4/7InkzHVUEQeEdU9vpc1tikzEhChrKmPfvXI-FSDBrBQ

transforming the church

First Estate, Meet the Fifth Estate: A New Reformation

The Fifth EstateIn the Church, we are still shaking off the dust of the Middle Ages. Back then, as always, there was a crying need to organize society, partly due to unparalleled spread and power of Christianity.

  • Who would have the power?
  • Who would control the wealth?
  • Who would protect the wealth and power?
  • Who would pay for everything?

There was tension between church leaders and the people they relied upon to protect their impressive assets. This ragtag group of warriors would be most effective and reliable if they were given some official status and a smidgen of power.

Somebody came up with the idea of “estates.”

The First Estate included the clergy. They controlled much of the wealth, demanding contributions of the faithful. They paid NO taxes.

The Second Estate included the warriors that were to become the nobility. They were willing to risk their lives to protect the Church, and so, they were allowed some very nice tracts of land and the power to get the general population to work for them. They paid NO taxes.

The Third Estate was everyone else—about 97% of the population. THEY paid taxes.

As for upward mobility—it was next to impossible to enter the Second Estate by any means other than birth or marriage. Is it any wonder that there was no shortage of clergy in the Middle Ages?

Then came the printing press. The Fourth Estate was born. It was soon recognized that anyone who owned a printing press held power that had to be respected (and controlled, if possible). The press became the Fourth Estate.

Along came America and the power of the press was given constitutional protection.

Today we stand at the threshold of new possibilities and the birth of the Fifth Estate. The term seems to have started in Canada, referring to the media. It is evolving to include the power that lies in the hands of millions of unfettered individuals (the same 97% who have been supporting the power structure of both Estates One and Two for a thousand years).

Enter the power of the blog—The Fifth Estate.

This is a new form of power— a bit like the press but rawer and more independent, uncontrolled by any structure and empowered as much by the low cost as the technology..

  • Blogs are available to all.
  • Blogs do not require wealth and backing.
  • Blogs can create their own following.
  • Blogs are immediate.
  • Blogs have no cumbersome internal power structures.
  • Blogs are not restricted by the costs of print, marketing and circulation.
  • Blogs are not beholding to advertising for revenue.
  • Blogs are controlled by everyone’s ability to respond if they disagree.
  • Blogs are protected by the same Bill of Rights that protects religion and the press.

Anyone can become a thought leader in this new world. You won’t need a title or fancy degree.

The Fifth Estate will outpower every other Estate.

We have already seen the Fifth Estate affect government and international relations—swaying elections, inciting rebellion, changing the world.

We are beginning to see the Fifth Estate change education with free and easy access to course material once available only to the privileged.

Business has changed. Publishing has changed.

Will the Fifth Estate change the First Estate—the Church?

It will…if we start using the power at our fingertips.

The Church’s resistance to change—which begins at the top—will hamper it. Leaders will try to protect the status quo, which is their expertise. They will continue to rely on outdated communication techniques—20-minute sermons in cavernous, empty sanctuaries, newsletters filled with fluff, feel good web sites that invite little interaction or thought leadership.

One day soon, the power of the Fifth Estate will force open the doors and windows that have been sealed for centuries. The change is not going to be dictated by the seminaries or bishops or even the clergy. It is going to come from the bottom up and it is going to be truly transforming.

Are we ready?

photo credit: BottleLeaf via photopin cc
21 Oct 2012

Low Expectations and the Under-achieving Congregation

Science documents that expectations play a powerful role in laying the groundwork for success.

Good parents know this.

If we expect nothing of our children, they are likely to fail. Expecting failure takes less effort.

If we expect great things, we go to work for our kids. We cheer for them and help to create the conditions for success. We are not surprised when they change the world.

The same science works on adults and in communities. Jesus did his best to build up the people he encountered. He loved them. He showed them he understood them. He challenged them. He gave them the opportunity to fail. He showed them how to pick up the pieces and try again. That’s the training by example that he gave his disciples.

Many church leaders today have given up on the Church. They look through the statistics and see declining attendance, membership, and giving. So sad. Too bad.

A prevailing attitude among today’s church leaders is to accept failure as the norm. Bishop Burkat even recommends doing nothing to help small churches in her book, Transforming Regional Bodies.

The malaise is contagious—and deadly.

Redeemer will never forget Bishop Burkat’s first visit to Redeemer in December 2006. Bishop Burkat likes to claim publicly that she worked hard with our congregation for an extended period of time to no avail. This is what really happened.

It was a study in the power of low expectations, fueled by prejudice.

She walked into our Fellowship Hall. Gloom filled the room.

No bishop had visited Redeemer to talk with our leaders in nearly a decade. In 1997, Bishop Almquist came to break the 18-month term call (contract) he had made with us and one of his staff members just three months earlier. We were bitterly disappointed. (Bishop Burkat likes to claim that Bishop Almquist worked long and hard with us, too, but he was largely absent and he confiscated a sizeable amount of our money for two years.)

We went without a pastor for a year after that and for most of the following decade. Our lay leaders had worked hard to find ministry solutions on our own with mixed success. Still, we were enthusiastic about our prospects, especially since things seemed to be poised for significant change.

The memory of synod’s abandonment was still fresh for our leaders if not for the many new people who had come to Redeemer. We weren’t sure what to expect from the newly elected bishop, whom none of us had met, but we came ready for a fresh start.

It didn’t take long to dash our hopes. Bishop Burkat greeted us with what sounded like a rehearsed string of criticism.

She walked into the equivalent of the living room of our home and complained that the place looked junky. “No visitor will want to return to a place that looks like this.”

We explained. Epiphany, a neighboring church whose building was condemned, had just moved their things out of storage and into our fellowship hall. We were trying to help our neighbors.

We moved on.

Next. “You have no parking lot,” Bishop Burkat noticed. “A church with no parking lot has little chance of survival.” Our Ambassador visits have proved that the size of the parking lot has nothing to do with attendance at worship, but we answered defensively.

We pointed out that parking at Redeemer had never been an issue. The school and library, which share our intersection are closed on weekends and in the evenings when most church activity takes place.

The conversation continued.

Churches have personalities, Bishop Burkat said, with the clear implication that Redeemer’s personality left something to be desired.

What could we say? We turned the attention to our ministry efforts. We talked enthusiastically about the number of East Africans who were showing an interest in our congregation and the multi-cultural environment that had been fostered by one of our part-time pastors. We wanted to continue in this promising direction.

Bishop Burkat said a puzzling thing, “You are not allowed to do outreach.”

Huh? Say that again.

We told the bishop that we were disappointed in SEPA’s treatment of our ministry and very hurt that Bishop Almquist terminated our call agreement for his own convenience. That was a pivotal loss (by design, we think) for lay people to overcome, but we rose to the challenge.

The meeting ended abruptly. The bishop had a serious family emergency and we urged her to go to be with her family. Bishop Burkat promised to schedule a meeting in three to five months to talk about our concerns and try to heal some wounds. (Never happened,)

We sighed with relief when she was gone.  She exuded negativity. We were glad that only our key leaders were at that meeting. Her attitude would have dragged down the entire congregation. It would have undermined all the work we had done.

Our next encounter with Bishop Burkat, eleven months later, was similar. There were more people present. Redeemer had grown significantly during that 11 months of neglect, accepting 49 members! We came to that meeting with our recently completed 20-page ministry plan and with a resolution to call the pastor who had been serving us for about seven months.

Bishop Burkat began this meeting by ranting that Redeemer was “adversarial.” She used that word repeatedly in her opening statement. We still don’t understand her wrath!

The rant was undeserved. Only three of the thirteen people present had met the bishop before — two of us briefly, a year before. The third was the pastor we hoped to call who had been a member of her seminary class. All but two had joined the church within the last 10 years and knew nothing about ancient problems, which synod seemed ever-ready to resurrect.   

The meeting lasted more than two hours and we were able to turn the tone around, ending, we thought, on a very positive note. The bishop promised we could work with her newly appointed mission director, Rev. Pat Davenport. Our people began to sing a hymn together as we rode down the elevator and crossed the parking lot. We were excited and united.

And then NOTHING happened.

After four months of silence, including numerous unreturned phone calls, we all received letters from the Bishop announcing she was closing our church.

We wonder how many other churches have experienced such low expectations from leaders.

If this is how every church is treated, it is no wonder there is so little progress.

Our leaders have no faith in their message.

They don’t seem to care about or even like the people they serve. They don’t model their teachings about peace, repentance, forgiveness, reconciliation, love, justice, humility, or transformation (though they talk about this a great deal).

Pastors and congregations soon begin to avoid the regional body. They may even fear it.

The only transforming that takes place is destructive.

What would happen if we expected success—if church leaders went into congregations and asked one question: “How can we help you serve?”?

What if pastors—and bishops—were held accountable?  

What if we believed in the message we preach?

All things are possible.

20 Oct 2012

Using Your Mission Statement to Strengthen Networks

We can’t do it all ourselves, but we live in a world where we like to think we can.

In the world of corporate marketing, the “brand” is sacred. Corporate branders would cringe to think of sending their customers to a competitor. They would take one of these approaches.

Convince the customer they are wrong for needing something they do not offer.

You like contemporary worship? Our liturgies are much richer and more meaningful! Take a seat and listen!

You are being bullied? We are so sorry, but our mission is more about feeding the hungry. Our food pantry is open on Tuesday and Friday afternoons! Stop by!

Promise an answer so far down the line that it is likely to be useless to the person in need today.  

You want youth programming? Come back in two years. We’re training someone right now in exactly what you are looking for.

This type of thinking can affect how congregations interpret their Mission Statements. Governing boards can start to weigh every challenge by measuring it against their published Mission Statement and what they are prepared to provide—not the actual needs of the neighborhood. The Mission Statement then becomes an excuse to turn a blind eye to the changing needs.

Part of the decline of the neighborhood church is that the church as a whole is unprepared for change. Denominational leaders strive to find long-term pastors for stable (they call them “settled”) positions. When this becomes problematic, lay people tend to pay the price.

Let’s learn from this failure. Do not use your Mission Statement as a rigid gatekeeper in approving every congregational venture. Instead, use  it as an indicator of how you need to change.

Also realize, that the approved Mission of your congregation may not resonate with each member. Similarly, visitors to your congregation may not care at all about your mission. Most people first attend church for personal reasons. They come to be healed. They come to have their needs met.

  • Don’t expect everyone to embrace your lofty words.
  • Make sure that all the good intentions in creating a Mission do not blind you to reality.
  • Seekers coming to your door may not seem to fit into your Mission.
  • Your sense of Mission must be flexible. Otherwise, you may be a congregation with a sense of mission but no one to serve.

This can happen at every level of Church life. A congregation can go to their Regional Body and ask for help with a challenge that their neighborhood has encountered. After all, when neighborhoods change, you can expect challenges to. But it is not uncommon for the response from leaders to be some form of “That’s not in our Mission.”

What they are saying is “We don’t know how to help you.” And that’s OK, but churches and denominations must be aware of the needs and be prepared to direct people to those who can help.

Today’s Mission needs are bigger than congregations of any size! It is inappropriate to turn seekers with problems away without hope. We have to start building networks for serving. We have to start thinking in terms of team.

If a need is beyond your ability to serve, help seekers find direction. Don’t just give them a phone number. Accompany them to the agency or office that can serve them. Personally introduce them to individuals with the expertise to help. Your personal attention will build your reputation in your changing neighborhood. By personally taking part in finding help, you will strengthen your own abilities.

You Mission must be active and flexible and ideally linked to other Christians and neighborhood organizations that can help.

Start building those networks!

16 Oct 2012

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

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

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

Rebuilding (transforming) the Church is nothing new

 . . . and it is still hard and lonely work

I’ve been reading the book of Nehemiah with Pastor Jon Swanson. (He’s crafting the art of internet preaching to an art form, by the way.)

His blog first proposed reading it together, chapter by chapter, a week or so ago.

I admit I read ahead. Pastor Swanson is catching up with me now. (look for 7 minutes with God on his blog)

The book is exciting reading in itself, but for me and for us at Redeemer, it is a revelation.

The story of Nehemiah is the story of Redeemer.

Against enormous odds, the people find ample leadership to rebuild the plundered temple. They get more support from the neighboring king than they get from Jewish leaders. The “religious” leaders pull every trick in the book to try to stop them — not because what they are doing is wrong (although every attempt is made to make it look that way) but because they feel their position and power is somehow threatened by other people succeeding at what they failed to even try to do. What they said was impossible is being accomplished before their very eyes and they can’t stand it!

That’s the story of Nehemiah.

It is also the story of Redeemer.

Is it the story of your church, too?

photo credit: Pensiero via photopin cc

03 Oct 2012

A Quote for Transformational Leaders

From Seth Godin’s Blog:

Transformational leaders don’t start by denying the world around them. Instead, they describe a future they’d like to create.

02 Oct 2012

The Theology of Winning

Downgrading Your Ministry

Downgrading in ministry seems like an odd concept. Ministry is all about gearing up. Yet the economy of the church is forcing the downgrading of ministry which leads to conflict if church members are expected to care — and we do!

The first move in downgrading is to move to part-time leadership. This is so effective in killing Christian community that congregations rarely return to full-time ministry.

Part-time leaders are forced to prioritize ministry. They are paid for doing only so much. The priorities are usually taking care of the existing parishioners. They even call themselves caretaker ministers.

Downgrading is the function of management. Management wants numbers to work in its favor.

Evangelism, on the other hand, is activated by passion. Right brain/Left brain.

Managerial thinking snuffs the fire of the Spirit. New ideas are NEVER part of a budget.

Managers in the church run the strong risk that their pursuit of viable numbers will hurt the people who support the numbers. Downgrading ministries does just that. Soon subsistence ministry is expected. If it is done well, it is rewarded. The Church is populated with thousands of congregations that are just getting by.

Church is different from any other human endeavor. Passion makes it different.

Closing a church is not like closing a business. If the corner hot dog stand closes, we buy hot dogs somewhere else, make our own, or start eating pizza. Passion and faith are more difficult to replace.

In matters of faith, we want to live by different standards. Our Scriptures and constitutions are written to nurture evangelical passion.

Today’s church managers operate under legalities. Synods have legal counsel on retainer. In our synod, the legal counsel is usually seated at the right hand of the bishop in meetings. This is intimidating to congregations — and it is meant to be!

The role of legal counsel is to ensure winning. Here’s the problem in the Church. Legal counsel hired by the regional bodies or the national church are often used in conflict with congregations. They are paid with the offerings of the congregations. Congregations in conflict with a regional body must not only pay their own legal counsel they have also contributed to the payment of legal counsel of the regional body. (This is why an early step in church conflict is for the regional body to “terminate” their opponents, so the congregations do not have the rights afforded to them as church members.)

This has proven to be a prescription for a mess.

Taking conflict to the courts may seem like a good idea, but as the Bible predicts, it replaces the values of our faith (reconciliation, peace, forgiveness and love) with the values of society (win at any cost). Better to be defrauded, the Bible wisely says.

The theology of winning doesn’t really exist, but we practice it all the same.

29 Sep 2012