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Thursday, 18 December 2014
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Top Ten “Leading Ideas” Articles of 2014
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Sometimes I interact with small congregations that assume that any significant community ministry effort is beyond their reach. They often keenly feel their limitations as they work to keep internal church programs going with limited staff and volunteers. So how could they ever engage the community in any significant way?
With the right approach, it is possible for a small group of people to make a big impact. It will take focus and clarity about what you are trying to accomplish, but the small church can make a big impact in the world through partnerships, creative use of resources, and a focus on relational ministry. Small congregations have unique strengths that can result in strong and effective community ministry.
Focus. A small congregation has to be more disciplined about not “biting off more than it can chew.” Identifying just one thing to focus on (tutor kids at the local public school, collect diapers, sponsor a community garden) may well help you be more successful, as you will have clear outcomes in front of you. I think sometimes there is a temptation for larger churches to make ministry efforts bigger and more complex than they need to be. Internal ministry programs may have many bells and whistles, so we think we need to do that with work in our community as well — right? Wrong! Sometimes simpler is just what the community needs.
Relationships. Another advantage of being small is that your church may be better at relational ministry than larger churches, and it is the relationships that you can build with people in your community that will make the greatest impact. People who are drawn to attend smaller churches are often there because of the “family” feel; in your small congregation, you can really get to know each other, go deep in your relationships, and bear one another’s burdens. A pastor of a rural congregation in West Virginia told me that his small church is “a place of gathering, celebration, and common community. We still celebrate each person’s birthday here!” Carrying that affinity for relationship into the community may well help you make a greater impact than if you brought hundreds of volunteers or thousands of dollars. Everything you’ve learned within your own congregation about really listening to one another and devoting time to relationships will bless your community in myriad ways.
Partnerships. Small churches often have no choice but to partner with others to carry out ministry, and partnerships, if done well, can result in exponentially greater impact in the community. You aren’t limited to the gifts and perspective within your own congregation; you can seek others who make up the other half of what you don’t have. Particularly when working on complex community issues when all kinds of people, expertise, connections, and resources are needed to move forward, the small church can truly shine as one piece of a more complex partnership puzzle. Recently, I worked with several smaller churches that were developing partnerships with public schools. We started with a goal of recruiting just ten volunteers from each church, and they met that goal. Next people from the church started going into the school every week, learning about the needs of students, interacting with teachers and other staff, and making an impact by being faithful. A small group of people who are willing to keep at it can make a big difference!
Ownership. In a small church, members may also feel a greater sense of ownership for the ministry. Without many paid staff, it is up to church members to develop the vision and the plan, find partners, and enlist other church members to get involved. You can’t just look around and say, “Pastor So-and-So is going to do that.” In a small church, when you look around, you might only see yourself and a few of your friends. If you don’t do it, no one else will! This strong ownership by lay leaders can help ministry be sustainable over the long term, long after paid staff members have moved on.
Accountability. Finally, those in small churches may be better able to hold each other accountable for following through on ministry goals and commitments because you are small. If just a few of you are working on a project and two of you don’t show up, it’s pretty obvious who isn’t holding up their end of the work! It is harder to be anonymous and go back on what you’ve agreed to. It is harder to give up when your friends are on your case!
Small churches are all too aware of the challenges facing their ministries — the limited funds, only a small number of church members, and a building that needs work. But even in the face of such challenges, your small church may be able to start some very powerful community ministries. Take stock of what you do have rather than what you don’t have, and build on those assets. Be creative about finding partners, raising money, and securing in-kind donations. And most importantly, keep going. Some of the most successful community ministries programs are small and focused and don’t require lots of money and people.
Joy F. Skjegstad is a consultant who works helping churches develop programs to meet community needs. This material is excerpted and adapted from 7 Creative Models for Community Ministry by Joy F. Skjegstad. Copyright © 2013 by Judson Press. Used by permission of Judson Press. The book is available at Amazon , Cokesbury, or Judson.
- See more at: http://www.churchleadership.com/leadingideas/leaddocs/2014/140212_article.html#sthash.XPUHjURe.dpuf |
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Last summer I joined a large group of extended family and friends at the beach. There were, on and off, about twenty-five to thirty of us. Come Sunday morning, some slept in, some worked out, two went running, one read the newspaper and watched the Sunday morning talk shows. Most of the group undertook an obligatory annual ritual of pancakes at Uncle Andy's Pancake House. Want to know what this crowd of mostly Irish- and Italian-American, largely parochial school educated, cradle Catholics did not do? Go to church.
You might wonder what I did about this dechurched epiphany in the heart of my own family. I breathed a sigh of relief. Thank goodness they didn’t go to church, at least to the parish church in this town. I know what I’m talking about. I went.
Back in the day, this church would have been mobbed on summer Sunday mornings. Not anymore. There were plenty of empty seats. And the congregation was old, old, old. At the door a grumpy usher grunted at me. Everyone else avoided eye contact and ignored me. More than most churches in my experience, this congregation exuded a huge “us versus them” culture (which seems ironic given that they’re in a resort community). A hundred little details underscored for me as a visitor that I did not belong.
There was no opening hymn, because the organist hadn’t shown up on time. The organ was in the sanctuary, so you could see she wasn’t there, and you could also see when our luck ran out and she did show up (during the homily). When the music came, it was old school stuff, which everyone knows (and no one likes). Nobody sang or even pretended to try, except the organist herself who also served as a kind of Wagnerian cantor.
The lector read the readings in a way that convinced me he’d never laid eyes on them before. The celebrant was not the pastor, but some other priest who did not bother to introduce himself. He sort of assumed we knew who he was, but it didn’t matter. Who he was or what he had to say seemed deeply irrelevant to the assembly. As became clear, he was a visiting missionary, there to raise funds for his mission, though he never told us a single thing about it.
He began, “Your pastor loves you, so he told me not to talk for more than five minutes.” The preacher then proceeded to quote a different gospel than the one we’d just heard, which is usually a clear indication of a canned talk. It quickly became obvious that was exactly what we were hearing. Next he told a string of groan-inducing jokes and then turned on the guilt about hungry children.
At the same time, ushers were handing out pledge cards to relieve the guilt and support the mission. Instructions for filling out the cards took up the rest of the homily. Here’s the thing: Virtually no one paid any attention. They stared at the ceiling, they stared at the floor, they talked to one another, they gave a glance to the card then dropped it on the floor, but they paid no attention to the presentation, and, as far as I could see, no one actually made a pledge.
Then we powered through the rest of the Mass as if the building was on fire. When I returned to my seat from Communion, almost the entire section I was seated in was gone. Finally the remaining faithful were inundated with a string of announcements, which were actually, unbelievably, more fundraising appeals, this time for the parish itself. At the dismissal, instead of some charge to go in peace and serve the Lord or announce the Gospel, the celebrant says, “Don’t forget, at the beach, it’s always Happy Hour.” Really? Did you just give them permission to start drinking?
Why would I want any of my dechurched family members to have set aside their various weekend activities to witness this gathering of the Body of Christ? The last place I would want to reintroduce them to worship was this half empty church for a half-hearted exercise in fund raising and a full miss when it comes to what the Christian community is supposed to be about when it assembles.
Meanwhile, just down the street at Uncle Andy’s Pancake House, enthusiastic crowds formed a waiting line that snaked all the way around the block. Hmmm … Uncle Andy’s got pancakes. We’ve got the living Word of God. What’s wrong with this picture?
Father Michael White is pastor of Church of the Nativity in Timonium, Maryland, near Baltimore. This article is excerpted from Rebuilt: Awakening the Faithful, Reaching the Lost, Making Church Matter by Michael White and Tom Corcoran. Copyright 2013 by Ave Maria Press, P.O. Box 428, Notre Dame, IN 46556. Used with permission of the publisher. Rebuilt is available at Amazon and Cokesbury.
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I have no patience for debates over the color of Advent candles and whether or not to sing Christmas songs in Advent. God became incarnate, and candles and carols are all some church professionals seem to care about. Give me a break. Here’s my problem with all this.
Spoiling Advent
First, it’s adiaphora, which is a nice Greek word that means “it doesn’t matter”; it is inconsequential for salvation, and, in this case, one might say, just inconsequential whether your candles are purple, pink, or blue. The overwhelming public witness of Advent should be about counter-cultural waiting, repentance, and anticipation of the incarnation. It should not be about which hymns and candles to use.
Isn’t this just like the church? We get into these arguments about little things that only church people care about, and everyone else beyond the church (and you know there are more and more of those, right?) finds it completely irrelevant. No one beyond the church cares about these things. Really. No one. And we wonder, “Why aren’t people coming to our churches?”
Liturgical Fundamentalism
What I see in this and many conversations around the church is a form of liturgical fundamentalism. We make the liturgy itself into God, in much the same way fundamentalists make the Bible into God. And whether you follow the proper rubrics becomes the measure of the quality of your leadership, perhaps even your character. At its worst, it becomes what I’ve come to call “liturgical fetishism” — getting everything perfectly “right,” as if all those little details are effective for salvation, or even proper worship. They’re not.
This is not what I learned in seminary from my wonderful liturgy professor, Gordon Lathrop. I learned that one should approach the liturgy with gentility, humility, and humanity. Liturgy is the work of the people, but it also ought to serve people of God and is always sensitive to context. Liturgy is always pastoral with a small “p.”
We can worship with integrity across styles and contexts. We can debate liturgical practice, but when it becomes our primary witness, it is a detriment to the work of the church.
Hopefully this Advent we can announce the season as an invitation to waiting, longing, love, and incarnation. Because, really, nobody cares about the color of your candles.
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One of the greatest challenges to the church in the twenty-first century is its lack of connection to its community. Far too many churches today have become drive-in, spiritual social clubs and not the agents of community vitality and life transformation they used to be. As a result, communities are suffering, churches are dying, and far too many people are searching for hope in all the wrong places.
We have a fabulous opportunity to interact, engage, build relationships, and make disciples with the people living and working in the communities surrounding us. We must view the community as our congregation. We must see the corner store and its owner, Ms. Campbell, as our classroom and treat Ms. Campbell as a cherished member, whether she belongs to our church or not. We must see Mr. Taylor, the principal, and his elementary school as an extension campus. We must persuade the mayor of our town, Ms. Kelley, to be a collaborative partner in the rebuilding of broken parts of our neighborhood.
I believe we are at a moment when if we return to our biblical roots of community engagement and covenantal relationships, we will reclaim the church’s rightful place as the center for life and community transformation.
Learning People’s Needs and Identities
It isn’t that congregations don’t know they are supposed to be outwardly focused. There is conversation in many churches about reaching out to the community. In fact, most congregations have some type of outreach ministry. There are many congregations bustling with food pantries, soup kitchens, clothes closets, and other great services that help people. The problem is that if we ask the people engaged in these serving ministries the names of those they are serving, where they live, what’s going on in their lives, why they are hungry, and what is the deeper need in order for them to reach God’s dream for their lives and their community — the answer for most is “I don’t know.” We are often doing ministry for people, but not with people. Many of us are doing “caring” ministry, but are we engaged in “transformational” ministry?
Jesus always knew the identity of those he touched. Even if he didn’t know everyone by name, he knew the root cause of their human condition; he was always ready to change someone’s life for the better, and he was positioned to help them see the power of being in a deep, abiding relationship with Him.
Forging Authentic Relationships
The challenge for most people is building authentic relationships that are mutually beneficial — relationships that build community vitality. People need to learn how to forge new relationships that can be cultivated in a way that brings positive community change. It’s amazing in this social-media-crazed world how difficult it is for many people to have a simple conversation with someone else. Particularly someone else they don’t know very well. As we become more dependent on texting, tweeting, and instant messaging, it seems as if we need to regain the art of having deep conversations with one another that build authentic relationships — the foundation of strong community ties.
Embracing and Loving our Communities
You’ve got to get to know your community and let your community get to know you. You must constantly inspect your community and get to know it like the back of your hand. This does not have to be a complex process. It can be done simply. For example, I conduct prayer services in the gym where I exercise when called upon. I preach and conduct prayer meetings at the family support collaborative down the hill from our church.
If the church is going to engage effectively with the community around it, which by biblical origin we have been commanded and shown how to reach, we must spend time seeing, hearing, feeling, touching, embracing, and loving our mission field. We must behave as if the community is our congregation. The streets are our sanctuary. The back alleys are our altars of blessing. Farmlands are our fields of opportunity. New housing developments become our narthex through which new life is ushered. And strip malls of suburbia become creative places for leading people to salvation. As John Wesley put it, the world is our parish.
Joe Daniels is pastor of Emory United Methodist Church in Washington, DC, and district superintendent of the Greater Washington District of the Baltimore-Washington Conference. This material is adapted from his new book, Walking with Nehemiah: Your Community is Your Congregation (Abingdon Press, 2014). It is used by permission and available at Cokesbury and Amazon.
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I grew up working with my parents in our country grocery store. Those were days before the advent of large drug stores with hundreds of over-the-counter medications and dozens of customized variations of each of them. With limited alternatives available, we sold Bayer aspirin as a cure for virtually any ailment, from headaches to arthritis. Most bought small “tins” containing twelve aspirin. Each package contained a sheet of cotton to hold the tablets in place. Larger packages also included cotton.
The practice of putting cotton into aspirin containers dates to 1914 or 1915, about the time Bayer began compressing aspirin powder into tablets. The cotton served a vital purpose. Aspirin tablets could pulverize by rattling around in a tin or bottle. In 1980, however, Bayer created a coated tablet, meaning it would hold up without padding. Yet Bayer only removed cotton from their packages in 1999. “We concluded there really wasn’t any reason to keep the cotton except tradition,” a Bayer spokesperson said. “It’s hard to get out.”
What might be the connection with church leadership? A pastor used the first year in a congregation to ask the church leaders as each activity and project came up on the calendar, “Why do we do this?” Once the leaders understood that the question was in no way a criticism, since it was asked about everything, they took it as an opportunity to think through many endeavors that may not have received careful thought for many years. Once churches have been around for a while, it is likely they are still putting lots of cotton in bottles well after the need has passed.
Practices, routines, and programs arise to meet specific circumstances at the time. Often the actions continue once the circumstances have changed. It may be that the church treasurer still passes out a monthly budget report and goes over each line item to explain and receive questions, even after the budget has gone out as an email attachment well before the meeting. And members have already come prepared for questions and discussion. When I was growing up, I thought 11 a.m. on Sunday was a biblically dictated time for church. It turns out that 11 a.m. became a common pattern for worship because most of the United States was rural, and farmers needed enough time before church for their chores, with time left to travel to church by walking or by horse-drawn wagons. It could be that choir practice time was set years ago to accommodate a choir director’s secular work schedule but continues a decade after that director left.
Not only is it silly to do things that meet a need we used to have; it is also costly. The tradition of continuing to use cotton in the aspirin containers once it was no longer needed cost money to Bayer and their customers. Continuing unnecessary activities or practices costs money, time, and energy. All three of those resources are in short supply in most churches. Every resource the church has to offer should be dedicated to one purpose alone: fulfilling God’s mission for our church faithfully in our time and place. Keeping the cotton in the bottles may reassure us that everything is how we remember it, but there is a world outside our church doors crying for attention and the love of Christ in new and vital ways.
Lovett H. Weems, Jr., is professor of church leadership and director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary. His latest book (with Tom Berlin) is Overflow: Increase Worship Attendance & Bear More Fruit, published by Abingdon and available at Cokesbury and Amazon.
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For many years, my wife and I were regular viewers of “The Tonight Show” — first with Johnny Carson, then with Jay Leno. We have now become fairly regular viewers of the new “Tonight Show” and its new host, Jimmy Fallon.
Fallon has a consistent way of beginning each night. He emerges from behind the stage curtains with joy, exuberance, and great enthusiasm every time. His hands are clapping as he approaches this appreciative studio audience, and he has an engaging smile — welcoming his studio audience and thanking his TV audience for tuning in. I wonder if we cannot learn something critically important from these opening two minutes of “The Tonight Show”!
We are ambassadors of the greatest good news ever delivered to the human family. We know One who lived and died and lives again as the “presence” of God in human history. We believe Christ came to portray God’s design and way of authentic and faithful living.
Yet, too often, a Sunday worship service begins with something far less engaging: “Well, good morning folks. Here are a few announcements for the week. Our annual rummage sale begins…. The youth meet at 5 p.m. today instead of their usual time…. Announcements are due for the church newsletter by Friday noon…. OK, let us start with our first hymn! Let’s see, that’s on page ### or on the screen.”
I think we would ratchet up the attention of the people a significant notch or two if we spent more energy using Jimmy Fallon’s model. We need an upbeat piano, organ, or choral prelude, an enthusiastic greeting that reflects the direction of the service for that day, and an opening hymn chosen to bring worshippers to their feet from the get-go. This can be done with media technology; it can also be done by an individual who has prayed through and planned the opening minutes carefully with zero media help.
It may be good to remember that some of us come from denominational traditions in which the early members were often called “enthusiasts” in derision because of their obvious joyfulness. I worship in many different churches these days. I yearn for an honest, exciting, and genuine opening to worship — one that represents theological integrity and attracts my attention and expectation for all that follows. The first two minutes are so very important.
Brian Bauknight is senior minister emeritus of Christ United Methodist Church in Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, and coordinator of leadership development for the Western Pennsylvania Conference.
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Churches have long assumed that new people would engage their congregations by first attending worship. When they are not growing and attracting new people, people blame the style of worship, the music, the preacher, the worship time, the paint color in the sanctuary, or the length of the service. Yet, it may not be any of those things. Worship was a strong mechanism for engaging new people when church attendance and Christianity was a foregone conclusion in our communities. Today, Christianity is an option among many options for living out life.
If we understand corporate worship as a relational and responsive gathering, why do we invite people who have no relationship with God to worship? It’s like asking a stranger to jump head first into one of our most sacred and long-held family traditions. If we believe people worship because they are in relationship with Christ and others, why use worship as the primary mechanism to connect people to Christ and church? With growing numbers of young people who have no religious affiliation and no previous exposure to Christianity or faith communities, the church must find a different and more familiar way to engage new generations.
Congregations cannot stand by passively and expect people to walk through the front doors of the church on Sunday morning. Churches must break the traditional rules of evangelism and provide multiple, creative and easily-accessible entry points to faith communities.
Missions and Social Activism
Mission ministries can be an organic and familiar place of connection and belonging for new generations who are much more likely to wake up to build a Habitat House than they are to wake up for worship. Service allows them to meet one of the primary longings in life — to have and add meaning in and to the world. And, it relates to their educational objectives as many secondary schools, colleges, and universities require their graduates to complete ongoing community service hours as a part of their academic program.
Small Groups
Small groups provide built-in safe spaces to grow, change, learn, evolve, and connect with God and people. When offered during nontraditional times and in nontraditional spaces, small groups provide nonthreatening and convenient entry places for new people to enter faith communities.
Preschools and After School Programs
Good, safe, affordable childcare is hard to come by today. Since many young families do not live near their families of origin, tight-knit preschool communities can become a meaningful place of belonging. In church-related childcare programs, families can come to see the church as an additional place of connection and belonging, if they are correctly and lovingly engaged by the congregation. But for these programs to be good entry points, they must be deeply connected to the life of the church, not just tenants using a church facility.
Age-level Ministries
Solid, nurturing, age-level ministries for children, youth, young adults, and older adults can become sustaining, supporting, and directing entry points for new people, if they are well-integrated into the full life of a congregation. They signal that the church can and wants to help navigate challenges unique to an individual’s stage of life.
Affinity Groups
Affinity groups form around a shared interest, need, idea or belief — such as parenting or scrapbooking groups, yoga, or personal finance classes. While small groups generally focus on spiritual development, affinity groups are more community-based, open, and always invitational. Churches can attract newcomers by creating affinity groups that respond to community needs.
Web, Social Media, Digital Engagement
Social media, web presences, and digital engagement allow new people to feel as if they belong before they step foot on the property or participate in any of the congregational ministries. These online avenues of participation signal that a church is interested in hesitant connectors, even if they are not yet physically present. They provide important information on the congregation’s beliefs and actions. And informal social media engagement can be a window on the human and relational dimensions of congregational life.
F. Douglas Powe, Jr., is a professor of evangelism and urban studies at Wesley Theological Seminary and Jasmine Smothers is associate director of the office of connectional ministries for the North Georgia Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. This article is adapted from their new book, Not Safe for Church: The Ten Commandments for Reaching New Generations (Abingdon Press, 2014). Used by permission of the publisher. Not Safe for Church is available from Cokesbury and Amazon .
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Traditionally, the Ash Wednesday service in my church has been in the evening. People come for confession and repentance, carry the sign of the cross on their heads for 30 minutes, then go home and wash it off. Last year, inspired by one of my seminary colleagues, I announced to the congregation that I would set up shop at a nearby coffee house from 6:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. for anyone who wanted to begin their day in prayer and with the marking of ashes. We wanted to give them the opportunity to be marked throughout the whole day with a visible sign of Christ’s redemption of our mortality.
At 6:00 a.m., the first person walked in the door, a high school student from the church on her way to a before-school practice. I sat toward the back of the coffee shop with my latte and a bowl of ashes. I handed every person who came a card with a prayer of confession on one side and an explanation of Ash Wednesday on the other side. I asked them to consider the prayer for a moment. They could pray it out loud. Or they could pray it silently. They could add to it. When they were finished praying, I marked their foreheads with ashes in the sign of the cross, saying “Sin and death are constant struggles for us in this life, but you are marked by Jesus Christ, and by his power, we live.” I did this with most people individually, but I had a few groups who sat together and a few families who prayed together.
We do not typically think of Ash Wednesday as a day to evangelize. So I was concerned about this seeming ostentatious or showy. But I learned that the conversation that comes from a cross made of ashes is not a showy conversation. It is an honest conversation that often leads to more questions. It is a door-opening conversation because it deals with death and our human condition — issues with which every person wrestles.
Although we didn't advertise beyond our congregation, some of our members invited others. By the end of the morning, 75 people had come to the coffee shop, making the owner happy. He sat down and talked with me for awhile about what we were doing and ended up asking me for ashes for his own forehead. A local news station even showed up!
The people who participated really valued the experience because they were challenged not to hide Jesus or be embarrassed about what they believed. Also, they carried the mark with them all day and therefore were drawn back to prayer several times throughout the day. It was a new and meaningful way for us to begin Lent together.
Yvi Martin serves as associate pastor at King’s Way United Methodist Church in Springfield, Missouri. She is a participant in the Lewis Center’s Lewis Fellows leadership development program for young clergy.
- See more at: http://www.churchleadership.com/leadingideas/leaddocs/2014/140226_article.html#sthash.Day3whrr.dpuf |
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The emerging consensus of research regarding young adults shows a growing percentage of this age group is not connected with any religion, although many younger Americans express an interest in spirituality. This reality raises concerns about young adult participation in religious communities.
How are faith communities with a significant proportion of young adults distinctive? The Faith Communities Today research project has been studying congregations of all faiths across America that are doing an exceptional job of engaging young adults. A congregation is considered to have significant young adult participation if 21 percent or more of its participants are 18 to 34 years of age. Across all faiths, a total of only 16 percent of all congregations have such young adult involvement.
The findings identify some best practices for congregations that wish to attract and engage young adults. These can be summarized in a dozen “do's” and four “don’ts.”
What congregations should do:
- Offer a high-quality worship experience that is contemporary in style or refashion traditional worship in new ways.
- Start a new congregation or young-adult-only worship group within an existing congregation, or move an existing congregation to a new location.
- Prioritize metropolitan areas and communities near university campuses.
- Allow people to bring coffee to worship.
- Provide food.
- Be intentional about reaching out to young adults.
- Form friendships with young adults.
- Involve young adults in leadership.
- Sponsor activities that mix socializing with theological reflection.
- Apply theological principles to everyday-life issues that young adults face.
- Figure out how to connect with the different types of young adults — whether they are still in school or starting careers, single or married, with or without children. These groups cannot just be lumped together without some facilitating rationale.
- Figure out how to connect with young adults who are aging out of the category in their mid- to late-30s.
Congregations should NOT do the following:
- Be theologically doctrinaire.
- Insist that people wear dresses or suits and ties to worship.
- Expect growth in the number of members or total giving.
- Expect young adults to sign up for long-term committee work.
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What should pastors do about their social media relationships when they move from one pastoral assignment to another? Do you “unfriend” all former members on Facebook and “unfollow” them on Twitter? After all, members in the church you are leaving may be watching to see if you post affectionate notes about your new church. You might find yourself curious about what your former members have to say about your departure or your successor. And people in your new church may monitor how you interact with your former members, as might the new pastor of the church you are leaving.
As with the changes that take place in your personal relationships, social media changes are dictated by several factors including the nature of the relationships, the boundaries that you have already established, and a good healthy dose of common sense.
Avoid overusing social media during a transition. One simple way to ease your shift into a different set of social media relationships is to scale back your social media use during your transition. Posting frequent status updates, liberally commenting on other people’s posts, or “liking” everything on your homepage can easily become a distraction and waste time when your attention needs to be elsewhere. Keeping a “low profile” on social media may be the simplest way to manage the many different relational dynamics at play in a time of transition.
Don’t rely on social media to get to know your new congregants.Social media is designed for staying in touch with others, not as a primary avenue for developing new personal relationships. Use social media as a supplementary way of keeping up to date with people, but never as a substitute for face-to-face ministry.
Manage social media contacts in the church you are leaving.Some moving pastors choose to “unfriend” everyone from their former church, eliminating the temptation to continue to act as their pastor. Another alternative is to move previous church members to a list with limited access to your profile. People on this list would not be able to see new wall posts or pictures of your life in the new church. Advanced settings on Facebook permit you to create sub-lists for different categories of friends and set different levels of access to organize Facebook friends into different groups to receive different posts. In addition to grouping people by past and current congregations, you may also want to create other groupings for family or classmates from high school, college, or seminary.
Whichever option you choose, it is important to state clearly in advance how you will handle this transition to avoid hurt feelings. If former parishioners remain as Facebook friends and Twitter followers, remember you are no longer their pastor. Talk about your plan and your new relationship on social media just as you talk about other changes and boundaries that come into play because of your transition. Let people know what is changing and what is not in your relationship, including through social media. Begin with conversations with church leaders, but eventually share the plan broadly.
Bruce Reyes-Chow, a Presbyterian pastor, worked with the church he was leaving to develop a “covenant” both to ensure a healthy transition and to remind everyone of the importance of the relationship between pastor and congregation (The Definitive-ish Guide for Using Social Media in the Church , Shook Foil Books, 2012). It reminded everyone that great self-restraint was required to allow for a relationship with the new pastor to flourish.
Check for guidelines. Increasingly, there are denominational and judicatory expectations for pastors both in the use of social media and in how it should be handled when there is a pastoral transition. Check to see if there are such guidelines or rules that apply in your situation.
But no statement or document can capture the complexity of these and other dynamics that go on during times filled with such mixed feelings of joy and grief by all involved. As Reyes-Chow puts it, “The line over which we must not cross when it comes to pastoral transitions is wide and gray, thanks to the expansive nature of social media.” It is hard to strike the perfect balance, but with sensitivity and conversations, we can come close enough to honor our past ministry and relationships while honoring the colleagues following us as well.
Thomas G. James is minister of mission and contemporary worship at Centreville United Methodist Church in Centreville, Virginia. Previously, he served as resource manager for the Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Lovett H. Weems, Jr. is director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership.
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