Missionary Renegade: Alban Weekly for Monday, 2 February 2015 "New Questions for a New Day" by Jeffrey D. Jones

Monday, February 2, 2015

Alban Weekly for Monday, 2 February 2015 "New Questions for a New Day" by Jeffrey D. Jones

"New Questions for a New Day" by Jeffrey D. Jones
It's time to start asking new questions. Better answers to the same old questions about the church will not get us through the tumultuous times in which we live. This is a time for out-of-the box thinking. Old questions keep us in the box. New questions invite us to move outside.
Phyllis Tickle, in The Great Emergence, talks about the need for today's church to have a rummage sale so we can rid ourselves of all those practices, beliefs and ways of being that are no longer effective and get in the way of being the church we are called to be.
Many of the questions we have asked for centuries in the church need to be put in that rummage sale. They need to be replaced with new questions that lead us into new ways of being and doing - ways that are attuned to the time in which we live.
It's not that the old questions weren't valid at one time or even that they have no place in the church today. Rather, the new questions, if they are the questions that form our approach to ministry,will lead us to new insights and new learning.
One question that has been asked consistently through the years, and even more so in these days of declining church membership is, "How do we bring them in?" It would be better for us to ask, "How do we send them out?"
In these days of changing roles and responsibilities many wonder, "What should the pastor do?" But a more important question for congregations today is "What is our shared ministry?"
When congregations focus on strategic planning they ask, "What's our vision and how do we implement it?" What would happen if they instead asked, "What's God up to and how do we get on board?"
When congregations have financial struggles, they ask, "How do we survive?" Instead they might ask, "How do we serve?"
When congregations think about their mission, they often ask, "How do we save people?" or perhaps, "How do we help people?" A better question might be "How do we make the reign of God more present in this time and place?"
There are no "right" answers to these new questions that can be applied to all congregations. Every congregation needs to live with the questions, because it is only in living with them that new ways being and doing church emerge. The familiar line from Rainer Maria Rilke in Letters to a Young Poet can guide us: "Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, one distant day live right into the answer."
If you ask these questions there is no assurance that you'll find the way to renew, revitalize or redevelop your church. It may happen. But you may just as likely discover that asking these questions takes you down a road to some other alternative that you hadn't even thought of before. What I feel pretty confident about, however, is that asking these new questions will bring us closer to discovering what God is seeking from us in this time. I also believe asking these new questions will help ensure that whatever the future holds for us and our congregations we will be more faithful in the work we are about right now. And that is a pretty wondrous thing! [Jeffrey D. Jones is a pastor in the American Baptist Church and the author of several books, including Heart, Mind, and Strength: Theory and Practice for Congregational Leadership. His latest book, Facing Reality, Finding Hope: New Possibilities for Faithful Churches, will be published by Alban Books later this month.]

Monday, 2 February 2015

Facing Decline, Finding Hope is a powerful book for leaders who want to honestly assess the size of their church and plan for faithful, invigorating service regardless of whether membership numbers are up or down.
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Encounters with difference are the measure of faith. How a person of one faith approaches persons with other beliefs reveals the heart of their religious conviction. In the Face of Difference offers a basis for constructive response, demonstrating how one can honor people of another faith by living fully into one's own.
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From the Alban Archive: Mission, Vision and Planning
Congregational Readiness for Visioning and Planning
Robert Leventhal

Before I agree to work with a planning team, I determine if the leadership is ready for the test. Congregations are different. Some are doing great and don’t need to do developmental planning now. Others lack a readiness to plan. I have developed some characteristics of successful planning teams for leaders to consider. If a congregation does not have enough of these assets, they may need to set more modest goals. They may not be a candidate for serious planning. Even if they feel they are ready, many still struggle with key issues related to readiness. Look for signs of readiness for planning. Have a mental checklist: Do we have board approval? Is the clergy on board? Do we have planning chairs? Do we have a budget?

There are three key elements to sustain change: honest assessment of the present, hopeful vision of the future, and practical steps to move forward. Although you may find that everything appears ready on the surface, one of the challenges is to try to understand the deeper readiness of the culture for change. All congregations have informal norms that they don’t articulate. There are also deep, unconscious (tacit) norms that they may not be aware of. The planning team must be humble about the ability of new plans to overcome the underlying DNA of the congregation. Planners need to check readiness but to expect surprises.

Let’s look at some of the factors to consider.

1. Clergy Must Be Supportive, Enthusiastic, and Committed to Planning

While the administration and lay leadership play key roles, if the clergy is not committed, it will be hard to sustain change. Programmatic initiatives that require professional staff to follow up may lose focus. Key members of the leadership supporting change may go unsupported or even be actively resisted. When the rabbi or pastor is not ready, it does not make sense to embark on visioning and planning.

2. There Must Be Urgency for Change

Some congregations are performing quite well. They may be in a great location with wonderful demographics for new members. They may have experienced and effective professional and lay leadership. The congregation has direction and is working effectively. These congregations may feel that their current governance and the leadership and management tools they have are quite adequate. They do not feel the need to mobilize co-planners or take the time to do visioning and planning. They may simply want a small long-range planning committee to upgrade financial plans.

3. Key Lay Leaders Must Be Committed to Planning

There is seldom well-defined readiness for leadership development programs. Even when I get a contract to work with a congregation on visioning and planning, the leaders usually have an incomplete agreement. Some do not endorse the plan. Others actively oppose the process. Still others are passive-aggressive. They will listen attentively but not agree to work on implementation. I try to review the plan with the core leadership and then ask for a meeting with the board. The entire leadership community needs to work through the issues. This models the kind of consensus-building skills needed in the process later.

4. There Needs to Be a Financial Commitment to Planning

Planning requires resources. Even if a congregation self-guides their process, they will need to budget for meals, the preparation of materials, etc. This requires a planning budget. The process of getting some money in the next year’s budget for planning will bring all of the other readiness issues into better focus. When the board has to vote on spending the money, they will dig deeper to explore their readiness.

5. Planning Should Not Be Directly Competing with Other Major Projects

During visioning and planning, congregations need to be focused. They cannot be distracted by another major congregation-wide project. If they are in the midst of doing a capital campaign or at the start of a building campaign, they may not be ready. Their focus needs to be on the other task. There is seldom enough energy to do both tasks. In this kind of situation, I would suggest a short-term leadership development training rather than a whole congregational visioning plan.

6. Planning Requires Some Capacity for Creativity

Some congregations have little capacity for creative vision exercises. They are so resistant to change that they won’t allow creative stakeholders room to brainstorm. They tend to interrupt brainstorming verbally or nonverbally. They discourage creative thinking in group sessions. Older established leaders remind new leaders that their ideas “have been tried before.” They provide background information on why the culture won’t respond to a proposed idea. I put a premium on creativity and collaborative learning to help overcome the reluctance of some stakeholders.

7. Planning Requires a Tolerance for Feedback

Some congregations are not used to getting feedback. They don’t have much of a history of trust. It follows that these groups are often reluctant to empower new individuals or groups. Empowered groups will provide the leadership with the opportunity for new energy and creativity (as I noted above), but they will also ask questions, raise concerns, and provide some challenging feedback.

8. Planners Need Conflict Management Skills

Potential visioning and planning congregations should not be in the midst of a high-level conflict. It is too difficult to recruit participants when people are in warring camps. Visioning and planning requires a lot of energy. You have to sell others on the value of the planning and its value to the congregation. Planning is somewhat abstract. Congregations need to trust the assumptions and processes. In a culture where relationships are strained and conflicts are raging, it is hard to get people to trust you. If you have a major conflict, it is important to delay visioning and planning and work to acknowledge the conflicts and mediate the concerns of the various parties. After six months it may be possible to start some parts of visioning and planning. At some point the community needs to begin to focus more on the future and less on the past. Visioning and planning can be a helpful bridge from the period of conflict to the period of promise, but visioning stirs the congregational pot. Congregations need sufficient health to manage what bubbles up.

Taking the Right Journey

Some congregations are not ready to do planning. Most can gain from a board retreat that helps clarify values and goals. Many could build on this with a series of leadership development workshops. Most could gain insight into their position, their identity, and their challenges and opportunities by doing parlor meetings. Congregations need to reflect on their readiness and find the leadership-development tasks they have energy and capacity for.

Copyright © 2008, the Alban Institute. All rights reserved. We encourage you to share Alban Weekly articles with your congregation. We gladly allow permission to reprint articles from the Alban Weekly for one-time use by congregations and their leaders when the material is offered free of charge. All we ask is that you write to us at alban@div.duke.edu and let us know how Alban Weekly is making an impact in your congregation. If you would like to use any other Alban material, or if your intended use of Alban Weekly does not fall within this scope, please submit our le=”Reprint Requests” href=”https://rowman.com/Action/Search/RL/alban%20books”>reprint permission request form.

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Knowing Your Community, Defining Your Mission
Joy Skjegstad

Getting to know the community that your congregation will focus on is a critical step in defining your mission. To start, work on getting answers to several key questions: What are the primary issues in your community? How do the people in the community want the church to respond to those issues? And probably most important: do the people in your community actually want the ministry you are proposing? Your congregation will be most successful if you can answer yes to this question.

It is pretty easy to stay within the four walls of the church and make assumptions about the lives of the people in the broader community. It is more difficult to actually build relationships with community residents and grow in your understanding of their needs and desires. It takes more time, too.

There are tremendous advantages, however, to building your congregation’s ministries on what the community says it wants. If you take the time to build these relationships, your congregation will focus its efforts on meeting unmet needs rather than duplicating what other groups are already doing. You will also have a strong foundation for sustaining your programs; strong relationships with your community make it easier to recruit participants and volunteers and raise money.

Sunny Kang, pastor of Woodland United Methodist Church in Duluth and a partnership advocate for the Self Development of People Committee (PCUSA), describes a process that one of his churches used to get to know the community:

A church I was pastor of did research for six months before we opened our doors to the community. We talked to the kids at the high school next door to the church and asked them, “What is the problem in the community, what can we do to help, how can we serve you?” They were real reticent at first, but eventually they did tell us “there are a few things you could do.”

We ended up opening the church to kids during lunch because there were 450 students in two of the lunch periods and the school could only accommodate 200 of them. So 200 to 250 kids had to leave the school building every day for lunch, even in 20-below-zero weather in the winter. So we opened our building and served lunch. It started slowly at first, but grew so that we had 250 to 350 kids in the church building every day during the week. Too many churches say, “We think the people in the community need this,” and they impose their value system on the people. Community residents often end up saying to the church, “Who asked you to do this?” You need to keep asking—is there a market for what we say the community might need?

So how can you get to know the community? I am not necessarily defining community as a geographic area, though many congregations are focused on a neighborhood, town, or region. Your community might be a certain group of people—for example, people living with HIV/AIDS. Here are some strategies to help you connect with the people your congregation aims to serve.

Connect with key leaders of the community on a one-to-one basis and build relationships with them. They will be able to introduce you to others you need to know and will help educate you on the needs and desires of the community. Start by asking them to teach you about the community. Everyone likes to share what he or she knows. Key leaders could include:

political leaders

denominational staff

pastors of other churches

law enforcement officers

staff at the neighborhood public school

leaders of other congregations

program specialists in the program area that is your focus (for example, youth development, family counseling, or chemical dependency treatment)

Read the demographic data and relevant studies. Census data is valuable to ministries that are geographically based because it gives a breakdown of the area by age, race, gender, and income level. There may also be written assessments of the need you are trying to address, so you do not need to start from scratch. Public schools could have valuable demographic information on your community, as could the local chamber of commerce, business associations, or neighborhood groups. Searching the Internet may help you find university research on your focus area. You might be able to find studies and statistics on infant mortality, employment and graduation rates, or housing trends that could help you focus the mission of your congregation.

Connect with the community through your church members. Members of your church may live in the area you aim to serve or work in professions that would provide needed contacts. For example, if your downtown church wants to provide an outreach to the business community through the congregation, business leaders in your church could help you accomplish your goal.

Join community organizations or boards. If a group of people from the community is working on an issue you would like to address, consider joining the group. As you work side by side, you will hear community concerns articulated over and over again. You will also build new relationships with community leaders; for example, a crime task force for the neighborhood or town you hope to serve would be a great place to connect. Always ask: What can the church do to support the neighborhood?

Attend community meetings. When community members get together for discussions or celebrations, make sure there is at least one member of your church in attendance. You may want to consider building a portable booth for community events to promote the visibility of the congregation.

Walk around the community. There is no substitute for seeing the people of your community and their needs with your own eyes. If you are open to spontaneous conversations, you will learn a great deal from people you meet on the street. Find out where people “hang out” in your community—it could be the neighborhood park or the diner in your rural town. If your community is not geographically based, just plan on being in attendance whenever the people of your “community” get together. It might be a national conference on a particular topic or a denominational gathering.

Gather the opinions of the community. If the people you want to serve have a positive impression of the church, they may be willing to participate in a survey or focus group. Invite some folks over for dinner at the church and ask them what they think. Brief door-to-door surveys might also do the trick. Try to find a volunteer who has the expertise to help you develop a survey. For instance, there may be someone in your congregation who has worked with focus groups. Also, your local neighborhood organization or United Way might be able to advise you on how to design a questionnaire. Questions for surveys or focus groups should focus around the questions: What do you see as the major issues for this community? How would you like to see this church respond to those issues? How can the church serve you?

Taking a big dream and molding it into a mission can be exhausting work. In my experience, the dream stage is more fun, because working on the mission brings home the stark reality of just how much work needs to be done. But try to think of it this way: developing the mission gives “legs” to your dream, helping people outside of your congregation understand what it is you are trying to do. As more people understand your dream and become committed to making it a reality, this helps the dream take flight.

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When the Mission Changes
Dan Hotchkiss

Alban at Duke Divinity School is grateful to partner with a number of organizations who resource congregations in a variety of ways. Former Alban consultant Dan Hotchkiss reflects on the tradition of Alban consulting and the ongoing ministry of the Congregational Consulting Group.

For the former Alban consultants, the time since the closure of the Alban Institute has been a little like a change of pastors. In addition to the classic signs of grief and transition, we’ve had to ask ourselves what, actually, the Alban tradition in consulting is. Like congregants on the first Sunday after the old clergy leader leaves, we’ve had to look at one another and ask, “Who are we now?”

On a practical level, the consultants who are part of the Congregational Consulting Group help congregations with strategic and financial planning, board governance, staff team design and supervision, size transitions, and conflict transformation. We also offer coaching for individual leaders. Each of us works independently. If you need a consultation, you can contact any of us by way of our shared website. One of us will help you think about what kind of consultation might be helpful—and from whom.

The process of discovering and rediscovering identity is never finished, but I’d like to share with you some of our tentative conclusions—aspirations, actually—about what the Alban tradition in consulting means to us and how we embody that tradition now.

We believe in congregations. Alban’s mission was to “build up congregations and their leaders to be agents of grace and transformation…” We affirm this goal and the expectation it implies: that every congregation, by fulfilling its unique mission, can make its community a better place. It is not always easy to discern that mission, still less to find the resources—divine and human—to fulfill it. But congregations, almost alone among the institutions in our culture, gather people of all ages for a dual purpose: to heal and comfort them and then to challenge and recruit them into lives of service.

We believe in your congregation. We work across a wide spectrum of religious groups in North America and beyond. We know that before we can help your congregation to improve, we need to understand and appreciate your culture, your faith, and the trajectory of your common life. The next chapter of your history has to be the next chapter of your history. To help you to accomplish this, we offer a variety of methods, options, and perspectives. The critical ingredient is one that only you can bring: your congregation’s calling and identity. And so we offer, in addition to our skills and toolkit, a fundamental trust that every congregation has a calling and can find it.

People often express surprise that we can work with such a wide variety of synagogues and churches—and it can be challenging. But more often, our work stretches our own sympathies and deepens our own faith in unexpected ways.

We don’t go for simple answers. Too many consultants come into every situation with a hammer and find only nails. This can be useful, and we too sometimes offer proven answers to frequently encountered problems. But when congregations aim to do something difficult, like breaking out of a long-standing patterns or rising to new levels of accomplishment, we’re skeptical of easy answers. Instead, we gather a wide range of data, ask a lot of questions, and work to get the “whole system” into conversation. We have found that while this process can seem slow, it often makes for unexpectedly deep change.

We offer knowledge and insight from outside your congregation. Alban pioneered the practice of applying insights from secular organizational scholarship to congregations. We have also always helped each congregations to benefit from the experience of others—especially those outside of their particular faith tradition. When we gather for “community of practice,” we consultants challenge one another’s pat assumptions and pool our joint sense of what is possible. The result places an uncommonly broad base of knowledge, optimism, and creative thinking at the disposal of each client.

These are our values and our way of working. If your congregation has arrived at a point where it could use some outside help—to plan next steps, to assess your processes and structures, to address a conflict or calamity, or to clarify and energize your distinctive sense of calling—we hope you will reach out to us and see if we can be of service.

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