Category Archives: Ministry

Jun 17, 2013

Why Congregations Are Stuck

We can… but will we?

I had an “aha” this weekend about why many of our congregations seem so stuck.

I attended a “Building and Empowering Communities” leadership training sponsored by VOICE, a group of congregations and institutions in northern Virginia that are doing community organizing around issues of affordable housing, immigration, and other issues.

The tools of community organizing are not just for engagement in the wider community; they are also helpful within the congregation, as you seek out leaders and discern a vision.

The crux of the training centered on the one-on-one “relational” meeting, in which you try to identify potential leaders through getting to know people and learning their stories—their histories, their passions, and what “keeps them up at night.”

To give us a taste of this, each presenter offered a bit of personal history before launching into his/her topic, and it was easy to connect the dots between the person’s past experiences and his or her life’s work. One person’s aunt and uncle was the victim of a predatory loan. Another saw her single working mother face discrimination and sexism and was driven to empower herself and other women in her community as a result. You get the idea.

Then we practiced one-on-one meetings, and I was struck with how many stories (mine included) were some variation of “I had a pretty comfortable life… and now I just want to give back and make the world a better place.”

Now, admittedly, many of us were brand new at this relational meeting stuff. The organizers who trained us (and whose dots were so easy to connect) have been telling their stories for a long time. And granted, it was an artificial exercise, taking place in a fishbowl, and we could only go 8-10 minutes long instead of the 30-40 minutes that is suggested.

But these rather bland, generic responses revealed to me how we find leaders and volunteers in the church, and how we talk about service. And how it’s killing us.

Here are three realizations I had:

1. We do discernment primarily around gifts rather than stories. We need to stop doing that.

Whether we’re the nominating committee trying to put forth a slate of officers, or a youth director trying to find confirmation sponsors, we think predominantly about a person’s skills and gifts. “This person is a teacher, so I bet he’d be a great Christian Education elder.” “She’s chief operating officer of her company; maybe she’d serve on the stewardship team.”

It’s not that gifts are unimportant. After all, spiritual gifts language has been with us from the very beginning. But one of the tenets of community organizing is that good leaders are made, not born. As a pastor, I can teach skills. But I cannot teach passion. Getting in touch with a person’s history allows you to find those deep hungers that will motivate and drive them even when the going gets tough. No wonder so many of our congregations are boring and lethargic—we’ve been talking about the wrong things!

2. We need to get way more concrete in our language about service.

“I want to help people because Jesus tells us to love our neighbor” doesn’t get us anywhere. Yet it’s our default response when people ask us what drives us. The content of a relational meeting is why and how. “Why do you want to help people? Why does that matter to you? How have you seen that impulse lived out? How do you see that not being lived out in your community?”

Just as we’ve relied on gifts as the primary mode of discernment, we have not taken the time to drill down past our surface responses about service. Many of the overworked pastors there (myself included) were searching for shortcuts—Can’t you do this work in group settings? Does it have to be one on one? What do you suppose the response was?

3. Anger is not the enemy. It is a resource.

Maybe you’re one of those who had a genuinely untroubled childhood. You didn’t see your aunt and uncle’s devastation at almost losing their home because of that predatory loan. But I bet there is an injustice that makes you furious. We don’t like to talk about anger, especially in the Church of Nice that so many of us belong to. Anger is bad, we tell ourselves—something to suppress. But anger, properly contextualized, is also energy. Anger is fuel for action. And there is plenty of holy anger in scripture. One of my favorite benedictions has the line, “May God bless you with anger—at injustice, oppression, and the exploitation of people, so you will work for justice, freedom and peace.”

There are plenty of injustices in the world that I worry about. But when I look back on my personal history, the key issue for me has been women and girls, again and again. The specifics of that have played out in different ways over the years, and the pivotal events that sparked that anger are for another post. But yeah. Women and girls.

My favorite quote these days is this one by Howard Thurman:

But how do we know what makes people come alive unless we ask them?

Jun 11, 2013

I’m Not Married to My Church, Are You?

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Does it? Why and how much?

I was with a group of folk from another congregation recently, introducing them to NEXT Church and talking about my involvement as co-chair. We got to talking about generational differences when it comes to membership in an institution, particularly a church. Millenials are way less wired toward joining a group in the sense of signing on the dotted line. In many cases they are committed to the organization and will support it through time and money, but they do not see the point of being a member.

I made an offhand comment about churches that have people re-commit to church membership every year. Rather than having someone join and be a member of a church “forever,” there is an annual discernment process. The church leadership re-introduces folks to what it means to be a member (and presumably, the expectations are high), and asks people to consider whether they are willing to devote the time and energy toward that endeavor. As always, non-members are welcome to worship and serve in the community, to receive pastoral care, etc.

There was some predictable backlash to this idea, some of which I can understand. There are times in a church’s life when things just aren’t that much fun. A beloved pastor leaves and the energy declines. There are conflicts and crises. Are we saying it’s OK for people to bail just because things get hard, or because the church is not suiting their needs?

And yes, our culture is one in which ties to institutions and communities are more tenuous than ever. So people are right to ask whether a yearly church membership drive feeds that lack of commitment. OR, does it simply acknowledge the world as it is, not as we want it to be? People can carp all they want about “kids today,” but how does that work as an evangelism strategy?

One comment really grabbed me: What, are people going to get married year by year now? I didn’t have the presence of mind at the time to question that analogy. But now, a few days later… No. Just no.

Church membership is not like a marriage. It’s just not. Don’t believe me? Consider this: when a person relocates because of a job, there is often grief over leaving one’s church. But rarely does someone pass up that job because they have made a commitment to their worshiping community. But I know plenty of people who have done that because a move would be bad for their spouse or family.

We use the marriage analogy all the time in the church. Pastors seeking another call feel like they’re “cheating on their church,” like they’re “running around behind people’s backs.” I can relate to the sentiment—there is a zone of secrecy that must be present in these situations, and it can feel inauthentic and sneaky. Still, I find these kinds of metaphors very unhelpful. Pastors are not called to a church until death do they part. They are called for a season of the church’s life. And in the Presbyterian Church (USA), there is at least a minimal sense of re-upping each year, in the sense of negotiating and re-approving terms of call.

Why would we not at least consider giving church members the same freedom to reaffirm their commitment to a congregation that pastors themselves have? Why do we get to leave whenever we feel the winds of the Spirit blowing, but church members are on the hook for the rest of their lives?

The real crux of this membership stuff is not people’s lack of commitment. It’s that the church has done a poor job of teaching discernment and discipleship.

Discernment: sensing the presence and leading of God, which goes beyond what makes me happy in the moment.

And discipleship: commitment to following the Way of Jesus, even when it’s hard, even when it means being in a community with people who are sometimes a pain to deal with.

A church that does a good job of this doesn’t need to worry about a mass exodus of people if the interim’s a boring preacher.

And a church that does a poor job of this wants to keep warm bodies (or not-so-warm ones) on the rolls any way they can.

Jun 6, 2013

What Happens in the Upper Room: A Case in Point

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A short follow-up to yesterday’s post about bidding farewell to children’s Sunday School at Tiny Church, in favor of the Upper Room and other activities.

For several weeks in late April/early May we adapted the “ribbon ritual” that took place at the NEXT Conference in Charlotte in March. At Tiny Church, the ritual built over a series of weeks and ended on Pentecost. The previous week, people had written their names on ribbons with different prayer words they selected. Then on Pentecost, we handed out the ribbons and folks were invited to take those home and pray for that person over the coming weeks.

We had the children hand out the ribbons before going to the Upper Room. One of the children spent the rest of the service creating a sort of “cocoon” in which to put the prayer ribbon she received. This was not an assignment. This was her own initiative, using nothing but paper and tape.

I especially love the lid that tapes shut for safekeeping. And of course, the heart.

Children do listen, process and respond.

Speaking of heart, I am off this afternoon to one of my heart places, Mo-Ranch in the Texas Hill Country, where I will lead the good folks of St. Philip Presbyterian Church in a Sabbath retreat. My piece is minimal: a few presentations and a sermon on Sunday. The real Sabbath comes from walks under the grape arbor and across the catwalk, BBQ by the river, and long hours in God’s hot tub, the rapids of the Guadalupe River.

St. Philip is where Robert and I married almost 19 years ago, where I first felt called to ministry, and where I was ordained as a Minister of Word and Sacrament 10 years ago. It will be lovely to go home to those great folks, many of whom I remember, some of whom are friends I haven’t met yet.

Jun 5, 2013

On Letting Go of Sunday School

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Children respond to the call to Sunday School class in 1937

The Sunday School movement began in the 1780s to provide education to children working in factories—children who were not receiving any other formal education. Teachers shared lessons on Christian religion, but also things like reading, sports, and drama. Today, more and more people are asking whether Sunday School is nearing the end of its life cycle, particularly in certain congregations and contexts.

Tiny Church’s practice in recent years has been to have Sunday School class during the worship hour, following the children’s time. For a small congregation, we have a good number of school-age children—this fall there will be nine, plus about seven middle and high schoolers and a handful of nursery-age.

That’s if they’re all there.

But they’re never all there… which is one of the problems with relying on Sunday School as a child’s primary Christian formation. “Regular church attendance” is different than it was even 5 years ago. Now, a couple times a month is considered regular. Around here, folks generally aren’t slacking off and sleeping in. They’re attending Girls on the Run, taking a weekend trip out of town, volunteering at the Kennedy Center, or helping a friend move. That means the adults who would teach weekly Sunday School are also out a lot, in addition to the kids.

Several of us at Tiny met this past Sunday to talk about Christian education in our congregation, and decided to see all of this as a creative challenge rather than a problem. We have the opportunity to think about Christian formation more holistically, rather than shuttling kids off to a separate room and trusting that they’ll get everything they need there.

Starting this summer, Tiny Church will no longer have Sunday School.

Instead, we will continue work in our Upper Room, which is the kid-friendly worship space in our balcony. School-age children go up after the children’s time and spend the rest of the service there. An adult leads them up and, before they go in, encourages them to “get ready to continue worshiping” by calming and centering, removing their shoes, and so forth.

There are always kinks to work out, but I’m happy to say that the Upper Room is working as well as I could have dreamed. Kids are able to wander, browse a children’s Bible or picture book in one of the comfy chairs, draw or do a simple craft at the table, use the Buddha Board, or mess around with the wooden Noah’s Ark or nativity set. And yet… they’re listening. They’ll walk over to the railing, peek over and watch what’s going on. I was preaching about Pope Francis’s recent remarks and a six year old walked up to Robert and whispered, “What’s an atheist?” I love it.

That said, we also see the value in building intentional relationships between adults and children (which is one of the primary benefits of Sunday School), so we’re thinking about planning a multi-week project maybe once a semester. At these times, children would have a “pull-out” during worship, perhaps to make a video about a Bible story, plan a puppet show, or prepare an anthem as an ad hoc children’s choir. But—and here’s the key—those activities would always connect to the life of the whole worshiping community. The video would be shown in worship, etc.

We also know we need to help equip parents. Like it or not, we are our children’s primary faith educators. I’ve heard of a church that sends home a packet each month with stories, activities, questions to discuss together, rituals, etc. I love this “homeschooling” approach. Sometimes (when I have time and inspiration) I will put together a GPS guide (Grow Pray Study) in the bulletin that helps people think further about the scripture and sermon, and I try to include something for families. That might be something we do more regularly.

We are also still considering how youth fit into this mix. We can see them as co-leaders of the special pullout activities. And we’re considering some mentoring, as well as partnering with another congregation for a mission trip.

Have you moved beyond Sunday School where you are? Would love to hear what you’re up to.

May 29, 2013

Ten Years In

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This Saturday is the 10th anniversary of my ordination in the Presbyterian Church (USA).

2003 was a hell of a year. My father died, I had my first child, I graduated from seminary, we moved to Northern Virginia, I was ordained, I took my first pastoral position, and we moved a second time, into the house we still inhabit. That brings us up to July of that year.

In August I started therapy.

When I began seminary, a non-religious friend told me he didn’t see me doing this forever. “It’s great what you’re doing; I just don’t see you doing the same thing long term. You’ll move on to something else.”

He didn’t mean it unkindly. I wondered myself whether ministry would stick. I had worked for several years prior to seminary, but never for more than a few years at any specific job. Now, ten years in… I don’t know. Is that long term? I remember when we started the Ask the Matriarch feature on RevGalBlogPals, I thought that those women seemed so experienced. Now I’m at that same vintage! Wow.

The great thing about ministry is that it’s always changing. Maybe it’s the last great generalist occupation. Depending on the day, I am a grief counselor, teacher, building manager, grant writer, desktop publisher, camp counselor, thought leader, fundraiser, community organizer, social media specialist, meeting facilitator, sandwich-maker, dispute mediator, contract negotiator, artist, and of course, preacher.

I’ve served two churches as pastor, but really I’ve served many more than that. Communities change as people come and go, as mission and ministry changes—as the world changes. My seminary professors were very clear that the era of Christendom was over; the idea that “everybody” goes to church, especially out of duty or societal expectation, is a thing of the past. The church of the future would have to be flexible, missional, risk-tolerant, creative. So I was prepared for an ever-changing vocation and an ever-changing church.

Still, I have been astounded by just how quickly things are changing. I harbored a secret hunch that there would always be a place for traditional worship, structure and church practice, provided they were offered with integrity, warmth, authenticity and excellence. I’m doubting that assumption more and more—and I’m someone who’s generally comfortable with alternate forms of church! I imagine how hard it must be people who aren’t prepared, who are still looking around flummoxed at how the world has moved on, asking “Why can’t we just plan a really great VBS and have that do the trick?” I think this is why I’m drawn to NEXT Church—it’s a place where churches of all shapes and sizes can acknowledge that doing “the old things better” is not going to work. So now what?

I happen to be walking with several friends who are discerning next steps in ministry. Some of them are actively interviewing with congregations. Others would like to be, but are waiting for a nibble. (In fact I wonder whether I am called to complete some training in spiritual direction/spiritual guidance.) It’s interesting to be the sounding board for these friends during my own 10th anniversary milestone. I feel very fortunate to have pieced together a vocation that works for me and that feels fruitful and right. But it’s not what I would have predicted for myself. More on that another time, perhaps.

Image source: Columbia Theological Seminary Vantage, Summer 2003. That’s me with Shelia Council and David Knauert, of blessed memory. Still can’t believe he’s gone.

The Blue Room

MaryAnn McKibben Dana