve problems. They offer no solutions. This relieves every church’s burden of supporting hierarchy and gives them a false sense of strength and prosperity. They sit smugly in their buildings, like spiders in their webs, waiting to assume the resources of older churches. Their buildings are up to code only because they were built more recently.

Redeemer’s school, by the way, was handicapped accessible. We were trying to renovate it to bring other things up to date, but the biggest expense in making it accessible had already been met. This is a resource to our church and community that has been squandered by SEPA.

Immanuel had just finished a week of Bible School and remnants of the busy week were still adorning the walls. About 45 children attended, the pastor said.

Yet, there were no children in church. There’s a challenge for them.

Redeemer, on the other hand, often had more children than adults in church. Many of our new members learned of our church through our six-week summer programs and day school.

The people were quite friendly. Many approached us for conversation. Even the pastor, The Rev. Gerald Faust, talked to us a little. (This is unusual!).

There were about 50 in church. They seemed to like to keep to a schedule. The organist announced that they would truncate the opening hymn, because the announcements were longer than usual.

Their Education Chair gave a talk about their various education opportunities which seemed to be extensive. They are preparing for their Fall Rally Day. We hope they can get some of those VBS families interested.

One of our Ambassadors was happy that they used the hymnal (LBW and WOV) and not the bulletin for worship. It’s his pet peeve. The hymns were all familiar. One was our Vacation Bible School hymn years ago and I still know it by heart. (Each year we memorized a different standard hymn.)

Singing was strong. A seven-member choir sang an offertory.

They sang the Lord’s Prayer at the appropriate time. It’s not the first time in our visits that the Lord’s Prayer was sung, but we have encountered a church where the pastor refused to allow the singing of the Lord’s Prayer during worship! Redeemer did this on special occasions. Maybe that’s what bugged the bishop! 😉

immanelnorwoodThe sermon was about division in the church in keeping with today’s lectionary. Sometimes we think the point of this passage gets lost. Division is to be expected. We are not asked by Jesus to lie down and let adversaries walk over us. Instead, we are encouraged to be prepared. Redeemer was prepared!

The most amazing thing about the sanctuary was not noticeable until we turned around to leave. There is a beautiful mural on the rear wall, painted by a woman and member, now deceased (see above). Their own Violet Oakley! (She painted murals on the walls of the Harrisburg state capitol and on church walls in our neighborhood.) Small churches are filled with talented and passionate people.

One of our Ambassadors is an architecture buff and commented on the older Sunday School area, now a fellowship area, at the rear of the church. This was common church architecture in the 1920s and was part of the Sunday School movement. Classes would meet in partitioned sections around the perimeter and the partitions would open for a closing ceremony. It’s a good concept, but the numbers in Sunday School rarely support it any more.

We wish this good-spirited congregation the very best as they celebrate their 125 years in September. We encourage them to find a way to open a school, so they can concentrate more on mission and less on heating and insurance bills. There has to be a way!

As we left the pastor asked us to sign the guest book. We did. We assured him we are loyal Lutherans.

18 Aug 2013

The Reach of A Neighborhood Church

A beautiful thing happened in East Falls yesterday that meant so much to us at Redeemer.

I told the Ambassadors about this on our way to visit our 65th church this morning. They, too, were moved. (I’ll write about our very interesting Ambassador’s visit later.)

What happened yesterday points to the impact of a neighborhood church that reaches beyond church statistics.

For several years, about ten years ago, Redeemer held two-week music camps in the summer. Most of the children who attended were not Redeemer members. We usually worked on a cantata for the holiday season or just taught choral music.

This week one of the girls who attended our music camp graduated from high school. Her family is very active in another East Falls church but they crossed Midvale to take part in events at Redeemer. This led to the whole family attending Lutheran Church Camp, which led to music from Lutheran Church Camp being introduced in Roman Catholic Schools. There is a cross-cultural nature to religious life in East Falls.

Anyway, I hadn’t seen much of the family for years, while we fought this shameful church battle.

Nevertheless, the family remembered the role Redeemer had played in their child’s upbringing. I was invited to attend the graduation party.

Redeemer had many such programs going on. We hosted the East Falls Children’s choir, had six-week summer day camp and had an ongoing legacy and reputation for quality child care. Many adults in East Falls can remember attending Redeemer’s programs, which have established significant good will in the community.

Much of this has been squandered by SEPA’s greedy interference. As they coveted our assets, they needed to paint a picture of a failing and desperate church. The Bible calls it “bearing false witness.”

It was heart-warming that years after SEPA locked our doors, some people in the neighborhood remember their roots in Redeemer.

Bishop Burkat’s forecast was that the memory of Redeemer would be gone in six months.

That’s not all she has been wrong about!

The reach of a neighborhood church is well beyond statistics. For that reach to begin to show statistically, there must be consistency and follow-up—impossible when you take a caretaker approach to ministry and/or bring conflict to a congregation every few years.

Open the church doors in East Falls. Return the land to East Falls Lutherans and let ministry happen in this neighborhood again—the Lutheran way.

30 Jun 2013

To Dream the Impossible Dream

Today’s Alban Weekly Newsletter promotes a book, The Small Church, by Steve Willis.

Willis points out that large churches are historically a new phenomenon—only 100 years old!

2×2 has made this point for a while. Most churches set out to serve their own communities with little thought of growth.

When churches grow, it is usually because of societal change, not a dedication to mission, fueled by a carefully drafted mission statement.

Willis points to the rise of mega church as a result of mobility in society made possible by mass transit and a reliable highway system.

The article quotes Tony Pappas, an American Baptist minister:

So for the first time in human history, thousands of people could get to a one- or two-hour event and get home for lunch! So large churches, big steeples, big pulpits, Old Firsts came into being. As we think of them today, large churches have only been around for a little over a century–only 5% of the history of our faith.

Before the concept of mega church, most congregations were pretty much the same in their needs and mission. Pastors were expected to do the same things and there was little mobility. There was no need. Pastors served the same church for decades.

Today, a pastor may, in following a call, carefully calculate how accepting the call will position him or her for a “better” or more lucrative call in three years.

Meanwhile, the congregations still think they are calling a pastor for the long haul.

The article makes a case for the mega church as an attractive business venture. Business entrepreneurs supported large congregations as an investment.

The early mega churches included congregations of just 1000 or 2000 members. Today, the mega church aims for five times that number. (Churches with 1000 or more members are called corporate churches. There aren’t many of them either.)

A model church budget today relies on the support of 1000 members. Most churches with 1000 members have only 10% worshiping on a typical Sunday morning.

In our 55 Ambassador visits, we have encountered only a handful of churches with worship attendance of more than 100. Most of those were on holiday Sundays. The average attendance of all the churches we have visited has been under 50. One congregation listed its average attendance as 400 in its Trend Report. Attendance at the 11 am service the day we visited was 27 (including us, the pastor and the organist).

In the last 100 years, we have created a model that the Church and its volunteer memberships never set out to support. And can’t.

So here we are in 2013, looking at the ruins of our church. And we are still thinking — if everyone can just change and be like the one or two percent of churches that manage to reach “mega” status, all would be wonderful.

Pastors are still trained to serve congregations as if they are neighborhood congregations. When expectations don’t match reality, the laity are blamed.

Most lay people just want to join a church to worship. They never set out to reinvent it.

But then there is 2×2.

04 Feb 2013

Join Us in Our Advent Social Media Project

A Tweet a Day for Advent—Get Ready!

A week or so ago, we proposed a social media project for the four weeks of Advent.

2×2 started as a blog. It is time to spread our little wings to other realms of social media!

2×2 has been blogging seriously for about 18 months. We started in February 2011.  It took us a few months to get our bearings. Only one person visited our site that month! Our stats show that our readership didn’t break triple digits until July. From our many web visits to other church web sites we figure that’s about when most churches give up on social media. We kept at it!  Patience!

Our best month of 2011 was November with 623 new readers that month.

By this time we were able to see growth patterns and we predicted that we would have 12,000 new readers visiting our blog in 2012. We should exceed that benchmark with ease.

Looking ahead to 2013, we can anticipate doubling 2×2’s reach. We are nearing 1500 new visitors a month and the growth has been steady. 110 people subscribe and have our posts go to their email every day. So that’s an additional 770 views each week! Our reach is truly worldwide.

2×2 achieved this without using any other social media platforms to enhance our SEO numbers. We followed just one strategy: Offer content that will be helpful to our mission audience — seekers and lay leaders.

We continue to be surprised by the many and strong relationships we are forming with other mission-oriented church workers, many of them not Lutheran. These are rewarding and growing. We started to introduce our readers to one another and now they are referring people to us. We look forward to many new things in 2013.

Which brings us back to our Advent project.

Research shows that Twitter is the least understood social media platform with the greatest potential to reach new audiences. Better than Facebook. There are others, too. But let’s tackle one at a time!

The biggest barrier to using Twitter is understanding its potential. That’s why we have chosen December as our month to experiment. We’ll take it step by step and report our progress.

We hope you will follow our experiment and perhaps join us and share your results. We’ll try to make it easy.

How about it!?

Sharing the Gospel—140 characters at a time!

Watch for our official invitation to join the experiment which should be posted Saturday afternoon — just in time for Advent 1.

Step 1: We just opened our account:

@2x2Foundation

This required us to have an email account. We opened a free account with Google.

2x2church@gmail.com

This process took about 15 minutes.

You can do it! Get cracking! 

30 Nov 2012

Stewardship of Possibilities: Part 2

Seth Godin’s blog is worth repeating today. (It’s short).

When you don’t know what to do…

That’s when we find out how well you make decisions.

When you don’t have the resources to do it the usual way, that’s when you show us how resourceful you are.

And when you don’t know if it’s going to work, that’s how we find out whether or not we need you on our team.

Every small church is in this position. Many are finding out that they don’t need to structure their “team” quite the way they have in the past.

The “dead wood” (a term one pastor used in a comment on this site in reference to small churches that the synod wanted to close) may not be the congregations. If you are going to assess interdependent ministries, look for dead wood in all the interdependent branches.

We suspect you’ll find some withering main branches.

Small churches are finding that not only do they not need them on their team but they have been playing without their support for years.

photo credit: Moochy via photopin cc
12 Nov 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

Valuing the Small Church for What It Is

Small churches are the Church’s secret weapon.
They just don’t know it!

Here’s the paradox of church work.

The mission is to reach all the world, right?

Only a small percentage of the world can afford to support “church” the way it is understood in the West. Even we in the West are having a tough time of it! Do we really welcome the ill and indigent to be part of the economic burden of Church?

The Church has set itself up for perpetual failure. It blames the few people who are supporting it for that failure. Result: morale is in the pits. Visitors sense gloom!

The people who still support neighborhood congregations are very good people. Passionate. Self-sacrificing. Dedicated beyond measure!

The Church, blinded by economics, saps as much from them as possible before exercising hierarchical powers — constitutional or not — throwing its strongest supporters to the curb (literally in Redeemer’s case!).

Forced church closings, where hierarchy self-righteously grabs assets is bad enough. When this is done by design it is downright sinful.

Church regional bodies have been taught to ignore struggling churches and wait them out. It’s right in the book used to train regional managers of various denominations (co-authored by SEPA’s own Bishop Claire Burkat).

“You do not have the luxury of giving everyone who asks for help whatever time you have available. Some tough decisions need to be made as to where your Regional Body is going to invest time, energy, and resources. Thinking in terms of TRIAGE is a most responsible thing to do at the present time. 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.”

There it is in black and white. Don’t waste time and resources on congregations that will close in ten years (if you do nothing).

A decade is long enough to fight two world wars!

And so the premise for mission changes. This part is not written down in congregational mission statements.

Churches want people who can support the way things are. Even better if they could support the way things were. Property and the staff come first. Programming and mission a distant last.

What would happen if the Church concentrated — really concentrated — on small church ministry? What if they found a way to help congregations be small, proud and strong — as opposed to dictating ministry solutions that work only in larger settings.

Small churches still have one big thing going for them. People still tend to prefer smaller churches!

It’s up to the smaller churches to insist on a change in attitude. This may not be as hard as it seems. Together, small churches outnumber large churches.

Find your voice! While you still have one!

17 Aug 2012

SPOTLIGHT on Five Small Church Ministries

God is doing something new  . . . .

2×2 invites small churches to join this page and share ministry experience—not just successes but ideas, criticisms, problems and challenges. If we don’t talk about things, how can we improve?

(If you’d like to join, send us your story. There is no cost and no money changes hands. We share our experiences, ideas, and pray for one another.)

Five churches have been part of our exchange in our first year. In this post we will spotlight their exciting ministries.

SPOTLIGHT on Glory of Pentecost in Eastern Kenya

Glory of Pentecost’s leader, Silas Kadenga, first wrote to us last spring asking us for help with their Vacation Bible School. They had read about our idea for helping small churches restore their summer outreach efforts. Their first email did not give their location. We started asking questions. We were surprised to learn they were in eastern Kenya. Our first reaction was there was little we could do to help. Our program was focused on the USA and even more locally. But we kept firing questions. The responses revealed a very different ministry scene than anything we expected.

How many students do you expect? Do they speak English? How many teachers do you have?

The answers: About 200 students. Most speak English as a second language. Three teachers and a few more that show interest but need training. Their obvious need was training for teachers and for resource material.

We pointed them to some free resources on line and kept in regular touch.

Today, their pastor sent us a notice of a new program and asked that we help publicize it.

Please join us in prayer for their new ministry.

Welcome to The Silas Faithfull Foundation

The Silas Faithfull Foundation (SFF) is the only Kenya-wide child protection charity dedicated solely to reducing the risk of children being sexually abused. We work with entire families that have been affected by abuse including: adult male and female sexual abusers; young people with inappropriate sexual behaviours; victims of abuse and other family members.

Drawing on our expert knowledge about child sexual abuse we offer a broad range of services for professionals and members of the public. These include: assessments, intervention and treatment of known offenders, case specific advice and support, training and development courses and workshops, educational programmes for internet offenders and their families, circles of support and accountability and internet safety seminars for schools (teachers, parents and children).

In 2009, The Silas Faithfull Foundation established the prevention campaign, Stop it Now! Kenya East Africa which supports adults to protect children through providing information; educating parents, carers and other members of the public; training those who work with children and families and running a Freephone confidential helpline_+254 708 403 409 +254 707 434 093_silasabali@yahoo.com  More information Stop it Now!

Through that we are looking forward to request your Support for this Organization to continue to Help more people all over the world your support of Prayer will make our Vision and Mission to be complete 

Together We Can Change the World 

 Message from founder of Silas Faithfull Foundation Kenya-wide

SPOTLIGHT on Kiorori Church in western Kenya

Simion Sagwe and his wife, Florence, have been caring for a number of widows and orphaned children in Kisii District, Nyanza Province, Kenya.. They work hard to feed and clothe them and find the money for their medical care and schooling.

We sent them a recording of a little song we thought the children might enjoy. They wrote to tell us that they learned the song and sang it in church. Now they sing it all the time. Meanwhile, back in East Falls, we often use the hymn in worship as well!

Simion has been traveling to attend classes at a Bible College. His wife is making jewelry in hopes of starting a cottage industry to support their mission work. We may be able to help their efforts. We will work on that.

We get weekly reports of their Sunday services and walks through the village afterwards to interest new people.

SPOTLIGHT on New Life Fellowship in Faisalabad, Pakistan

Pastor Sarwar Sadiq writes to us daily, sharing Bible verses and reports of his ministry. He wants to learn as much as he can about our church and writes his prayers for us, asking about our members by name. He describes the difficult mission of growing a church as a minority religion and the effect it has on their families and their children in school. He sends many photos of their ministry.

Their internet service is iffy and we are going to try to help them by setting up a mirror service on our site.

They have a vibrant ministry in their neighborhood but take mission trips into more remote areas to spread the Gospel. The above photo is from one of their mission trips.

They pray for better and affordable space for their ministry.

SPOTLIGHT on Prince of Peace, King of Prussia

Prince of Peace is a small, suburban congregation near Philadelphia. They happen to be the first congregation our Ambassadors visited two summers ago. We have stayed in touch and tried to help them with some projects.

Their current project is called “No Family Left Behind.” It aims to reach all families with worship and learning opportunities, including families including elderly, disabled, or children with learning disabilities. They are partnering with the Community Center directly across the street from their church and with Ken-Crest, a Lutheran Social Service agency.

They plan to make iPads available to help people with disabilities communicate, read, and take part in activities. The Rev. Dr. John Jorgenson, a retired pastor serving the congregation, has drawn on his years of service with the LCA in developing curriculum to develop the innovative program.

SPOTLIGHT on Redeemer, East Falls

Much of this web site talks about Redeemer’s very active ministry so we’ll list just a few.

  • Redeemer Ambassadors visit churches
  • 2×2 Foundation pioneers Social Media Ministry
  • Maintaining a Lutheran presence in East Falls
  • Staying active in East Falls organizations and government
  • Working to maintain Lutheran congregational polity by challenging actions of SEPA Synod
10 Jul 2012

Undercover Bishop Is Now Available In Ebook Form

Have your congregation read Undercover Bishop, a new parable of the modern church, now available for download. Compare your own church stories with those discovered by the newly elected Bishop Ruby Kinisa as she travels from church to church incognito to learn what clergy and lay members would never tell a bishop.

Sixteen short chapters are followed with suggested discussion questions.

Bishop Kinisa visits

  • an urban neighborhood church,
  • a small town church, and
  • a church in the country.

She needs to return to each church to reveal her identity. You are invited to act out your own endings and submit them to 2×2.

Undercover Bishop is an ebook, which means it can be amended. We’ll be glad to add your endings in prose or video form to keep the discussion of small church ministry going.

22 Jun 2012

The Church: Is bigger better?

The Ambassadors from Redeemer have visited nearly 50 churches since we were locked out of our own church.

We started with congregations near us, close to the city. Most of our early visits were to small congregations.

As we drifted toward the suburbs, we found congregations to be a little larger. But in all our visits we have visited only three or four churches with more than 100 in attendance (all but one on significant holidays).

As a general observation, the larger the church the more similar things are. The liturgy is more set in stone. The hymns choices are more predictable. You have the organ. You have the choir (with paid section leaders, in some cases). The involvement of the people is more standard. People file out of the sanctuary in groups that don’t interact much. The bulletins look alike. The list of activities could be cut and pasted from one to the other.

Smaller churches are unpredictable, more likely to be innovative in their worship, more diverse and more inclusive. They are livelier and more spontaneous. More people are involved — sometimes in unusual ways. There is more going on between the people, even in the worship setting.

(See our Ambassadors Report.)

No wonder most people belong to small churches! That may not be where the money is, but it is where there is a lot of action. And still the attention of church leadership is on bigger congregations — that overall fewer people will join—because most people choose to belong to smaller churches.

How do we grow small churches without forcing them to lose their personality? How do we tap their energy and ideas? Or are we most interested in tapping their assets? That’s a real question. There is an  economic dichotomy in the Church that is the source of a great deal of church conflict. The economic model that the Church aspires to is not the economic model that people support with their hearts or their pocketbooks.

Most of the economy of churches revolves around the ability to pay clergy and support hierarchy, but that’s not necessarily where ministry is most effective.

But that’s how the Church measures success.

07 Jun 2012