This month’s Vestry Papers shares somewhat similar stories from congregations across our church. All faced real challenges. Some related to issues inside the church: leadership transitions, declining membership, decreased income, and rising operating costs. Others involved community issues: how could a small congregation contribute in a meaningful way to bring about needed change in their communities?
What the creative models for ministry these congregations adopted have in common is the increased involvement of lay leaders in all aspects of church life.
Listening to these stories, what I heard repeatedly was the more people are involved in the life of the church, the more their experience of church expands. And, especially in our smallest churches when the prospect of growth is often off the table, there is an increased focus on the congregation’s role in the community.
Our August stories include:
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Even though the official end of summer isn’t until September 1, the signs of the final dog days are here. Back-to-school sales. Last trips to the beach. Baskets of tomatoes and zucchinis in the parish hall, free for the taking.
As one season nears its end, machinations for the next one begin. Congregations are planning for the fall, scheduling Rally Days or potlucks to kick-off the Sunday School year. In our congregation, we’re blessed to have a part-time (8-10 hours or so a week) Christian formation director who has tons of experience. On Sunday, after worship, she gathered folks who were interested in adult Sunday School to talk about the curriculum for the fall. She presented three very different options (one with homework, another using DVDs, one that explored on a single book in the Bible). She asked the class for discussion and feedback.
Then came the interesting part: she told the group that they had to choose which course they wanted to study. She wasn’t making the decision.
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Congregations need leaders who can offer more than just a quick fix.
Is the temperature heating up in your congregation? And not in a good way?
While it is unlikely that conflict will ever disappear, the way we respond may make the difference between healthy - and perhaps difficult - conversations and shouting matches where both sides shut down. The articles and resources in this July midmonth digest offer strategies and techniques for managing conflict that allow for all to be heard and keep the focus on discerning a way forward.
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Welcome summer! For many congregational leaders, the church’s program year has ended providing opportunities to catch our breaths, sort out and through things undone, and take some time off. For many of us, it is also a time for review and reflection and a time to think about changes for the coming program year.
Our July and August Vestry Papers articles all relate to change. Included are the experiences of churches of various sizes, including the tiny congregation found on the Penders and Saturna Islands in British Columbia as well as contributions from clergy and laity. And, as has become our practice, each article includes a recommended action your congregational leadership team might want to try.
Our articles this month include:
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This past Sunday was Social Media Sunday, an effort began by Laura Catalano and Carolyn Clement that, judging by my Twitter and Facebook feeds, gained quite a bit of traction. Everyone from my dad (who is an Episcopal priest in Joplin, Missouri) to the Presiding Bishop participated. You can see some of those tweets from around the country here and here.
However you may feel about using social media during church, you can probably appreciate the community supporting each other in this endeavor. I am happy to see the Episcopalians sharing and speaking to each other across great distances.
In an earlier post I mentioned Richard Beck’s thoughts on using social media as a sacrament, and I think you can see this in yesterday’s posts. The photos and prayers were signs of life and grace, evidence of the wide variety of passionate people who attend Episcopal churches every Sunday and who are doing all they can to spread the Gospel.
This, I think, was also an example of many people saying yes to trying something new. Maybe some found that using social media was disruptive and will never tweet during the sermon again, but I think a willingness to try new things is part of a healthy church. Many Episcopalians have our critical voices turned way up, leading us to say no to anything that isn't tried and true or has not been thoroughly theologically vetted. And yet, sometimes I think we should simply say yes.
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Intentional conversation, listening & reflection.
“At 30, 50, or 70, who do you want to be?” Malcolm Boyd asks this question in his recent article of the same title.
I was struck by this, realizing that I hadn’t thought that far out, at least not in a long time. With my vocation as a lay professional, I couldn’t help but also wonder where the Church would be as well.
With change happening at an ever increasingly rapid pace around us, our congregations can no longer afford to strategically plan five, ten, or even more than a year or two ahead. Worse though, many congregations find themselves stuck, paralyzed, or in some manner unable to move.
Yet we can keep up by shifting to thinking strategically, and discernment is an important component of this. In the following articles and resources, we invite you to enter into intentional conversation, listening and reflection to help you move forward, finding the hopeful vision for the future of your congregation.
Malcolm closes his article with a question and challenge I’d like to put to you as well, “Can we allow our life to open up? There's no moment like the present."
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The church blogosphere is heating up. The topic is death… the death of the Church…or to be more accurate this issue is a question: “Is the Church dying? Or not?”
Of course, everyone has an opinion. And I do mean everyone (including me, but I’m getting ahead of myself), and as a colleague of mine once said, “not a thought goes unpublished…” I must have read a have a dozen of these blog posts (at least) in the last several weeks alone…even tossed in a couple of my own. Opinions run the gamut. Some of my friends say, “Yes.” Some of my friends say, “No.” Some of my friends say, “Maybe so.”
The latest one I read, moments ago, was one by the Rev. Jason Cox of St. Columba’s, D.C., “
The Church Isn’t Dying, Christendom Is.” And he makes some good points, among them that (a)
we are way too anxious about this “dying church” business and (b)
good riddance to Christendom, which never was the kingdom of God anyway but the institutional Church getting into bed with the Powers That Be.
I come down a little bit differently on this. (I know…you wouldn’t have it any other way.)
As usual, in large part I agree with my friends…on both sides. I say “The Church is ALWAYS Dying” and “The Church will NEVER die.”
Here are a few facts:
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I find myself intrigued by the idea of “open source church”. What happens when we open the doors, hand out keys, and give a wider variety of our neighbors a shot at creating what happens in church? Not just a voice in the planning of programs that the church leadership has already decided to do -- actual creating from scratch.
My experience at St. Mary’s in Los Angeles is that interesting things happen. We’re not all the way to an open source model by any means, but more and more of what happens, especially during the week, takes shape outside the traditional sources of authority and responsibility within the church. Language classes, music lessons, dance groups, community meetings, community gardens, band practice, and basketball, now all happen without direct participation from vestry, rector, staff, or even longstanding members of the congregation.
People are even solving problems on their own. Not too long ago, a group was cooking in the kitchen for a community event. They mentioned later that they had had a little problem with a clogged toilet. Not to worry, however, they had cleaned up all the water, called a plumber, and it was all taken care of. I should let them know if there were any further problems.
I find myself imagining how this all might unfold -- growing to include worship and other central aspects of traditional church life. It’s exciting, and a little scary.
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I pride myself on an ability to multitask. But I also resent when the unexpected takes me away from my well-laid plans.
During breakfast, my dining companion talked about a willingness to be open to the work of the Spirit. A one-time parish secretary, she embraced a “theology of interruption.”
And I began to pray right there that I could practice this philosophy. See, I’m easily frustrated by interruption. When traffic jams up my schedule, I’m annoyed. When I’m hip-deep in crafting a difficult sentence, I don’t want to answer the phone or talk about expense reports or answer inventory questions. When I’m reading a great novel, I don’t want to hear how one child said something mean to the other.
Leave me alone. I have plans here. Can’t you see I’m busy?
Yet what could happen if I saw interruption as opportunity? If I started looking for God in those moments instead of cursing under my breath? If I created space for the Spirit to introduce me to something new and wonderful?
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Sometimes the hardest part about rebuilding is tearing down.
Most of our churches are longstanding institutions, with dearly held traditions about firmly ensconced expectations. Making changes requires a delicate touch.
A case in point: Our congregation has moved to mission and ministry committees. With an average Sunday attendance of about 200, we’re moving from pastoral to program-size. But, as with all transitions, we’re experiencing some of the pains that come with growth and change.
The vestry and other key leaders worked for several months to discuss the future of the church, including its structure and administration. They determined committees were an important feature. They decided which committees were needed. Recommendations were requested and given for members of each committee. One of the key purposes of the committees is to spread the leadership of the congregation from a small group to a larger one. The committees are designed to empower and encourage members, to give them voice and a stake in the ministry of the church. Already, we’ve discovered talents, generated creative ideas, and witnessed the work of the church spread among eighty or so people, instead of the vestry and a handful of devotees.
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The soap in the hotel seemed to be missing something. Specifically, the center.
I flipped over the box of this hole-y soap and learned that it was an environmental effort “designed to eliminate the unused center of traditional soap bars.”
It’s not a bad idea, really. At our house, the nubbin’s of the soap bar get thrown away. I don’t think it’s the whole center, but there’s definitely some waste.
Several years ago, I heard a story on the radio about how Coca Cola moved into the bottled water business. The company purified water as part of the process of creating the soft drinks. When bottled water started trending, someone at the company realized they already had all of the elements in place. All they needed was different packaging.
So what can doughnut-shaped soap and Dasani bottled water offer to our churches? An invitation to creative thinking.
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Earlier this week several congregants from St Lydia's gathered in our new space armed with cardboard and packing tape. We recently signed a lease on an empty storefront and are working with an architect on the design of the new space, so we made rough mockups of the table and counters and placed tape where some of the benches and other furniture might go. We walked around it a bit and made some observations and decisions about what worked and what didn't, which we'll take back to the architect.
It was helpful to stand in the space and physically try things out. It's a reminder that sometimes talking through ideas and looking at plans isn't enough, sometimes thinking ideas through requires movement and experimentation.
There are many ways to do this. Recently, I went to a brainstorming meeting at work that included toys scattered on the meeting room table simply to give us some inspiration and loosen us up a bit. We wrote on large notepads and used stickers to indicate which ideas we liked best.
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They came in their baseball jersey and pants, cap tucked into the belt. They came with soccer shorts underneath the choir robes, and they processed with hair primly pulled into a bun for an afternoon recital. One wore riding boots for an afternoon session at the horse barn; another schemed for a play date.
But they came.
These children with lives as busy and overscheduled as their parents came to church on Palm Sunday. They sang with the choir, played handbells, collected the offertory as acolytes. They shook hands with the adults around them at the peace and knelt at the altar, receiving the Body and Blood of Christ. And if some had to slip out before the recessional hymn to catch the start of the game, so be it. Their priority was clear: they were here. Worship was an important part of the day.
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What’s hiding under your basket?
When I was a child, I messed up the words to the ever-enduring song, “This Little Light of Mine.” (A confession: I’m a serial offender as a lyric slaughterer. I thought for years that The Bangles were singing "just another man named Monday" -- instead of "Manic Monday." But I digress). My flub for this children’s song came with the hiding. I was certain that the song’s words encouraged us to stop hiding our light under a bush (oh, no!). It made a lot more sense when I learned that it was a bush-el (basket).
Of course, knowing the words and living them are two different things. Despite the admonition in the Gospel of Matthew, I hide my light all the time. I suspect our churches do too.
This morning, I had a wonderful experience of what can happen when we remove the basket. I wrote a meditation for Forward Day by Day that appeared in yesterday’s edition. In it, I explained the staff of Forward Movement gathers each day and reads the daily reflections. But more importantly we pray together. I mentioned that many of these prayer requests come from an online prayer chapel that we host.
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Back in October, as all of us were getting ready for another round of annual fundraising and budget-making, I wrote about an experiment we were preparing to launch at St. George’s, Valley Lee. “We’re ditching the pledge drive,” I wrote. “Instead, we’ll send every member a box of donation envelopes with a letter. …We will share some real numbers and tell them how much our annual operating expenses are projected to be for 2014, how many households are receiving boxes of envelopes, and what a helpful average annual donation would be.”
Because, being an experiment, I didn’t want to lead anyone down an unguided path, I quickly added a caveat: “I’m not offering this new approach as something every church should do or even consider.” At the same time, however, I wagered, maybe hoped that this would bear fruit.
It’s the end of the first quarter of the new year, so let me share some metrics and modest successes along the way.
First, as in all things, communication has been key. It’s not just communication, however; it’s really clarity. Let me be clear: this is not, nor has it ever been, a campaign to raise more money. This is and has always been a campaign to expand the capacity of our membership and enlarge our understanding of the makeup of the parish. If it translates to an increase in giving, that’s well and good.
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Sometimes I wonder if what we really want in our churches are seat fillers.
Seat fillers are an LA institution. When the season of televised awards shows rolls around, certain production challenges arise: among them, what to do with unsightly empty seats that occur when people get up to go to the bathroom.
Enter the seat fillers.
An acquaintance who scored tickets to one of the lesser awards shows described leaving his seat and coming back to find it occupied by a beautiful and impeccably dressed woman. Not an award show veteran, he wasn’t sure how one handled such a problem gracefully. But she popped up without a word, leaving as quietly as she had come.
She was a seat filler -- an attractive human who may or may not have been paid to keep the audience full while our friend used the restroom. At a big show like the Oscars, no payment is required. People vie for seat-filling gigs, work connections, buy new tuxes, all for the chance to be in the glittering theater for the big event.
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On Saturday, my church, St. Lydia’s, had our community meeting, which happens twice a year. We go over financial reports and talk about the future, and occasionally vote on something (though we did not have anything to vote on at this meeting).
Because our membership is still pretty informal, congregants planning to come to the meeting identify their interest by filling out a piece of paper on a Sunday beforehand that says either, “I am a committed member of the community and ready to come to the meeting and vote” or “I am ready to attend the meeting but not ready to vote yet. “
This process provides each congregant a moment of conscious discernment about his/her place in the community. Each of us must ask ourselves, am I committed to this church, and do I feel ready to help make decisions for the community.
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In elementary and middle school, we learn about the importance of being good citizens. We place a high value on civic-mindedness, on tending to your community and neighbors.
But we often lose sight of this value when it comes to our churches and leaders. Too often, we want to hoard the talent of our priests, staff, and lay leaders. The thinking falls somewhere along the lines of, “We’re paying them to work in our church, diocese, agency, etc. Not to gallivant off to some other congregation for a training program or to serve on a diocesan committee or to assist with decision-making and planning on a church-wide level." I suspect there’s a latent sense of not-enough-ness. If our priest/staff member/bishop/lay leader is spending time helping someone else, he or she might not have enough time for me/my family/our church.
I hear those concerns. And it is important to maintain a balance between the primary place of service and ministry beyond that location. But we are called to minister to the Church (capital C) and to the world. Our baptismal vows do not limit us. We don’t promise to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship only in our neighborhoods. Our response to seeking and serving Christ in all persons is not, “I will, but only where I worship (or get paid).” Rather we are called to serve Christ in all people, to respect the human dignity of every human being.
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As we know online learning is making some serious headway these days. 77% of U.S. corporations use online learning as a part of their continuing education and in recent years institutions of higher education have been investing in online learning at a rate of 10-1 compared to investments in traditional learning venues. The Church has been using a variety of vehicles to incorporate digital formation into their Christian formation programs for several years, the work done by Virginia Theological Seminary, and their second annual eformation conference coming up in June testifies to the increasing interest the church has in this way of learning.
Online learning works for several reasons, including 1) expert instruction, 2) convenience, and 3) affordability. There are a variety of channels our parishes are trying, including individual online classwork, parish-based online schools, as well as something our company, ChurchNext tried in January - a MOOC or 'massive, open, online class'-style of learning - which was no sure thing. As we know, the bubble seems to have burst for the MOOC.
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Ten would have been considered a success.
But when twenty-six women showed up for a Saturday morning retreat sponsored by the Episcopal Church Women, the numbers alone were enough to make the group take notice.
I suspect that many ECW groups (and other committees in the church as well) are doing some soul searching. As demographics continue to shift, the ECW of our mothers may not make as much sense in today’s context. But I’m also convinced that ECW can have an important role in the life of a congregation, and importantly, in the lives of the women in that community.
The ECW at our church has become the catch-all. Basically, if it involves women, it’s seen as broadly under the umbrella of the ECW. In part, this happened because of the amazing generosity of women in the church, women who were willing to volunteer oodles of time for all manner of events, from the spaghetti suppers to the raffle parties, from book clubs to wine tastings.
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