Resistance and Sabotage

Recently, I had the opportunity to hear Peter Steinke speak on New Hope for Mainline Churches. Peter is an ELCA consultant who has done some of the best work in translating Family Systems into congregation life. His “Healthy Churches” is a very helpful book.

During the seminar, he pointed out that because most congregations today are in need of revitalization that, like it or not, most pastors are called to be agents of change. Then he observed, “Most pastors are poorly trained as leaders, and when they experience resistance, they seem baffled and confused. Further, when pastors experience sabotage, they seem completely surprised.” Peter’s experience matches mine, and all t his relates to my current series of blogs on revitalization.

First, in what way are we poorly trained? The theological education that most mainline clergy receives is heavily academic. There is nothing wrong with this in my opinion, but what is wrong is the model that seminary professors often offer. This model is that education and knowledge lead people to the right conclusions and my job as pastor is to simply inform them. I see this all the time with clergy. We come into a congregation that is stuck or in decline. We think we know what people need to do to bring creative change and we preach, teach and instruct them waiting for their behavior to change.

In my first parish, I did exactly this. I remember well my first Annual Meeting. Faced with stiffening resistance, I said to the members, “Some of you still don’t seem to understand that this parish must change or it will die.” Immediately, a long time member raised his hand and said, “Fr. Martin, you are the one who doesn’t seem to understand. Many of us would rather see this church die than change.” I was speechless. I thought leading change was a rational process where insight and information would lead to the right choices.

Even more so, I was not prepared at all for sabotage. This is the behavior where members of the parish, often leaders, do things to directly subvert actions of the leader. I remember a Diocese of Texas congregation that had asked the new Rector to help bring in younger families with children. He did, but when the families began to disappear, he found out that long time members were offering to pay the families for baby-sitting in their homes because their children were ruining the dignified and beautiful Episcopal Liturgy. Sabotage! The new Rector asked me, “How could people tell you one thing and then work to undermine it?

On the change issue, I refer folks back to the excellent work by John Kotter on why efforts at change fail. On resistance and sabotage, I have a bit more to say.

First, expect resistance! If change and revitalization were easy then everyone would be doing it. I think it is best to work with a coalition of lay leaders in the parish to build change and to help them respond (rather than react) to resistance.

Second, sabotage happens most when something is about to happen. Sabotage comes forward as the anxiety about change becomes overwhelming to those most invested in the status quo. Remember that what drives this sabotage isn’t rational and rational explanations won’t deal with it. What does deal with sabotage is truth telling and persistence. I often find clergy give up at just the moment when creative change is about to take effect.

Readiness for Revitalization

Several of you wrote me to ask about the issue of “readiness” of a congregation for revitalization. Some even wanted resources for this. Here is a composite of some of my responses to such questions:

I can point you in two directions. First, the Alban Institute has done some good work in this area. While I have not been in touch with them for a while, I suspect that they have good information on revitalization.

Second, George Bullard, who I think is one of the best congregational development persons in the wider church, has done great work in refining the congregational life cycle information and applying it. He can be found easily on the web at The Columbia Partnership. By the way, George has written some wonderful articles on Denominational Revitalization, but don’t tell anyone at 815 about this.

Here is what I look for in measuring a congregation’s readiness to begin revitalization. I frame this around a series of questions.

1. How in touch with the decline are the leaders and members? Have they viewed their own statistics? Do they know the trends? Is there urgency for creative innovation or just anxiety because they can’t pay the bills?

2. Are they searching for a future, or simply wishing to repeat a favorable past moment?

3. Are they looking for systemic change, or do they simply see "getting the right clergy person" or starting some new “program” as the solution?

4. Do they have financial and other resources to fund a creative change? If not, are they willing to raise the funds?

5. This leads to the commitment as expressed in stewardship issue. What is the average pledge? Does this reflect sacrificial giving or nominal giving in their region of the Country?

6. How many new or potentially new leaders do they have in the congregation? Conversely, are the older tenured leaders willing to give you leadership to younger and newer people?

Now let’s turn this around into a generalization. Most ECUSA congregations in decline are low commitment congregations living in denial, longing for a nostalgic past, and eager for a quick fix. Everything that is counter to this is a sign of hope and of possible revitalization.

Revitalization

One of the three most critical analytical questions any leader should ask of their own congregation or prospective congregation is “where is this church in the predictable life cycle of a congregation?” The life cycle information was one of Arlin Rothauge’s most helpful resources on congregational information that his office produced. In my humble opinion, it is not used as often as it should.

By way of reminder, Arlin (and others) pointed out that most congregations go through five key stages of development:
Birth – Growth/development – stability – Decline – Death

Birth is the time in which the initial vision for the congregation is cast. During the last major development period for TEC, 1945 – 1960, this vision may have been as simple as “having our own parish in this part of town.” Today, vision is more critical and needs to be much more refined, and not institutional since “membership is not a destination” for most secular people. Birth is a good analogy because just like human birth there is a lot of messiness.

Once launched, there comes a time of up-building. During the initial life cycle of a congregation, this growth/development stage often determines the size (family, pastoral, program, etc.) of a church. During our last building period, many churches were build with their parish hall as their initial building. Since these were built at a “pastoral size” in the life of a church, few congregations had the energy to move beyond this limit to a larger size. This is, however, when ministries get established.

Then comes stability. The role of the leadership becomes maintaining the present known culture of the congregation. Stability can continue for some time. Stability is actually the best time to revisit vision and start a new revitalization process, but few congregations have the visionary leadership to do this at this stage.

Eventually, decline sets in. Most congregational leadership don’t address this stage very well, and most respond, when they do, to trying to return to some previous stage instead of facing present realities. Decline can happen quickly or over 50 years.

Lastly, death comes. My experience is that congregations die hard. Most everyone knows when a church is in the last stage and few are in denial about it, however, the resources necessary at this point (people, money, leadership) are usually in such short supply that revitalization at this stage is rare.

Most congregations finish their initial cycle after about 30 years and then need revitalization. Given the ages of most of the Episcopal Churches in this country, this means that most clergy are presiding over the decline and death cycle. Revitalization is difficult work especially for us clergy who were trained to maintain churches – that is to do Lent over this year with some improvements.

One major problem in revitalization is that few lay leaders have really thought through where their churches are in this cycle and what this means. One way to help them do this is to present the life cycle information and ask them to identify “where” they think their church is in this predictable cycle.

Long standing congregations, like the Cathedral that I serve, have gone through several life cycles, having lived through revitalizations at some point. I plan my next several blogs around the topic of revitalization of the declining and/or dying congregation and why this is often so hard to do.

“The life cycle in congregations: A process of natural creation and an opportunity for new creation” (Congregational vitality series) by Arlin J Rothauge is available through Amazon.com. I do not know if 815 continues to carry this.

Reaching Harry and Mary

In response to my posts on vision and mission, Jim Griffith, the best leadership coach I know responded with this;

“fyi: I’am probably the only person on the planet who thinks vision statements, mission statements, et al are important but seriously "over-rated." there's absolutely no relationship between a well articulated vision or mission statement and new professions of faith or lifelong transformation. there is a large bill $$$ as the board goes away for a few weekends to come up with these statements, but that's it. in fact, with existing congregations, they have these things in spades. many of them cut & paste from megachurch websites.

I find these exercises a complete waste of time and many members of the laity see them for what they are: fruitless meetings.

What I suggest as an alternative, have the leadership team spend 24 hours away defining the un-church harry & mary in their mission field and obsessing about how to reach them.”

As I said in an earlier post, I agree with Jim and think most mission statements and the process that brings them about are over-rated. Notice, however, that Jim is concerned with the number of new professions (or adult converts as we would say in TEC). Vision and Mission Statements are about organizational revitalization and have “no direct relationship” to reaching un-churched because that is not their purpose. In addition, my experience is that few Episcopal congregations make “new professions of faith” the highest priority of the congregations. I leave it for the reader to ponder the “meaning” of this last statement.

What Jim knows, and those who wish to grow their congregations in new member ministry (and not just transfer growth) is that to do so you must find a methodology that works and then repeat it over and over. One of the best church planters I know said it this way to me, “Church planting isn’t that creative. Once you find the way to reach folks, you have to be willing to repeat it over and over. Most Episcopal clergy are too creative to want to do this.”

All this leads us to the topic of “EXECUTION” or as I like to call it “organizational consistency,” the topic of my next blog.

What is the Vision of Your Community?

For me, a Vision Statement is different from a Mission Statement although I find that many consultants and church leaders use these interchangeably. When I look at a church’s Vision Statement, I expect it to tell me who these people are. This means that in a Vision Statement the nouns are the important words as different from a Mission Statement where the verbs are the key words.

When a community attempts to say “who they are,” they are saying a great deal about what they value. This means that a Vision Statement says both who we are and who we want to become. This means that Vision is bigger than mission and is about identity which also means that it tends to be a bit more global and at times fuzzy.

This is why I often find it more helpful to articulate a Church’s mission – what we feel called to do – before we charge into the Vision Thing. After helping a Church write their Mission Statement, I would ask, “what does this mission say about who you believe you are and who you believe you are becoming?”

If you think this Vision business is simple, think about how many ways the Scriptures try to articulate the identity of the people of God; God’s own people, the household of God, the family of God, God’s own chosen, a royal priesthood, a holy nation – to name just a few.

I might mention that I believe one of the issues before the Episcopal Church today is that we have diverse and at times conflicting visions of who we think we are.

A community’s Vision Statement can be remote and abstract especially if it is detached from the core values of a community. I see core values as the DNA of a community. Over time a congregations core values expand and become diffused. This is what makes re-vitalization so difficult because by the time re-vitalization is attempted different members are too invested in different things.

No where is this process of Vision better illustrated than in a new church plant. These are most successful when built around 3 or 4 core values. A long-standing congregation’s leadership may list as many as 20 core values if asked. I’ve often found it helpful to ask leaders to start with their long list of values and reduce these to the seven most important. Even this is difficult for some congregations.

So to summarize: as a congregation works on self-understanding, I like to see three things emerge or be put in place: one is the Vision Statement, the second is a Mission Statement, and third is a banner or slogan statement. Churches that have these three things in place have done the hard work of understanding who they are and what they are called to do TODAY.

It is hard work, but it is very much fruitful. Besides, it is better to have leaders spend their time on these things than on balancing the budget!

The Elements of a Good Mission Statement

What do I like to see in a Mission Statement? I like to see the leadership of a parish state three things.

Who are we as this community, called by God, in this place and at this time?

In my next blog I will write more on this because it involves the “Vision” of the congregation. I make a distinction between a church’s vision and its mission.

What are we called to do?

I like to see active and strong verbs. Vision Statements are about nouns, but Mission Statements are about verbs. When I see a Mission Statement, I underline the verbs, and I especially like to see if there object is beyond the members of the congregation. This leads to:

Who will benefit from this mission?

This is often the missing ingredient in most Mission Statements, and there is usually a reason why it is missing. The reason is because the statement is aimed at members of the church, i.e. “to nurture one another in Christ” and isn’t about a Church’s mission to the world, It is inward focused instead of outward focused. This doesn’t mean that such things are not important, however, I’ve often found that many Mission Statements have almost no “mission” in them.

In looking at this third element, I suggest that a congregation target who they can best reach. When I do this, leaders of a church often say that this would be wrong since, “our doors are open to everyone.” Consistently, when church leaders insist that their doors are open to everyone, their congregation is in decline. Can you guess why? I’ve found that a congregation that knows who they are trying to reach with their mission is much better in reaching all others.

Of course, all this work usually produces a rather long Mission Statement, sometimes as long as a full page. I then suggest that “knowing their mission” those congregational leaders can then create a one sentence (even phrase) that summarizes this mission and becomes a kind of banner. Once they have t his, I recommend this be put on every communication; newsletters, websites, stationary, business cards. You can put an attractive and consistent logo with it too.

Here is the mission banner statement of the Cathedral of St. Matthew.

“Our mission is to invite all to join our diverse community, worshiping God and sharing Christ’s compassion.”

One of the most evocative banner statement that I’ve seen was “Our mission is to find a hurt and heal it in the name of Christ.”

Feel free to share your Church's Mission Statement in reply to this post.

Written Mission Statements

Sure your congregation has a mission statement, but does it have a mission? Many congregations have undertaken the task of writing a mission statement and generally speaking, I think this is a good thing. Yet, over the years, I’ve noticed that many churches with mission statements do not seem to have much of a sense of mission. Here are some critical questions to ask about your mission statement.

1. Is it up to date? Secular organizations know that the rapid pace of change means that mission statements tend to go stale or become irrelevant very quickly. This can even be true of churches too.

2. Is your statement too, well quite frankly, theological? Many mission statements that I read reflect the heavy hand of the rector in creating it. Better mission statements are usually created by lay people who say in normal language what they mean. Clergy, if this offends you, remember that the New Testament was written in Koina or common Greek. I would add this caveat for clergy; the rector should always write the finale version. After all, she or he will be the person who most often has to say it.

3. Are the verbs in the mission statement weak, or even worse, passive voice. The strength of a mission statement is found it active and strong verbs. “Nurture” and “Support” are poor substitutes for “care” and “love.” You might want to think of the Great Commission here with “go, make, teach as the active verbs.

4. In other words, some mission statements are really maintenance statements in disguise. What they really say is “We intend to keep doing things the way we like it around here and we would like to find some new people who will help pay for this!” Is this what your statement really says?

5. Is your mission statement borrowed from someone else? After “Miracle in Darien” was written in the early 80s, many churches adopted “to know Christ and to make him know” as their mission statement. Few did it.

6. Can the lay people tell you what the mission of your church is without reading it? If they can’t, it isn’t a mission statement.

7. Can the new people tell you what it is? This means you are attracting folks on the basis of your mission and not the Rose Window.

Lots of times folks ask me what is wrong with using something such as the Great Commission or the “to know Christ” statement (actually this is Archbishop Temple’s great statement on the mission of the church.) In one sense, nothing is wrong with it especially if the people really own it and the congregation really does it. What I would ask a group of leaders if they told me that their mission was “to know Christ and make him Known” is “can you tell me five exciting and dynamic ways in which you actually do this?

By the way, what is the mission of the Church? Paraphrasing St. Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians in the 5^th Chapter, the catechism correctly says that “it is to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ.”