The Presbyterian Polis - Connecting Churches to Churches

The Nature of a Healthy Church

Bill Kinnon's polemic about churches is still reaping reaction from the blogosphere. Read his posting - The People formerly known as the Congregation. Make sure you read the comments too.

One of the responses to Bill's piece is by Michael Spencer, the Internet Monk - Riffs: 3:31:07: “The People Formerly Known As The Congregation” or Why Some Christians Are Not On Your Ego Trip This Time Around.  It is a nice counterbalance.  This is the sort of exchange that needs to be taking place in the church.

The focus of their comments is centered on those churches and denominations that have chosen to follow a church-growth strategy.  Many of my client churches do not follow this strategy. That doesn't mean that they are more healthy.  It just means that their issues are a bit different.

The question though is how to grow as a church and remain a healthy church. What does that mean?  What is the measure of health in a congregation or denomination?

We live in a time of specialization and fragmentation. So many of my clients both in and out of the church suffer from the "silo" effect in their organization. This comes from an over-specialization of programs that isolates people and groups. There is little collaboration or unity as a result.

You can't just say we are going to collaborate and change it. You must look more deeply at the fundamental structure of the church in order to understand what the problem is. Let's use my Three Dimensions of Leadership diagram as a guide.

Many churches are simply institutions. They are all program and process. Other churches are nothing more than fellowship centers. Others exist as a gathering place for the discussion and debate of theological and social ideas.

What I've found is that every church, every person, every relationship, every organization, family or community needs to have all three dimensions functioning for them to be healthy. This does not mean that the three are equal in weight. From my perspective, relationships trump everything else. It is where the action is.

Ideas don't have to be living. Structure doesn't have to be purposeful or effective. Both of these dimensions can exist as externals that are held as possessions like pews in the sanctuary.  This is why I say that for many people Christianity is an abstraction. It exists as an external object that we can hold and reflect upon, just like we can our favorite basketball team.  Just because you feel emotions for some ideas or some program doesn't mean that you have internalized those things.

We even treat community as an external good that can be created by using an online social network site and a cool weblog.  Again, in doing so, community becomes an abstraction that exists as a topic of action, rather than something else.

The internalization of ideas happens in relationship.  It is where we learn how to apply these ideas so that they make a difference in the relationship.  In other words, our relationships with one another should change us. If we have not had a transformational experience in relationship with someone, we, quite possibly, have been treating relationships as abstraction as well.  It is just another thing to focus my intellectual and physical energy upon.  In this case, people are things we use to get the things we want in life.

This leads back to the nature of a healthy church.  The transformational relationship experience comes as we become servants to others. Let me give you a couple examples.

My parish for the past seven years, in some ways, has been our Boy Scout troop.  No other place in my life have relationships mattered as much.  It is where I came to see the three dimensions of leadership in coordination with one another.

When relationships matter, then the values (ideas) and their application (program) matter. We find that ideas are not simply interesting topics for discussion but the conceptual boundaries that protect relationships from corruption.  In one instance, a valuable adult leader was removed from participation because he violated the trust and respect that is at the core of the troop's life.  In another situation, a young scout and his parents talked with me about how he didn't have a place to fit in his life. He was advanced in ways and undeveloped in other ways to the extent that he just wasn't like the other guys. It was hard, very hard, and he felt an outsider, an outcast and was considering leaving the troop because of his loneliness.  He stayed and stuck it out because as his scoutmaster, I worked very hard to make sure the integrity of the organizational structure of the troop provided him a place to belong. In so doing, it has given him and others just like him room to grow and mature in a supportive, caring environment. He is a happy kid now with a real future ahead of him. He has found acceptance. Not acceptance in words (ideas), but in relationship.  He was recently one of two elected out of a possible eight boys to join a special camping program in scouting.  His acceptance by the other scouts is not out of pity, but rather out of recognition of his gifts and commitment.  His life has been transformed, and mine by relationship with him has been too.

See, this is what I think the church is to be for people. The church is a place of redemption, not just in word, but in the act of transformation.  It happens in community, and it becomes more difficult to take place as the church grows in size.

This is why the organizational structure of the church should not be focused on growing larger, but rather on the multiplication of small communities within the congregation. That is where the growth that transforms happens and where the church finds its health. 

Where are the Prophets?

Churches are tribal in nature. They are closed social systems that exists for the protection and preservation of the family, regardless of whether the clan is biological or ideological. We are this way because it is a fundamental aspect of human nature.  We may talk a good game of inclusion, but let too many of those folks in, and the social circle tightens.

At the heart of schism is the tribal conflict between competing clans.  As long as they remain tribal, they remain in conflict.  To change the context requires an outside influence.

Enter the prophet or prophetess, and you have someone who can be a catalyst for change. However, they are going to have to disrupt things to make it happen.

I've been thinking about this for a while. I think it began when I watched Martin Scorcese's The Departed.  It is a story about the Mafia in Boston centered around two moles, one in the mob and one in the police department.  In an early scene, we see Jack Nicolson as Frank Costello the mob boss working the protection racket.  I could not help think about how the same kind of influence is applied in churches. There aren't gun shots and broken knees, but there is ostracism.  The difference is the means of enforcement, but essentially the social pressure to conform is the same.  It is a mark of a tribal culture that seeks to control the externals of its environment with as little introspective reflection as possible.

This also came to mind sitting in Sunday school listening to Joab's handling of David's sexual indiscretion. Unfortunately, Uriah became a complication that had to be dealt with.  Unwittingly, he was a threat to the social cohesion that centered on a fallible king.  Last Sunday, he taught on Amnon's rape of his half sister Tamar.  In an aside he talked about the patriarchal system of ancient cultures, and of the women in the OT who became influential while being outside that system. 

The tribal meme continued as a colleague told me of one his clients who use subterfuge and deceit to manipulate the system.

Ironically, of a sorts, this is what Sky Jethani writes about in his Out of Ur blog entry - Where Have All  The Prophets Gone?
He writes:

While studying for my ordination a few years ago I was required to read Oswald Sanders’ classic book, Spiritual Leadership. I’ve forgotten most of his practical advice about leading a church, but one short section has stayed with me. Sanders talks about the choice pastors face between being a popular leader or an unpopular prophet.
...
Prior to reading Sanders I had already been wondering why few pastors led with any prophetic energy. Scanning my favorite books on my shelf, typically ones with a provocative challenge for the church, I realized that virtually all of them were written by professors. Few, if any, were composed by pastors. Where were the voices of correction in the local church? Where were the sermons calling God’s people in a new direction? Where was there a pulpit challenging our popular assumptions about church, mission, and discipleship? Reading Sanders helped me see that we’ve driven the prophets out of the local church and into academia.

Or, they become consultants.

For the past few weeks, I've been thinking about the tribal nature of social groups. In many respects, what separates the church from the Mafia from a country club from a gated-community from a Boy Scout troop are their activities and espoused purpose. They are all similar in that many of them do not like dissent or outsiders meddling with their group. They prefer to be a closed society where everyone knows everyone, knows what everyone else knows, thinks what everyone else thinks, and doesn't venture beyond the safety and protection of the society. 

Not all social groups are this way, but many are.  What social network theorists are learning is that these closed social systems need an infusion of fresh ideas from the outside in order to be healthy.  With the advent of modern transportation and communication, the world is shrinking, and the opportunity for people to never encounter a stranger is diminishing.

Ron Burt at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business studies these things. His book Structural Holes is an examination of social structure of competition.  He shows that the person who has a more diverse set of relationships has a competitive advantage over the person who only knows the people in his or her social group.  That competitive advantage is broadly understood to be the advantage that access of new information provides a group. 

This is why I think the role of the prophet is an important one for the church and the people of God. It isn't that the prophet has a competitive advantage over the congregation. Rather the congregation that values a prophet outlook has an advantage over the church that rejects the prophet. 

The way this works is that the prophet, like the outsider, like the consultant, like any person who has a different bank of knowledge than the group, can see things that those on the inside cannot. For the prophet, this view is essential a corrective word from God, or a work of clarification. But it can also be an affirmation or a call to respond to an offer to go in service. Whatever the specific situation entails, there is a need for the church to look beyond its established social boundary to gain a new perspective.  It is the outsiders voice that provides perspective that is difficult to achieve in house.

The ironic aspect of this whole discussion is that when I was in college, some of my buddies nicknamed me Prophet.  In many respects, that is the role that an organizational consultant must take.  We often bear bad news, but more times than not, affirmation that leads to continued growth.

Don't cast out your prophets. Listen to them, and take seriously what God is saying to you through them.  It is to your advantage to listen and to act when appropriate.

Church in transition? Develop, don't change

Almost all my client work is about change.  Much of it is with churches who are in transition, or to put it more directly, they are in a change or decline transition. 

Here's reality - I don't know a church that isn't in some transition phase.  It may be a pastoral transition.  It may be a generational transition.  It maybe a culture/environmental transition.

If your church doesn't look and feel different than it did ten years ago, then it will. Because the more things change, the more they change. Really.

So, as I read this posting by Seth Godin this morning - Go read it, and come back - it reminded me of what is happening in churches.

Seth is saying to McDonalds, don't try to be Starbucks.  Be yourself. Develop what you have to what you can be.

Take this next to last paragraph of his and restate it for your church

The question, and I don't know the answer, is how does a regular feel when she steps into the new store? Better? Worse? Good enough to bring a friend next time?

How do your members feel when you change the liturgy or the music without telling them, or asking them?

How do your members feel about anything?  Do you know?

Too often in the church we come down to an impasse between the people who want it like it has always been and those who want to change things.  That simple dualistic dicotomy of a two class-system between those who want to keep things as they always have been, and those who want to change things is the wrong way to look at how the church handles change.

Churches need to think about how to develop their culture, not change it.  Culture is the mixture of values, preferences, traditions, behaviors,etc. that distinguish this congregation from the one next door. Why do people join here, rather than there?  It is often because of the culture of the church.

So in order to master the transition process, it doesn't mean change everything or nothing.  It means getting in touch with who you are as a community of faith, as a culture that provides a context for your relationships, your programs and your mission.

Build on those values that have given you strength for generations.  The new people that are there are partially there because of those values.  In order to know what you share in common that you can develop, you need to talk, and talk regularly as a congregation.

Congregational conversation for developing your church culture is not easy.  It is a process that helps people learn how to articulate what they feel and believe in ways that are not defensive, confrontational or reactionary.  Churches need to provide for an open-ended way of seeing how they can grow.  It isn't easy.  It can be done.  It needs to be done if the transition  from where you have been to where you will be is successful.

Technorati Tags: change, congregations, communication, Seth Godin, Starbucks, McDonalds

Tim Keller on the church in the city

Tim Keller is a Presbyterian (PCA) pastor in NYC.  He is cut from a different bolt of cloth.  NYTimes has an article on this pastor who embodies two trends that worth considering for every church in an urban environment .

1. Keller treats the philosophical/ideological/human orientation of each person who comes to his church seriously.  Boston pastor, Stephen Um says of Keller, "This is Tim's thing," said Dr. Um. "He said, 'You need to enter into a person's worldview, challenge that worldview and retell the story based on the Gospel.' The problem is evangelicals have always started with challenging the worldview. We don't have any credibility."  The reverse in many respects has been true of mainstream Christians. Too quickly assimilate comtemporary trends or ideas into the beliefs of the church with the effect of diluting and marginalizing the faith.  In other words, Christianity is a belief system that is both adaptible to contemporary life and is a system that transcends the trends of the moment.  It would seem that Keller has a handle on this.

2.  Keller's church meets four times a Sunday in three different rented space in three different sections of the city of New York.  On top of that his church is planting churches, and training pastors from across the country on how to do the same. 

Pastors from around the world are beginning to come in a steady stream to New York City to glean what they can from Dr. Keller and Redeemer. Their goal is to learn how to create similarly effective churches in cosmopolitan cities like New York, which exert outsize influence on the prevailing culture but have traditionally been neglected by evangelicals in favor of the suburbs.

"We're not giving them a turnkey template," said Dr. Keller. "What we're saying is, 'There's lots of overlaps between our big city and your big city. Some of these things you will use. Some of these you will discard. Some of these you will adapt.' "

Believing new churches are the best way to produce new Christians, evangelicals are making a major push to start new churches around the world, said Edmund Gibbs, a professor of church growth at Fuller Theological Seminary outside Los Angeles. But only recently have some evangelicals begun to turn their focus to urban centers.

Dr. Keller "has grasped the strategic significance of the city, of the urban culture and the need to engage that very diverse culture at every level," he said. "Our culture is urban-driven."

In New York City, Redeemer has become the central training ground for anyone planning to start a church in the metropolitan area, whether among Guyanese immigrants in Queens or streetwise youths in the Bronx.

Since 2000, when it established its own training center for "church planters," as they are called in evangelical parlance, Redeemer has helped start more than 50 churches in the city, from faith traditions and denominations as diverse as Assemblies of God, Lutheran and Southern Baptist. In addition, it has helped found 17 "daughter churches" of its own Presbyterian denomination in communities like Williamsburg and Park Slope, Brooklyn; Astoria, Queens; and Hoboken, N.J.

Meanwhile, so-called city-center churches modeled on Redeemer — also attracting audiences of professionals and creative types — have sprung up in places like Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Berlin, London and Amsterdam. The churches emulate much of Redeemer's approach, including its attitude of embracing the city and its focus on the Christian message of grace and redemption, which Dr. Keller argues has been muddled in many churches.

There are two things to take away from this article.

1. Every person who comes to a church comes from a specific context with a particular perspective. Being able to understand the diversity of the sources that affect people is essential for pastors.  It is one of the most demanding aspects of pastoral ministry today.

2. New churches are all future.  Old churches are a tug-of-war between the past and the future.  Keller's story points to the importance of mission as a key to the vitality and extension of the church's reach in the world. 

(HT: Bill Kinnon)

Technorati Tags: Dr. Tim Keller, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, church planting, worldview, New York Times

A Story To Tell - A Helping Hand to Offer

What's happening here?

Hugh Hewitt posted a comment on his blog that provoked me to shift the focus of the weblog to disaster assistance for the congregations of the Presbyterian Church (USA) affected by the Katrina this week.

So, here's what is going to happen here.

1.  We are going to connect people to people, churches to churches.  Let the large institutional efforts do their job.  There is a need to make the recovery effort more personal.  How?  By creating long term relationships between churches. 

2.  We are going to tell stories.  The people who have been through this trauma need to tell their stories.  We whom are far away need to hear their stories.  We need to join with them as partners in their sorrow and the hopes for recovery and renewal.

3.  We are going to help meet the needs of people and churches.  We can't replace Presbyterian Disaster Assistance. We don't want to.  However, they are not designed to do everything.  We can supplement what they do.

4.  We are going to be a clearinghouse of information.  For example, today, I've posting information that our Presbytery has been sending out.  I'm sure that this is happening in other places.  Send it along.  I'll post it, and when the information conflicts, we'll go find out what the actual story is.

5.  We are going pray.  We are going to cry for the losses of people.  We are going to celebrate the goodness of God expressed through the caring of people.  We are going to be partners with you who have been devastated by this natural disaster.

6.  We are going to pass along the stories and needs to our friends, our families, our churches and our communities. Use this communication link to fulfill the ideal of presbyterian connectionalism.  We are one church.  Let's act as one by caring for those in need.

May the Lord God who made heaven and earth, and every living being, be with us as together we serve people and communities that are in need. 

Together In Christ's Service

Vision, Structure, Standards

For the past month, I've been pondering where to take this weblog.  At the crux of my questioning is the idea that the critical need in the church is to address the leadership relation between pastors and elders.  I'm beginning to rethink this notion.

I think that there is a more fundamental, less mechanical approach to this question.  Specifically is whether the current structure that we live with as the church is still valid.  I come to this question by asking what criteria should we use to measure the "success" of a congregation. 

Ist it growth?  That is okay, for to grow requires you appealing to larger and larger number of people.  But that can be misleading.

I think we have to look at three areas to determine what success means in the church: Vision, Structure, Standards

Vision is simply what are we trying to achieve.  Please don't get lost in fancy biblical descriptions of the church. Get real and concrete. What do you expect to see happening, changing, becoming different?

Structure is important because it provides a basis for knowing where you stand, what is expected, and how to contribute.  It provides security and protection.

Standards is a critical factor in every organization, not just churches.  High standards must be championed by the pastor and the elders.  If they don't, it isn't just less than satisfactory results will happen.  Rather, whomever represents the lowest standards will become the default leader.  I've seen it over and over again.

So, what are we to do?

I think it is time to begin to seriously ask questions about the nature of the role of pastor in the Presbyterian church.  As I shared with a couple people yesterday, "Being a pastor is a lonely positions.  You expected to work miracles, and be real at the same time.  Many that I know are excellent in the pastoral relation, but struggle with decision making.  Yet, the emphasis is on management.  We need to rethink what we are doing to pastors.

That is why I come back to these three disciplines: Vision, Structure and Standards.  More about these as time passes.

What is a Presbyterian Polis?

This weblog is named The Presbyterian Polis for a specific reason.

In ancient Greece, prior to the birth of Christ, the polis was a city where people lived. We know it primarily as the place where democracy grew. But there was more to it that just that.

Today, we say we are from a town or city, and we mean that is the geographic location of my house or birthplace. We may take pride in being from there, or living there. We cheer for the hometown high school football team. We know everyone in the coffee shop we visit in the morning. And when a crisis hits the community, we turn out to help.

For the Greeks, this was true and more. The polis was a symbol of identity. Not only did it give residents a historical reference point for understanding themselves, it also provided the basis for understanding what I am to do with my life. Every person within the polis had a role to play, a contribution to make.

If we go back three milennia to the time of Homer, we'll see that a since of individual identity separate from being a member of your polis was rare. What we know as Western individualism emerge in later centuries in Greece, and is with us to this day.

In other words, the polis provided the physical location for the organization of society and the individuals that make up society.

The Presbyterian Polis is a community in a particular place - the local church - with citizens -members of congregations - who loyalty, faithfully, and sacrificially serve their polis - live lives of Christian faith and stewardship. The local church is where people find their sense of identity, their mission and purpose in life, where they focus their contributions.

When we talk about the church. We generally talk about it as a community of people, each with their gifts and sense of identity, gathering together in the name of Jesus Christ, to have worship, fellowship, learning and to serve a specific mission of the Gospel.

What we miss by not seeing the church as a polis is the intimate relationship between the mission and programs of the church and the administration and leadership of the church.

As a consultant who serves churches, as well as nonprofits, schools, local governments and small businesses, I see over and over organizations where there is confusion about this relationship. The place where this confusion is seen most clearly is in the work of pastors as administrative leaders, Sessions as Boards of Directors, Trustees and Advisors, and committees as the organizational structure of the church.

So, The Presbyterian Polis, this weblog is going to focus on specific things within the life of the church, most specifically the Presbyterian Church (USA), though the application of ideas here will benefit most churches.

Here's what it is and what it isn't.

1. This is not going to be about the denominational death-match between the liberals and the conservatives in the Presbyterian Church (USA). If you are looking to fill up your time debating resolutions before the General Assembly, you'll have to go some where else.

2. My interest here is primarily focused on the leadership relationship between pastors and officers -Elders and Deacons. Pastors and elders have told me that they believe that this is THE critical need in the church today. Is this a dysfuntional or undeveloped relationship? I'll leave that up to you to decide. All you have to do is look at your congregation to determine this. In future postings, I'll speak to this issue - How do you know if this relationship is healthy and working well for the church?

3. My goal is to assist local congregations to grow in healthy, sustainable, spiritually vital ways.

4. I am not looking for a theological debate on church polity, ecclesiology or eschatology. Though I welcome it if it means that a pastor or a Session will be able to make some decision or take some action that forwards their church along the path of fulfilling the Great Commission and living the Great Ends of the Church.

5. I am also not looking to be a lone voice here. I'm looking for discussion. I'd like to hear questions that should be addressed. I'd like to engage in dialogue that enables leaders to lead, and followers to follow. For members to take intiative to fulfill their sense of mission within the organizational structure of their local church.

6. I want to have fun. I am convinced that when people have serious fun, they will grow, resolve their differences, and move to new places in the faith. Think Jesus ever laughed with his disciples. Laughed at their foibles and false assumptions, laughed at the ironic incongruities in life, laughed at the silly ideas that get offered. Here's a rule: What is fun gets done.

7. I want to celebrate God's goodness in the church and in the lives of Christians. So send me stories, weblinks, email addresses, etc. that I can feature. We learn not just from ideas but from examples.

8. If you would like to know a bit of more of what I intend for this blog, go to my other two blogs: Leading Questions and Lewis & Clark for the 21st Century. Also clink on the links that are scattered throughout postings and in the side bars.

9. More than anything ASK QUESTIONS. If you can't think of a question, then you are not thinking. If life in the church, in our Presbyterian Polis, doesn't raise lots of questions, then you need to open up your mind and start looking at what is going on.

The Presbyterian Polis is a place where the leadership of Presbyterian churches, as well as others, can find help, hope and a hand to clarify the confusion institution that we call the church.

I'll say more about who I am in my next posting.

Together In Christ's Service.