The Presbyterian Polis - Connecting Churches to Churches

From a consumerist ministry to an entrepreneurial one

In response to my last posting on Divinity school students, a fellow named Chris made the following comment.

Ed,

I appreciate your honest frustration as to why seminarians are not going into parish ministry. In the first part of your essay, you hit the nail on the head: "the principal issue is the inability to state with certainty precisely what the pastor's role is and isn't . As a result, the role is measured by the expectations that each member has, rather than some more objective criteria."

Unfortunately, at this point, you wander away from the relevant objective criteria ("biblical, theological and ecclesiastical" training) for the pablum of consumer-driven models focusing on "social networking and word-of-mouth marketing". Wasn't that precisely the problem you were concerned about? An overly consumer-driven picture of ministry? And the best answer you can come up with is to turn to those methods used to manipulate and affect consumers?

The answer is to be found in reading the Scriptures. Not only do they make us "wise unto salvation" (2 Tim. 3:15), but as the God-breathed revelation of Jesus Christ they "thoroughly equip [ministers] to be competent in every good work" (2 Tim. 3:17).

God knew that we would be tempted to make a chimera of the ministry. Therefore, the Spirit moved Paul to write the pastoral epistles, containing rather explicit instructions about how to minister among the people of God. Our confessions and history point to faithful ways of living out the convictions we find in those divinely given instructions.

Jesus said, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." (John 15:5) Similarly, Paul said that we should "[l]et the word of Christ dwell richly in [us]" (Colossians 3:16).

The further we get away from the Scriptures, the less relevant and effective we become.

Let me answer his challenges and questions in order.

1. I'm not frustrated. I am concerned about the future of the church. We are in a long protracted period of transition in the church and society.  I am also concerned about pastors and what the future will require of them, and whether they will be prepared. 

2.  Your are concerned that I wandered 'away from the relevant objective criteria ("biblical, theological and ecclesiastical" training) for the pablum of consumer-driven models focusing on "social networking and word-of-mouth marketing".   If you understood social networking theory and practice, you would have understood that this is a method that Jesus' Apostles used to spread the Gospel.  It is the lack of understanding of contemporary business ideas that puts the church at a disadvantage. Why? Because your parishioners are employing these very same methods to build and strengthen their businesses. Surely, you wouldn't say to their faces in a public forum that they are manipulating their customers?  But this what you suggest by your comment.  If you truly believe this, then you have placed a barrier between yourself and your parishioners by this prejudicial view.

From my perspective, most of these ideas fall within the category of common grace. These are ideas that are true in a creation sense, though not necessarily in a redemptive one.  Though I believe we can gain insight into God's design for humanity by understanding social network theory, it won't at the same time lead you to Jesus.  So, these ideas are not a replacement for the Gospel, nor are they necessarily antithetical to it. 

3.  I think you confuse ideas that are organizational structure ideas with those that are ideas that frame our theological understanding of who God is and who we are in relation to him.  Word-of-mouth marketing is simply an organizational methodology.  There may be some theological relevance to the social dimension of one person telling another person about what is important to them. But strictly speaking it isn't confessional theology.  So too is most of the governance structures of most of the churches that exist world-wide. 

The problem is the contention that everything must square with some idea or text in scripture.  This is not only impossible, but it is simply legalism.  There is not a one-to-one correspondence between our time and the Bible's. To treat it so is to misinterpret the Scriptures in order to save it from itself.

As Reformed Christians, we live in the real world, and we read the Scripture in the context of the real world of its formation.  We interpret Scripture by adapting our lives to it. But there is never a literal one-to-one correspondence.  To suggest this is to treat the Scripture just as much as a source of pablum and tool for manipulating people.  This literal approach to Scripture is not biblical, but born out of the scientism of the Enlightenment that sees truth in a mathematical congruity.  The Scripture is a divinely inspired human document that tells the story of our relationship as people to God our creator, and to make it into a periodic table of ethics is to turn it into something that it is not.

4.  This leads to the problem of how we use Scripture to measure the work of ministry and the life of the church.   You use the John passage to show that we are to abide in Christ. Of course we are, he is our life. But this is a metaphorical description of our relationship to him, not a design for the organization of the church. And it does not denigrate Scripture to say that it is largely silent on how churches are to organize themselves in the 21st century. That silence has serve us well throughout the centuries because it has allowed the church to change and adapt to changing societal circumstances.  And this is where I see us today.  We are on the cusp of dramatic change in the church's role in the emerging global society, and as pastors we need to be prepared for this change.  For example, read Tom Friedman's The World is Flat and ask where is the church?

5. So, what would I recommend for the average seminary student to learn apart from the traditional theoretical knowledge and ministry skills?  It is impossible to learn everything, and not advisable all at once. Therefore, I think learning how to function entrepreneurially is the key to the future of the ministry in the context of organizational leadership.  What this means is that pastors learn to lead their congregations to innovate and change instead of trying to hold on to methods that are clearly no longer working.  This means that they are equipping members for ministry. Show where your members are in ministry, and I can tell you about the effectiveness of the church's leadership.

6. I am not suggesting that we get further away from the Scriptures. I am suggesting that if the Scriptures are all you read, that you will end up manipulating Scripture to explain away why the church is failing. And this is what we have been doing for a generation or more.

7.  Let me state my perspective this way.  For too long, the church and the professional clergy, of whom I have been one for 25 years, have hidden behind the idea that the church is in exile, that we are different, and that we should sequester ourselves away from the evils of the world, even the "consumerist" evils of business. While we were in hiding, the world changed, and the church is slowly adapting to that change.  We are holding out for pie-in-the-sky while the world goes to hell. The world is God's creation and we are called to be stewards of it.  This isn't an environmental or a political call to action, but a call to fulfill our calling as God's human creation.

Let me give you one example of what I see.  Over the past ten to twelve years, the world of communication change dramatically. The advent of internet technology that was simple and cheap enough for anyone to acquire and use made it possible for people to communicate with people all over the globe.  I work with both churches and businesses, and I am always surprised by how few churches use this tool for connecting with their members.  It suggests to me that the problem isn't technology, but human community.  Our standards for community in the church regardless of theological, social or economic level is pretty low. There is no urgency for me to care for anyone as a result. We come to church because it meets a need, and we are satisfied with fast food.

Chris, you complained about consumerist methodologies in ministry. Let me say as bluntly and as clearly as I can, that every church currently operating today is working off a consumerist model. The differences are what the consumers are coming to church to select and purchase.  They may be coming to be entertained by pop Christian music. Or they are coming to get their weekly security fix or to visit the museum of memories. For the most part, they are not coming to be transformed into the likeness and character of Jesus Christ.  They are not coming to lay their life down for others as an act of gratitude to Jesus Christ. No, we are all consumerists. Some of us are just better at hiding it.

8. I believe churches in the near future will increasingly adopt the business models that I describe in my Innovative Business Ideas series.  I think this will happen because of the shift from a consumerist  model that is dead to a missional one that is alive. If that shift doesn't take place, then those churches will continue to decline and close.

When I look at the kinds of innovative things that business are doing today - read Mavericks at Work to get an idea of what I'm talking about - I wonder, why are not more churches doing the same kind of innovative things. In reality, for the past twenty years, more and more churches have been making this transition from what they used to be to what they will be in the future, and it has primarily been in the missional realm.  People want to participate in things that are Personally Meaningful and Socially Fulfilling, and mission work fulfills both. It is about Values and People.

The hard truth, Chris, is that simply stating Scripture texts will not be sufficient to provide a "relevant, objective criteria" for measuring the effectiveness of the church.  So, when you ask me for that criteria, I take your question seriously, and suggest to you and to other pastors that learning how to be entrepreneurial and innovative as congregation leaders is how that needs to be measured.  To be innovative and entrepreneurial is a mindset that requires a new set of skills. 

Where should pastors start?  Do the following.

1. Ask the youngest business person in your congregation what business book had the most influence upon them.  Read the book asking the question, "What relevance does this have to the church?"  Then talk with them about what you see.

2.  Subscribe to a business magazine like FastCompany or BusinessWeek.  Before you subscribe, buy a couple copies and sample them.

3.  Train yourself to think practically.  Ask of every idea, regardless of its source, "How do I apply it? How do I put it into action?" When it is clear and compelling, then do it.

Do this and there won't be as much pablum, manipulation or consumerist stuff going on in your church. Do it and the Gospel will take on a fresh authenticity because it will be shown to be effective in the lives of people.  Do it and you will see, not merely believe, the Holy Spirit at work in your ministry.  And ultimately, as difficult as it is to measure, that is the measure we seek. To be used by God to be an effective minister of the Gospel for this time and in the place where he has put us.

Thanks for your comment.  God bless you.

The Divinity student and the future of the church

As I read this NYTimes article - Divinity Schools Take On the Challenge of Keeping Students on a Path to the Pulpit -,  I realized that the transitions that I'm seeing in churches have not yet reach the point where a major transition in the nature of the pastorate has begun to emerge.

I can't really tell you want will come in the role and experience of being a pastor.  However, i do know that one of the things that needs to happen is a great deal more clarity about the boundaries that form the role pastors play in the church.

I think the principal issue is the inability to state with certainty precisely what the pastor's role is and isn't . As a result, the role is measured by the expectations that each member has, rather than some more objective criteria. 

Part of the dilemma is that what often happens is that the pastor ends up take responsibility for work that members should be doing, yet don't because it is easier to just pass it off on to the pastor. 

For example, every pastor position comes with the expectation of visitation. Precisely what does this mean?  Who should be visited? How often should they be visited? And what should be done when a visit is made? 

What is missing is the responsibility of elders and members to care for one another.  If this role is being fulfilled, then it changes the social context of the church.  If the responsibility is fully on the pastor's shoulders, then the social environment is built around one individual. That is not a healthy arrangement.  The core problem with this is that their a complicity of silence between those who desire to be visited and those who ignore the responsibility. As a result, it gets dumped on the pastor.

The options for men and women who earn ministerial degrees have grown.  Being a parish minister is not the most easy nor attractive ministerial calling.

From my perspective, the training for parish ministry needs to broaden out from the traditional course work and field work.  Merely tweaking the curriculum won't do it. It requires broadening exposure to fields outside of the traditional biblical, theological and ecclesiastical intellectual box. 

Two areas that I can see are training in organizational development and transformation and instruction in social networking and word-of-mouth marketing.  Developing the first requires the church to more clearly understand the similarities and differences between traditional businesses and the church.  Developing the second is the recognition that the focal point of church is shifting from the Sunday morning worship service to the social formation of the church as a collaborative community of servant leaders.

What this means for pastoral ministry is a shift from a pastor-centric to a member-servant centric church life.  This means that part of what pastors need to learn through their seminary training are the skills that enable members to take responsibility for the full life of the church. The pastor serves as an enabler of growth and development rather than the measure of it.  It is this that I have always seen in Paul's description of the church in Ephesians 4.

So, if seminaries are having a difficult time recruiting people to parish ministry, then we need to ask the question about whether the way we function as an institutional church makes sense.  I know there are changes happening. I see them and want to encourage their spread. But one church changing here or there isn't sufficient.  Ultimately, this change will have to be reflected both in the seminary and in the governing bodies that validate a person's call to ministry.

Transaction or Transformation: Which is your church marketing?

Bill Kinnon has been ranting about church marketing. His latest is up and is worth a read here.

I offered a couple comments, see below, and want to expand on them a bit. First my comments.

Here's the problem as I see it. Marketing is a transaction focused activity. It is measured by the exchange of goods and services. It assumes that transaction is the nature of human organizational activity. "I need something. You have it. We negotiate a transaction, and make the exchange." Churches and businesses that take this attitude are missing the point.

The purpose isn't a transaction between economic/spiritual partners, but rather a transformation. James Magregor Burns made this point about leadership twenty plus years ago in his classic text, Leadership.

Transformation begins with the recognition that change is necessary. The change required for human beings is the recognition that without the grace of God their lives are a mess. The grace of God changes motivations and disciplines, changes perceptions, and opens up possibilities. Transactions are simply exchanging the ownership of a product for a price.

Now many churches sell the "experience" of transformation, but not the transformation itself. It is just like selling luxury brands to middle class people. It is intended to give them the "experience" of wealth without requiring them to be wealthy. I think this is the emotional appeal of contemporary pop Christian music.

I'm not interested in being entertained. I'm interested in being transformed into the image of Christ in my daily living. The old ways of worship required reflection for transformation. The new ways provide emotion to avoid reflection, masking our need for transformation.

How can the church be a place of transformation? This is the question that we should be asking.

Oh, yes, one more thought. Transformation requires action. It requires us to make decisions and take action to validate what we believe. The emotions that follow are different as a result. They are not only uplifting, but also peaceful. Instead of being hyper, they are deep and rich because they are part of something larger, not isolated from who we individually are.

Tuesday, I was in New Orleans at a church where a score of men and women were preparing to go out and hang sheet rock in some Katrina victim's house. It wasn't their first or their second trip, but fourth or fifth. They found deep emotions of satisfaction and joy in serving. That's hard to market. But it is easy to communicate when our churches are personal and focused on transformation. My Rule of Thumb - you can quote me on this - is that people desire for the activities in their lives to be Personally Meaningful and Socially Fulfilling. They want their values to be affirmed and their activities to touch their relationships with others. That's hard to market with authenticity when all you are doing is just conducting religious transactions.

Whatever we market as church people is a statement of what we believe the Christian faith and the Christian church to be.  This cuts many ways.

If you are a contemporary church, and you are marketing coolness and a post-mod, pop faith, then you are making a statement about what the historic faith has been and how it has changed. However, on the other hand if your marketing is centered about programs and activities, then you are saying something about the historic nature of the church as well.

Here's an additional part of the problem.  If people see the church as a social outlet of activities, then they will see it as a place to go to and do something, and then leave.

However, if the church "sells" itself as a community of transformation, which I think is quite difficult to market, then it is not saying we are governed by our calendar, but rather by our relationships to one another.  It is partly for this reason that I think the really vital churches in the future will be those that are focused on missional service.

It is through service that is sacrificial and self-giving that leads to the transformational nature of the Christian faith.  We are living at the end of an era in the life of the church where we have focused on the particulars of correct theology over against authentic action as a response to grace.

As I was traveling this week, I was wondering about how I now categorize myself apart from being a Christian and a Presbyterian.  Am I a conservative or a liberal, a charismatic or an evangelical, a progressive or a fundamentalist? Frankly, I find none of those labels very helpful any longer.  So, I've decided that I am simply a Christian humanist or if you will a biblical humanist.  There is much to unpack there, but it goes back to the nature of transformation.

Not to go on too long because I see it coming, but suffice it to say, that my perspective on transformation is rooted in a very clear understanding of the nature and reality of sin, the reality and pervasiveness of God's goodness, grace and love and our intimate and fractured relationships to all that is created as well as all that is divine.  From this perspective, I see the church as a place of transformation to be people who understand their own sin and corruption, their own call to share the goodness, grace and love of God with others in a Personally Meaningful and Socially Fulfilling manner and are committed to being people who are agents of transformation and reconciliation.  I know that is a mouthful. And I know that it is far too abstract to market, and hence why marketing doesn't work. Only the genuineness of our lives lived in honest relationship with others and Christ is where the transformation takes place. Enough for now.

 

Slippery Slope and social norms of church leadership

Susan Wise Bauer in her review John Stackhouse's new book Finally Feminist critiques the relevant use of the "slippery slope" argument by the church.  As I read the review, it occurred to me that the "slippery slope" metaphor can be applied to all kinds of norms and structures in the church, and done so inappropriately.

The argument is simply that one decision necessarily leads to another and then to another. In this instance the inclusion of women to the ranks of ordained leadership in the church necessarily leads to the same for homosexuals.  Bauer's review critiques this specific argument.

On a broader scale, though, I think we could possibly apply this method of critique to leadership norms and structures in the church. 

Often when I meet Presbyterian pastors and elders I get two reactions to the description of my conversational planning methodology. First is that the church isn't a business, and second, the church isn't a democracy, that we are a REPRESENTATIVE democracy.  Both are red herrings intended to end discussion, not illuminate the social functioning of the church.

There is a tacit assumption in the church that our structure of leadership is spiritual on the level of being handed down from on high like the Ten Commandments.  Having observed many church Sessions over the years, I think it is more accurate to say that the Presbyterian Church system of governance is a human attempt to make sense of biblical norms in the organizational context of the Body of Christ. 

It never occurred to me to think this way until I began to get criticism for engaging congregations in conversation as a part of a long range planning process.  The typical argument is that we are not a democracy, and the Session are the biblical leaders of the church.  Not really much of an argument, but rather assertions that are based on social norms currently operating in the life of the church.

So, is there a slippery slope when you ask the congregation what they think their church should be like in five years?

Are we descending into the chaos of individual preferences determining the future of the church?  No. That is already happening.  We have already become a culture of religious commodities.  The  historical structure and functioning of most church Session's have been unable to stop the spread of consumerist individualism.  The fallacy that we've been operating on is that church leaders lead by policy and business acumen. The problem is a misunderstanding of leadership and why some businesses succeed and other don't. 

Leaders don't lead by policy making, but by influence. Influence is a relational function not a governance one.

The governance role of the Session is integral to the effective functioning of the organization of the church.  But the leadership role requires them to lead by influence and relationship, and when the Session goes to the congregation and asks "What do you think?" then it opens up the relationship to horizons previously closed. At that point the Session is inviting the congregation to a new level of participation and ownership of the mission and performance of the church.   

The Session's responsibility as leadership influencers is to listen and to respond by saying, "We heard you, so here is what we are going to do."

What this requires from the Session is humility. The humility to recognize that God speaks through people ... "when two or more are gathered" ... and part of the Session's role is to listen and interpret what God is saying.  Typically, we've only seen this as listening and interpreting Scripture, not the Holy Spirit speaking through the Body of Christ.  Just so that I'm clear about what I saying here.

Leadership in the church requires pastors and elders to lead through the three dimensions of Ideas, Relationships and Organizational Structure.

Each dimension is essential for creating the level of Impact needed for the church to fulfilling its calling as the Body of Christ in a particular place for a specific time.

The balance of the three works this way. The priority is on Relationships built around a common set of values with a shared vision of the future. Those values and that vision is derived from a conversation about Ideas that come from Scripture and the history and traditions of the church.  It comes from a sense of call, which is a conceptualization of an idea about what God expects of the church. The Organizational Structure therefore exists primarily to serve the Relationships within the church focused on its mission or call to service.

What has tended to happen in the church is that Session focus almost entirely on Structure. If there is any theological reflection, it is by the pastor conducting a devotional at the beginning of a meeting. The Relationship between the Session and the congregation therefore exists primarily through an organizational reporting function that takes place a few times a year or through a report in a monthly newsletter.

What I have found is that the place to begin to change is simply start a conversation that enables members to talk to the Session in a manner that provides an easy way for the Session to respond. Once that has begun, many other things can be done to foster a deeper relational leadership function in the life of the church.

Community or Institution - A False Dicotomy?

Alan Hirsch points to a book by Howard Snyder written two decades ago on renewal in the church.  One of Snyder's theses is 

"The church is essentially the community of God’s people, not primarily an organization, institution, program, or building. This is a distinction of fundamental importance because it is linked to the basic models of the church which Christians employ."

This is the conventional thinking about the church. The reality is that community and institutionalism are separate realities. One is about how people interact with one another,and the other is about the structure of that interaction.

This dicotomy is not the problem.  Churches are both communities and institutions.  The problem is that being a community requires more initiative by the whole church than do the institutional aspects of programs, operations and facilities management.

The problem is not this dicotomy. The problem is a spiritual one.  Community is a human experience. The work of managing programs, operating programs and caring for the facilities is primarily an intellectual process.  It is analysis, decision-making and follow-through.  The better the relationships (community) are the more likely the work will achieve a higher level of excellence.

These dicotomies are not uncommon. For example, often I find in working with non-profit boards that they will emphasis program over operations or vice versa.  It goes to the talent and interest of the members, the focus of the executive director, and many other reasons. And it is the case that a healthy organization is focused on both program and operations. The same is true of the church.

It does not serve the church to make this distinction. It only serves the church to make a clear distinction between being faithful in community and faithful in the stewardship of the organization of the church.

HT: Bill Kinnon

The Children of Men - review

Hope is one of those words that gets used a lot, but without much discussion about what it means.  It is one of those words that evokes a feeling of calm and peace without having to be specific about what it actually means.  A film version of the P.D. James mystery,  The Children of Men (watch the trailer) addresses this question of hope.

It is a story that takes place two decades in the future at a time when women have ceased to give birth. There are no children, and at the beginning of the film, the youngest person on earth, an 18 year, dies.  It is a world in dissolution.  It is similar to other sci-fi films that paint a bleak picture of the future, but this one is different.  It seems much more familiar, and the missing element are not the children, but the hope that comes when a child is born.  This story is clearly a study or at least a statement on the birth of the Christ child.

This is a powerful and touching film that is to be seen.  The less you know about the film the better for its story will take you by surprise and its message will be clear.