Resources and Comments in Response to “What to Keep, What to Cut”
The September 6, 2010 issue of Alban Weekly (“What to Keep, What to Cut“) suggests an excellent approach to communication and strategic planning in congregations–particularly when difficult decisions must be made.
If you have not already read the article from John Wimberly, please do so now.
A set of resources is listed at the end of the article. In addition to those listed, you might also consider Loren Mead and Billie Alban’s book, Creating the Future Together as well as Gil Rendle and Alice Mann’s Holy Conversations.
What are your stories and thoughts concerning this topic? And what resources do you recommend?
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Resources and Comments in Response to “Avoiding Mission Drift”
Church consultant and Lutheran pastor Peter Steinke recognizes the cultural shifts and systemic pressures that can lead congregations to lose their focus. At the same time, though, he emphasizes that a focus on mission is essential to navigating those shifts and pressures. His August 30 Alban Weekly article (“Avoiding Mission Drift,” excerpted from his recently published book, A Door Set Open) defines “mission drift” as the conditions that result from either not having a clear sense of mission or losing sight of mission. These conditions—which range from “succumbing to a pressure group” to “exchanging core beliefs for more marketable ones,” can take shape, gain power, and derail congregations when people lose sight of mission.
What is the mission that can effectively preserve a congregation’s integrity and vitality? For Steinke, it is “the expression of the church’s deep, abiding beliefs” and “the major standard against which all activities, services, and decisions are valued.” Ultimately, says Steinke, “It is about God’s love for the world, not what I like or don’t like about my church.”
What resources can support you and your congregation in avoiding mission drift and reclaiming mission? In addition to the resources listed at the end of the article, you might consider the items in the “Mission and Vision” section of the Congregational Resource Guide—particularly Fredric Roberts’s Be Not Afraid: Building Your Church on Faith and Knowledge.
What are your stories and ideas regarding mission and mission drift? And what resources do you recommend? We look forward to hearing from you!
Resources and Comments in Response to “A Well in the Distance”
Drawing on the biblical story of Hagar and Ishmael in the desert, Carol Howard Merritt invites readers to envision the living waters that can renew their congregations and make possible the missions and ministries to which God has called them.
Merritt’s Alban Weekly article of August 23 (“A Well in the Distance“) explains how old congregational and denominational frameworks no longer serve within the social and cultural contexts in which people find themselves. Nuclear families—with housewives who could offer abundant volunteer labor to a church—no longer characterize the demographics that define congregational reality today. But Merritt points out that there is cause for hope: “New opportunities, tools, movements, missions, and passions cascade through our wilderness landscape bringing vital ways of organizing faithful communities, communicating prayerful longings, and seeking social justice.”
What resources can support these “prayerful longings”? In addition to the items listed at the end of the article, please consider Changing the Conversation: A Third Way for Congregations, as well as Culture Shift: Transforming Your Church from the Inside Out.
What stories and ideas do you have regarding this topic? And what resources do you recommend? We look forward to hearing from you!
Resources and Comments in Response to “Ironies, Paradoxes, and Balance”
In “Ironies, Paradoxes, and Balance” (the August 16, 2010 issue of Alban Weekly, adapted from Beating Burnout in Congregations), Lynne Baab points to a paradox in congregational life: the work required to fulfill the life-giving goals of congregations often lead to levels of burnout among volunteers that are life-depleting. As Baab puts it, “If a person or many people experience exhaustion, discouragement, and pain in the very place that promised to give life, then what does that say about our faith?”
Baab notes that for some volunteers, burnout does not happen; rather, they experience their service as life-giving and they recognize the “holy moments” in their work. And fortunately, in a healthy congregation people recognize that God can foster transformation through all kinds of situations. “Indeed,” Baab surmises, “burnout can enable us to reshape our priorities and have a fresh start.”
What resources might enable volunteers to recognize the holy moments in their work, and to allow a grace-filled “fresh start”? In addition to the excellent resources listed at the end of the article, you might consider Kirk Byron Jones’s Addicted to Hurry: Spiritual Strategies for Slowing Down and Margaret Guenther’s At Home in the World: A Rule of Life for the Rest of Us.
What stories and ideas do you have about this topic? And what resources do you recommend? We look forward to hearing from you!
Resources and Comments in Response to “Craving Community”
In the August 9, 2010 issue of Alban Weekly (“Craving Community,” excerpted and adapted from “Downtown Judaism: In Our Own Image,” an essay in Living Our Story), New York Rabbi Niles Elliot Goldstein relays his memories of the longing for community and for the safe haven of sanctuary that arose in lower Manhattan and in Jewish life after 9/11.
That longing still exists, and Goldstein holds that people even now “are looking for communities, not congregations,” and for sanctuaries more than for houses of worship. And yet, a key question in the face of creating community and sanctuary is how best to “strike the proper balance between creating innovative projects and initiatives and conserving the traditional pillars of our rich and ancient faiths?”
If you have not yet read this article, please do so now.
The article is followed by an annotated list of relevant resources. In addition to these resources, you might consider The Spirituality of Welcoming: How to Transform Your Congregation into a Sacred Community as well as the exciting project and website, Synagogue 3000.
What are your thoughts and stories on this topic? And resources do you recommend? We look forward to hearing from you!
How’s Your Hopefulness Index?
Bob Sitze, author of It’s Not Too Late: A Field Guide to Hope and this week’s Alban Weekly, writes:
This book started as an attempt to thwart “eco-despair,” something I saw building in the environmental movement and bleeding into the social justice enterprises of which I was a part. No one was out-and-out giving up, but many of its signs were there: endless circling around what didn’t work in the past, tired arguments over small details, uninspired approaches, neglect of current scientific thought, and perhaps just plain old stress-related actions—fighting, fleeing, freezing. Help was needed, I thought, and perhaps I could offer it in the form of a book about the subject of eco-despair.
I started looking at hope and hopefulness as part of the human condition, including the spiritual and neurobiological parts of this basic human trait. I was encouraged by what I read, including books and research that got to the nature of hope itself. There was no end to the really excellent writing that delved into hopefulness, from any number of directions. Good stuff, and not to be repeated in anything coming from my little brain. There had to be another angle by which to approach “Please let’s all be hopeful,” perhaps a niche that I could play with.
That’s where the “field guide” metaphor came to life. As an avid outdoors guy—with my family I have hiked and fished the Sierras for decades—I knew the value of those little books that help you identify the flora, fauna, history, and geology of the landscapes around you. Without the useful presence of those compact little volumes in our pockets, our family forays into nature would have been uninformed, unappreciative, and maybe even dangerous. (Ever encounter the famous “Stinging Nettle”?)
So a “field guide to hope” became the operating metaphor for this book, an approach to hopefulness that offered less description about the thing being sought and more help in how and where to find it.
And What About You?
I don’t know how your “hopefulness index” is doing these days. These are tough times, let’s be honest, so I can understand if you find yourself infected with some form of despair. The little mosquitoes of life today seem to want to bite all of us, trading our life blood for their eventually death-dealing poisons. I know those feelings—they sat on my shoulder like a horde of demons all during the writing of the book—so I can grant you the possibility that despair and its ugly brood might be perching on your soul, too. Waiting to turn you into a sulking cynic or worse.
I really hope that you’ll not succumb to any of their temptations or diseases. Hopelessness will kill your ministry as certainly as will anger or narcissism. You have a higher calling than dragging the mission of God into slow-motion; you have more skills than mumbling about the end being near. You’re a leader, for God’s sake, and by God’s grace you can help the people you serve face the gathering environmental and economic landscape with more than dogged determination.
I wrote this book to be helpful for you. I hope that will become obvious as you read it. Like any other field guide, my little book can be read from front to back or sampled in small gulps. I also hope you’ll do more than read the book and put in on your shelf. Spend some time with someone you trust talking about any of the entries in the book. Because it’s small, you can put it into any of your real or metaphoric pockets and carry it with you into the places where you want to find hope.
Hope is still a gift of the Spirit, and it’s out there where you live and work. Look for it, and take someone along with you on the journey!
God keep you hopeful,
Bob Sitze
Resources and Comments in Response to “Friend, Foe, or Fiasco”
The July 27, 2010 Alban Weekly (“Friend, Foe, or Fiasco,” excerpted from Bruce Epperly and Daryl Hollinger’s From a Mustard Seed: Enlivening Worship and Music in the Small Church) stresses the importance of strong partnerships between pastors and music leaders, particularly in small churches. Such partnerships are fostered, say Epperly and Hollinger, by good communication; understanding strengths, weaknesses, and personality types; respecting each other’s roles in ministry; and a commitment to spiritual formation on the part of both pastors and church musicians.
Epperly and Hollinger conclude that “Creative worship calls us to be bold in creating healthy relationships between the pastor and church musician that are loving, supportive, full of open communication, and grounded in spirituality.”
If you have not yet read the article, please do so now.
What resources can support creative worship and the relationships that nurture it? In addition to the many items listed at the end of the article, we hope you’ll also take a look at the “Music” section of the Congregational Resource Guide. You might find Don Saliers’s Music and Theology especially helpful.
What are your stories and thoughts on this topic? And what resources do you suggest? We look forward to hearing from you!
Resources and Comments in Response to “Evangelism and the Under-Thirty Crowd”
Resources and Comments in Response to “Why Do We Worship the Way We Have Always Worshiped When People Keep Changing?”
In the July 12 issue of Alban Weekly (“Why Do We Worship the Way We Have Always Worshiped When People Keep Changing?“), Graham Standish asserts that forms of worship need to be adapted to the trends that emerge with each new generation. Forms that were vital thirty or forty years ago fail as time passes because congregations forget to “keep the focus of worship on the encounter with the Holy.” Maintaining the status quo begins to take precedence over enabling people to “gain a sense of the Creator’s purpose in their lives, Christ’s presence in worship, and the Spirit’s power working through them.”
What is the alternative? Becoming intentional about adapting worship to the spiritual realities of people’s lives. The core question, says Standish, is this: “Do people encounter the Holy in our worship services?”
What resources might help you and your congregation move toward an adaptive, spiritual approach to worship? In addition to the items listed at the bottom of the article (particularly Standish’s books, In God’s Presence and Becoming a Blessed Church), the items featured in the “Worship” and “Spirituality” sections of the Congregational Resource Guide may prove helpful. You might especially consider Beyond the Worship Wars, and Making Liturgy.
What are your stories and ideas concerning this topic? And what resources do you suggest? We look forward to hearing from you!
Resources and Comments in Response to “Funding for Today and Tomorrow”
In the July 7, 2010 issue of Alban Weekly (“Funding for Today and Tomorrow“) Dan Hotchkiss points out that many congregations want to believe they serve those beyond their walls, but expect budget outlays to focus on the desires and needs of their members. He compares the congregation with other nonprofits as he explains that both kinds of institutions require plans for “primary customers” (people whose lives will change through interacting with the organization) and “secondary customers” (people whose contributions and support are needed for success).
The article discusses several ways to approach these plans. (If you have not read the full article yet, please do so now.) One approach is to “teach stewardship to members, who eventually understand that the congregation does not exist for them alone but has a precious gift to give to others through their gifts of time and treasure.”
What resources can support teaching stewardship in your congregation? In addition to the resources listed at the end of the article, we suggest you check out the “Stewardship” sections in both the “Administration” and “Spirituality” categories of the Congregational Resource Guide. You might especially find Generous Saints: Congregations Rethinking Ethics and Money helpful.
What are your stories and thoughts on this topic? And what resources have you found helpful? We look forward to hearing from you!
