Resources and Comments in Response to “Visions of the Sacred Community”
In the May 31, 2010 issue of Alban Weekly (“Visions of the Sacred Community“), the authors clearly delineate the differences between a consumer-driven functional congregational community and a truly visionary community. While purely functional communities are marked by consumerism, segmentation, passivity, meaninglessness, resistance to change, and nonreflective leadership (which are explained in the article), truly visionary communities are characterized by sacred purpose, a holistic ethos, participatory culture, meaningful engagement, innovation disposition, and reflective leadership.
The authors discuss each characteristic in detail. At the same time, however, they emphasize that “no congregation performs perfectly as a visionary congregation in all aspects.” Rather, a visionary congregation will favor sacredness over consumerism, holism over segmentation, participation over passivity, meaningful engagement over rote interactions, and reflective over nonreflective leadership.
What resources might help your congregation to move into a more visionary ethos? In addition to the items listed at the end of the article, we invite you to consider the items in the “Mission and Vision” and “Congregational Renewal” sections of the Congregational Resource Guide. You might find From Nomads to Pilgrims, Be Not Afraid!, and The Answer to How Is Yes especially helpful.
What are your stories and thoughts on this topic? And what resources do you suggest? We look forward to hearing from you!
Shalom All,
The post is essentially an outline of what measurably successful megachurches have
understood and have done for many years. I’m glad to see that we’re finally “coming to
the table” with this recognition.
The author(s) of the post wrote: “The composite images we draw here emerged clearly from interviews with the lay and professional leaders of eight transformed congregations.”
What was measured and how was it measured, to know empirically that a congregation was “transformed?” In other words, what is the the empirically measurable definition of transformed? I know what/how a number of megachurches measure success or transformation, but haven’t seen this adequately dealt with on the Jewish side of the aisle.
Wholeness to all of us,
Jordan Goodman
Great article summarizing the key differences between functional and visionary communities of faith. I posted a link to it on my Facebook fan page,
it is very inspiring to consider the possibility of growth from a “functional” to a “visionary” congregation (the author describes the differences very clearly) . It would be interesting to measure such growth with objective parameters that move beyond the subjective vision of the leaders.
This same argument along with the characteristics show up continually in revitalization conversations. The experts and researchers all agree. What would be really interesting to know is what brought a particular congregation to change. Somewhat like an alcoholic, one, I think, has to hit bottom before one can finally come to the decision to radically change one’s approach. The congregations I have encountered – most of whom are slowly dying – are still quite content in what they are doing and how they are doing. They are convinced that some outside source is going to suddenly add large numbers to their membership and large sums of money to their coffers. They still do not think that they need to do anything different. What causes the shift in attitude? Is it sudden? Is it gradual? Does the impetus come from within the congregation or outside? What role does the pastor/priest/rabbi play?
When will we move to “Visions of the Sacred Mission?” What is a sacred community for but to support its members in their daily living as agents of Gods’s mission to make the world more loving and just? Our current list of local, national, and world problems would surely be more manageable if churches got across to their members that how they live in each part of daily life from Monday to Saturday was God’s primary interest and that Sunday was to help them to do it better!
Wayne Schwab
Good question about how we measure a church’s visionary capacity. There may be a few questions that could help congregations take a hard look at themselves, like: How often do you actually pray for other members? Or engage regularly in a ministry that doesn’t directly benefit the congregation? Or get a new insight from scripture? Getting honest answers to these questions is the hard part; lots of self-deception out there, and lots of different ideas about what “counts” as visionary ministry.
We may also need to be careful; what looks like merely “functional” ministry to some may feel “visionary” to others. How can we gauge the efficacy of a ministry without judging by human standards the mysterious work God does through the cracked vessel we call Church?
A visionary church is a place of meaning and purpose vs. the functional church “which is not???”. As a pastor I have seen the main problem in churches who seem to have little “sacred space” to be indifference. Everyone goes through the motions and few know why. The lack of spiritual curiosity has been mind numbing at times. Still, they are faithful. Maybe it’s just Lutherans….