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transforming the church

Multicultural Ministry Requires Congregational Confidence

Congregations are not wrong to approach a multicultural outreach program with hesitance. It is honest and human. Humans make good Christians!

Multicultural Ministry means things will change. Change opens the doors to the unknown and that can be unsettling.

Any new ministry initiative must start with the people you have. If they feel loved and respected, they will be equipped to welcome and serve new people. If they feel criticized and worthless, they will become resentful and protective. Your congregation will not have an atmosphere that invites anyone — much less those of other cultures.

Begin your Multicultural Ministry by affirming your congregation. Make sure they are confident and have self-esteem. The one thing every member wants to know (without asking) is that they will still fit in when their congregation begins to change. They want to know that in building a ministry around new people they are not valued less. We all want to be loved for who we are — not what someone else thinks we should be. A confident congregation — no matter how small — can grow.

Approach change as additive. You are adding new people, new music, new traditions. You are not replacing or criticizing the people who have worked and sacrificed for your congregation for decades. Your members should not have to change the things that are very special to them. They can sing the same hymns, have similar observances. New hymns and customs should be added to the old. Visitors don’t expect a church to drop everything and do things their way. They will notice that your congregation respects your elders and traditions. In fact, most foreign cultures respect this more than we do!

Take it easy. This is probably the most difficult concept for leadership to grasp. Leadership tends to be eager for quick transformation. Leaders have incentive to look for success in statistics. They have at stake their professional career image and desire for personal achievement. Congregations, on the other hand, have their entire social order at stake. They have their history, their family relationships and friendships, their way of life/culture and traditions. This must not be run over roughshod. It will destroy Christian community. Measurable successes will be fleeting.

Don’t put a timetable on change. Your congregation will know when to mothball old customs. It doesn’t have to be forced.

Celebrate your people. Members need to know that they are “chosen” for this ministry because they are a good community with ministry skills. Stress the qualities that make your congregation welcoming to other cultures. Build on them.

  • Are your people naturally welcoming? Let them know that this skill is now more important than ever.
  • Have your people travelled? Are they knowledgeable about some other culture? Give them a leadership role. Have them talk about their experiences in other countries.
  • Does your church have families that can mentor new families? Multicultural Ministry may mean that you will be inviting immigrant families or families new to your neighborhood. Prepare your families to show them the ropes. Let them know this is valuable service to their church. Train them. Help them find ways to connect with newcomers.
  • Holidays can be a particular challenge to immigrants. Try explaining Halloween to someone who has never experienced it! Yet children will be expected to take part in Halloween fun at school. Your church families can advise parents, answer questions, or even help them put a costume together. Similarly Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are ingrained in our society. They can be puzzling to newcomers.
  • Are there people with special skills in your congregation that could be helpful to newcomers? Members with experience in real estate, banking, business and legal issues could be helpful in reaching out to people looking for housing, financing, jobs and citizenship. Their special skills can play a big role in Multicultural Outreach.
  • Do you have members who can help teach English?

When your current members know that they are important to your congregation’s new ministry, change becomes exciting. The threat is gone.

In later posts, we’ll give you real examples of how some of these points played out in our multicultural ministry.

03 Nov 2011

Exploring Multicultural Ministry

“Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every nation.”

Multiculturalism is a mandate of Christianity.

Many church consultants have postulated that if the Church is to grow it must become multicultural.

This is indeed desirable but difficult for parishes to undertake. There are many things standing in the way of congregations entering into intentional multicultural ministry.

  1. People looking for a church home tend to be attracted to groups that are like them.
  2. People inviting tend to relate most easily to people who are like them.
  3. Leadership is often uncomfortable with spearheading multicultural programs. It is outside their training.
  4. Resources for developing multicultural ministry are few and developing resources for such a broad topic is difficult.

2×2 grew from Redeemer Lutheran Church which had a thriving multicultural ministry. It did not grow from any master plan skillfully implemented by strong, well-trained leadership.

In Redeemer’s experience, multicultural ministry grew from accepting who we were and adapting as the neighborhood changed. Slowly, year by year, member by member, the faces in our congregation changed, our worship changed, and our fellowship changed. Within a decade, our small congregation with century-old ethnic roots in German and Scottish-English traditions had become predominantly East African with members from many countries and speaking many languages. This was managed without major upheaval from within the congregation. We are, however, experiencing difficulty with our denomination, who viewed the changes as one group dying — giving them rights (in their view) to move in and control assets and reassign new members to another location.

Multicultural ministry can be very tough for the whole church to accept.

While we have experience in multicultural ministry, we cannot claim expertise. Surely, there are other congregations with as much or more experience than ours, although they are not easy to find. Redeemer has visited 33 congregations in our synod. We have encountered only two or three that concentrate on multicultural ministry. Among them, one or two are diverse without being noticeably multicultural. In fact, defining multicultural might be a helpful exercise.

Many years ago, in a discussion of an upcoming mixed-race marriage, someone among the gossipers commented, “Hey, when you come right down to it, aren’t ALL marriages mixed? Isn’t that what marriage is all about?”

That’s a good starting point. Take a close look at the cultures that are already present within your congregation. You might be more diverse than you think!

Please share your experiences as we share ours in a series of posts. Perhaps together we can encourage multicultural outreach. We invite posts from anyone with thoughts to share on multicultural ministry.

Despite the fact that this is an original mandate of Christianity, we need to break new ground.

Send us a comment and we will get back to you.

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02 Nov 2011

Getting Pastors Onboard with Social Media Ministry

Social Media is new — only a few years old from the start and even fewer in universal popularity. Many pastors and professional leadership were not trained in using social media. They probably never gave it a thought when they answered their “call.”

Therefore, congregations may run into resistance when talking with their pastors about developing Social Media Ministry.

Professional leaders should be excited!
• Social Media gives the church tools to reach many more people.
• The people churches want to reach are using social media.
• Social media is a change agent — just look at what is happening across Northern Africa!

While many in the church agree that the church must change, often they are slow to accept the tools which will create change. It seems the Church longs for change as long as everyone (including leaders) can continue doing things the same way! Social Media is a tool for changing ministry. Use it!

Here’s a great video overview from PBS’s Religion and Ethics program.

This video begins with a mega-church approach. It may intimidate you to see the opening scenes of a church with a control room and banks of computers. But watch to the end. It ends with the Social Media Ministry of an order of nuns in the Boston area, who have made it a mission to answer spirital questions online. They have more than 16,000 “Likes” on their Facebook page. Anyone with a laptop and internet connection can do Social Media Ministry.

If your congregation has a pastor that is savvy to social media, great! If not, encourage your leadership to explore the possibilities. Remember, it’s new to everyone!

Here’s the choice for pastors of small congregations:
Continue to preach on Sunday to the same few people and an occasional visitor or go into all the world (without leaving the church office!)

Using Social Media will require some shifting of mental gears. Social Media is most effective with short thoughts (as opposed to skillfully crafted long sermons). Think of the power of parables which were sometimes only a couple of sentences.

Social Media requires frequent interaction, not just once a week. Your leaders will have to restructure their work habits to make room for new work. They will not be alone. People throughout the business/nonprofit world are restructuring the way they work to include Social Media. The church will have to follow suit. Many executives are starting and ending their day with 20-30 minutes of participation in Social Media — and finding it to be time well spent! “I don’t have time,” is not an acceptable excuse.

Social Media invites dialog. It will take a while to develop online dialog, but pastors must be prepared to field questions and engage in online discussion. What a great opportunity!

Social Media requires commitment. Online questions/comments must be answered within 24-48 hours. Longer than that and you have turned a seeker away. All comments deserve a response.

Start with blogging. Facebook and Twitter are often the first things that come to mind when people think of Social Media. They have their place but they are not good places to start if you are encouraging reluctant pastors to get their feet wet. Blogging is more sophisticated — closer to what pastors are trained to do. Professional leaders can maintain their voice better on a blog than in the short and fleeting interactions of other tools.

Share statistics. Start your church blog without your pastor as contributor if necessary. It’s too important to wait. You are not likely to change minds while doing nothing. As your audience grows, share the statistics with your pastor. If you start to get 50-75 new hits a week (as our church experienced after four months with no pastoral involvement), your leadership may begin to see the potential.

Be specific in you initial expectations. If your pastor does not want to contribute regularly, ask for help with specific topics your committee may have identified.

27 Oct 2011

How to Create A Social Media Committee for Evangelism in a New World

Going into all the world to preach the gospel has never been easier.In a previous post, we recommended renaming your Evangelism Committee the Social Media Committee. Evangelism today must embrace social media. Changing the name will
• remind you to use social media,
• attract the interest of young people whose lives revolve around social media, and
• communicate to your neighborhood that you are serious about your message.

1. Explore Social Media

The most up-to-date information is online. There are many books but they get outdated quickly. Many good websites provide FREE training (socialmediaexaminer.com, hubspot.com, are rich sources of information and training, much of it FREE). If you want to do your own search, start by looking in the search engines for articles on “Content Marketing” or “Inbound Marketing.” (Don’t be put off by the terms. Marketing is the secular term for Evangelism!)

2. Review your church membership and look for people with the following skills:

• passion to spread the Gospel
• good communicator
• is a social person (very important)
• uses social media (this may mean recruiting youth that you might otherwise overlook)
• basic computer skills
• has some experience with Facebook or web design
• likes to write
• can use a digital camera or video camera

Do not try to find all these skills in one person. Social Media Ministry needs the skills of several people. This is simply a guideline. You do not have to have all of these skills represented on your committee to get started.

3. If you have difficulty finding the skills and interests within your congregation, look outside.

This media is too important to ministry to resist with “but we don’t have the people.” Find the people. Try for volunteers first but if that proves difficult, create a budget and pay for some expertise to get started. This can be a short-term commitment.

Follow or join online communities. You will find lots of help online for free. You will be surprised at how many people are eager to help. This may seem daunting at first, but you will learn to trust the online community to help. (Leave questions here in our comment boxes, we’ll be glad to post them and help you find answers to your questions!)

As you search for committee members, tell people: Our congregation is starting a social media ministry, and we are looking for someone to set up a blog and create a Facebook community. As you engage in conversation let them know you will be using a blog, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Start talking about your plans in the community. Talk to the parents of kids in your day school, if you have one. Talk to the Scouts or other groups that may use your building. Put a small ad in the local paper or a sign on the grocery store bulletin board. If you think it will help, offer to pay someone short-term to train your committee or get you started with a blog. That’s the biggest hurdle — getting started.

Don’t overlook youth. This is a medium young people thoroughly understand, and is it a way they can contribute to their church. A young person might be willing to undertake this as a confirmation project or even a Senior Project in his or her school.

If your pastor understands social media, great! If not, find a way to get clergy on board. Pastors should jump at the chance to reach a greater audience than those who attend church. If they need training, help them find it. Again, there is ample training available on line for free. At the very least, encourage them to be enthusiastic supporters.

Churches say they are looking for change. Social Media is a change agent.

4. Your first meeting.

This is all the farther we are going to go in this post, but we thought you’d need to know what to talk about at your first meeting. A good social media plan begins with a blog. At your first meeting, talk about setting up a blog and brainstorm for ideas for content to put on the blog. Once you have a plan, it will be easy to assign tasks to committee members. We’ll cover this on our next post.

19 Oct 2011

Social Media Can Help Your Church Make a Good First Impression

Part 3: Social Media MinistryToday, when someone visits your church, it is likely they have already formed their first impression of your congregation from their online search. Congregations need to put their best foot forward on their web sites.

Here’s a list of questions to consider:
(This list was derived from our visits to 32 churches in the last 14 months.)

  • Is service information easy to find?
    It should be boldly displayed on the home page.
  • Is the service time correct?
    Ten percent of the churches we visited had wrong times listed on their web sites.
  • Is parking available in a lot or on the street? What buses or trains are nearby?
    Some congregations we visited had information printed in their church bulletin that parking was available at neighboring businesses. Too late!
  • Is the entrance they are to use obvious?
    We had trouble figuring which door to use on occasion.
  • Is the phone number you want people to call prominently displayed?
    Adding office hours and the name of the person likely to answer is also helpful. It puts a face on your community. For example: For more information about our services, call Lois at the church (555) 321-5432, weekdays between or 9 am and 1 pm. Our answering machine provides basic information 24/7.
  • Can web viewers ask questions online (email or Facebook) and be assured of an answer within 24 hours? People expect this these days!
  • Is there a warm welcome from church leaders (clergy and lay) with photos and a little background?
    Visitors will recognize leaders when they visit and have some information to ease conversation. You might even give visitors a prompt such as “When you visit, ask for Gus or Mary. They’ll be glad to give you a tour.”
  • Is there a date for the last update of the site?
    Many sites we visited had not been updated in years, even listing pastors who had left long before. Timely updates reveal that your church is on their toes.
  • Is new information prominent with older information archived?
    Old information is fun and can show your congregation’s personality, but the first images and information should be about the immediate future or very recent past.
  • Is there time for fellowship before church or after church?
    If visitors want to mix and meet your members they need to know if they should arrive early or plan to stay later. Invite them to fellowship. At several of the churches we visited, the congregation disappeared quickly after worship to a side room or basement area for fellowship without announcing fellowship or inviting visitors.
  • How long is your service expected to be?
    We encountered several services that were two or three hours long. Visitors need to know if a service is expected to be more than an hour long.
  • Is your service contemporary, liturgical, multicultural, or multilingual?
  • Are there helpful details about your next service?
    Will communion be offered? Is it a special Sunday? Will there be a blessing of pets or a baptism/confirmation? One church we visited was having a special meeting to call a pastor. Our visit seemed intrusive and we left.
  • Is child care available?
    Not everyone is comfortable leaving a child in a nursery with people they don’t know. Will their children be welcome in worship?
  • Will there be a children’s sermon?
    Families may like to know.
  • Engage your potential visitors from the start.
    Give a teaser. Ask a question that will be answered in the sermon!
18 Oct 2011

9 Reasons Every Church Should Have a Social Media Committee

Part 1: Social Media MinistryMost churches have a set of standing committees which look something like this: Worship, Property, Social Ministry, Finance, Education, Stewardship and Evangelism.

In today’s church environment the Evangelism Committee can play a huge role in shaping the future of any congregation. Once the realm of church newsletters, the modern Evangelism Committee must embrace Social Media. The potential is too enormous to be overlooked — so great that it should be the hub of any congregational plan for growth.

First, consider changing the name of the committee to Social Media Committee.

Have you noticed that the word "evangelist" had been adopted by the business community?

There is nothing wrong with the word “evangelism,” but calling it a Social Media Committee will force you to see “evangelism” in a new light.

Social Media used correctly and DAILY is powerful. Look at it this way: A small congregation could go on reaching the same 25-75 people week after week, or it could start to reach thousands with the same message on the internet.

Here is a short list of how a Social Media Committee can spur your congregation’s ministry.

1. Using Social Media will give your congregation visibility, especially if you look beyond your own circle of activity and begin to interact with other neighborhood groups.

2. Using Social Media will give people a way to interact and share. The internet crosses religious and denominational lines. Invite people to share. Soon you’ll be engaging people who would never walk through your door on Sunday morning.

3. Social Media is cost-effective. The traditional costs of printing and mailing can be nearly eliminated. The costs of Social Media are more time intensive. Content must be created and your various social media accounts must be monitored, but this is work that can be shared.

4. Using Social Media will force your congregation to stop relying on programs that require people to come to you. It’s called OUTREACH.

5. Social Media will grow your network of people with skills and talents. You will discover influential people and you may be able to enlist them in projects. Ask a local authority to comment on an important issues that your church should address (bullying, crime, child care issues, etc.). Invite guest pastors to contribute.

6. Social Media will open eyes! Change (which most congregations admit they need) will be within reach. You will have a new arsenal of tools.

7. Social Media will open hearts as you expand your congregation’s reach in the world. If you engage in online communities on topics of interest to people in your congregation, you may be astounded to find help in places you never dreamed. Your congregation might learn about a situation your people could address and form networks far beyond what was once possible.

8. Social Media will force your congregation to work as a team. One person cannot do the job alone. Every other committee will have a message they need to share. A social media committee will have to work with all other committees to develop a strategy for each of them.

9. Social Media provides measurable results which can help you shape ministry. Increasingly sophisticated metrics (many of them free) can tell you who is reading your blog or web site, how they came to your site, what pages they look at,  and how long they spend. If you offer something of value (community calendar, devotional booklet, etc.) you can collect information and expand your audience. You can tweak what is not working. What you can measure you can improve.

There is a lot to learn, but it is not difficult to get started and you can grow at a pace that is comfortable. Here is a guide to help you get started. 2×2 will start a Social Media Page to provide more help for congregations who want to harness this powerful EVANGELISM tool.

13 Oct 2011