Episcopal Church Foundation Vestry Papers - for leading congregations

Easter brings with it an invitation to explore new life and resurrection in our lives, our congregations, and communities, as well as the wider world of which we are a part. My diocese – Massachusetts – invites us to explore and act on Jesus’ life and resurrection by “Answering God’s Urgent Call. Together.”

What happens however, when you’re having difficulty discerning what it is that God is calling you to do?

After reading 5 Resources for March – Connect with Your Community, the senior warden from a suburban church contacted me. She shared that while her congregation was active and visible in their community, they had “not found a need to fill where we can reach out and engage with the community. Did I have any recommendations for her suburban church?”

Her question has stayed with me, long after writing back with some ideas to consider. Perhaps what would have been more helpful would have been stories related to the different ways churches listen, and learn to look for, things that may not be easily seen or heard.

The power of conversation – and collaboration

Sometimes listening for God’s call involves following our hearts and opening our minds. What in our community – or wider world – is catching our attention?

At Iona-Hope Episcopal, the congregation’s practice of using small groups to manage the usual necessities of a congregation (altar guild, hospitality, office angels), in answer to needs as they arise (adult living facility services, soup kitchen, technology team), and in response to a good idea (book club, memoirs for healing, shawl ministry), also extends to discerning God’s urgent call.
Each August, Iona-Hope’s Justice Ministry small group, in affiliation with the Lee (County) Interfaith for Empowerment or LIFE group, enters a year-long cycle that begins with a series of house meetings where members gather to discuss questions such as “What wakes you up at night” or “What is happening in our local community that aggravates you the most?” In early fall, the group leaders gather to share their findings, beginning a process of narrowing all of the collected issues to two or three. By spring, all of the groups identify one issue to focus on for that year. A research to action group is formed, tasked with researching the issue to further assess the problem and begin to seek solution.

In recent years, this collaborative process has led to changes in public policy related to educational issues as well as law enforcement. Joining together in conversation, listening, and prayer, people of faith across Lee County, Florida are able to hear, and act on God’s urgent call. Together.

Acting on community challenges

The ongoing drought in California is a serious issue, impacting both the people and economy of the state and the nation’s food supply. In the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles, people are making the connection between this crisis and God’s call to heal our hurting world. On World Mission Sunday, the bishop of the diocese invited congregations to join a year-long diocesan “water-tithing” program designed to address the challenges of water insecurity that Los Angeles shares with regions and nations around the world. Congregations and households are provided with specific actions they can take to both reduce their own water consumption by 10% and support overseas work related to water access.

What challenges are impacting your community or region? How do these challenges affect members of your congregation? Your neighborhood? What gifts or resources do you have to offer that might make a difference?

Active listening

When Broadway United Methodist Church in Indianapolis began to question the impact of their outreach programs one of the first things they did was to hire a “roving listener.” This person’s 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.

The more he listened, the more he learned about what people in the neighborhood cared about. He began to listen for people’s gifts. Relationships began to form, bringing the opportunity for honest – and sometimes difficult – conversations related to how people in the neighborhood felt about the way they were treated by the church.

At the same time, church leaders were taking a hard look at the ministries, evaluating their impact and asking whether these programs were making a positive difference.

Through conversations with local health officials, church leaders learned that the primary health problem facing the neighborhood was obesity, not starvation. What they recognized was that much of the food they were sharing through their food pantry – "carbs in a box and peaches in cans of heavy syrup” was contributing to the problem. They started to think about focusing on long-lasting solutions to problems of food insecurity – and including people in the neighborhood in the conversations.

As they evaluated other long-term ministries, they discovered similar disconnects. The efforts they were making to improve people’s lives weren’t impacting the bigger issues facing the community. Understanding that God was calling them to try something different, the congregation elected to close their food pantry, clothing ministry, and after-school tutoring program.

And every other outreach program of the church.

Out of the ashes of these ministries, has risen a new approach. Neighbors were invited to meet with the church’s governing council to talk about what they were up to. Over time, the church became a catalyst for making connections between neighbors with common interests. Various groups formed, ranging from backyard gardeners to people interested in education or music or law as well as a group connecting teen mothers with older women.

Six years later, Broadway UMC’s formerly empty classrooms are filled with a collection of small businesses that rent space and some fledgling organizations that get space for free. The church acquired a commercial kitchen license, opening that space to people from the neighborhood starting catering or other food related businesses. Also meeting regularly in the church are a metropolitan youth orchestra, an eclectic mix of artists, and a large group of gamers. There is a pottery shop and dance studio.

In the faces of the hundreds of people who enter the church each week, Broadway’s facility manager, Cathy Pilarsky, sees something that was missing before: The majesty of God. “God is glorified not only in the sanctuary, but in every corner of the building.”

Who do you serve? With whom do you partner? What are the impacts of your ministries? Do any of them produce unintended consequences?

Making listening a priority

Encouraging and cultivating ongoing congregation-wide conversations about what God might be up to in the church and the neighborhood is central to the listening process. For the past several years, the vestry at St. Matthew’s Episcopal Church in St. Paul, Minnesota has challenged themselves to recast their role, making discernment of God’s call for their congregation central to their ministry. Their report of this work provides other congregations with a model for beginning to identify what God is calling your congregation to do.

Try This:

The process used at Broadway UMC is known as asset based community development. To get started, try this three-part action plan:

Listen
Begin to learn more about your community by paying closer attention to both the people who live there and your environment. This includes individuals of all ages, community groups and associations, organizations, and public and private institutions such as schools, health care centers, recreation facilities. What’s the economic environment like? The natural environment? As you listen and observe, pay attention to the interests, gifts, and talents of the people you meet.

Connect the dots
Look for relationships between ideas, resources, and opportunities. Are there other organizations and individuals doing similar work? Might there be opportunities for partnership? Connecting the dots requires practice and collaboration; no one person can see the whole network.

Take action
Once you have a sense of your community and the issues impacting it, it’s time to begin to transition from listening and connecting to action. Consider inviting people with similar interests to join you in exploring your next steps. Central to asset-based processes is engaging 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 by Cameron Harder.

Resources:

• “Advocacy,” Melanie Barnett Wright, ECF Vital Practices’ Vital Post, October 15, 2013

• Advocacy Resources, ECF Vtial Practices

• Broadway United Methodist Church, Indianapolis, Indiana

• “Cultivating a Culture of Discernment” by Blair Pogue, ECF Vital Practices’ Vestry Papers, July 2010

• “Death and Resurrection of an Urban Church” by Robert King, Faith & Leadership, March 24, 2015

• Discovering the Other: Asset-Based Approaches for Building Community Together, Cameron Harder, Rowman & Littlefield, May 2013

• Episcopal Public Policy Network website

• “Lessons from Babylon,” Christopher Johnson, ECF Vital Practices’ Vestry Papers, January 2012

• “Low Income Communities are not Needy – They have Assets,” John McKnight, Faith & Leadership, January 13, 2015

• “Small Groups, Big Impact” by John Adler, ECF Vital Practices, Vestry Papers, July 2014

• St. Matthew’s Vestry Discernment Process for Annual Meeting

• Diocese of Los Angeles Water Tithe program overview and resources

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