Death and Resurrection in an Urban Church by Robert King
The Rev. Mike Mather walks with the youth at Broadway United Methodist Church in Indianapolis. The church has closed many of its traditional helping ministries and created new ways to connect and support the community surrounding it.Photos by Kelly Wilkinson
They've been killed off.
In many cases, they were buried with honors. But those ministries, staples of the urban church, are all gone from Broadway. Kaput.
Broadway's summer youth program, which at one point served 250 children a day -- bringing them in for Girl Scouts and basketball, away from the violence and drugs of Broadway's neighborhood -- is gone, too. Broadway let the air out of the basketballs. Sent the Girl Scouts packing.
Then peek into the comfortably cluttered office of the Rev. Mike Mather, who is prone to putting his feet on his desk and leaning so far back in his swivel chair that you expect him to go flying at any moment.
Watch him, inverted like this, until he suddenly gets animated, drops his feet to the floor, leans over, elbows on knees, and shares this: "One of the things we literally say around here is, 'Stop helping people.'
"I'm serious."
He is serious. Mather has given years of thought to this, and he's as sure about it as anything he learned in seminary.
"The church, and me in particular," Mather said, "has done a lot of work where we have treated the people around us as if, at worst, they are a different species and, at best, as if they are people to be pitied and helped by us."
With that in mind, Broadway has -- for more than a decade now -- been reorienting itself. Rather than a bestower of blessings, the church is aiming to be something more humble.
"The church decided its call was to be good neighbors. And that we should listen and see people as children of God," said De'Amon Harges, a church member who sees Broadway's transformation in terms not unlike Christ's death, burial and resurrection.
Rejecting Charity
In 2004, Mather hired Harges to be Broadway's first "roving listener," a position that is exactly what it sounds like. Harges' job was to rove the neighborhood, block by block at first, spending time with the neighbors, not to gauge their needs but to understand what talents lay there.
"I was curious about what was good in people, and that was what I was going to find out," he said.
Harges wound up spending hours sitting on people's porches and hovering near them as they worked in their backyard gardens. He began listening for hints about their gifts.
"I started paying attention" he said, "to what they really cared about."
Mather, meanwhile, was drawing deeply from the philosophical well of "asset-based community development" -- the notion of capitalizing on what's good and working in a place rather than merely addressing its deficiencies.
Broadway UMC's leaders have changed the way they view their neighbors -- as people with gifts, not just needs. In what ways does this view reframe the conversation? What difference does reframing the relationship make in the outcomes achieved?
Questions to learn about people's gifts
What three things do you do well enough that you could teach others how to do them?
What three things would you like to learn?
Who, besides God and me, is going with you along the way?
John McKnight, a professor emeritus at Northwestern University, is one of the founders of the approach. He literally wrote the book on building communities from the inside out. He describes Mather and Harges as a “God-given team.”When Broadway invited him to come speak, McKnight spent some time walking the church’s neighborhood with Harges.
“What he’s listening for is their gifts -- ‘What has God given you?’” McKnight said. He doesn't advocate ignoring people's needs and problems, but rather to look first for solutions within the community itself. Later, he said, institutions and services can help.
“John 15:15 tells us that, at the Last Supper, Jesus said to the disciples, ‘I no longer call you servants. … I call you friends.’ So the final way of defining what Christianity is based on is friendship, not service. … I think Mike and De’Amon are guided by that spiritual principle.”
A key to what’s going on now at Broadway, McKnight says, is the church’s brutally honest view of charity, which McKnight defines as “a one-way compensatory activity that never changes anything.”
Seeing and serving needs
Like so many older, urban churches, Broadway came to its charitable ways honestly, and with the best of intentions.
Broadway was once a thriving church. It experienced steep decline but now has about 200 in worship.
When the current building was erected, in 1927, the church along the banks of Fall Creek was on the northern outskirts of Indianapolis. It was then a flourishing area primed for growth. Within a decade, Broadway had 2,300 members. The pews were packed. The Sunday school rooms were buzzing.But by the late 1950s, Indianapolis began to experience white flight to newer suburbs. The neighborhood began a long, slow decline. And so did the church.
By the mid-1990s, weekly attendance was down to 75. The pews were empty. The Sunday school was dark.
Amid the surrounding decay, the church assumed a new role: caregiver.
Broadway, Mather says now, came to see its neighborhood for all of its problems -- poverty and abandoned houses, drugs and the related violence, high teen pregnancy and dropout rates.
Mather confesses to being part of that history. He has been pastor of Broadway twice, and during his first stint, from 1986 to 1991, he retooled the church’s summer youth program -- the one with the basketballs and the Girl Scouts -- and injected it with a new spiritual theme each week. And it took off.
“We felt so good about it,” Mather said, “that I broke my arm patting myself on the back.”
But then Mather was confronted with a heavy dose of reality. In a nine-month span, nine young men within a four-block radius of the church died violent deaths. Some of them had come through that great youth program at Broadway, a program that had done nothing to inoculate them against street violence.
Mather was left to bury them -- along with the sense that what Broadway had been doing for its neighborhood all those years had been effective.
Asking new questions
Mather carried that sense with him to another United Methodist church in South Bend, Indiana, where he was assigned in 1992.
Again, he was a pastor in an urban setting. But this time Mather began to probe more deeply into McKnight’s philosophies, into what it meant to be an urban preacher. Finally, he asked himself whether he was living out what he believed, and what he had been preaching.
Questions to learn about people's gifts
What three things do you do well enough that you could teach others how to do them?
What three things would you like to learn?
Who, besides God and me, is going with you along the way?
One Pentecost Sunday, Mather preached about Peter’s sermon in Acts 2 regarding the prophecy of Joel:
“And in the last days it will be,” God says, “that I will pour out my Spirit on all people, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy, and your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. Even on my servants, both men and women, I will pour out my Spirit in those days, and they will prophesy.” (Acts 2:17-18 NET)
At a congregational meal after the service, a parishioner asked Mather pointedly, “So how come we don’t treat people like that?”Mather didn’t understand. Then the woman explained that she was talking about the government food giveaway hosted by the church. To get food, participants had to fill out a form that basically asked, “How poor are you?”
Nowhere on the form were there questions about people’s gifts.
“If we believe that God’s spirit is flowing down on all people, old and young, women and men -- and on the poor,” the woman continued, “why don’t we treat people like that’s true?”
Mather saw where she was going. He put aside the government form and, in a number of ways, began asking people new questions. One of his favorites: “What three things do you do well enough that you could teach others how to do it?”
Sarah Killingsworth shows a blanket she crocheted, during a dinner at her house with neighbors and church members.
Soon, the church was tapping into people who could repair cars, make quilts, paint, and cook some of the best Mexican food Mather had ever eaten. Through that, some neighbors found new livelihoods. More found a community.By the time the church reassigned him back to Broadway in 2003, Mather was fully committed to this inside-out approach.
He hired Harges as the roving listener, then started closing ministries from the charity era. The moves were as practical as they were oriented to the new philosophy.
For 30 years, Broadway had tutored neighborhood kids after school. And for 30 years, the neighborhood dropout rate kept climbing higher. So Broadway stopped tutoring.
For decades, the church had been feeding people out of its pantry. But local health officials were telling Mather that the No. 1 health problem facing the neighborhood wasn’t starvation.
It was obesity -- often leading to diabetes.
To Mather, it made no sense to hand out carbs in a box and peaches in cans of heavy syrup to people who were overweight.
“We’re not only not helping,” he concluded. “We’re actively making people sicker.”
Instead of handing out food, Mather hopes to help people find long-lasting solutions to problems such as hunger. He likes to tell the story of Adele(link is external), who came to the food pantry for supplies for her family and ended up, a year and a half later, using her gifts as a cook to open her own restaurant.
But giving up old ways is difficult. Mather tried to ease the shock to Broadway’s system. He devoted part of one Sunday service to bidding farewell to the dead ministries. That included the thrift shop, which by then was being run by women in their 80s and 90s.
During the service, Mather asked everyone who had ever worked in the thrift shop or had ever donated to it to stand. Many did. Then, in unison, the congregation said, “Well done, good and faithful servants.”
Convincing the doubters
Not everyone cared for Broadway’s new approach.
Neighbors were grumbling about services the church had cast aside. There were even doubters among the Broadway staff. Among them was Cathy Pilarski.
Before moving to Indianapolis in 2008, Pilarski had run a mobile latte business in Tucson, Arizona. She needed work in Indy and found it at Broadway -- as a janitor. Six months in, Mather wanted to promote her to facilities manager.
Pilarski knew nothing about mechanics or wiring or other building systems. Besides, her head was spinning from everything going on at Broadway.
She responded to Mather’s offer with disdain.
“No, Mike,” she told the pastor. “No, because I think you’re crazy, and I think there are some other people who think you are crazy, too.”
As soon as she spoke the words, Pilarski regretted them. She had always fancied herself as someone who liked to think outside the box. Here was a pastor taking a chainsaw to the box. And she was resisting. That revelation told her that maybe she should trust Mather and his vision.
When she did, Pilarski came to see that Mather was less interested in her cleaning skills and her knowledge of building mechanics than in her social skills and her experience as an entrepreneur. More than the building itself, he was concerned about building community.
Such rewiring was going on across the church.
The church’s governing council stopped rehashing committee reports at its quarterly meetings and instead began inviting people from the neighborhood and the congregation to come in and tell them about the work they’d been up to.
Harges began connecting people with common interests. Within four blocks of the church -- the same area where young people had been dying years before -- Harges found 45 backyard gardeners. He brought them together around a meal. With no agenda.
The gardeners liked it enough that they began to meet monthly. None of them individually had seen their green thumbs as a gift. Together, they began to realize that they had something valuable. In a neighborhood that’s part of an urban food desert, they’ve begun planning their own farmer’s market.
Broadway is even passing on the art of listening to young people.
The Rev. Mike Mather talks with the youth during a service at Broadway United Methodist Church.
In each of the last six years, the church has hired 15 to 20 kids from the neighborhood to learn from Harges and then head out into the neighborhood as part-time roving listeners.The information they’ve been bringing back has enabled other interest groups to form in areas such as art, poetry, music, law and education.
From these gatherings, people have found jobs, collaborators and friends. There are still hungry people who need a meal. They just find it now among friends.
“The whole idea is that we extend beyond the physical structure of our church and that we grow community -- and that we know community -- in real ways,” said Seana Murphy, who lives near the church.
Recently, she invited people from the church and the neighborhood with an interest in education for conversation over meatloaf and mashed potatoes.
The people around her table included a woman who grew up in a housing project who’s now attending a community college, a dropout who got a high school equivalency diploma and plans to be a nurse, a college administrator, and an assistant pastor with a Ph.D.
At the meal, one woman mentioned she had struggled with depression. Now, Murphy said, others will know to check on her from time to time.
Making connections
Tamara Leech, an associate professor at the Indiana University Fairbanks School of Public Health, has been studying what Broadway is doing for the past six years.
Social cohesion, Leech said, is a key to improving life in what she calls “neighborhoods of the concentrated disadvantaged.”
“The neighbors see Broadway as a place where you can go and ask for help. Not for goods or services,” she said. “You go there for connections.”
Leech hopes to win a grant to do a long-term study of Broadway and its neighborhood. But, for now, hard data is scarce. At least from a theoretical basis, Leech said, “What I do know is that Broadway takes an approach that makes the most sense to me.”
Anecdotally, both she and Mather have heard about people finding jobs through their Broadway community connections. Others have found the encouragement to enter college or technical programs. Leech points to a partnership with the state health department in which the church brought together teen mothers, many intent on having more babies right away, with older women. Two years later, none of the girls has had another child.
Mather says the neighborhood is much less violent than in the 1990s, but he concedes the causes of that are hard to isolate. For one thing, some homes that were once abandoned or occupied by the poor are now being inhabited by middle class families.
Change also is evident in what’s going on in Sunday school classrooms that sat dark for decades.
Today, they are filled with an unusual collection of small businesses that rent space, together with fledgling organizations that get space for free. Meeting in the church now is a metropolitan youth orchestra and an eclectic mix of artists and, on Sunday nights, 50 or more gamers.
There’s a dance studio and a pottery shop and an office for a small architectural firm. The church acquired a commercial kitchen license, and now people from the neighborhood use it for catering startups.
Pilarski, the onetime doubter, is in charge of managing all this. She still thinks her pastor is crazy. “Certifiable,” she said, joking.
But in each busy corner of the church, in each of the hundreds of faces that now pass under its roof each week, she sees something that was missing for a long time -- the majesty of God.
“I want to make sure that God is glorified not only in that sanctuary but in every corner of this building,” she said.
Some of that bustle has spilled over into the sanctuary. Sunday morning attendance has climbed past 200. But in the Broadway economy, that’s almost an afterthought.
Broadway has died to its old self, giving up the things that were holding it back, said Harges, the roving listener. The church’s resurrection has come from seeking the gifts of others.
“Our role in this place is to become like yeast -- that invisible agent for social change. It is not about us as an agency inviting people to witness God here. Instead, what we want to do is to see God out of this place.”
How do you get started with asset-based community development?
Three steps in the process
Listen
Learn about your community by paying attention to its people and environment, including individuals; associations and other community groups; institutions such as clinics, schools and grocery stores; local economics; physical characteristics such as highways and valleys; and natural areas such as parks and woodlands.
Connect the dots
See relationships between ideas, resources and opportunities that others have not seen. Connecting the dots requires practice and collaboration; no one person can see the whole network.
Take action
Asset-based processes engage the gifts of people who are motivated to act. Meetings should end with a clear plan about who will take what steps.
For a practical guide to an asset-based approach to ministry, read “Discovering the Other(link is external)” by Cameron Harder.
Questions to consider
Who do you serve? With whom do you partner? What difference does framing the relationship make in the outcomes achieved?
The Rev. Mike Mather asks people, “What three things do you do well enough that you could teach others how to do it?” How does a question like that shift the conversation?
Is anyone assigned to listen to your congregation and community? If so, do those listeners compare notes and connect what they are learning?
Mather realized that his church's food pantry might be contributing to obesity and diabetes. Do your ministries produce unintended consequences? How do you envision the impact of your projects? How do you assess their impact?
Broadway United Methodist Church's website has more information about their ministries and initiatives in Indianapolis and around the world. Read more » http://www.broadwayumc.org/
Monday, March 30, 2015
Buy the book
Buy the book
Shine Your Light: Build Your Buzz and Reach Your Community by Dorie Clark
The choice for many Americans today isn't which church they'll attend -- it's whether to go at all. So how do we make people want to seek us out? What's required, says marketing expert Dorie Clark, is a willingness to dig into your current congregational practices to find the "gems" you already possess and might promote a little better, along with a willingness to try new ideas that are true to your values yet enticing to newcomers.It was a lovely winter Sunday, and I was sitting with four friends in the pews of a Unitarian church in the small town of Littleton, Massachusetts. Nothing terribly unusual—except that none of us were Unitarians and we had never been to Littleton before, yet we had driven more than an hour just to hunt down this church because of what we had heard about its pastor’s musical talents.
The choice for many Americans today isn’t which church they’ll attend—it’s whether to go at all. So how do we make people want to seek us out? The good news is you don’t need to have written The Purpose-Driven Life—or even be a reasonably well-known folk singer, as was the case with the minister in Littleton—in order to attract a following. What’s required is a willingness to dig into your current congregational practices to find the “gems” you already possess and might promote a little better and a willingness to try new ideas that stay true to your values yet are enticing to potential new members.
Where Do You Shine?
Jesus counseled us not to hide our light under a bushel. The first question to ask is where your congregation excels. Do you, in fact, have a famous folk singer for a pastor? Maybe your children’s program is top-notch, or your social justice committee is particularly vibrant, or your outreach to the gay community has earned you a loyal following. Maybe your hipster minister is popular with college kids, the chef of your church suppers is Cordon-Bleu level, or you’re the only bilingual congregation in the area. It’s always easier to build on your strengths than to fix your weaknesses, so start here.
Building the Buzz
Your goal is to get people talking about your congregation and how innovative and interesting you are. People expect churches to be stodgy and hide-bound; they don’t expect fun and creativity. Surprise them and you’ll attract buzz.
To be clear, publicizing how you’re unique or creating new events is not necessarily about changing your liturgy or other traditional elements, and it’s certainly not about “marketing” your congregation as something it’s not. Too often, marketing has gotten a bad rap from those who view it as a deceptive, secular exercise in obfuscation. Rather, it should be a process through which you look at what your church really stands for and find the best way to express it.
Why Should I Come?
Put yourself into the shoes of your ideal attendee (note: “everyone” is not an acceptable answer). As you have probably noticed from teenagers’ fascination with Axe body spray, a great many products succeed because people who are not in the target group are completely unimpressed. Of course churches are places that welcome and embrace everyone. But that is not synonymous with marketing to everyone. We can eventually target everyone, if you desire, but not all at the same time. To take just one example, the messages that work for seniors will be at cross-purposes with the messages for families with young children.
So, for now, choose a target audience based on your natural strengths. That’s what First Church Congregational in Somerville, Massachusetts did. Just down the hill from Tufts University and chock full of youthful parishioners, they decided to celebrate Mardi Gras with a 1980s prom. At a time when tapered jeans were coming back into vogue and Gen Xers sought to recapture their youth, First Church’s celebration—led by lay volunteers—leveraged fun and nostalgia to introduce new people to their congregation.
Maybe your town has a lot of Harley enthusiasts. For over three decades, New Hampshire—a hotbed of motorcycle tourism—has featured various “Blessing of the Bikes” ceremonies. Not to be outdone, New York’s St. John the Divine Episcopal Cathedral has offered its own “Blessing of the Bicycles” for the past decade to protect the spandex set. Reaching out effectively in your community is all about tapping into the local zeitgeist.
Going Viral
In marketing, we talk about “low barriers to entry.” If you want to read an article online, you’ll click on a link. If you want to read it badly enough, you may give them your name and e-mail address to be let into the site. But if you’re subjected to a ten-minute online registration process in which you have to type in your address, a secret passcode, and the periodic table of elements, you’ll probably decide midway through that the article just isn’t worth it.
The most effective form of marketing is word of mouth—friends telling friends. But these days a lot of people are afraid to talk about their churches or invite people to join them for fear they’ll be tagged as obnoxious proselytizers. Indeed, someone asking me if I’d like to join them at church could actually be pretty discomfiting unless I’ve specifically told them I’m church shopping. Will they stop being my friend if I say no? If I say yes once, will my friend keep pressuring me to return? What if the people at church are weird or have values that are radically different from mine? What if it’s actually a cult? (When I was in college, the administration warned all students about “love bombing” tactics from a particularly aggressive local church.) So much risk!
Our goal is to give parishioners an excuse to bring up church with their friends in a casual, low-pressure way—to invite them to an event or tell them about something unusual and fun. In short, to create low barriers to entry. “Do you want to come with me to a service?” may be greeted with suspicion unless you already have a strong connection. “Do you want to come with me to the Blessing of the Priuses?” Well, that’s just fun—especially if your friend is a hybrid driver. (A joke circulating on the Internet attributed the idea to Massachusetts Episcopal bishops—and despite its fictitious origins, it’s still a great idea if done with a sense of humor.)
Other ways to draw people in might include talks or workshops at the church; special “guest sermons” by interesting community figures (a well-regarded college professor, a local author, a nonprofit head); popular or interesting musicians playing during the service (how about your hymns backed with traditional Celtic instruments?); and the like. Our friends at First Church Congregational—they of the Mardi Gras prom—tapped into a near-universal New England obsession when they decided one summer to broadcast Red Sox games onto their outside wall using a projector. Located on a main thoroughfare, they quickly attracted convivial crowds for their “Keeping the Faith” parties.
Partnering Up
Another way to enhance your community relations—and expose new people to your church—is to partner with like-minded local groups. Odds are, there’s a neighborhood civic league with plans for a clean-up, a float in the town parade, or a car wash for the high school sports teams. Check out what’s going on and pitch in. A show of support from your congregation—particularly if members wear church t-shirts to quantify your impact—can elicit meaningful exchanges with people who aren’t happy with their current church or who haven’t found one they’re comfortable with.
Even better, organize your own community events and invite others to join you. Why do car salesmen love test drives? Feeling the hum of the engine, experiencing the smooth handling, and seeing the admiring stares as you drive by, you’ve practically sold yourself before you even get back to the showroom. Seeing—and doing—is believing. That’s why it’s important to get people on your turf. Let community groups meet in your basement, let your members host book clubs on-site, invite fascinating speakers to come and get as many cosponsors as possible. It doesn’t even have to be “issues oriented.” You could host a film series of romantic comedies and have discussions afterward about the meaning of love—a fun but meaningful
topic for churches to address. The main thing is that you want the community to feel comfortable coming to your church—to know where it is, to think of it as a relaxing and interesting place, to associate it with their own ideology and values, and—just maybe—to pick up a pamphlet about your services, have a conversation with a member, and decide to come on Sunday.
Professional fundraisers know that the biggest donations don’t come out of the blue from Warren Buffett or Bill Gates magically “discovering” your cause. Rather, they come from the people who are committed year in and year out, who originally gave $50 and then gave $100 and then $500, and now are writing five- and six-figure checks. You have to move them up the ladder. Similarly, you want to build a large base of community members who have heard of your church, have been there personally, and think highly of you (“Oh, yeah, they’re the church where I heard that great lecture on health care.”). This is public relations in the broadest sense—creating a cohort of people who, when asked for their recommendation about where to check out church services, will point to you.
Reaching Out to the Media
You’ll notice we haven’t talked at all thus far about the media, and that’s intentional—friends talking to friends is far more powerful. But stories in the media can be helpful for two reasons. First, they sometimes bring in new attendees who are lured by a specific program. Second—and more importantly—media coverage contributes to your long-term brand development. An adage in the world of political campaigns says it takes seven repetitions before someone will even remember a candidate’s name. The same goes with churches. Far more likely than someone seeing an article, clipping it, and joining you the next Sunday is someone reading the article, forgetting about it, and having a dim but vaguely positive recollection when someone mentions you. Another iteration or two and you’ve made the transition from “What did I read about them?” to “I should check them out sometime.”
So how do you make contact with the media? First, you’ll need to assemble a media list—contact information for every outlet that covers your community (daily and weekly papers, local access television, and local radio). Don’t forget relevant blogs or listservs that share your interests and values. If you don’t know the religion reporter’s name, feel free to call the newsroom and ask who the right person is.
Next, reach out. It’s human nature that it’s much harder to ignore people you know personally, so make it hard for them to ignore you. Give them a friendly call when you know they’re not on deadline (for most daily reporters, this would be in the mornings; for weekly newspaper reporters, the best time to call is usually the day their paper comes out). Introduce yourself, confirm that they’re the person who covers the religion/nonprofit beat, and ask them if it’s OK for you to occasionally send them items you believe would be of interest to them (note: it’s their job to report on interesting things, so they won’t say no). Try to confirm when their deadlines are and ask if there are particular types of stories they’re seeking. This will help you shape solid story ideas (known in the news business as “pitches”) that are targeted to their needs and are therefore more likely to get written.
Finally, know what makes for an appealing story. First, it has to be local. Check your paper’s coverage area. The Chicago Tribune usually doesn’t care what happens in Tucson, and similarly, if it’s called the Cambridge Chronicle, don’t bother convincing them to write about your church in Chelsea. Next, it has to be new. Reporters are constantly asked to justify to their editors why something deserves to be in the paper. It’s great that your church is doing an Iraq War vigil, but if your members have been out on the town common every Thursday for the past four and a half years and you’re trying to get coverage now, you’re going to have a hard time explaining why you deserve ink. Look for a hook that is genuinely “of the moment.” Maybe the fifth anniversary of your vigils would be a good time for the paper to look back on the war’s impact on your community.
It also helps if your event or story idea has a human interest angle, such as a profile of a particularly compelling parishioner. Maybe you have a centenarian in your congregation who can share tips for living to one hundred (including the importance of faith and a strong spiritual community), or a mother-daughter team that’s raising money for breast cancer research, or a new associate minister who’s coming to the community with an interesting background (volunteer work in Africa, graduate study in astrophysics, a past career as a minor league ballplayer). Think about stories you find interesting and would be fun for a reporter to write.
Lastly, controversy is the lifeblood of today’s media—and we can leverage it in a positive way to proclaim our values to a wider audience. Hate crime directed at a transgendered person? You can organize a candlelight vigil. Bernard Madoff embezzling billions of dollars? Host a forum on ethical investing. Your city’s administration supporting a coal-fired power plant next to a school? Time to mobilize a petition drive. As in surfing, it’s easier to ride the wave than to try to make your own. When the media is covering a story, they’re looking for follow-up “response” stories—and your congregation (if it moves swiftly) can garner both media attention and a reputation as a forward-thinking, moral force in the community.
Every congregation depends on a base of active, committed members. You can attract new parishioners by clarifying your church’s strengths, building on them to develop interesting programming, and creating an atmosphere where your current members and the media are excited to talk about what you’re doing. Done right, your marketing will take on a life of its own—and you might even get a carload of intrepid explorers driving miles out of their way just to check you out.
____________________
Questions for Reflection
How is your congregation currently perceived by the public?
What is the best thing about your congregation?
What’s the most interesting thing about your congregation that most people don’t know?
What community groups could you potentially partner with?
What events could you organize that reflect your congregation’s values?
What media outlets cover your community?
What story ideas about your congregation might be of interest to the media?
Coming Together, Healing Division and Forming Union through Story by Douglas Liston
Our human tendency to separate into groups can cause us to forget our one calling as people of God, with one mission and one purpose. Repentance must begin with a realization that we all are on the same journey, all serving the same Lord, even if we are traveling what seem to be separate paths. The path of convergence must begin with a return to our story, our sacred Story, our particular story, our one story. The first Methodist Society was formed in the log cabin home of Wheeling, West Virginia’s founder, Ebenezer Zane, in 1786. That initial gathering of the faithful became the first organized church in the area and the first Methodist appointment west of the Appalachians. Throughout the 19th century, that first congregation grew with the community and gave birth to many other congregations and missions within this Gateway to the West. At the beginning of the 20th century, Wheeling was on the verge of great economic growth. It teemed with glass factories, tobacco markets, steel mills, textile industries, rich coal mines, and river commerce. Population expansion and visitations by evangelists such as Billy Sunday prompted the church to engage in building worship centers in the city’s many new neighborhoods.
However, Wheeling’s prosperity—and that of the entire upper Ohio River Valley—peaked mid-century and subsequently declined. The next half century brought industrial downsizing and closures, rising unemployment, substance abuse, family deterioration, and a mass exodus of youth in search of employment. By the beginning of the 21st century, the inner city was economically and culturally impoverished. There were seven United Methodist churches within a four-mile radius of one another—all in serious financial and spiritual crisis. They had long ago shifted from mission mode to survival mode. They had no ministries for making disciples, no hope for the future, no vision for discipleship, and few young families. Time, energy, and money were spent solely on self-preservation. Membership aging and financial demographics clearly indicated a predictable demise date for congregational existence.
I was appointed to serve two of these congregations in 1997. It quickly became apparent that this community of faith was facing life-and-death choices—during my watch. Discernment workshops began the process of awareness. Bible studies began to open a few eyes to the truth of the dilemma. In 1999, God gave us a vision: the necessity for a shared ministry—the uniting of the people of God for the purpose of combining our resources, unifying our leadership and mission, and forming partnership ministries to share the gospel of God’s grace and power in the city’s neighborhoods. The challenge would be casting this vision in such a way that the people could embrace it—and own it as their calling. Research and study revealed a process for change: create a new culture of cooperation to replace a culture of competition, develop a focus on self-giving rather than self-preserving, and make the major and extremely difficult transition from survival to mission. But the road ahead would be long and troubled.
There were many boundaries to cross and barriers to tear down. The makeup of the congregations was quite diverse and deeply rooted in the ethnic and cultural identities of their locations—neighborhoods once delineated according to ethnicity, religious association, and even place of employment (which mill or mine you worked in). One congregation was the remnant of a hard-working, hard-living, hard-fighting neighborhood where the parents worked in the mills and the children stayed with grandparents in rows of modest clapboard houses. Another was descended from a Scottish and Irish white-collar middle-class. The streets are wider in that neighborhood and the homes there are built of brick. Another congregation is the remnant of the white, German, upper-class business owners’ neighborhood, where the homes, once elegant, large, and luxurious, are now low-rent apartments. Three of the congregations’ memberships were each 90 percent contained within their own half-mile circle at the edge of town—not country, not city—and not about to change. One inner-city congregation was nominally upper-middle-class professional African American with a scattering of white spouses and related white families.
These diverse groups had lived and worshiped in secure insulation from one another, and in many ways from their surrounding environment. The generations of their ancestry established rigid boundaries along ethnic, cultural, and economic lines. These boundaries have gradually eroded over time. The lines are blurred now. Today a culturally and racially diverse population is common to most of the city. Neighborhoods are run-down. The homes are in disrepair, some condemned, and are occupied by racially mixed families and single-parent households. Unemployment is high. Substance abuse and violence abound. The urban landscape has changed.
Over time, the face of each congregation had changed with its neighborhood, presenting opportunities and challenges to become more inclusive and grace-filled toward their new neighbors of different class and race. But old walls of division between the congregations still remained, effectively separating the body of Christ into factions, rendering them helpless to carry on the mission of Christ. The church was dying along with its surroundings. Everyone agreed: revival was imperative. But revival could not come without repentance.
This is a familiar pattern, repeated across the land and around the world. The influence of culture and history can distract us from our mission. Our human tendency to separate into groups can cause us to forget our one calling as the one people of God with one mission and one purpose. Repentance must begin with a realization that we all are on the same journey, all serving the same Lord, even if we are traveling what seem separate paths. The path of convergence must begin with a return to our story, our sacred Story, our particular story, our one story.
So we set out upon a long and arduous course of “coming together,” a gradual process of socialization, the repatterning of shared assumptions about the worship life and mission of the church. We worshiped together (on a Sunday morning) for the first time in longer than anyone could remember. We formed a ministry council and met once each month. Each session was framed in an experience of worship and a searching of scripture. We explored new songs for singing and new ways of praying. We engaged in a focused Bible study to understand our identity as God’s people, called to mission and commanded to unity. I introduced what Eric Law calls “mutual invitation”1 as a process of sharing and listening, so that each person might have an opportunity to tell—and all have occasion to hear—one another’s story.
And the miracles began! People shared first their “best memory” of their church: stories of the glory days and packed houses, stories of beloved Sunday school teachers, stories of chicken dinners, playing hide-and-seek after the lights were turned out, stories of being the “heathen” neighborhood children who were welcomed by the church. One at a time, they journeyed through the past. Tears were shed and laughter broke out (though they tried so hard to restrain it). Together, the members of once separate congregations began to see a common thread—and each other from a different perspective. New relationships were forged and old friendships renewed. The first foundational pieces of a healing bridge were laid.
In the weeks and months of meetings that followed, I asked the people to share stories of their worst experiences in church, their saddest times, their toughest decisions, and their most painful mistakes—stories that increased in degrees of personal intimacy as levels of shared trust increased. The loss of young people topped the list of shared pain. Few still had children in church. Then there were memories of friends and family who had left the fold, hurt by something or angered by someone. They told stories of pastors who broke their trust, decisions of the “hierarchy” that squelched their enthusiasm, and the endless, unstoppable decline of their church to a mere shadow of what it had once been. They recognized themselves in the experiences of others shared around that table. They heard their own stories from the lips of strangers.
Awareness grew of how our story crossed all the old barriers and our mission now transcended neighborhood boundaries and extended across the community. The cultural meld of our age had touched and shaped the family of faith, and in surprising ways prepared them for a new kind of ministry to a new kind of society. Gradually, they constructed a common narrative, and realized they were each part of a larger story—a shared and binding story. To make a long story short, now they are one church, one people of God with one missional focus, one set of values, and one congregational identity. Together they are writing a new chapter in their story.
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NOTE1. Eric Law, The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1993), 76.
Douglas Liston is a retired United Methodist minister. Prior to his retirement in June 2007, he served as pastor of New Life United Methodist Church in Wheeling, West Virginia, a congregation created from the consolidation of four other churches. Doug was the architect of that consolidation.
Fulfilling the Great Commission: Congregations as Missionary Outposts by Claude E. Payne and Hamilton Beazley
In the increasingly secular world of America, congregations really are missionary outposts, spiritual settlements on the frontier of the unchurched, with the opportunity to share the divine power of transformation with the hunting souls who surround them. The mission field in contemporary America is rich -- tragically rich -- because of the failure of the mainline denominations and their congregations to teach and live evangelism as a critical element of the Christian faith. The Great Commission is Christ’s command to make disciples of the world. Reported in all four Gospels, it is the heart of a vibrant Christianity, a reflection of the kingdom of God at hand, and the source of a profound and remarkable paradox. The paradox is this: whenever Christians focus on sharing their spiritual experience with those outside their community, they find their own faith enriched, their own souls strengthened, and their own lives further transformed. The Great Commission is therefore both a goal and an expression of faith as well as a means through which that faith becomes transformative. The process of disciples making disciples, which is infused with the power of the Holy Spirit and which results in the transformation of both the disciple and the seeker, is as wondrous a phenomenon of the Christian faith as exists. Yet it is far too infrequently recognized.
The Episcopal Diocese of Texas has embraced a vision based on the Great Commission and, therefore, on the transformation of individual lives. Furthermore, these transformed lives become a catalyst to change and enrich society. Because disciples are made at the congregational level, the diocesan focus is on congregations, which, in the Diocese of Texas, are termed “missionary outposts.” Together, the 156 missionary outposts of the Diocese of Texas compose the “one church” of the diocese. That “one church,” like each of its congregations, has become a community of miraculous expectation in which the spiritual growth and glorious transformation of its members are an essential part of the Christian experience.
The concept of the congregation as a missionary outpost serves several purposes. In the increasingly secular world of America, congregations really are missionary outposts—spiritual settlements on the frontier of the unchurched—with the opportunity to share the divine power of transformation with the hunting souls who surround them. Those with no church home can be found in the school across the street, the office building down the road, or the house next door. The mission field in contemporary America is rich—tragically rich because of the failure of the mainline denominations and their congregations to teach and live evangelism as a critical element of the Christian faith. The term “missonary outpost” reinforces the need for evangelish, captures the energy of discipleship, and challenges larger congregations that can easily become complacent about disciple making and growth to continue to see their mission in evangelistic terms.
As a missionary outpost, a congregation leads to rely on other outposts for resources and on the judicatory for overall direction and coordination. As part of the “one church” of the diocese, different missionary outposts can focus on different segments of the unchurched and can, in combination with each other, enable the judicatory to minister to people of all ages, races, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Together, missionary outposts can take on large or complex outreach projects that would be daunting for them individually.
Christ Church, Matagorda
A striking example of the power of evangelish expressed through a missionary outpost is Christ Church, Matagorda, an Episcopal church founded in 1838 as the mother church of the Diocese of Texas. Matagorda is a tiny, unincorporated town of 750 people in an economically depressed area of the Gulf Coast. Christ Church was a chaplaincy mission with an average of 12 in attendance when Bishop Payne became the Seventh Bishop of Texas. For many years, the congregation had been subsidized by the diocese in order to support a resident, seminary-trained vicar. When the paid vicar of Christ Church left to assume another position, Bishop Payne appointed Harley Savage as lay vicar. Mr. Savage, a rice farmer and lifelong resident of Matagorda County whose great-grandfather had been married in Christ Church, agreed to serve without a salary. After training, he was ordained by the bishop under a special church provision that allowed him to serve as a priest for the locality of Christ Church only. The newly ordained Rev. Harley Savage embraced the diocesan vision of evangelism and the concept of congregations as missionary outposts.
The resurrection of Christ Church began with the vicar’s proposing an outreach lunch program to meet the hunger needs of the Matagorda community and to fulfill the diocesan vision of reaching those beyond the congregation. “The idea of the luncheon was not to grow the congregation, but to be an outreach to the community,” says the vicar. There was no assurance that anyone would come or that the tiny church could afford to sustain it for long. But the congregation stepped out in faith; and the outreach has been successful beyond anyone’s dreams.
What started as a small group of disciples offering food for the body and spirit has grown into a weekly gathering of more than 70 guests who settle in at family-style tables to see old friends and meet an ever-changing assortment of visitors. Wizened citizens of Matagorda, businessmen in town for a meeting, pipeline workers clad in the clothes of their trade, the homeless, and cowboys driving cattle through town mingle over home-cooked meals prepared by the people of the parish. When somebody suggested that an offering basket be placed next to the iced tea so that diners could make a freewill offering for their meal, the result was a basket overflowing. The lunch program is now self-supporting.
The energy, commitment, and faithfulness generated by the luncheon outreach program manifests itself in many ways within the congregation. Average Sunday attendance has increased from 12 to 60, young people have become involved in the life of the church, stewardship has increased dramatically, new educational and outreach programs have been initiated, and the congregation has just completed a $100,000 addition to the parish hall (paid for on the day it opened). The number of acolytes and lay readers continues to grow. The congregation has a new choir director (with a master’s degree in music education). Fundraising projects have enabled Christ Church to send five children to Episcopal camp in the summer and four senior high students on a home-repair mission trip to Colorado. Through a foundation grant, a new mobile medical clinic has been acquired to serve Matagorda County, providing much-needed free medical care that was previously nonexistent.
As remarkable as the statistics are, they don’t compare to the impact that the missionary outpost of the Diocese of Texas has had on the lives of its members, the unchurched in its area, and the citizens of its community. “We’re out of the ‘keep the church open’ stage to the ‘we have to spread the Gospel’ stage, and we can’t do that by keeping it in the building!” proclaims the vicar. These changes at Christ Church are examples of what can be accomplished with love, enthusiasm, and the power of the Holy Spirit. “The Gospel is about really touching people,” says Father Savage. “It’s about giving them something they can hold on to! God intends ministry to be a delight and a joy. It should be fun.”
Christ Church has become a dynamic place, a growing organism with a vitality and a life of its own—one that is invigorating for its members and life-changing for the spirituality hungry who walk through its doors. Members “see themselves as missionaries,” the vicar says. Many of the new members had never held a Prayer Book before or even been to church except for “weddings and funerals.” They had to be trained and educated. People who have never attended church come to see how much it has to offer them. “We bring them in one at a time,” the vicar says, “and minister to them as individuals.” Christ Church is an inspiring example of the transformative power of evangelism born of a diocesan vision of community and mission.
Mission vs. Maintenance
The culture of a congregation like Christ Church that is devoted to making disciples and committed to the concept of the missionary outpost is different from the culture of a maintenance-based congregation in many ways. These include:
Focus on others rather than on self. Evangelism is outwardly focused. It leads to compassion for others and away from self-centeredness and self-indulgence. It provides meaning and sustenance for the soul, returning many times the investment made. Because it involves the Holy Spirit, evangelism is a great blessing for the disciple as well as for the disciple-to-be.
Spiritual orientation rather than an institutional orientation. Missionary outposts acknowledge that the institutional dimension of Christian life is important, but that is ultimately secondary to the dimensions of service and mission. The orientation and passion of the members are directed at making disciples and at spiritual transformation rather than at the mechanics of maintainiing the institution of the Church.
Sharing rather than hoarding. Evangelism and congregational development encourage the sharing of spiritual treasure so that all can be enriched. Evangelism teaches disciples not to hoard that which has been given to them, but to share it so that it can be multiplied. A congregation that is devoted to maintaining the status quo is grounded in selfishness. By hoarding that which God has commanded to be given away, congregations lose their vital connection to God’s will and stagnate. A missionary outpost, on the other hand, is eager to share with the suffering people outside faithful offer aid to those who are hurting along life’s highway. The disciples of a missionary outpost are not concerned about whether those who are suffering are “like us,” but only whether they are in need. Such an attitude of sharing “outside the church” spreads easily to time, talent, and treasure offered within the church.
Congregational collaboration rather than isolation and competition. When the judicatory operates as “one church,” missionary outposts are led to collaborate, each making a unique contribution that is valued by the whole. The tendency for individual congregations to compete with one another or to suffer in isolation is reduced.
Love rather than indifference or hostility. A judicatory that envisions itself as one church living in miraculous expectation of glorious transformation and that carries that vision outward through its missionary outposts to the unchurched is a community living in love. Such a community does not focus on internal issues that divide but on issues that unite, such as the call of Christ to make disciples of all nations. Self-righteousness, intolerance, and condemnation are replaced by compassion, discernment, and acceptance. In the spirit of the Great Commandment to love, people are allowed to change and grow.
A Glorious Transformation
When a congregation becomes a missionary outpost and shifts its focus from its own needs to those of the community around it, the profound changes that occur in the lives of its members are echoed in the larger community. In Matagorda, for example, the mobile health clinic has dramatically improved the physical health of the area just as Christ Church has improved its spiritual health. Once a missionary outpost embraces the Great Commission and the glorious transformation of lives that discipleship makes possible, it becomes a catalyst for change that draws others to it. When a congregation becomes committed to evangelism and so knows what it wants to do and for whom, it becomes open to missionary leadership. Harley Savage provided that kind of leadership at Christ Church. Part of a congregation’s “getting well” is to develop a missionary vision and then identify the person who is called to fulfill it.
What began as an intellectual respect for the missionary vision of the Diocese of Texas has evolved over the past five years of Bishop Payne’s episcopate into a deep understanding of its purpose and promise. Out of that understanding has grown a genuine and abiding love of mission, evangelism, and the Great Commission. What had once been a dream of the diocese and its congregations has become a reality for the “one church” and its missionary outposts: disciples making disciples in a community of miraculous expectation devoted to the glorious transformation of lives.
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From the earliest days of the faith, Christianity has been experienced and expressed in communities. In the Acts of the Apostles, we find six features of thriving communities that we can cultivate today. Learn how in "Thriving Communities," an ebook by C. Kavin Rowe and L. Gregory Jones.
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The choice for many Americans today isn’t which church they’ll attend—it’s whether to go at all. So how do we make people want to seek us out? The good news is you don’t need to have written The Purpose-Driven Life—or even be a reasonably well-known folk singer, as was the case with the minister in Littleton—in order to attract a following. What’s required is a willingness to dig into your current congregational practices to find the “gems” you already possess and might promote a little better and a willingness to try new ideas that stay true to your values yet are enticing to potential new members.
Where Do You Shine?
Jesus counseled us not to hide our light under a bushel. The first question to ask is where your congregation excels. Do you, in fact, have a famous folk singer for a pastor? Maybe your children’s program is top-notch, or your social justice committee is particularly vibrant, or your outreach to the gay community has earned you a loyal following. Maybe your hipster minister is popular with college kids, the chef of your church suppers is Cordon-Bleu level, or you’re the only bilingual congregation in the area. It’s always easier to build on your strengths than to fix your weaknesses, so start here.
Building the Buzz
Your goal is to get people talking about your congregation and how innovative and interesting you are. People expect churches to be stodgy and hide-bound; they don’t expect fun and creativity. Surprise them and you’ll attract buzz.
To be clear, publicizing how you’re unique or creating new events is not necessarily about changing your liturgy or other traditional elements, and it’s certainly not about “marketing” your congregation as something it’s not. Too often, marketing has gotten a bad rap from those who view it as a deceptive, secular exercise in obfuscation. Rather, it should be a process through which you look at what your church really stands for and find the best way to express it.
Why Should I Come?
Put yourself into the shoes of your ideal attendee (note: “everyone” is not an acceptable answer). As you have probably noticed from teenagers’ fascination with Axe body spray, a great many products succeed because people who are not in the target group are completely unimpressed. Of course churches are places that welcome and embrace everyone. But that is not synonymous with marketing to everyone. We can eventually target everyone, if you desire, but not all at the same time. To take just one example, the messages that work for seniors will be at cross-purposes with the messages for families with young children.
So, for now, choose a target audience based on your natural strengths. That’s what First Church Congregational in Somerville, Massachusetts did. Just down the hill from Tufts University and chock full of youthful parishioners, they decided to celebrate Mardi Gras with a 1980s prom. At a time when tapered jeans were coming back into vogue and Gen Xers sought to recapture their youth, First Church’s celebration—led by lay volunteers—leveraged fun and nostalgia to introduce new people to their congregation.
Maybe your town has a lot of Harley enthusiasts. For over three decades, New Hampshire—a hotbed of motorcycle tourism—has featured various “Blessing of the Bikes” ceremonies. Not to be outdone, New York’s St. John the Divine Episcopal Cathedral has offered its own “Blessing of the Bicycles” for the past decade to protect the spandex set. Reaching out effectively in your community is all about tapping into the local zeitgeist.
Going Viral
In marketing, we talk about “low barriers to entry.” If you want to read an article online, you’ll click on a link. If you want to read it badly enough, you may give them your name and e-mail address to be let into the site. But if you’re subjected to a ten-minute online registration process in which you have to type in your address, a secret passcode, and the periodic table of elements, you’ll probably decide midway through that the article just isn’t worth it.
The most effective form of marketing is word of mouth—friends telling friends. But these days a lot of people are afraid to talk about their churches or invite people to join them for fear they’ll be tagged as obnoxious proselytizers. Indeed, someone asking me if I’d like to join them at church could actually be pretty discomfiting unless I’ve specifically told them I’m church shopping. Will they stop being my friend if I say no? If I say yes once, will my friend keep pressuring me to return? What if the people at church are weird or have values that are radically different from mine? What if it’s actually a cult? (When I was in college, the administration warned all students about “love bombing” tactics from a particularly aggressive local church.) So much risk!
Our goal is to give parishioners an excuse to bring up church with their friends in a casual, low-pressure way—to invite them to an event or tell them about something unusual and fun. In short, to create low barriers to entry. “Do you want to come with me to a service?” may be greeted with suspicion unless you already have a strong connection. “Do you want to come with me to the Blessing of the Priuses?” Well, that’s just fun—especially if your friend is a hybrid driver. (A joke circulating on the Internet attributed the idea to Massachusetts Episcopal bishops—and despite its fictitious origins, it’s still a great idea if done with a sense of humor.)
Other ways to draw people in might include talks or workshops at the church; special “guest sermons” by interesting community figures (a well-regarded college professor, a local author, a nonprofit head); popular or interesting musicians playing during the service (how about your hymns backed with traditional Celtic instruments?); and the like. Our friends at First Church Congregational—they of the Mardi Gras prom—tapped into a near-universal New England obsession when they decided one summer to broadcast Red Sox games onto their outside wall using a projector. Located on a main thoroughfare, they quickly attracted convivial crowds for their “Keeping the Faith” parties.
Partnering Up
Another way to enhance your community relations—and expose new people to your church—is to partner with like-minded local groups. Odds are, there’s a neighborhood civic league with plans for a clean-up, a float in the town parade, or a car wash for the high school sports teams. Check out what’s going on and pitch in. A show of support from your congregation—particularly if members wear church t-shirts to quantify your impact—can elicit meaningful exchanges with people who aren’t happy with their current church or who haven’t found one they’re comfortable with.
Even better, organize your own community events and invite others to join you. Why do car salesmen love test drives? Feeling the hum of the engine, experiencing the smooth handling, and seeing the admiring stares as you drive by, you’ve practically sold yourself before you even get back to the showroom. Seeing—and doing—is believing. That’s why it’s important to get people on your turf. Let community groups meet in your basement, let your members host book clubs on-site, invite fascinating speakers to come and get as many cosponsors as possible. It doesn’t even have to be “issues oriented.” You could host a film series of romantic comedies and have discussions afterward about the meaning of love—a fun but meaningful
topic for churches to address. The main thing is that you want the community to feel comfortable coming to your church—to know where it is, to think of it as a relaxing and interesting place, to associate it with their own ideology and values, and—just maybe—to pick up a pamphlet about your services, have a conversation with a member, and decide to come on Sunday.
Professional fundraisers know that the biggest donations don’t come out of the blue from Warren Buffett or Bill Gates magically “discovering” your cause. Rather, they come from the people who are committed year in and year out, who originally gave $50 and then gave $100 and then $500, and now are writing five- and six-figure checks. You have to move them up the ladder. Similarly, you want to build a large base of community members who have heard of your church, have been there personally, and think highly of you (“Oh, yeah, they’re the church where I heard that great lecture on health care.”). This is public relations in the broadest sense—creating a cohort of people who, when asked for their recommendation about where to check out church services, will point to you.
Reaching Out to the Media
You’ll notice we haven’t talked at all thus far about the media, and that’s intentional—friends talking to friends is far more powerful. But stories in the media can be helpful for two reasons. First, they sometimes bring in new attendees who are lured by a specific program. Second—and more importantly—media coverage contributes to your long-term brand development. An adage in the world of political campaigns says it takes seven repetitions before someone will even remember a candidate’s name. The same goes with churches. Far more likely than someone seeing an article, clipping it, and joining you the next Sunday is someone reading the article, forgetting about it, and having a dim but vaguely positive recollection when someone mentions you. Another iteration or two and you’ve made the transition from “What did I read about them?” to “I should check them out sometime.”
So how do you make contact with the media? First, you’ll need to assemble a media list—contact information for every outlet that covers your community (daily and weekly papers, local access television, and local radio). Don’t forget relevant blogs or listservs that share your interests and values. If you don’t know the religion reporter’s name, feel free to call the newsroom and ask who the right person is.
Next, reach out. It’s human nature that it’s much harder to ignore people you know personally, so make it hard for them to ignore you. Give them a friendly call when you know they’re not on deadline (for most daily reporters, this would be in the mornings; for weekly newspaper reporters, the best time to call is usually the day their paper comes out). Introduce yourself, confirm that they’re the person who covers the religion/nonprofit beat, and ask them if it’s OK for you to occasionally send them items you believe would be of interest to them (note: it’s their job to report on interesting things, so they won’t say no). Try to confirm when their deadlines are and ask if there are particular types of stories they’re seeking. This will help you shape solid story ideas (known in the news business as “pitches”) that are targeted to their needs and are therefore more likely to get written.
Finally, know what makes for an appealing story. First, it has to be local. Check your paper’s coverage area. The Chicago Tribune usually doesn’t care what happens in Tucson, and similarly, if it’s called the Cambridge Chronicle, don’t bother convincing them to write about your church in Chelsea. Next, it has to be new. Reporters are constantly asked to justify to their editors why something deserves to be in the paper. It’s great that your church is doing an Iraq War vigil, but if your members have been out on the town common every Thursday for the past four and a half years and you’re trying to get coverage now, you’re going to have a hard time explaining why you deserve ink. Look for a hook that is genuinely “of the moment.” Maybe the fifth anniversary of your vigils would be a good time for the paper to look back on the war’s impact on your community.
It also helps if your event or story idea has a human interest angle, such as a profile of a particularly compelling parishioner. Maybe you have a centenarian in your congregation who can share tips for living to one hundred (including the importance of faith and a strong spiritual community), or a mother-daughter team that’s raising money for breast cancer research, or a new associate minister who’s coming to the community with an interesting background (volunteer work in Africa, graduate study in astrophysics, a past career as a minor league ballplayer). Think about stories you find interesting and would be fun for a reporter to write.
Lastly, controversy is the lifeblood of today’s media—and we can leverage it in a positive way to proclaim our values to a wider audience. Hate crime directed at a transgendered person? You can organize a candlelight vigil. Bernard Madoff embezzling billions of dollars? Host a forum on ethical investing. Your city’s administration supporting a coal-fired power plant next to a school? Time to mobilize a petition drive. As in surfing, it’s easier to ride the wave than to try to make your own. When the media is covering a story, they’re looking for follow-up “response” stories—and your congregation (if it moves swiftly) can garner both media attention and a reputation as a forward-thinking, moral force in the community.
Every congregation depends on a base of active, committed members. You can attract new parishioners by clarifying your church’s strengths, building on them to develop interesting programming, and creating an atmosphere where your current members and the media are excited to talk about what you’re doing. Done right, your marketing will take on a life of its own—and you might even get a carload of intrepid explorers driving miles out of their way just to check you out.
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Questions for Reflection
How is your congregation currently perceived by the public?
What is the best thing about your congregation?
What’s the most interesting thing about your congregation that most people don’t know?
What community groups could you potentially partner with?
What events could you organize that reflect your congregation’s values?
What media outlets cover your community?
What story ideas about your congregation might be of interest to the media?
Coming Together, Healing Division and Forming Union through Story by Douglas Liston
Our human tendency to separate into groups can cause us to forget our one calling as people of God, with one mission and one purpose. Repentance must begin with a realization that we all are on the same journey, all serving the same Lord, even if we are traveling what seem to be separate paths. The path of convergence must begin with a return to our story, our sacred Story, our particular story, our one story. The first Methodist Society was formed in the log cabin home of Wheeling, West Virginia’s founder, Ebenezer Zane, in 1786. That initial gathering of the faithful became the first organized church in the area and the first Methodist appointment west of the Appalachians. Throughout the 19th century, that first congregation grew with the community and gave birth to many other congregations and missions within this Gateway to the West. At the beginning of the 20th century, Wheeling was on the verge of great economic growth. It teemed with glass factories, tobacco markets, steel mills, textile industries, rich coal mines, and river commerce. Population expansion and visitations by evangelists such as Billy Sunday prompted the church to engage in building worship centers in the city’s many new neighborhoods.
However, Wheeling’s prosperity—and that of the entire upper Ohio River Valley—peaked mid-century and subsequently declined. The next half century brought industrial downsizing and closures, rising unemployment, substance abuse, family deterioration, and a mass exodus of youth in search of employment. By the beginning of the 21st century, the inner city was economically and culturally impoverished. There were seven United Methodist churches within a four-mile radius of one another—all in serious financial and spiritual crisis. They had long ago shifted from mission mode to survival mode. They had no ministries for making disciples, no hope for the future, no vision for discipleship, and few young families. Time, energy, and money were spent solely on self-preservation. Membership aging and financial demographics clearly indicated a predictable demise date for congregational existence.
I was appointed to serve two of these congregations in 1997. It quickly became apparent that this community of faith was facing life-and-death choices—during my watch. Discernment workshops began the process of awareness. Bible studies began to open a few eyes to the truth of the dilemma. In 1999, God gave us a vision: the necessity for a shared ministry—the uniting of the people of God for the purpose of combining our resources, unifying our leadership and mission, and forming partnership ministries to share the gospel of God’s grace and power in the city’s neighborhoods. The challenge would be casting this vision in such a way that the people could embrace it—and own it as their calling. Research and study revealed a process for change: create a new culture of cooperation to replace a culture of competition, develop a focus on self-giving rather than self-preserving, and make the major and extremely difficult transition from survival to mission. But the road ahead would be long and troubled.
There were many boundaries to cross and barriers to tear down. The makeup of the congregations was quite diverse and deeply rooted in the ethnic and cultural identities of their locations—neighborhoods once delineated according to ethnicity, religious association, and even place of employment (which mill or mine you worked in). One congregation was the remnant of a hard-working, hard-living, hard-fighting neighborhood where the parents worked in the mills and the children stayed with grandparents in rows of modest clapboard houses. Another was descended from a Scottish and Irish white-collar middle-class. The streets are wider in that neighborhood and the homes there are built of brick. Another congregation is the remnant of the white, German, upper-class business owners’ neighborhood, where the homes, once elegant, large, and luxurious, are now low-rent apartments. Three of the congregations’ memberships were each 90 percent contained within their own half-mile circle at the edge of town—not country, not city—and not about to change. One inner-city congregation was nominally upper-middle-class professional African American with a scattering of white spouses and related white families.
These diverse groups had lived and worshiped in secure insulation from one another, and in many ways from their surrounding environment. The generations of their ancestry established rigid boundaries along ethnic, cultural, and economic lines. These boundaries have gradually eroded over time. The lines are blurred now. Today a culturally and racially diverse population is common to most of the city. Neighborhoods are run-down. The homes are in disrepair, some condemned, and are occupied by racially mixed families and single-parent households. Unemployment is high. Substance abuse and violence abound. The urban landscape has changed.
Over time, the face of each congregation had changed with its neighborhood, presenting opportunities and challenges to become more inclusive and grace-filled toward their new neighbors of different class and race. But old walls of division between the congregations still remained, effectively separating the body of Christ into factions, rendering them helpless to carry on the mission of Christ. The church was dying along with its surroundings. Everyone agreed: revival was imperative. But revival could not come without repentance.
This is a familiar pattern, repeated across the land and around the world. The influence of culture and history can distract us from our mission. Our human tendency to separate into groups can cause us to forget our one calling as the one people of God with one mission and one purpose. Repentance must begin with a realization that we all are on the same journey, all serving the same Lord, even if we are traveling what seem separate paths. The path of convergence must begin with a return to our story, our sacred Story, our particular story, our one story.
So we set out upon a long and arduous course of “coming together,” a gradual process of socialization, the repatterning of shared assumptions about the worship life and mission of the church. We worshiped together (on a Sunday morning) for the first time in longer than anyone could remember. We formed a ministry council and met once each month. Each session was framed in an experience of worship and a searching of scripture. We explored new songs for singing and new ways of praying. We engaged in a focused Bible study to understand our identity as God’s people, called to mission and commanded to unity. I introduced what Eric Law calls “mutual invitation”1 as a process of sharing and listening, so that each person might have an opportunity to tell—and all have occasion to hear—one another’s story.
And the miracles began! People shared first their “best memory” of their church: stories of the glory days and packed houses, stories of beloved Sunday school teachers, stories of chicken dinners, playing hide-and-seek after the lights were turned out, stories of being the “heathen” neighborhood children who were welcomed by the church. One at a time, they journeyed through the past. Tears were shed and laughter broke out (though they tried so hard to restrain it). Together, the members of once separate congregations began to see a common thread—and each other from a different perspective. New relationships were forged and old friendships renewed. The first foundational pieces of a healing bridge were laid.
In the weeks and months of meetings that followed, I asked the people to share stories of their worst experiences in church, their saddest times, their toughest decisions, and their most painful mistakes—stories that increased in degrees of personal intimacy as levels of shared trust increased. The loss of young people topped the list of shared pain. Few still had children in church. Then there were memories of friends and family who had left the fold, hurt by something or angered by someone. They told stories of pastors who broke their trust, decisions of the “hierarchy” that squelched their enthusiasm, and the endless, unstoppable decline of their church to a mere shadow of what it had once been. They recognized themselves in the experiences of others shared around that table. They heard their own stories from the lips of strangers.
Awareness grew of how our story crossed all the old barriers and our mission now transcended neighborhood boundaries and extended across the community. The cultural meld of our age had touched and shaped the family of faith, and in surprising ways prepared them for a new kind of ministry to a new kind of society. Gradually, they constructed a common narrative, and realized they were each part of a larger story—a shared and binding story. To make a long story short, now they are one church, one people of God with one missional focus, one set of values, and one congregational identity. Together they are writing a new chapter in their story.
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NOTE1. Eric Law, The Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb (St. Louis: Chalice Press, 1993), 76.
Douglas Liston is a retired United Methodist minister. Prior to his retirement in June 2007, he served as pastor of New Life United Methodist Church in Wheeling, West Virginia, a congregation created from the consolidation of four other churches. Doug was the architect of that consolidation.
Fulfilling the Great Commission: Congregations as Missionary Outposts by Claude E. Payne and Hamilton Beazley
In the increasingly secular world of America, congregations really are missionary outposts, spiritual settlements on the frontier of the unchurched, with the opportunity to share the divine power of transformation with the hunting souls who surround them. The mission field in contemporary America is rich -- tragically rich -- because of the failure of the mainline denominations and their congregations to teach and live evangelism as a critical element of the Christian faith. The Great Commission is Christ’s command to make disciples of the world. Reported in all four Gospels, it is the heart of a vibrant Christianity, a reflection of the kingdom of God at hand, and the source of a profound and remarkable paradox. The paradox is this: whenever Christians focus on sharing their spiritual experience with those outside their community, they find their own faith enriched, their own souls strengthened, and their own lives further transformed. The Great Commission is therefore both a goal and an expression of faith as well as a means through which that faith becomes transformative. The process of disciples making disciples, which is infused with the power of the Holy Spirit and which results in the transformation of both the disciple and the seeker, is as wondrous a phenomenon of the Christian faith as exists. Yet it is far too infrequently recognized.
The Episcopal Diocese of Texas has embraced a vision based on the Great Commission and, therefore, on the transformation of individual lives. Furthermore, these transformed lives become a catalyst to change and enrich society. Because disciples are made at the congregational level, the diocesan focus is on congregations, which, in the Diocese of Texas, are termed “missionary outposts.” Together, the 156 missionary outposts of the Diocese of Texas compose the “one church” of the diocese. That “one church,” like each of its congregations, has become a community of miraculous expectation in which the spiritual growth and glorious transformation of its members are an essential part of the Christian experience.
The concept of the congregation as a missionary outpost serves several purposes. In the increasingly secular world of America, congregations really are missionary outposts—spiritual settlements on the frontier of the unchurched—with the opportunity to share the divine power of transformation with the hunting souls who surround them. Those with no church home can be found in the school across the street, the office building down the road, or the house next door. The mission field in contemporary America is rich—tragically rich because of the failure of the mainline denominations and their congregations to teach and live evangelism as a critical element of the Christian faith. The term “missonary outpost” reinforces the need for evangelish, captures the energy of discipleship, and challenges larger congregations that can easily become complacent about disciple making and growth to continue to see their mission in evangelistic terms.
As a missionary outpost, a congregation leads to rely on other outposts for resources and on the judicatory for overall direction and coordination. As part of the “one church” of the diocese, different missionary outposts can focus on different segments of the unchurched and can, in combination with each other, enable the judicatory to minister to people of all ages, races, ethnic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Together, missionary outposts can take on large or complex outreach projects that would be daunting for them individually.
Christ Church, Matagorda
A striking example of the power of evangelish expressed through a missionary outpost is Christ Church, Matagorda, an Episcopal church founded in 1838 as the mother church of the Diocese of Texas. Matagorda is a tiny, unincorporated town of 750 people in an economically depressed area of the Gulf Coast. Christ Church was a chaplaincy mission with an average of 12 in attendance when Bishop Payne became the Seventh Bishop of Texas. For many years, the congregation had been subsidized by the diocese in order to support a resident, seminary-trained vicar. When the paid vicar of Christ Church left to assume another position, Bishop Payne appointed Harley Savage as lay vicar. Mr. Savage, a rice farmer and lifelong resident of Matagorda County whose great-grandfather had been married in Christ Church, agreed to serve without a salary. After training, he was ordained by the bishop under a special church provision that allowed him to serve as a priest for the locality of Christ Church only. The newly ordained Rev. Harley Savage embraced the diocesan vision of evangelism and the concept of congregations as missionary outposts.
The resurrection of Christ Church began with the vicar’s proposing an outreach lunch program to meet the hunger needs of the Matagorda community and to fulfill the diocesan vision of reaching those beyond the congregation. “The idea of the luncheon was not to grow the congregation, but to be an outreach to the community,” says the vicar. There was no assurance that anyone would come or that the tiny church could afford to sustain it for long. But the congregation stepped out in faith; and the outreach has been successful beyond anyone’s dreams.
What started as a small group of disciples offering food for the body and spirit has grown into a weekly gathering of more than 70 guests who settle in at family-style tables to see old friends and meet an ever-changing assortment of visitors. Wizened citizens of Matagorda, businessmen in town for a meeting, pipeline workers clad in the clothes of their trade, the homeless, and cowboys driving cattle through town mingle over home-cooked meals prepared by the people of the parish. When somebody suggested that an offering basket be placed next to the iced tea so that diners could make a freewill offering for their meal, the result was a basket overflowing. The lunch program is now self-supporting.
The energy, commitment, and faithfulness generated by the luncheon outreach program manifests itself in many ways within the congregation. Average Sunday attendance has increased from 12 to 60, young people have become involved in the life of the church, stewardship has increased dramatically, new educational and outreach programs have been initiated, and the congregation has just completed a $100,000 addition to the parish hall (paid for on the day it opened). The number of acolytes and lay readers continues to grow. The congregation has a new choir director (with a master’s degree in music education). Fundraising projects have enabled Christ Church to send five children to Episcopal camp in the summer and four senior high students on a home-repair mission trip to Colorado. Through a foundation grant, a new mobile medical clinic has been acquired to serve Matagorda County, providing much-needed free medical care that was previously nonexistent.
As remarkable as the statistics are, they don’t compare to the impact that the missionary outpost of the Diocese of Texas has had on the lives of its members, the unchurched in its area, and the citizens of its community. “We’re out of the ‘keep the church open’ stage to the ‘we have to spread the Gospel’ stage, and we can’t do that by keeping it in the building!” proclaims the vicar. These changes at Christ Church are examples of what can be accomplished with love, enthusiasm, and the power of the Holy Spirit. “The Gospel is about really touching people,” says Father Savage. “It’s about giving them something they can hold on to! God intends ministry to be a delight and a joy. It should be fun.”
Christ Church has become a dynamic place, a growing organism with a vitality and a life of its own—one that is invigorating for its members and life-changing for the spirituality hungry who walk through its doors. Members “see themselves as missionaries,” the vicar says. Many of the new members had never held a Prayer Book before or even been to church except for “weddings and funerals.” They had to be trained and educated. People who have never attended church come to see how much it has to offer them. “We bring them in one at a time,” the vicar says, “and minister to them as individuals.” Christ Church is an inspiring example of the transformative power of evangelism born of a diocesan vision of community and mission.
Mission vs. Maintenance
The culture of a congregation like Christ Church that is devoted to making disciples and committed to the concept of the missionary outpost is different from the culture of a maintenance-based congregation in many ways. These include:
Focus on others rather than on self. Evangelism is outwardly focused. It leads to compassion for others and away from self-centeredness and self-indulgence. It provides meaning and sustenance for the soul, returning many times the investment made. Because it involves the Holy Spirit, evangelism is a great blessing for the disciple as well as for the disciple-to-be.
Spiritual orientation rather than an institutional orientation. Missionary outposts acknowledge that the institutional dimension of Christian life is important, but that is ultimately secondary to the dimensions of service and mission. The orientation and passion of the members are directed at making disciples and at spiritual transformation rather than at the mechanics of maintainiing the institution of the Church.
Sharing rather than hoarding. Evangelism and congregational development encourage the sharing of spiritual treasure so that all can be enriched. Evangelism teaches disciples not to hoard that which has been given to them, but to share it so that it can be multiplied. A congregation that is devoted to maintaining the status quo is grounded in selfishness. By hoarding that which God has commanded to be given away, congregations lose their vital connection to God’s will and stagnate. A missionary outpost, on the other hand, is eager to share with the suffering people outside faithful offer aid to those who are hurting along life’s highway. The disciples of a missionary outpost are not concerned about whether those who are suffering are “like us,” but only whether they are in need. Such an attitude of sharing “outside the church” spreads easily to time, talent, and treasure offered within the church.
Congregational collaboration rather than isolation and competition. When the judicatory operates as “one church,” missionary outposts are led to collaborate, each making a unique contribution that is valued by the whole. The tendency for individual congregations to compete with one another or to suffer in isolation is reduced.
Love rather than indifference or hostility. A judicatory that envisions itself as one church living in miraculous expectation of glorious transformation and that carries that vision outward through its missionary outposts to the unchurched is a community living in love. Such a community does not focus on internal issues that divide but on issues that unite, such as the call of Christ to make disciples of all nations. Self-righteousness, intolerance, and condemnation are replaced by compassion, discernment, and acceptance. In the spirit of the Great Commandment to love, people are allowed to change and grow.
A Glorious Transformation
When a congregation becomes a missionary outpost and shifts its focus from its own needs to those of the community around it, the profound changes that occur in the lives of its members are echoed in the larger community. In Matagorda, for example, the mobile health clinic has dramatically improved the physical health of the area just as Christ Church has improved its spiritual health. Once a missionary outpost embraces the Great Commission and the glorious transformation of lives that discipleship makes possible, it becomes a catalyst for change that draws others to it. When a congregation becomes committed to evangelism and so knows what it wants to do and for whom, it becomes open to missionary leadership. Harley Savage provided that kind of leadership at Christ Church. Part of a congregation’s “getting well” is to develop a missionary vision and then identify the person who is called to fulfill it.
What began as an intellectual respect for the missionary vision of the Diocese of Texas has evolved over the past five years of Bishop Payne’s episcopate into a deep understanding of its purpose and promise. Out of that understanding has grown a genuine and abiding love of mission, evangelism, and the Great Commission. What had once been a dream of the diocese and its congregations has become a reality for the “one church” and its missionary outposts: disciples making disciples in a community of miraculous expectation devoted to the glorious transformation of lives.
A Resource from Faith & Leadership
From the earliest days of the faith, Christianity has been experienced and expressed in communities. In the Acts of the Apostles, we find six features of thriving communities that we can cultivate today. Learn how in "Thriving Communities," an ebook by C. Kavin Rowe and L. Gregory Jones.
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