Leading Ideas: Putting Ourselves in the Places Where Life Happens | Does Everyone in a Church Need to Know Everything? from Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., United States for Wednesday, 28 October 2015

Leading Ideas: Putting Ourselves in the Places Where Life Happens | Does Everyone in a Church Need to Know Everything? from Lewis Center for Church Leadership at Wesley Theological Seminary in Washington, D.C., United States for Wednesday, 28 October 2015
Wednesday, October 28, 2015
Putting Ourselves in the Places Where Life Happens by Keith Anderson

I’m convinced that one of the major challenges for today’s church leaders is a matter of perspective. For ministry leaders, the church, whether by that we mean the building or the institution, is often at the center of our time and focus. People in parish ministry spend most of our time there, along with much of our emotional, spiritual, and intellectual energy. This is a good and noble thing. However, we can become so focused on the interworking of our congregations that we miss what is going on down the block and across our communities. 

This myopia is especially dangerous in a time of institutional decline. Debates and worry over the fate of church institutions, while acknowledging the mortality of the institution, which seems a good and healthy thing, paradoxically reinforce the focus on the institution itself rather than pushing us to look beyond its boundaries. Even as the number of people present in our congregations dwindles, our fixation on the institution grows. We spend more and more time worrying over the internal operations of our institutions, even as fewer and fewer people attend and belong. Thus we inhabit and concern ourselves with an ever-shrinking piece of cultural and spiritual real estate.

Moreover, we often operate with a view of the church at the center and everything else running out into the horizon. The church is so in the foreground of our experience that everything is interpreted in relationship to the church. We see Sunday morning sports as a threat rather than an opportunity to connect with people’s daily lives. We tell a story about Nones turning their backs on the church, rather than appreciating the way in which they are making meaning and practice their spirituality. We conceive of our faith communities too narrowly, not taking into account the broad expanse of community in lived Christian experience beyond our buildings. We curse the problems with church as institution, but, because we are so stuck in that frame, we propose institutional solutions, when the problem is institutionalism itself. For many leaders, this has created a kind of ecclesiastical blind spot that renders people and places invisible to our gaze.

We need to claim a much broader understanding of who belongs to our communities and where church and faith happen. The work begins by placing ourselves outside of church buildings or ministry offices, both digitally and physically. 

Rather than standing at the church door looking out, we need to be present in the places people work, live, and play, to enter into the sanctity of everyday life and understand the ways people make meaning there. We cannot define our culture, our community, or individuals from the literal or figurative perspective of the institutional church. We must put ourselves in the places where life happens. Three things church leaders can do in this new environment are connect, convene, and converse.

Connect

Ministry leaders ought to be continually on the lookout for points of connection with others. We should seek to communicate our availability to others by being present in the places where they already gather, relinquishing the instinct to define the terms of those encounters. In social media terms, we need to be “discoverable.” This means committing to a consistent presence on social media, actively seeking out local people, businesses, groups. Move some of your office hours outside the office. Get outside and spend some time on your sidewalk, whatever that place is for you in your context.

Convene

One of the most important and enduring roles of ministry leaders in the digital age is as conveners. Look for ways to bring people together. That can happen in someone’s living room, or in a coffeehouse, barbershop, or pub, on social media, or in the park. It doesn’t have to be sedentary either. Those conversations can happen while walking, running, or as I have done for men’s retreats, while climbing a high ropes course. Just bring people together, ask them to share their stories, and trust them and the work of the Holy Spirit.

Converse

Don’t just make presentations. Host conversations. Give up your predetermined theological outcomes and focus on the relationships. The leader does not need to be the center of the conversation. Instead, the task is to listen prayerfully and be attentive to the work of the Holy Spirit. Trust the process of conversation, and recognize its theological import.

Keith Anderson is pastor at Upper Dublin Lutheran Church near Philadelphia and author of the recently published The Digital Cathedral: Networked Ministry in a Wireless World (Morehouse Publishing, 2015) from which this article is adapted. Used by permission. The Digital Cathedral is available from Amazon and Cokesbury. Read more…

Does Everyone in a Church Need to Know Everything? by Robert Schnase

Every congregation has a set of expectations, mostly unspoken and never completely identified, about making decisions. And sometimes, these expectations are unhelpful. One such unhelpful expectation is the belief that everyone needs to know everything, and the church can’t act until everyone approves.

In churches operating with this expectation, many leaders expect to be included in every decision. “Why wasn’t I asked about that? Why didn’t that come through my committee?” Leaders genuinely search for clarity about their responsibilities. Yet when every leader expects to be included, the system becomes increasingly complex. No one wants to be left out of the loop. This expectation causes ideas to circulate through an endless number of committees up and down the organizational chart. It slows down processes and requires people to vote and re-vote on mundane decisions.

Churches that expect that everyone must approve everything surrender at the first sign of disagreement. They coddle critics and modify plans to appease anyone who objects. They settle for mediocrity instead of demanding excellence and fruitfulness. They accept a peaceful intransigence and a less-threatening inertia rather than pushing for action.

Moreover, the expectation that everyone must know and approve gives tremendous power to discontented members. The whole church can be held hostage by a few people who object. Regrettably, meeting everyone’s expectations slows down processes and expands the size and number of committees.

The desire to please everyone is a prescription for decline. Leaders must be able to handle the stress of occasionally disappointing people. Growing churches reach a point where no one person knows everything that’s going on. The insistence that someone, or everyone, must know everything limits growth.

The expectation that everyone has to know everything both reveals and fosters lower trust. If laity do not trust staff, the finance committee has no confidence in the mission team, the council questions the motivations of the day school, and old-timers mistrust newcomers, then the church creates a system overpowered by rules, prescribed procedures, slow processes, and long circular sequences of permission seeking.

Changing this expectation requires a conscious decision, and it demands a higher level of trust and maturity. It requires leaders who can let go when it’s appropriate to let go. As one long-time layperson told me, “Sometimes I have to let go in order for someone else to take hold.”

Robert Schnase is Bishop of the Missouri Conference of the United Methodist Church. This article is excerpted from his most recent book, Just Say Yes! Unleashing People for Ministry (Abingdon Press, 2015), and used by permission. The book is available at Cokesbury or Amazon. Read more…

Connect

Quotable Leadership:
The missional congregation understands that while the idea of the kingdom of God is eternal, the way that vision gets expressed and lived out will change.[F. Douglas Powe, Jr.]

Help Prevent Clergy Sexual Misconduct

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The Right Question
Leaders do not need answers. Leaders must have the right questions.
Two questions used during some annual staff reviews are:
On what do you wish you could spend more time?
On what are you now spending time, or too much time, without proportionate results?
Want more Right Questions? Check out “Right Questions for Church Leaders, Volumes 1–4.”
Editors: Lovett H. Weems, Jr., and Ann A. Michel. Production: Carol Follett
Lewis Center for Church Leadership of Wesley Theological Seminary.
4500 Massachusetts Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20016 United States

(202) 885-8757 | lewiscenter@wesleyseminary.edu
Lewis Center for Church Leadership

Wesley Theological Seminary

4500 Massachusetts Avenue NW

Washington, DC 20016 United States
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