sustain:if:able kiwi

developing change leaders book review – Ch 3 What does it take to lead?

A book review of Paul Aitken and Malcolm Higgs, Developing Change Leaders: The principles and practices of change leadership development. Chapter one here. Chapter two is here.

Chapter three explores what is required to lead change effectively.

One helpful insight is the fact that they need to be able to operate both on the church and in the church, to both performing public skills (ensuring existing functions like preaching, pastoring and organisation) and backstaging (engaging support, working with resistance, influencing the future).

Key phrases keep appearing – “deal with ambiguity” (44), “deal with ambiguity, paradoxes and dilemnas” (45), “facilitative and engaging practices” (55)

The danger lights, especially in regard to some existing church change process, are there if we want to pay attention:

“Might not the continual search for the hero-leader be a critical factor in itself, diverting attention away from building institutions that by their very nature, continually adapt and reinvent themselves, with leadership coming from many people and many places and not just from the top. (45 citing Senge 2002, 64)

When, oh when will the church get over the search for the one dynamic, command/control type leader. When will it realise that their is no magic bullet, that leaders need “not follow a set or common approach to the overall change implementation process.” (49) Instead: “It is only by learning new things about ourselves, our relationships with others and discovering new ways of seeing reality that we can start to implement new [business] practices” (49)

Research of 84 leaders shows “that effective change leadership requires the leaders to have a high level of Emotional Intelligence.” (50)

Over 100 change leadership stories (when, on when might the church collect 100 change stories and use them as one of the data sets for reflecting on leadership. Could we be part of this with the Master of Ministry), showed three broad groups of behaviour, and a subset of behaviours:

• Shaping behaviour – lead by example, expect hard work and enthusiasm, personally persuasive, expecting accountability.

• Framing change – working with others to create vision and direction, explaining, educating and communicating on need for change, giving freedom for innovation within broad frameworks, changing how things get done as well as what gets done

• Creating capacity – developing the skills of others in implementing change, offer feedback and coaching, working across the organisation at all levels, ensure adaptation of reproducible systems.

The change stories indicate that while directive type leaders focus on the first, shaping behavior, this actually negatively reduces the likelihood of change. Yep reduces! By contrast, it is the last two – framing change and creating capacity – that bring long term change.

This data was reduced to four core change leadership principles:

• attractor – creates energy for change by connecting with others emotionally to embody the future, creates compelling story, weaves it to make sense of the life of the organisation, seeks good of the organisation above their own, able to adapt their leadership
• edge and tension – amplifies disturbance by telling truth, is constant in tough times, challenges assumptions, stretches people, grows talented people
• creates a container – holds the tension around the change by managing expectations, faces conflict, encourages, creates safe space to take risks, seeks alignment of resources
• transforming space – creates movement by showing commitment, is vulnerable in a way that frees people to new possibilities, breaks existing patterns and challenges systems.

I’ve just spent 3 days and over 20 hours with 15 students. The topic was change and the leadership question sat with me all week. How to develop these people? How to best use the time? Was this the best use of my time? Should instead have been researching change stories? offering ongoing and longterm coaching with a few leaders?

The next chapters might answer these question, as they will turn to explore how to develop change leaders.

developing change leaders book review of chapter 2

A book review of Paul Aitken and Malcolm Higgs, Developing Change Leaders: The principles and practices of change leadership development. Chapter one here.

Chapter 2 The Challenge of change
This chapter explores the challenge of change. It provides a helpful diagram, linking change to what looks like a grief cycle – shock, anger, resistance, acceptance, hope. As with grief, people need time.

This includes noting the potential of resistance:

“Whilst resistance is generally perceived as being a negative within a change process, it is important to consider that resistance can be an indicator that change is having an impact. Furthermore, it surfaces the key issues and concerns which need to be addressed in order to ensure the effective implementation in the long run. Finally, resistance can play a positive role in surfacing challenge and insights which can prove beneficial in achieving the change goals or indeed discovering more appropriate ones.” (31)

Of course, to respond to resistance in this way, and be able to surface such positive possibilities for a change process requires a fairly unique skillset, far removed from “Well, this is what we have decided.”

It also depends on the approach to change, of which 5 are noted:

• Directive: the leader’s right to impose change, which has the disadvantage of breeding strong resentment
• Expert: generally applied to more technical problems, in which a specialist team leads
• Negotiating: accepts that those involved in the change have the right to a say in how the changes are made. It takes longer, but equally is more likely to last longer
• Educative: changing people’s hearts and minds. Again, takes longer but is more likely to last
• Participative: while driven by leaders, all views are considered as change occurs. Again, takes longer but has far greater by in.

They note the shift from linear and programmatic notions, to emergent notions of change, characterised by the appreciation of the entire system, the acceptance that change can start anywhere (and the larger the system, the more likely that large changes begin at the edge), leaders as facilitators instead of drivers of change.

They then analyse over 100 change stories to conclude that change was successful when:

• it was understood as complex
• processes were used that genuinely involve people
• change leaders have the skills to involve people.

saying thanks: turning practices into missional life

This is a most excellent example of helping a community give thanks. It is a church wall at Church of the Trinity Uniting, Goodwood. People are being given (paper) flowers and invited to give thanks.

Over weeks the wall is growing, an emerging symphony of colour. Over weeks what people write seems to be deepening. Over the weeks, people are commenting they are finding themselves becoming more and more intentional about looking for reasons to be thankful in their daily lives. Good stuff. (The pastor, very wisely IMHO, is photographing the wall each week, planning to make it into a movie, to play at years end.)

This became an excellent learning moment in our Missional Church Leadership class (3rd gathering of 10). We were looking at ways to listen and I was talking about appreciative inquiry, the simple practice of saying thanks, as a window into where God’s Spirit might be active. And how the simple act of naming ie saying thanks, gives people an opportunity to further participate.

And at that moment, the photo got passed around and we admired the colour and the effective, yet creative way, of helping people worship.

What intrigues me is how this simple, yet intentional, worship practice might actually be part of the church’s ongoing intentional mission life.

For example: Why not take a note of the recurring themes. Then invite all those who gave thanks over a year to a gathering. Share with them the themes. Get people in groups around questions like what surprises you? Then ask them to think about ways the community could further develop this theme ie be yet more thankful. Perhaps they are thankful for family. Get them to brainstorm ideas, ways they could focus their energy on families. Record the findings and ask if any people want to part of giving their dreams legs.

Start a second year with a second wall. See what happens as you gather people intentionally around what they have identified as important and significant.

Such, I would suggest, is the task of missional leadership:
1. Invite people into missional practices
2. Mirror back to people what is emerging as the practices are lived.
3. Gather conversations about next steps: how then shall we live?
4. Record the findings and return to 1.

It was a great class! (Even without the learning that emerged as another student talked about farm gates. But that’s for another post.)

women and the emerging church. a bibliography

For a number of months I’ve been meaning to compile a list of missional and emerging church writers who are female. I’ve been prompted by a colleague who is doing a post-graduate project on women and the missional church, plus a glance over my Missional Church Leadership bibliography and the realisation that it is still overwhelmingly male. Plus stumbling across this podcast, which is me interviewing Jenny McIntosh back in 2006, on the topic of gender and the emerging church conversation.

Which prompted a brief literature search. My criteria included being recently published and with a focus on mission/evangelism/leadership. Here is the list. Who am I missing? (more…)

summarising Mission Shaped Church: 6 years in

Just out in Great Britian is a report researching the impact of Mission-shaped Church in England. You can download it here. At 40 pages (including appendices), it’s thorough, clear, erudite. A great piece of work.

Here’s some quotes that caught my eye, with some commentary from myself, stranded in no-mans land between Baptist and Uniting world’s.

1. The value of the notion of “mixed economy.”

Most of all, “inherited”, or traditional, understandings of what it means to be Christ’s church, and emerging fresh expressions of church are complementary aspects of a single, coherent ecclesiology. (1) The best of what we have inherited, and a rich outpouring of new creative thinking, are indeed combining in the name of the gospel. For that we thank God. (2)

It’s a fantastic metaphor and so helpful in terms of affirming and valuing what is, yet encouraging space for what is not yet. However, it does require careful attention, given what has happened.

There is a clear pattern emerging with many parish based initiatives appearing on the fringes of inherited churches … They are making the inherited church effective in mission by creating appropriate new church congregations shaped for mission (20) …. they are very valid forms of mission and have brought substantial growth to the church but are insufficient on their own to answer to the missionary task in the nation as a whole. (21)

There are fewer ‘free-standing’ fresh expressions, focused further from the inherited church and working more often with those who are non-churched. This is probably due to the greater levels of resourcing these fresh expressions tend to require. (21)

So the validity of my Opawa experience, planting new expressions as a multi-congregational model. Equally, the validity of what we tried to do at Graceway, planting a new form. And oh the resource issues we struggled with in that context. Oh the pain and energy loss we experienced trying to find a physical building to ground our mission.

2. The creation of a “pioneer stream” including selection, courses, context.

Regarding selection

Specific selection criteria should be established … Those involved in selection need to be adequately equipped to identify and affirm pioneers and mission entrepreneurs.

Regarding courses

[a]ll ministers, lay and ordained … should include a focus on cross-cultural evangelism, church planting and fresh expressions of church.” (6)

Regarding context

“curacy posts should be established where church planting skills, gifting and experience can be nurtured, developed and employed.” (7)

Wouldn’t it be great to see that type of systemic change, in which a church system has fresh expressions in which pioneers can be idenitified, mentored and then placed to be formed in leadership. I recall Al Roxburgh in 2007 summarising our Baptist “Sharpening the edge” new forms as “epiphenomenal.” In my words, a fluke of the Spirit. They happened, often driven by uniquely gifted people. While we must be so grateful for them, what was needed was a denominational system which was intentional about leadership development.

Applied to the Uniting context, I wonder how the categories of mixed economy leaders will play out. How might pioneers be identified, encouraged, mentored, trained, in ways that are mixed – best of the tradition, creative in the new.

3. Importance of lay pioneer training

A pattern should develop that provides training as part of a process of discernment-for-authorization, rather than training subsequent to discernment, or the removal of existing leaders for training elsewhere.” (7) “To turn the vision of a mixed economy church into a reality will take many lay pioneers who will be able and willing to plant fresh expressions as volunteers. The task is too great to rely solely on those who will be called, trained and appointed as ordained pioneers. (16)

This is a huge shift in thinking, but so necessary. At Opawa we were planting our “new forms” as teams, always looking for groupings of people. It was so encouraging to see what were essentially lay people grow in this capacity: Adrian learning to do lectio divina, the Soak team, Paul and Anne in their leading of espresso, the bridge builders like Annette, Hugh, Jenn. So lot’s of resonance with this.

4. The value of church “groupings”

Deaneries (geographic groupings of churches) have the potential to bring together a range of human and financial resources, to consider mission across parish boundaries, and to share prayer and encouragement. (5)

At the risk of being rude, this is where Baptists really struggle. We are so obsessed with local church, that we simply do not have this sort of grouped mission potential. When we gather (at Assembly or as associations), what coheres us is relationships (in contrast to sacraments or creeds). And because our relationships are voluntary, and because they are infrequent, there is little capacity for robust critical reflection and interaction, out of which shared mission can grow. And so we lack this shared synergy for mission.

Arriving in a Uniting context, I am wondering if “synod” can be exchanged for “deanery”? Or is it actually “networks”?

5. Resources

a [mission growth and opportunity] fund as key to the development of fresh expressions (8) … Money alone is clearly not sufficient to establish the mixed economy, but it is an extremely pivotal factor. (19)

While this is obvious, and is the logical consequence of groupings, it is then followed by some fascinating reflection on how funding is used. Shotgun or rifle, and what happens when you pull the trigger?

a plethora of small grands … tended to fund mission that was “focussed on current patterns of ministry, rather than more cutting edge, non-parochial projects.” (18)

a few projects that were “centrally discerned” … were more cutting edge, with a network focus (18)

6. Diffusion of mission-shaped vision throughout the system

“the spread of Mission-shaped Church thinking and practice” through one day courses, six evenings, a one year course, along with books, DVD’s and websites.

the impact and effectiveness of a mission-shaped diocesan strategy is directly related to the level of ownership given to the report’s recommendations by diocesan senior staff … a direct correlation between the seniority of this member of staff and the impact of the [Mission Shaped Church] report on the diocese. (13) Their [bishops] ownership has released a wave of creativity and experimentation within the church as it strives to re-shape itself in response to the call to mission.” (22)

6. Future challenges

there is still a strong bias to a neighbourhood understanding of society over network. (5)

lack of record keeping, with many dioceses have no data base of church plants and fresh expressions.

This seems to be made worse by a lack of clarity about what is a fresh expression.

“120 according to Churchwarden returns 2006, 11 according to the Fresh Expression website, 20 according to my calculation.” (20).

Is the downside of a desire to be mixed and inclusive, the reality that because anything can be fresh, then what was inherited can simply be given a “fresh label”. New paint job solves everything! When in reality, the mission requires so much deeper work, as evidenced by the following:

Ministries among profoundly unchurched people take a long time to create recognisably Christian groups – five years may just be the beginning. Such ministries do not start with worship, but with relationships, shared activity and exploration of life’s values. (27)

All this suggests that the hard work is yet to be seen. A report reflecting on 6 years, which concludes that it takes at least 5 years to see fruit amongst the unchurched.

Hats off to the UK Anglicans and I hope the work of the Spirit in their life, as seen in this report, is an imaginative stimulus to the church family I have been part of, and to the church family I am now on loan to.

And I can’t resist it – to all those using the internet to publicly jump ship on the emerging church, enjoy reading that last quote once again!

Ministries among profoundly unchurched people take a long time to create recognisably Christian groups – five years may just be the beginning. (27)

the last Sunday: mission and church today

And so dawned my last Sunday at Opawa. An ending after six most excellent years. Emotionally it was going to be tough.

Normally the last Sunday in December is the quietest Sunday in the church year, what with the post-Christmas slump and summer holidays. But this service was to include two baptisms, three people welcomed into membership and the commissioning of one missionary. Which was a wonderful way to end.

But it also made the service very awkward to curate, especially with non-churched friends and family turning up for the baptisms. In the end I decided all I could do was acknowledge the parts of the service would mean much for some, but not all, and to ask for Christmas cheer.

I also used boats – origami on seats as people arrived, and the invitation to write a prayer for a person they came to support, or for their own journey. And during the final song, people could come and sail them on the pool that had been made at the front.

Being my last Sunday, I wanted to remind Opawa of our journey mission. Again, not very “unchurched” friendly. But it’s not every day you conclude six years of ministry in a pretty major change project.

So for those interested, here is what I said in terms of mission, church and change. Not attractional, nor super-Christian, simply …. (more…)

Mission and missional: Why “a” and “l” are way more than a typo part 2

Last week I provided a piece on the difference between mission and missional and why that “a” and the “l” were much more than a type. I sought to draw on resources from the Bible and church history.

Today I found this wonderful personal story of what it means to be missional in Pete Ward’s Participation And Mediation: A Practical Theology for the Liquid Church.

I set myself the task of journeying into the world of young people and meeting them in situations where they felt at home. The idea was that I went to their territory. The meant that I was the visitor in a context where they were in control and they set the rules. Needless to say this was not at all easy, but interestingly almost from the start I felt that this kind of ministry was a deeply spiritual practice. Going to young people, rather than asking them to come to me, gave me a strong sense that I was in some way sharing God’s love and concern for the world. In fact more than that, I was struck by the conviction that the Holy Spirit was there with the young people even before I arrived. So I wasn’t just meeting young people, there was also a sense in which I was meeting God.

For more on this book and it’s application to mission.

mission and missional. Why the “a” and the “l” is more than a typo

There is some useful discussion rolling on in the “What is community ministry?” post. I’ve just written a comment, which I think is worth clarifying as a separate blogpost.

It regards the difference between mission and missional. You see, missional is about mission and mission is missional but mission is not missional. Clear aye! 🙂

The Christian impulse for mission is for all time and all place. It emerges from a God of triune love who dwells in relationship, celebrates diversity and is unified in love.

But mission is outworked in different ways. We know this because Scripture give us diverse pictures of mission.

Ruth is the story of God’s work through the outsider; Lamentations is the story of faith in black; Daniel is a story of marketplace faith in exile; Jesus is the wandering prophet; Paul is the community builder; Revelation is the persecuted dreamer.

Or take the book of Acts. In chapter 2, mission is at work as people flock to Jerusalem interested in God and when there are spaces in society where people notice the church. But later in Acts, Paul takes this gospel on the road, is tentmaking and creating cultural connections on Mars Hill. And then he is the suffering prisoner, using his chains to proclaim faith. In each of these, the Christian impulse is mission, but the outworking is diverse.

This is made most clear when we consider the relationship between church and society as it it played out through the Bible. The task of the church is to reform in Dueteronomy, to protest in Mary’s song, to be counter-cultural in lifestyle in 1 Peter. This response is based on how much society listens to the church and whether society has the ear of the powers that be.

This relationship continues to be played out through history. David Bosch in Transforming Mission looks at mission over 2000 years and notes how at different times, different Scriptures became commonly used to describe the mission of the church.

It is this plurality that makes our task exciting today. What Biblical and historical pictures will most accurately encourage and challenge us in this time and place? In Christendom, when the church is at the centre, then “temple models” of being large and attractional work. But the church is no longer at the centre and so we are back to Scripture and church history, wondering what are the texts for our time.

This is what the word “missional” means. It is prophetic voice. First in flagging mission for what is essentially a Christendom church and second in pointing to cultural change – that the 2000’s are not like the 1970’s, and that the relationship of church and society has changed. Given these two factors, missional is a Biblical voice, seeking to excavate the Scriptures that will serve a post-Christendom church.

Hence: missional is about mission. And mission is missional. But mission is not missional because “missional” is the attempt to speak of “mission” today.

Have I confused or clarified myself?

what is a community ministry?

So I’m having a chat. As you do. With a person enthusiastic about mission in their community. ‘

Who has a problem. They run a community ministry. People come, but people don’t transition into church.

I suggested that rather than think about taking people from the community ministry to the church, that they think about taking the church to the community ministry. What would it look like to think about building a community of faith around the ministry? I politely inquired.

Vigourous shake of head. Wouldn’t work, because lots of the people who attend the community ministry go to other churches.

How many, I ask.

70%. 70% attend a church somewhere else.

Oh. Long pause. My mental wheels are turning.

So what makes community ministry a mission? Is it the intention and the hope, that we run this so that people from the community can come? Is it the numbers, when 50%, or 70%, or whatever number, are from the community (and not from another church) then it’s mission? Is it the baptisms or bums on Sunday seats, that it’s worth it when the Denominational stat counter can be clicked?

Personally, being blunt, I think it’s a load of hogs to call something a community ministry, and defend it as missionally important, when the majority of people who attend are already churched. It might be useful and important and have a role – in ecumenism, or community or whatever. But it ain’t mission!

spirituality of change

I sat with my spiritual director last week. Where was God since we last met, was the question. And so I reflected on my sunflower prayer from a few weeks ago:
As the sunflower tracks the sun,
God, help me track your warmth and love this day,
And grow, unfold, bloom,
into my full splendour as your child, Amen.

So what would stop you following God’s warmth through a sun/day, Steve? my director asked. The question floored me. I searched within myself. I fumbled and fudged and we moved on.

Thirty minutes later, we returned. Somehow the conversation slipped back to that same question (sneaky spiritual director). So what would stop you following God’s warmth through a sun/day, Steve?

And I knew the answer. It was time for me to stop looking in and look out. To name what I have been afraid to name. That when external change happens, some people don’t like it. It’s not the same and it’s not the good old days. Change is hard and I don’t understand/agree.

To use the sunflower analogy, other people can stop following the sun. And when they stop following, when they fold their arms, they run the risk of acting in ways that, in fact, can stop others following the sun. This is heightened by my sensitivity and intuition. As I travel through my sun/day, I feel the resistance and as I feel it, I am tempted to stop following the sun, and start tracing the shadow.

Here’s the rub. The cold hard rub. When do I as a leader stop listening to these people? When do you say enough is enough? When do you say, if you are not following the sun, it is quite likely that your input is no longer life-giving to us in our journey of change? (more…)

sense making faith as a great missional resource

Sense Making Faith. Body Spirit Journey is one of the best missional resources I’ve come across in recent years. If asked to explain it in one sentence, I’d call it an Alpha course using the senses, not the intellect. And since God made us whole bodies, Sense making faith is thus a great gift to the church.

I ran the course twice last year, once at Opawa for about 15 people with a range of faith experiences, and once with a local community group working with mental illness. Both time I was astonished at the ability of the course to open conversations, to connect with those inside and outside the church and to enrich people’s lives. The open-ended exercises allowed each group to find a life of their own.

The highlight for me is week one, which introduces the course by inviting people to wonder. One of the exercises involves spreading photos around the room and inviting participants to take the one that most catches their attention. Three simple questions become quite transformative: What caught your attention? What caught the attention of the photographer? How does looking at this make you feel? In so doing, participants are introduced to the heart of the spiritual search: to notice the beauty that surrounds us. And so our eyes, ears, noses, skin and mouths are in fact the gateway by which we can be struck, aroused, challenged by God. This is not an intellect pursuit, but a embodied engagement with the God of life.

Sense making faith originated in the UK. During Lent 09, the BBC are using it as a Lenten resource. A supporting website is here

It’s not a perfect course. The book seems to suffer from an internal conflict. Having started with the challenge to wonder, the book then devotes considerable time and attention to critiquing current church practice, and the lack of attention to the senses in churches today. While the criticism is valid, it turns the initial “hermeneutic of wonder” into a hermeneutic of critique. It also tends to push the resource toward being of more use to those who enter churches, which is a shame. However, this is where the extensive appendix becomes really useful, providing lots of exercises that in fact allow the book to recapture it’s original ethos, a journey of sense making faith. Essentially I bypassed the main material, and simply used the exercises as springboard into shared group learning experiences.

If you’re looking to engage with spiritual seekers, Sense Making Faith is one of the best resources I’ve found. I’m planning to run another course later this year and hoping that this might be a stepping stone to a new congregation, probably based more on monthly retreat days than weekly church services. This is because the course covers 7 weeks (introduction: sight : sound : smell : taste : touch : imagination) and thus it offers a framework through which to keep gathering, not around content, but around what each participant is learning as they simply pay attention to their senses in the journey of life.

missional signs as locally homegrown

One of my concerns about the missional church is the way that it can disappear into ever-tightening theological circles, full of Trinitarian depth and ecclesial rigour, but strangely divorced from the reality of church life and mission. While I don’t want to create a dualism between theory and practice, at heart the missional church is a pretty simple understanding that God is in the world and we’re called to participate in that. In essence that’s the awareness that the Spirit of God is becoming visible, however faintly, among our local and homegrown communities of faith.

So, as I’ve looked around Opawa over the last few weeks, the missional signs I’ve noted have included:

1. The hall smells of cigarette smoke as community people drop by needing food.

2. The kids who break into your church four times over the weekend, when caught, are invited into restorative justice.

3. The 24/7 prayer room, which has a combination code for afterhours access, increasingly becomes an emergency refuge at times of domestic violence.

4. People are becoming honest enough to wonder aloud if the Bible narrative might be unfair and in then ensuing conversation, to find their patterns of parenting and living under gently critiqued.

5. The conversations with those struggling with change have a sense of respectful listening and awareness of the other.

6. People from the local community call your church home, and safe, even if they visit rarely.

7. You find people having an afternoon-nana nap on your foyer couches.

8. You watch your 10 year olds help lead worship and your 11 year olds voice their praise to God.

That’s some locally homegrown Opawa missional signs in the last few weeks.

chopping down the Sunday tree

Updated: this post is receiving quite some attention, from here and here and here and here and here. Welcome and ta for the linking luv! Can I stress that this post emerged from a particular set of circumstances, a local church approaching us in terms of a mission partnership, and so being forced to think through this change process. So it’s not a generic recipe for all Sunday mornings, nor a longterm recipe, but simply a wondering about a way to focus a conversation on mission.

Say your church is dying. You have good buildings and some community ministry, but Sunday service is dwindling. It consumes a lot of your energy, both from your pastoral leader and your volunteers – to run sound and play music.

Change proposal: chopping down the Sunday tree.

Keep meeting at 10:30 am Sunday. Keep the doors open. Keep the coffee fresh. Keep the muffins warm. But stop the sermons and stop the singing. Take all that energy and reclaim the time for mission. Read a creed. Dwell in Luke 10:1-12. Initiate some listening experiments. Share stories. Foray into the community for simple acts of service. Return to share stories. Re-read a creed. Re-dwell in Luke 10:1-12. Initiate some more listening experiments. Share stories. Foray into the community for further acts of service.

You get the idea.

If it fails, you were dying anyway.

If visitors do come, they are not meeting a shut door, nor are they finding a stressed group of people. Instead they are finding a warm community who like coffee and muffins. Who knows, they might just be attracted by a group of people taking mission and church and leadership seriously. In the meantime, you are reclaiming an existing resource – your time and your pastoral time – and you’re investing that in mission. And you are redefining your stretched life around mission and community.

Do this for 3 months and see what shoots begin to emerge. Who knows. Some shoots will need another prune. But some might be worth persevering with. Some might even need a new name.

The mission tree.

help my church is dying: updated

Updated: Thanks to those who made comment. The morning went very well. The material I presented seem to frame a very positive conversation, frank, gutsy, faith-filled. Will be interesting to see what, if anything, happens next …

What would you say to a group of leaders you’ve never met, who wonder if there church is dying? Here are my current thoughts and I’d welcome comments and feedback.

Aim: outline and encourage a process of change that has continuity with past and openness to the future and is enhanced by an intentional alignment of resources.

Premise 0. We live in a missionfield.
Premise 1. The current state is not working. We are not good missionaries
Premise 2. Current state is working for some.
Premise 3. That the current state demands resources. The smaller the church gets, the more the current state sucks up resources.
Premise 4. God is always at work. This is a theological hope and a future compass.
Premise 5. What will it mean to gather resources around what God is doing? (Biblical narrative – Elijah text; Get up and eat, for the journey is too much for you (19:7) / listen in new ways (19:11) / form new partnerships (19:15) cf Luke 10:1-12: Go (10.3) / Take no bags (10.4) / Kingdom is near (10.9)
Premise 6. Given 2 and 3, leaders need to be gut honest. Practically: how do we deploy existing resources for mission not preservation?

I am then planning to talk about what this looked like when we came to Opawa in terms of the “resources” that a church has:
– buildings
– financial assets
– goodwill (or illwill) in church community
– goodwill (or illwill) in wider community
– volunteers
– pastoral time
– creative capital
and narrate some of the hard and courageous work of re-alignment that began before and after I arrived, before inviting them to consider their context, working their way through their “resources”. My hope is that they will go away to put time into Premise 4, before meeting again to consider Premise 5 and 6.

Comments?