Category Archives: Ministry

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Help Me Decide If This Is a Harebrained Idea

I sent this message to some friends and got a little bit of discussion going, but I’d like to open it up more:

I get lots of ideas. Some are good, and some aren’t good upon greater reflection, but it’s fun to entertain them. And if they go somewhere, great. I’d like some thoughts from y’all on one of my latest ones.

Since getting on Goodreads, I’ve been struck by just how many churchy books I should read, and want to have read, but don’t want to actually read. And I wonder if you feel the same. I’m talking about the “missional leadership for the blah blah” books, not the more devotional stuff. You can spend all your time reading church administration if you aren’t careful.

But there IS useful stuff in a lot of those books.

Then I got to thinking about the RevGalBlogPals blog and how useful it is as a ministry resource. And they have a feature on there, RevGalBookPals. Here’s the most recent one. Really good reviews can give you the gist of a book. But reviews aren’t quite enough; you need more of a summary. A colleague of mine once sent me an executive summary for a business book he thought I’d find useful. I guess there is a service you can subscribe to.

So then I thought–would there be a market for “executive” summaries of church administration books? I’m not talking about a paid market (or am I?), but enough people to make it worthwhile. Sort of a swap thing. So let’s say I just finished reading Friedman’s A Failure of Nerve, and I’ve outlined it in 2-3 pages or whatever. Someone else has read Introverts in the Church and outlined it. So I have access to the latter book’s summary since I’ve contributed to the pool.

As a rule, I don’t outline books as I read them, but if it meant a ticket to other books’ outlines, I might. But would other people?

Robert is skeptical because he says that people get different things out of books. I think that’s just the nature of the game. The books you’re most interested in, you’ll read. The books you’re less interested in but that might still be useful, you might read a summary of, and that would be adequate.

Two primary considerations of this idea, beyond whether there’s a market for it: there’d have to be some mechanism for distribution, as well as some basic level of quality control.

What do you think?

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A Pastor’s Kind of Creativity

The tagline for the Blue Room is “a space for beauty, ideas, creativity, and the life of the Spirit.” I tagged it thusly because that’s the purpose of the Blue Room in our house. It’s my home study, the homework place, the kid arts and crafts room. But it feels high-falutin’ to have that tagline. I don’t feel worthy of it.

Then yesterday I listened to Creativity and the Everyday Brain, an interview with neuroscientist Rex Jung on Being. And it encouraged me.

You can read the whole transcript, but here’s the pertinent bit for me, and I suspect, for many of you who plan worship, education and mission in the church. Prior to this, Krista Tippett and Rex Jung had been talking about Einstein’s term, “spiritual genius,” and what it meant:

Ms. Tippett: One of the people I’ve interviewed is Jean Vanier. Are you familiar with him? He started the L’Arche Movement, which is a global movement of communities centered around people with mental disabilities, especially Down syndrome. I think, if Einstein had known him, he might have said ‘there’s a spiritual genius.’ But even if you put that language to one side, I think that’s a form of creativity — there’s socially useful, novel and useful, creativity.

Dr. Jung: Yes.

Ms. Tippett: Right, that — that fits your definition, but it’s not immediately what comes to mind. We think of artists, we think of scientists.

Dr. Jung: It’s not, but I totally agree that that is a form of creativity and a very valuable form of creativity and perhaps something that we’re moving towards in our increasingly complex society. It’s not just going to be a product. It’s not just going to be an artifact like a painting or a dance number. It’s going to be moving groups of people together and motivating groups of people in certain ways, and that’s a creative endeavor in this L’Arche Movement that you’re talking about. This is a kind of — sounds like a new creative endeavor that we should start to recognize.

Ms. Tippett: Yeah. I mean, people think differently and live differently as a result of this.

That’s the goal, isn’t it, of that kind of creative endeavor? That people think and live differently. That’s why we worship leaders pore over books to find just the right prayer of confession. Or comb our archives looking for a quote for the bulletin cover that will set the right tone. That’s why groups of pastors fly off for a week of lectionary study with other trusted colleagues every year. (OK, one of the reasons.)

The transformed life is the artifact we’re looking for.

But works of spiritual genius also happen on a level that’s beyond us and our efforts. During Sunday’s service I saw at least three people with tears in their eyes. That’s not all that unusual, in my experience. Church is a place where people can tap deep wells of emotion. You don’t force it or manipulate it. You just create a space where it can happen.

What was a bit unusual is that all three of these people were big strong men. It was holy ground.

In my work with NEXT Church, I’ve sometimes felt an insecurity among pastors of mainline churches. Are we dinosaurs because we offer a more traditional worship experience? Sometimes, yes, if it’s not indigenous to the people we serve. But it’s like we equate spiritual genius with tattoos and funky glasses. I feel this sometimes myself. I am in awe of the way some people think. I am creative, but within a form. I’m not nuking the Presbyterian order of worship, as many have (faithfully). It’s the sandbox I’m playing in.

For others, there is no box.

But artistry comes in many shapes and sizes. During the NEXT conference, we sang a setting of “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing” that was utterly fresh and new, with guitar and percussion. And the music we made was like a wall of sound—I’ve never heard a congregated people sing that song like that. And at the end of the conference, the organist played the Widor Toccata, and dozens of people stood and soaked it in… even came up into the chancel to behold an artist at work.

Both experiences were traditional. And both were of the moment. Both were moments of spiritual genius.

Be of good cheer, friends who work in the church. There is an artistry to what you do.

~

Image: from the New Yorker article referenced in the On Being program, about how brainstorming doesn’t work. Off topic for this post but worth a read.

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A New Heart: A Sermon

A heart of stone... the cover of our bulletin on Sunday.

Here’s what I preached on Sunday. It is inadequate for the occasion, but it is something.

MaryAnn McKibben Dana
Idylwood Presbyterian Church
March 25, 2012
Fifth Sunday of Lent

Jeremiah 31:31-34: The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt–a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the LORD,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

My girls came bounding off the bus Tuesday afternoon, full of news. A sixth grade boy had been walking to school and had been stopped by a man driving a white van. The man had tried to get the boy to get into the van. The boy had refused, and run all the way to school. Police were called; procedures put into motion. “We’re going to have a lockdown drill on Thursday!” the girls clapped. They were concerned for the boy and a little wary, but mainly they were excited about a break in the monotony of the school day.

I was so grateful for their innocence — that they say something so potentially serious as a festive occasion and not one for fear.

But the other side of me, the side of me who’s seen too much, who had that innocence taken away long ago simply by living in the world for four decades, sucked in her breath.

My oh my, we live in a fallen creation.

We live in what our Presbyterian Statement of Faith calls a “broken and fearful world.”

One of my disciplines this Lent—in addition to fasting from dessert, fourteen more days but who’s counting—is to look around me to try to find just one scene of beauty: each day, to find one thing that takes my breath away that I might have missed if I hadn’t been looking, really looking for it.

I need that discipline right now. I need to look at the world in that way. I need to be a detective for beauty, a sleuth for grace. Because right now the world is a dead black boy in Florida and mean Internet comments and a law student from Georgetown who was called a prostitute for having an opinion. The world is protesters slaughtered in Syria and dead Jewish children in Paris and a soldier gone mad in Afghanistan.

I think Jeremiah would understand the need for some beauty. Jeremiah’s prophetic words were uttered in a time of crisis: Jerusalem has been destroyed by a foreign power; the people of Israel have been deported. Most of the book contains a harsh judgment on the leadership, who have not been faithful to God by maintaining justice and obedience. Exile is seen as a punishment for this failure.

The world is a mess, says Jeremiah.
But let me be more specific: we have made it so.

And then comes chapters 30 and 31, right in the middle of the book, two luminous chapters called the Book of Comfort. That’s where we are today, nestled in that comfort, and it comes just in the nick of time.

The days are surely coming… I will make a new covenant.
I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.

Just one chapter later, we are told that Jeremiah responds to these words, personally and powerfully, by buying a field at Anathoth. This field, it should be said, was occupied by a foreign power; it had fallen to the Babylonians. And yet Jeremiah stakes his claim on that land. The time will come when this land will be God’s again, and I will plant and build here, he says, and in so doing, he claims that covenant hope that God expresses in today’s passage. Jeremiah’s purchase of the land is more than a prophetic move; it is an act of daring, reckless hope.

~

Friday I took a trip downtown to see the cherry blossoms at their peak. As I walked around the Tidal Basin, I happened upon the Martin Luther King memorial. Amid the beauty of cherry blossoms floating down from the trees like pink snowflakes, and branches dipping into the water, the King memorial offered a different kind of beauty, a stark, stony beauty.

King of course was a prophet, as surely as Jeremiah was a prophet. He described the world that is not yet ours, but could be. Should be. Will be. And as I read the various quotes etched in stone on the inscription wall, I couldn’t help but see the sweet face of Trayvon Martin.

“If we are to have peace on earth, our loyalties must become ecumenical rather than sectional. Our loyalties must transcend our race, our tribe, our class…”

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

The fate of Trayvon Martin affects us. Whatever investigation takes place—and an investigation is sorely needed—whatever truth comes out, whatever happens next—his death diminishes us.

We will never know what a grown-up Trayvon Martin might have contributed to his family and his community and the world. He was an A and B student who according to his teachers “majored in cheerfulness,” who had no criminal record and was studying to be an aviation engineer. He wanted to fly.

He is gone. And it falls to us then, the living, to say a reckless YES to the covenant God describes and promises, here in the Book of Comfort. Even if the world God describes seems so far from our own, we are called to step out in faith. The new covenant God promises Jeremiah hasn’t happened yet. The restoration has yet to occur, and God is speaking in the future tense. Here is what I will do, God says.

The when is not clear. But God’s intention certainly is.

There have been many versions of the covenant before this in scripture: covenants to Noah and Abraham, and covenants handed down to Moses in the Ten Commandments. But here there is a shift. The covenant will not be spoken to patriarchs, nor will it etched on stone tablets. It will be written on human hearts. Our hearts. Hearts that don’t just weep at the death of an unarmed black boy, but who work for a world where such a tragedy is a thing of the past.

In a moment, we will hear from John Dearie, a board member of the Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness.

That sounds impossible. End homelessness? It seems laughable in its audacity. Surely the problem is too big, the problem is too complicated, the problem is too expensive. If there were a way to end homelessness, we’d have done it by now.

But I invite you to listen with the ear of Jeremiah:

Jeremiah, who in the midst of the exile of his people said, “God is not finished with us yet.”

Jeremiah who saw the despair and the destruction all around him and dared to announce that there is still hope.

Jeremiah, who wrote 50 chapters of prophetic judgment but had the good sense to include 2 chapters of comfort. But the comfort doesn’t say everything’s going to be OK, that God’s going to swoop in and fix everything. The comfort comes in the form of a new heart beating in our chests, a heart that beats for justice and hope and abundant life for everyone. Everyone.

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”

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Holy Week Helps: Palm Sunday and Maundy Thursday

From the forthcoming book White Flour by David LaMotte. Illustration by Jenn Hales.

First, do you know about Liturgy Link? It’s a place for open-source liturgy creation. The folks there recently asked about Palm Sunday and my answer was longer than a comment, so I’m sharing my plans here. Feel free to borrow or use anything I post. I don’t need attribution. Although, if someone leaves worship and tells you, “That was awesome,” I’d love for you to tell them about The Blue Room and my work.

If they hated it, blame it on some random person on the Internet.

So… Palm Sunday is also April Fool’s Day, which is an amazing opportunity to work with some of that Pauline stuff about God choosing the foolishness of the world to bring down the wise. Also the deep paradoxes that are present in Jesus’ teachings: to save your life you must lose it, and so forth. Reign of God as a series of topsy-turvy reversals. That sort of thing.

I am thinking about doing the service in reverse. I will start with the benediction—a blessing to the community. It’s communion Sunday, and since we usually have that near the end, we will move it towards the beginning. At its best, when communion is at the end, it’s the climax of the service (rather than the afterthought). But if it’s near the beginning we can hit themes of the grace of God that is a free gift for the asking, without even having to sit through the sermon as payment first. Heh.

For the message, I will read the poem “White Flour” by David Lamotte. Read the poem here, or hear more on Kickstarter about David’s plans to publish a children’s book—it’s due out in May. The poem is a true story about a Klan parade in Knoxville five years ago. A troupe of clowns called the Coup Clutz Clowns mounted a counter-protest that exposed the ugliness of the Klansmen. From the Kickstarter page:

Rather than shouting down the shouters, meeting rage with rage, they simply refused to take such foolishness seriously. Fight and flight are not our only two options, and humor, it turns out, beats hatred.  At least it did on that day.

I find this a powerful story to connect to the Palm Sunday narrative. Jesus, too participates in a parade, and while he doesn’t don a clown nose, he rides in on a donkey. He confronts power with humility.

We will move the confession to the latter part of the service, as we start to shift from Palm to Passion… and then we will close with the call to worship—the idea being that as we move into Holy Week, our lives are an act of worship.

~

For Maundy Thursday, the message will borrow from a story I heard on The Moth podcast a few years back. You can read about it here and listen to it here. In this story, writer Andrew Solomon talks about researching his book on depression, which took him to Cambodia to see the impact of the Khmer Rouge on the people there. He met a woman who works with other women to help them recover, and the recovery involved three basic components.

First, she teaches the women to forget—to have something in their mind besides the trauma. This will be an interesting twist as we have communion that night—because communion is all about memory. But what kind of memory we cling to is important. Jesus says, “do this in remembrance of me.” In communion we are called to remember not just the trauma of the cross, but the totality of Jesus’ life and ministry, and of course, the story of his resurrection.

Second, this Cambodian woman gave the other women meaningful work. Here I will talk about the life we are called to lead as followers of Jesus.

Third and most surprising—and specific—she taught the women to do manicures and pedicures. Wait, what? But listen to what she says:

You know, the worst atrocity of all that was brought by the Khmer Rouge was that half the country turned against the other half of the country. And people who lived through that period knew that they couldn’t put anything in anyone else, and they completely lost the habit of looking anyone else in half in the eye.

All of these women had been deprived for a long time of any occasion to indulge in the least bit of personal vanity. I brought them to my hut, and I built a special room that I would fill with steam. And it was a pleasure for them to feel beautiful. But what was really amazing for them was that, in this context, it was something that was at once very intimate and very impersonal. And they would start, because I was telling them how to do it and giving them some instruction, to handle each others’ fingers and each others’ toes. And it meant they were touching each other. And if I had told them to begin to hold each others’ hands or to have some kind of physical contact with other people, they would’ve shied away and they would have pulled back. They weren’t ready to do anything with anyone. But, in this context, they would touch each others’ fingers, touch each others’ toes, and then, because it was such a funny context, and because they felt so happy about the fact that they were, for a moment, feeling a little bit beautiful again, they would begin to laugh together. And they would begin to tell each other little bits of stories and things and that was the way that I taught them to trust again.

This, of course, leads right into the washing of feet. We will actually wash hands, because feet are a barrier for folks. Hands are vulnerable enough; in fact more vulnerable, in a way, because you can look someone in the eye. I will probably not shy away from the beauty aspects of this story, because I think that’s important. Not in a vain way, but in the sense that our physical selves are more than just a utilitarian container for our brains. Our bodies are precious to God.

UPDATE: I forgot to mention that we are going to close Maundy with a pivot to Good Friday, since we alternate MT and GF each year. I’m going to borrow an idea from my friend Jan, who used to have people bring thirty “pieces of silver” (i.e. coins) as an offering. People dropped the coins into the empty (?) baptismal font. Since the thirty pieces of silver are symbolic of Judas’s betrayal, the money collected goes to an organization that works with individuals who have been betrayed in some way (e.g. domestic violence, child abuse).

~

So, them’s the plans. I am excited about all of this… my only anxiety is that for Easter, I got nothin’.

What are you doing Holy Week?

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Agile Church: Slides and Case Studies

I can see that.

Folks who attended my workshop last week at NEXT: things have been pretty crazy around here since then, so I haven’t had a chance to play around with uploading my Keynote slides to the Blue Room. But if you’d like me to send them to you, e-mail me at maryannmcdana at gmail and I’ll pass them along.

However, I can post the case studies easily and have done so below.

During the workshop, after I’d done a short overview of agile as I understand it, we looked at these case studies and answered these questions in small groups:

Where do you see intersections between this church’s processes and agile process?
Where do you see places that agile methodology might help them?
What impediments do you see standing in the way of this church becoming more agile?
What next step would you suggest?

Here are the case studies. These are adapted from actual churches I queried. Hope they prove helpful.

~

Agile Church: Case Studies

Case A. Edgy Urban Church with a Smooth Traditional Center:
Medium-Sized Pastoral/Program Oriented Church

Before:

  • elders chaired committees
  • session meetings were run as committee of the whole
  • meetings were “terrible”
  • elders were burning out

After:

  • elders do not run committees; in fact they do not even serve on committees
  • new system of volunteer staff coordinators who oversee the ministries of the church
  • volunteer staff are empowered to get the work done any way they want (individually, through teams, regular meetings, online), but they have written job descriptions that describe their work
  • volunteer staff are also empowered to spend within their budget without session approval
  • the week before session, volunteer and staff meet for dinner—each coordinator prepares a one-page report for session containing basic information, actions taken, any major items requiring session approval, and examples of transformation/new growth that have occurred
  • these reports are compiled and given to elders several days before session meeting—elders are expected to get any questions answered prior to meeting
  • session meetings involve 30 minutes of business; the rest of the time is spent on prayer, equipping/study, and visioning “big picture” tasks for the congregation

 

Case B. Church of the Leafy Suburb: Large Program-Sized Church

  • Session consists of fifteen elders that are divided into pairs or triads for partnership, support and accountability—for example, children, youth and adult education elders form a triad; small group elder and fellowship elder form a pair; facilities and office operations elders form a pair.
  • Elders chair the committees and ensure that the ministry gets done, using whatever means they wish (regular meetings, retreats, “divide and conquer,” etc.)
  • Elders are expected to report back to session whenever there are items requiring session input or approval
  • In addition, each month a different ministry is highlighted as an order of the day: the elders prepare a more in-depth report, seek feedback, basically delve deeper into their ministry so elders are well versed in it
  • Session meetings consist mainly of business, but with 30 minutes of study/discipleship each month.

 

Case C.

Same as Case B but with the elders serving as a liaison to the team rather than the chair. As liaison, they have no power on the committee other than a vote when one is required.

 

Case D. Our Ecumenical Neighbor: Governance Model from Another Reformed Denomination

  • Ministers, elders and deacons
  • Elders=church council. Deacons=board of deacons. Combined elders and deacons=consistory
  • Elders are understood to be responsible for the spiritual life of the church, including pastoral care.
  • Deacons are responsible for the physical life of the church, mostly the finances and the charitable and social justice life of the church.
  • Major financial decisions are made by the consistory
  • “Elder districts”: each elder is assigned a certain group of people in congregation, often alphabetical or geographical. Every person in the congregation has an elder. If a person lands in the hospital, they would expect to see their elder and their pastor. These districts are sometimes small groups.
  • Not every elder is assigned to a committee. Committees report to council, but sometimes they don’t have a member seated on council. Councils will often have someone assigned or asked to be on a committee, but not to run it necessarily.
  • Council meetings were usually focused on worship; education; and even a review of what was going on with people in your elder district. And, of course, anything else that needed to be dealt with. Often, Council and Deacons met concurrently so that they could check in with each other if needed.
  • Elders team together (three panels of three elders) to coordinate ministry areas
  • Ideas for new ministries (from congregation members) would be referred to the Elder relationship area panel (and the full Session if necessary) for review as to whether they fit into CPC’s current mission/vision

Case E. Church on the Highway: Medium-Sized Program Oriented Church

  • If approved, the Elder panel will identify a task leader to create a taskforce for implementing the program
  • If no leader or volunteers can be found for an approved taskforce, the program is not implemented
  • Ministry Initiation Form is completed by congregation member or group desiring to implement a new ministry, event or “task”
  • Ministry Status Reports include:
    • Submitted by Task Leader to Elder Relationship Area Panel
    • Monthly Status Reports when there is an activity or issue to be resolved
    • Ministry Completion/Annual Report at the completion of a short-term ministry task, or annually for long-term and on-going ministries

 

 

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Harvesting from NEXT: Open Space

One of the most interesting happenings at NEXT was Open Space. After a presentation that included a description of the topic, people shouted out topics they wanted to discuss, then people clustered to the conversations that interested them and we were off! There were probably 30-40 discussions going on around the room.

We’ve implemented Open Space in our presbytery, National Capital. Here is a good description from our website. Note that the purpose of OS is not to deliberate on an issue or to seek consensus on something. The point is for people to come together to share ideas and potentially even form partnerships. (See the video at the NCP link about “flipping the presbytery.”)

Robert Austell had a good “friendly critique” of the process at NEXT. Some of his comments reflected limitations of the conference: the space was not ideal, and it’s hard to start from a place of trust when you don’t know one another. Some of the discussions were better facilitated than others. However, his post provides a good overview of what we did and some ways it could be better.

Rather than provide a broad description of Open Space, I want to share two moments I witnessed in OS recently, one in our own presbytery and one at the NEXT Conference. I share them for people who may be looking to implement Open Space. They are not huge moments, but I found them revealing in their own way:

1. After our first OS at National Capital, we had one of the crankiest meetings I’ve ever had the misfortune to experience. (There’s a reason I call us National Crankypants, but this was cranky even for us.) People were pulling out all the Roberts Rules of Order stops: Division in the house! Substitute motions! I think we were even wordsmithing a motion en masse at one point. Blech. Now granted it was a contentious issue we were dealing with (I can’t even remember what it was) and there was some confusion too. But I am certain that Open Space played a role in this dynamic. It’s like things were so unstructured that people just clamped down afterwards.

Some people find Open Space exciting and refreshing. Others find it scary in its sheer open-endedness. If you get a bunch of Presbyterians in a room together and ask them to be open source… to go off the agenda… to meander around in a topic to see what generative stuff might result… there is going to be blowback. It is such a different way of being that some folks will overcorrect. That is basic family systems stuff right there. We should have anticipated it and planned for it in our meeting, in retrospect. (I say that as a member of the committee that plans presbytery meetings.)

2. Following the NEXT conference Open Space, there was a report back of “harvestings.” These were supposed to be short sentences that reflected some aspect of the discussion. One person got up and, instead of sharing the results of the discussion, launched into what felt a lot like a public service announcement. It felt like talking points. Don’t get me wrong; the information was really important. But the difference between this report-back and the others was obvious and it shifted the energy palpably. I found myself wondering what that group’s discussion had been like.

Not sure what the takeaway is there, though it seems related to number 1. You can’t shift a culture overnight. There will be pockets of resistance. And resistance doesn’t always appear as frowny crossed arms. Sometimes resistance is friendly, but still speaking the old language.

It’s OK. But be aware of it, plan for it, correct and redirect as necessary… but don’t let it stop you either.

Image: the rules of Open Space.

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NEXT Church Blog Roundup

OK. I had every intention of taking notes (graphical or otherwise) during the NEXT Conference, but I got totally caught up in what was going on—the ideas, the conversations, the tweets—that I just plumb didn’t.

Kinda like when you go on vacation and don’t take any pictures because you’re having too much fun.

So in lieu of notes, here are some reactions from around the blogosphere for interested folks to peruse. I will post my own reaction later—not so much a post-mortem as a specific comment about Open Space, which is something we’ve started doing here in National Capital Presbytery and we got a taste of at the conference.

And of course, a regular Friday Link Love will be on tap for tomorrow.

The roundup:

What’s Next PCUSA: Living in the Wilderness — Theresa Cho

NEXT Church 2012 — Adam Copeland

NEXT Church Pts. 1 – 3 – Robert Austell (he’s written three posts so I’m linking to his homepage, not a specific post)

NEXT Church… Just Whelmed — Wendy Bailey (I wish she’d been able to stay until the next day!)

Prototypes and Process Modalities — Rocky Supinger (this is part 1, looks like there will be a part 2 to come)

NEXT Church 2012 — John Vest

The Church Come of Age — Fritz Risch

NEXT Church 2012, A Twenty-First Century Revival — Mary Harris Todd

If there are others, please let me know.

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Questions

I’m here at the NEXT Conference, which means a very full schedule the next few days. I brought along a big spiral notebook that I use to take graphical notes. I thought in lieu of blogging the conference each night I would upload a photo or two of these notes.

The image below is actually from Saturday’s transformation training, but it’s an insight I’m bringing with me today:

Love the questions today.

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Agile Church: Beyond the Committee Structure

It’s been a long fabulous day at Preacher Camp.

This evening at dinner I was sitting with a friend who is helping coordinate the NEXT Church conference in Dallas in just a few weeks. (Not too late to register! 400+ and counting.) He was fiddling with his phone as we all ate and talked, and I found out he was receiving updates as people have begun registering for workshops. “14 people are registered for your workshop, MaryAnn.” A few minutes later: “Now it’s up to 20.”

The workshop is called “Agile Church” and will be partly about our experience at Tiny Church. When I got there, we had nine elders and eleven committees, many of which were committees of one—or zero. We have moved to something that is messier and still nascent but hopefully more agile. And no committees. We will be reading and working with the agile manifesto, mining this business/software development resource for wisdom in how we do our work as a church community. It’s not all directly translatable, but I contend that much of it is.

But I need your help. I also want to talk about other churches that have moved beyond outdated bureaucratic structures into other models that are more effective and life giving.

Do you have ideas to share?

Do you know someone I should be talking to?

Failures and challenges are important to hear about as well. I especially need to hear from folks in larger churches. Are committees the worst structure except for all the others? Or can large churches also move beyond the committee?

Comment here or e-mail me at maryannmcdana at gmail dot com. I’d be grateful, and I know those 20 people (and counting?) will be thankful too.

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Design Your Own Preacher Camp: A Reprise

I’m off today to Preacher Camp in Montreat so I thought I’d re-run my post about how our group got started, hopefully to inspire others

A couple of things have changed since I wrote this, but the basic gist is the same.

Get yourself a Preacher Camp. You’ll be glad you did.

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The Well. By the way, did you know that the Hebrew word for well is beer? Yes indeed.

I leave on Sunday for my yearly meeting with a group of clergy that calls itself “The Well.” (The story of how we ended up with that name is a post in itself.)

We patterned ourselves after a group of hoity-toity pastors that have been meeting together for something like 25 years. I think there are other groups like ours too. This is our fourth year to meet, and here’s how it works:

We are each assigned two Sundays in the upcoming lectionary year, and for each of those Sundays, we are responsible for writing and presenting an exegetical paper. These papers analyze the text and typically provide 2-3 sermon “trajectories.” There are currently 15 people in our group, which means we leave with a head start on 30 weeks of preaching. From time to time we think about adding members, but haven’t figured out how to do so without cutting into evening free time, something we are not willing to do.

People have said to me, “Aww, I wish I had a group like that.” I always tell them, “Just do it!” It’s really not that complicated to put a group together. I would love to see these groups propagate. So to encourage people to give this a try, I thought I would write down a few things we did to get started or keep going. I think most of this is taken from the hoity-toity group, so no claims at originality.

1. Start with a core and invite. Our group began with a few seminary friends kicking around the idea of a yearly lectionary study group. Once this core group was locked in, each of us invited another person. If you still need more, have the invitee invite someone else. That casts the net wider. Decide what kind of denominational/ regional/ theological/ seminary diversity you want, or don’t want.

2. Have a covenant. We were advised to set the expectation: if you don’t have your papers done, you don’t come. That sounds harsh, but the integrity of the group depends on everyone doing the work. We have granted exceptions for truly dire situations—in those cases, the folks brought one paper instead of two. Nobody has arrived empty handed.

3. Have a “dues guy.” We charge dues for basic operations of The Well—this is collected ahead of time by one of our members and kept in an account through the church he serves. Dues might pay for a few lunches, a dinner or two, evening snacks and drinks, etc. We use a sliding scale based on how big people’s continuing education budgets are, but it’s somewhere between $100-$200. Then each person is responsible for their travel expenses plus accommodations.

4. Divide the jobs and respect the royalty. We start with a short worship every morning, and someone new handles that each year. Another person draws names out of a hat to figure out who’s assigned to which date in the lectionary year. We make these determinations about 9 months ahead of time so people have time to write the papers (though I assure you, there is plenty of cramming going on as we speak). We also take turns “hosting” the event. That doesn’t mean it necessarily takes place in that person’s city, but one person is in charge of securing lodging (we like B&Bs), a place to meet (a local church, perhaps) and also moderates any discussion that needs to take place in between meetings (via e-mail). We’ve taken to calling that person the King or Queen, because they are “the decider” for that year. We have a lot of type A people in our group (if I ever write a book about our group it will be called “Too Many Alphas”) so it’s good to have someone in charge.

5. Use Dropbox. We’ve tried a number of things in terms of paper collection and distribution. We used to bring copies of our own papers for everyone, but lots of us preferred electronic copies for various technical and environmental reasons. This year we’re uploading our papers to Dropbox so people can download them onto their laptop and/or print them, if they’re a scribbling type. We make them due by Saturday morning before we leave, and if you miss the deadline, you are responsible for bringing copies of your own paper for everyone.

6. Schedule for the week: We do 40 minutes per paper. The person reads the text, reads the paper, and then the discussion begins. Someone watches the time so we stay on schedule. In the past, we’ve had a block of time with a scholar or pastor to talk shop, and this year we even have a free afternoon. Heaven.

7. Leave evenings free. I’ve heard that the hoity-toities do papers into the evening, and honestly, I don’t know how they do it—by the time we finish for the day, I’m fried. Guess that’s why they’re hoity-toity. Our group likes to have a leisurely dinner, then hang out late into the night. We also started a yearly competition, with a trophy awarded to the person with the most outrageous ministry story. And yes, there’s an actual trophy.

So, there it is. The Well is one of the best things I do as a clergy person and one of my happiest weeks of the year. And I say that despite the fact that I preach the lectionary less than half the time. The scripture study is awesome and stimulating, and of course, spending time with other people who “get it” and with whom you can be real is HUGE. I think I laugh more that week than I do the rest of the year.