This will be my final post to the Mission Possible Network. I thought it would be helpful – to me certainly and potentially to you – to wrap up this little corner of the work that I have done among you for the past 18 months with a few closing thoughts about what I have learned along the way. Some will be confirmation of ministry principles that I have long tried to embrace. And some will be discoveries that I have had while working in the synod office. I’ll try to capture these thoughts in five broad statements.

1. Jesus is Lord and the closer we stay to that reality the more effective we will be in ministry.

I began this work with a vision to join Bishop Rinehart and his team in helping our congregations make more Lutherans. Immediately I got pushback that it was inappropriate to strive to make more Lutherans. I heard from people, “We need to make more Christians, not more Lutherans”. “Lutheran” is an adjective; “Christian” is the point. I agree with that. Point taken. (On the other hand, the reality is that we have spent 22 years in the ELCA making less of just about everything so what difference does it make to argue semantics?)

I was surprised by that pushback; I assumed people would understand that is what I meant. Lutheran and Christian are not mutually exclusive terms for me. I expect Baptists to make more Baptists so what is the problem with a Lutheran seeking to make more Lutherans? Unless more Lutherans would be unhelpful to God’s work in the world…in which case we ought to close our doors.

But we all live and work in the real world. In the real world, no one equates Christian identity to a name in a big red Parish Book. There IS something deeper to church membership, isn’t there? Yet in the real world, our name can be in a membership list for a congregation in which we play no part, believe little of anything taught, believe perhaps the opposite of what is taught, and no one is the wiser. As Pastors, we are free to be as spiritually disengaged from ministry as we choose to be. Short cuts abound. This is all dangerous to our identity, our purpose and our calling.

At the end of the day, if we all aren’t spiritually engaged – if we are not seeking God’s direction in our lives, we’re not praying about everything, we’re not engaged in Bible study, active in worship and service, accountable to a few other Christians – then we will never reach our God-given capacity for ministry. I need to improve in these areas; most people I know need to improve in these areas. We all know it. Probably time that we make time for it.

When we take the Lordship of Jesus seriously then our lives will reflect that. We will live, work and do ministry as if we belong to God and our goal is cooperating with God in incarnating the Kingdom of Heaven for the good of the world.

2. A faithful congregation makes every decision in the best interests of, and on behalf of, those who are not yet here.

I get pushback – even my own stomach churns – when I say this one out loud. Evidence perhaps that it lies right at that crucial cutting edge of the kind of missional thinking that leads to missional ministry. We push back because we sense that this principle calls us to selflessness, creativity and change. It goes against the grain of common sense (the world tells us that membership has its privileges, not its responsibilities.) But every time that I remember this principle in the midst of a question about congregational practices or leadership directions, it becomes a compass pointing due north to the truth.

Embracing this principle requires three things from us. First, it requires intuition. If we have been around the church our whole lives it will be almost impossible for us to “see” our ministries, our buildings, our practices, from the point of view of a new person. Even if we didn’t grow up in the church, once we have been around a little while we tend to forget what it felt like to be new. So we must imagine. We must intuit.

It might help here if we imagine a congregation like a restaurant. If you were designing, opening and running a new restaurant, what would you have to be thinking about in your design, your marketing, your customer experience, that would lead to a successful business?

Second, we need people who can speak up on behalf of those who are not yet here. They might be the voices of young people, of boys in their 20’s, of our newest members who can still remember good reasons why they chose our congregation. We need to listen to the voices of those outside of our congregations who can help us see needs in the surrounding community that aren’t being met but potentially could be places for our congregation to serve.

And third, we need to be checking in with our newest people to see how we are doing. We need to measure our effectiveness in stories as well as statistics. There is plenty of room in the church for excellent mistakes, for trying our best with the best of intentions but failing miserably to reach our goals. Such failures are only failures if we fail to learn something from them. We only learn if we ask.

3. Christianity is a team sport.

I realize that the popular culture around us divides spirituality and religion. Frankly, we need to accept an appropriate level of responsibility for sewing the seeds of such a divide. Many is the congregation, and the Christian, whose words and deeds have failed to align to such a degree that the institution, and the person, lose credibility.

But the popular answer in the culture has been to leave the church in droves. That is precisely the wrong answer! It is wrong in that it is unhelpful in two ways. Let’s call them “protection” and “production” to make them easy to remember.

First, isolated individuals cut off from Christian community lose the best when they leave the rest. They open themselves to all sorts of goofiness. They run from the church but they can’t run from God. They fall prey to American individualism run amock, just a “me and Jesus on the golf course” kind of faith that is more like the man building his house on sand in Jesus’ parable than finding God in the 8^th hole sand trap. People who say they believe in nothing tend to swallow anything that feeds their selfishness, isolation and shame. Being part of Christian community protects us.

Being part of Christian community also helps us be more productive in the best sense of that word. We make a much more significant mark in the world by working with others than we can alone. We can enjoy the support of good friends. Our lives, living in a rhythm of worship and prayer and fellowship, become more centered around the Center that lies at the center of life. It is healthy for people of faith to be connected to others of faith.

The Bible tells us that Body of Christ is just that, a living organism comprised of many interdependent members. When we function as a part of the whole, for the good of the whole, we are at our best. Christianity is a team sport. And that calls us to live with a healthy sense of connectedness within our own networks of family and friends, within our local congregation, our ministeriums, our synod and our denomination. We thrive together and we die alone.

4. A minister can attract new people but it takes a ministry to retain them, nurture them, help them grow and set them free to serve.

People are complicated. There is nothing simple about us. It is no wonder, when you team a bunch of us up together in a congregation, that congregational systems come out as complex as they are. There is no BIG ANSWER to congregational health, grow and vitality. There isn’t a program or a pastor who can “fix us.” All there is is the love of God which has captured us and the common call to live that love in the world. We work out how to do that together. That is where it gets tricky.

Having said that, we all do well to learn as much as we can about leadership and the life dynamics of congregations of various sizes. We learn that from others who have been there before us (books, websites, personal conversations, congregational visits), from learning events (best experienced in groups), and from our prayer lives as we seek God’s direction in applying what we learn to our lives and our ministries.

The most effective congregations include pastors and lay leaders who are hungry to learn as much as possible about congregational leadership and congregational health. Pastors, of course, get paid to learn such stuff. Our people expect that from us. But once we learn something new, we need the active and on-going partnership of others to make it happen and make it work.

Far too often pastors settle back into the routine of what they have always done, wondering why they don’t get different results. Far too often, lay people who aren’t really engaged in a spiritual life sit back and take potshots at pastors for not “growing the church” like we “pay you to do.” Neither route gets us home.

Christianity IS a team sport and congregations do best when they play to win, when they play as a team, when they follow leaders who lead well in doing the right things.

5. The only healthy theology of stewardship is healthy stewardship of life.

I have also been responsible for working in the area of healthy stewardship and mission support for the wider work of the church. Frankly, while we did some good work in drafting a synodical plan for growth as stewards, I didn’t spend as much time or energy in this area as I have in evangelism and congregational growth. There is a reason for that.

Money does in fact follow mission. When we come to the place that we fully realize that we belong to God, it is a very short step for us to then realize that what we do with our lives, all of our lives, every corner of our lives, reflects this identity.

Mature Christians don’t need to be reminded to be generous, they are eager to be generous. They don’t need to be beat over the head with reminders of finding an outlet to serve the world through their gifts/passions, they are already doing it.

The Christian church today, including the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, doesn’t have a money problem today, we have a faith problem. And we don’t solve that faith problem by raising more money.

Along with Rolf Jacobson, I’ve learned some wonderful new insights into Christian stewardship this year that will last me for years to come. Among them:

o The church needs to do a much better job talking about money (helping people to understand and steward the role and power money plays in their lives) and less time talking about giving. As Mark Allan Powell says, the Bible has much to say about how we acquire money, regard our money, manage our money and spend our money.

o Healthy stewardship concerns 100% of our lives. Everything (all of our time, our interests, our passions, our pursuits) comes from God and matters to the world. We sew misunderstanding if we only talk about 10% of anything at church.

o The culture in which we live is post-Christendom but our congregational practices remain firmly rooted in Christendom. That needs to change. We need to re-think the whole ball of wax.

o We still collect offerings weekly in little offering envelopes as if people still get paid cash weekly in little pay envelopes.

o We still have an annual “pledge drive” in the fall even though a very high percentage of us no longer make our living from agriculture and therefore wait until harvest season to see how we did for the year. Not to mention that some of us won’t know what we will be making in the next year because new salary adjustments don’t happen until January.

o We plan our annual stewardship programs around our annual budgeting process and then wonder why our people don’t get it when we tell them that they aren’t giving “merely to support a budget.”

o We host Time & Talent drives and thereby feed the unholy notion that the only spiritually significant work that Christian people do in the world is volunteer for church stuff. That isn’t our theology, it has nothing to do with the idea of the priesthood of believers unleashed into the world to serve the world (and therefore fulfill God’s will) in their normal home/family/daily work lives. So why do we do it? And then, when it doesn’t work as intended, do we complain about the same people doing the same things all the time?

o And I will value Charles Lane’s exegesis of Luke 12:34 (beginning with reminding us of how easy it is to remember that verse reference…1,2,3,4) in seeing the relationship of our treasures and our hearts as Invitation rather than Prescription. If we want our heart to be more engaged in something, it helps to send our money there first.

At the end of the day, God will provide for our needs. Not only our daily needs but for the needs of the ministry of God’s church. And we in turn do well to remember what Martin Luther taught us about the 4^th petition of the Lords’ Prayer: In fact, God gives daily bread without our prayer, even to all evil people, but we ask in this prayer that God cause us to recognize what our daily bread is and to receive it with thanksgiving.

Thank you for the privilege of serving the church here in the office of the Texas-Lutheran Gulf Coast Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Thank you, good people of Faith Lutheran Church in Bellaire, Texas, for taking the risk of inviting me into your presence for the next twenty years (I hope neither of us live to regret that.)

May God bless and guide us as we seek to be a part of a network of growing, Christ-centered, outwardly focused congregations passing the faith to the next generation.

Connecting with Spiritual Orphans, Prodigal Children and the Blessed Rest

Spiritual orphans (those baptized but not raised in a Christian community), prodigal children (those who were raised in the church but fled to the far country at the first available opportunity) and the blessed rest (those who expect a local congregation to provide meaning, ministry and mission for the good of the world) live in and around all of our congregations.

No doubt there are many other “spiritual types” out there in the world but these three seem particularly “reachable” by traditional Lutheran congregations – who are willing to be open-minded, open-hearted and adaptable in creating safe and meaningful opportunities for people to find their place in the life of the congregation.

What follows now are some suggestions on what connecting with these spiritual types might look life in our worship and ministry.

Connecting with Spiritual Orphans

Spiritual orphans, even more than prodigal children, are quick to describe themselves as “spiritual” but not “religious.” Often they have been burned along their life journey by religion and religious people. For many, that began in their homes as they internalized the negative messages they received from their (often prodigal children) parents.

They might show up alone and unannounced at church on a Sunday morning but they are more likely to come at the invitation of a friend. They are looking for relationships, good relationships, trustworthy relationships.

The good news about spiritual orphans is that most of them are not yet fully inoculated against coming down with a full blown case of Christianity. But – if we are going to create a safe place for them – we need to pay special attention to the following:

1. Emphasis (and commitment to) the inclusive love of God for all people. If we pick and choose who we will accept, spiritual orphans will smell a rat and see how easily they could also be rejected. This is where the unchurched world rejects the church because of racism and homophobia.

2. The practice of radical hospitality in every area of our life together. If we fall prey to “birds of a feather flocking together” in forming congregational cliques, or saying that “everyone here is related to someone else somehow”, spiritual orphans will only be reminded that they are, and will forever be, outsiders from the club.

3. We need to make a high priority of offering “first steps of the faith” experiences for those new to our congregational ministries. More than new member classes (but obviously including them as well), we need to have relational messages and systems in place to help people learn what it means for them to be Christians, and to practice the Christian faith, in ways that are helpful to them and the world around them.

4. A growing network of relational small groups help spiritual orphans find a place and a group of people to belong to in life-affirming ways.

Connecting with Prodigal Children

Prodigal children are those who were raised in Christian community but bolted and haven’t often looked back. They are our sons, daughters and grandchildren. But, given the slim loyalty contemporary people attach to denominational heritage, it doesn’t much matter what denomination they were raised in. If a life crisis opens their minds to the possibility of returning to church, they are usually more interested in finding a church that works in their lives than in finding a Lutheran church that works in their lives.

It is precisely for the sake of prodigal children that we are invited to think about our Sunday morning worship experiences from the point of view of the story from Luke 15. The father was overjoyed to see his long lost son coming up the road. He was prepared to see that son because he had been checking that road every day, every time he stepped out on the porch. He greeted his son with a warm embrace, oblivious to his son’s carefully crafted apology. And he threw a party for him, celebrating his return to the place he had always belonged.

This – if we are going to be evangelistically effective with prodigal children – needs to be the operative image in our mind as we plan and conduct our worship life. Absolutely central to this is the realization that, if a prodigal child is going to hear Good News upon their return home, then what they discover there has to be both GOOD and NEW.

If a prodigal child returns to their grandma’s Lutheran church, to a service planned for, led by and intended to reach, the elder brothers of Luke 15, they might stick around long enough to get their hurt healed but they’ll be gone by morning.

Central to an experience of Sunday morning worship targeted to prodigal children (and a safe landing place for spiritual orphans) is a spirit of hospitality and celebration, anticipation and removal of any shaming moments (experienced as an unwelcomed feeling of sticking out and self-consciousness) and both relevance and applicability to modern life.

A spirit of hospitality begins with…

o the care and appearance of the church property

o the ambience of the gathering space

o the openness of the people and the absence of insider language

o the presence of food/refreshments

o a worship service that anticipates the needs of someone brand new

o the promise, communicated in worship, that help is available to people in crisis within the ministries offered by the congregation

A note of celebration is sounded in worship when…

o there is a palpable feeling of joy and honesty in the room

o the music and prayer life of the gathering uplifts the spirits of those in worship

o as much time is given to human hopes and aspirations as to human illness and the brokenness of life

Pastors and worship leaders strive toward the removal of “shaming moments” in the service. Such shaming moments include:

o Entering largely empty worship spaces where the congregation has failed to pay attention to the ratio of available seating to the average number of attenders. We need to provide seating so that each service is 50% – 80% full. Visitors like to sit at the end of the rows, more to the back of the room. When members hog those seats they make it uncomfortable for a visitor to enter into worship.

o Forcing visitors to self-identify and therefore stick out. Pew registers require being passed down a row – when a prodigal child or spiritual orphan sits in a row by themselves they don’t know what to do. Using communication cards that are given to everyone, and filled out by everyone at some point in the service, accomplishes our need to track visitors (and follow up with them) without shame.

o Uncomfortable downtime created when worship leaders are not prepared or ready during the transition moments in worship. There is nothing spiritually significant or helpful watching someone walk down to the front of the church to read a lesson. It just looks like we don’t know what we are doing and it makes a visitor self conscious rather than being caught up in the movement of the worship experience.

o Children’s sermons inevitably detract from the movement of the service. Visitors with children are stuck making a decision about whether or not to send their children forward, perhaps battling with the wishes of their children. In some settings, the one or two grandchildren who go forward strike an unconscious chord of memory or desire (I remember when we had a lot of children around here or I wish we had more.) And usually (except when given by people with the gift of publicly communicating with children) the lessons are exactly the kind of banal moralisms that prodigal children ran away from. (And, for those pastors who say, “But people tell me that they ‘get more out of’ the children’s sermon than the regular sermon”, see below.) Don’t do children’s sermons.

o “Passing the peace” that encourages people to leave their seats, wandering around the sanctuary interminably, often lasting three or more minutes. This is death to the prodigal child who might actually be close to tears having just heard a word of hope in a sermon or sensed God in the prayers of the church. Suddenly they are being accosted by well meaning people they don’t know and forced to shake hands with strangers. While it is significant that, precisely in the point in the service where we are going to receive Jesus in bread and wine, we begin our preparations by exchanging a hand of fellowship with another human being, we need to do it without shame. Worship leaders can greet one another and then the musician can come in with music as the worship leaders sit down.

A worship experience has a better chance of being relevant and applicable to modern life when it is planned and conducted in view of the fact that we live In an age when few people read music, fewer listen to classical or organ during the week, and the majority of people are functionally biblically illiterate. We can address these issues by:

o Printing everything needed for worship in a nicely laid out bulletin or projecting everything onto video screens

o Having one strong voice singing into a microphone to carry the congregation into music that might be unfamiliar (people find it easier to sing along with a voice rather than with the congregation as a whole)

o Transposing music pitched too high down to a range where a baritone can comfortably sing the melody

o Preaching with passion, conviction and intellectual honesty.

- Think “five minutes at a time” broken up with interesting movements – stories, videos, humor, interviews, etc.

- Think “teaching” as much as preaching.

- Preach to 8th graders and you’ll hit everybody.

- Dig more deeply into the Bible rather than picking a topic and leaving the Bible behind

- Use visual aids and some of the things you used to use when you preached children’s sermons.

- Don’t adopt a “preachy” tone or pulpit voice.

- Be who God made you to be, don’t pretend to be someone you aren’t.

- Intentionally preach to men during portions of every sermon.

- Draw illustrations from real life, newspaper, pop culture and personal experiences.

When a prodigal child walks into a worship service that was tailored with them in mind, he or she will have a sense that “something is different”, “something has changed.” They might not even like all the changes but that is far better than leaving them with the idea that “nothing about the church has changed in all these years.” If they are return to the same place they left, they will most likely leave again.

In addition to a celebrational worship service that is both good and new, effective congregational ministries will have programs and people in place to help prodigal children in their daily lives, especially in processing and working through the crisis that brought them back to church. If it all works, they might find themselves home again to stay.

Connecting with the Blessed Rest

In the old days, it was almost expected that people have some kind of connection to Christian community. It wasn’t simply an ethnic expectation (to be Roman Catholic if you were Irish or Italian, or Lutheran if you were German or Norwegian) but also a cultural expectation. Bank loan forms asked for your denominational identity or your church home. Politicians were expected to be connected to a church. It ought to be no surprise that those days are long gone.

But aspects of that way of thinking still linger among our older members who are part of the blessed rest. They remain part of our ministries out of a strong sense of duty, loyalty and heritage. But the most mature among them realize there is more to Christian community than that. They want to see meaningful ministry happen and they are willing to make it happen.

Strangely, in this same spiritual camp are those who are radically disengaged from the church but who are socially conscious and aware of the real human hurts and hopes of contemporary life. They want to be involved in making the world a better place. Congregations can potentially become channels for their involvement.

Unchurched people among the blessed rest are far more likely to turn up at a volunteer opportunity at the invitation of a friend than they are in worship on Sunday morning. Therefore the key here is to make sure than our congregations are involved in various types of missional work that benefit the wider community.

In the old days, the pattern might have been 1) believe, 2) join, and 3) participate. That has changed. Among the blessed rest, especially around younger people, the pattern has now become 1) participate in something connected to the church, moast likely an activity happening out in the world, for the good of the world, 2) join in a worship or learning experience geared to their place in life, and 3) be surprised to discover that they are drifting into a new place in their belief in God.

We Can Do Better

As the church continues to wrestle with all the changes that have rolled over us in the past 100 years, as we come to grips with our diminishing influence and increased marginalization in the world, there is a temptation to batten down the hatches of our lives and close ourselves off from the world. That is a death spiral.

There are certainly times when we feel discouraged and frustrated. Times when we wonder if the church isn’t the problem rather than part of God’s answer. It feels at times like the church is the only team that we’ve played on that tries its best to lose.

But we can do better.

In every synod across the country, there are Lutheran congregations who continue to be effective evangelical missions. They have adapted – dare we say reformed themselves – to do what it takes to connect with new people. Knowingly or not, they have found ways to connect with spiritual orphans, prodigal children and the blessed rest.

If one congregation can do that, any congregation can do that. We can do better.

Spiritual Orphans, Prodigal Children and the Blessed Rest

In Part 1, I lifted up the possibility that planning around a “target audience” might in fact be a key for us in discovering what it takes to be more evangelistically effective in our ministries. In Part 2 below I describe three “spiritual types” that might find a home in our congregations, if we are prepared for them. And then in Part 3, I will list some possible changes and adaptations we might consider in worship and ministry that are specifically targeted at these three target audiences.

If I was to look at the community surrounding a local church building, I could seek to better understand it sociologically. That is what we usually do. So we turn to demographic studies as noted above in constructing Saddleback Sam. But I think it might be – in our day – more helpful to look at that same community spiritually.

Doing this well requires thinking deeply about the faith. Often re-thinking the faith.

We need to realize that God is “out there” in the world just as much as God is “in here” in the church. Evangelism isn’t what we do in isolation of the movement of God’s Spirit but rather it is what we do in cooperation with that Spirit in the world around us. The faith wasn’t simply incarnated in Jesus but, in fact, continues to incarnate in and through us as we move into the world – and in and through the world as it comes to us. We will ever be both saint and sinner, we will ever be both evangelizer’s and the evangelized. This gives us humility.

We need to realize that faith means more than intellectual assent to doctrinal and biblical assertions – faith means following Jesus. We need to understand that “sin” is a meaningless word without making a theological term real using synonyms like brokenness, alienation, meaningless, and shame. Especially shame for that is the feeling of deep unworthiness and separateness that plagues people. Recognizing this in ourselves and others is the source of our passion, and of our compassion.

We need to rethink “justification” beyond simply the declaration of forgiveness toward actually being transformed by God’s love. And we need to think of “salvation” as healing, as wholenss, as restoration, rather than as “getting our ticket punched” to heaven.

Re-read and think more deeply about the previous three paragraphs and you will quickly realize that this re-thinking is actually what we have hoped for, longed for, and maybe even experienced all the way along in our faith journeys.

Now we bring such thinking to the world around us. Who do we see out there?

Spiritual Orphans

For example, some of the people in our community are spiritual orphans. At some point in their past they were brought into a spiritual community. Among Christians, they might have been baptized Lutheran or Roman Catholic or Episcopalian or any other among the communities of the Christian faith. But, simply put, their parents didn’t keep their promises. They were introduced to their Heavenly Father but not raised in God’s family. Through neglect or other forces beyond their control, they were orphaned. Now they are drifting through their lives, still hungry for that sense of connectedness, of belonging, represented by “family”.

Like physical orphans, they struggle with the push/pull of abandonment issues. They look for love in all the wrong places. They are susceptible to anyone who comes along, who loves them, who helps them with a sense of belonging. But they are fickle. At the first sniff of rejection or relational difficulties, they bolt. And travel on, unconsciously or not, looking for another place to land.

Prodigal Children

Another group of people surrounding our church buildings are prodigal children.

Prodigal children are people who were raised in the Christian faith, often but not always with families who were deeply dedicated and committed to congregational life. Among Lutherans, these were kids who were baptized, who went to Sunday worship and Sunday School, were confirmed, participated in youth group, went to summer camp, sang in Christmas programs – and then, in high school for many of them, in college for the rest of them, either actively bolted or casually drifted away from participation in Christian community.

Emancipated from their parents, they self-emancipated themselves from the Christian faith. Like the prodigal son of Luke 15, they went off with the heritage of faith that had been given them and squandered it by doing their own thing.

For a long time, people believed (and enough people did it to secure the belief) that young people would drift off to sow their oats but, once they had children of their own, they would be back at church. Increasingly, that is not the case. Ask any long time gray-haired member of any Lutheran Church about the faith lives of their children and grandchildren and you will hear about prodigal children that have wandered off to far countries.

The good news is that life continues to happen for prodigal children. The bad news is that life hurts. Like it or not, crisis moments come into the lives of prodigal children and sometimes those crisis moments are enough to open them to the possibility that help is available back home at church.

These crisis moments might include painful experiences like sudden illness, the death of a friend or family member, the loss of a job, moving to a new city and feeling alone, or even something like the cultural shattering of a 9/11 or an economic meltdown. There are also “good” crises like deciding to get married or the birth of a child or some kind of surprising spiritual awakening.

Regardless of the cause, one day the prodigal child makes a decision to go back home. In our case, that most likely means visiting a Christian congregation on a Sunday morning for a worship service. They are looking for help, healing and hope. Some – but certainly not all – of that will begin for them in a worship service.

The Blessed Rest

And then the final group that lives around our congregations I call the “blessed rest.” That includes everyone else – strangely enough, agnostics and lifetime mature Christian disciples end up in this same boat. The blessed rest look to the church for meaning, ministry and mission. They expect the church to be doing things to improve the world. They want to know that the church is making a difference.

In the last congregation I served, we refurbished the homes of low income African American senior citizens by working with a program called “Rebuilding Together.” Each time we tackled a new project, someone would bring along a friend or a co-worker whom we had never met. Sometimes these were people who had nothing to do with the church. But after spending a couple of weekends working alongside the mature Christians who showed up to serve others, relationships began, conversations happened, and then we would see those new faces in worship.

The blessed rest are intellectually curious, socially conscious, and are not interested in congregational ministry that is turned in upon itself. They want to make a positive difference in the world and they hope that their congregation will lead them in discovering ways to do just that.

Further Thoughts

1. Do you personally “fit” one of these three spiritual types?

2. As you look at your congregation, do you see people who fit these three spiritual types? Where do most of your people fit?

3. As you imagine the community around your church building, do you see signs of the spiritual types living among you?

4. As you assess how you do ministry in your context, which spiritual types are you now best prepared to receive and engage?

Connecting with increasing numbers of new people, disciple-making, opening our front doors, is “evangelism”. Evangelism is congregational outreach, congregational mission. (Tending to those within the community is disciple-shaping, closing our back doors, congregational inreach, congregational ministry.)

There are many angles into the question of “evangelism.” For the purposes of this article, let’s start with a working definition of evangelism and the possibilities of the concept of a “target audience”.

My working definition of evangelism is as follows:

Evangelism is connecting relationally with people who live with a kind of wishy washy, ill-formed, myth-ridden shadowy-Sunday School spirituality, with the goal of helping them to a new place where they identify themselves as Christian, actively participate in Christian community, and express their new faith in some form of personal ministry.

A shorter definition: Helping people discover a faith that works in their lives and makes a difference in the world.

Defining evangelism is the easy part and not terribly controversial. Actually doing it is the challenge we face.

The sad fact is that evangelism is one of the “four letter words” of the faith among many of our people. (Stewardship is the other.) Evangelism is, for most of our people, saddled with images of judgmentalism, self righteousness, door knocking and shame. Not a pretty picture. No wonder we don’t do it. And when we try, don’t do it well.

Now to the question of a “target audience”.

The idea of a target audience, at first glance, hardly seems biblical. Abraham and Sarah were blessed to be blessings to all nations, to the whole world. Jesus called his disciples to go into the whole world to make disciples. At first glance, the idea of a target audience, of carefully doing what it takes to intentionally connect with some, according to their particularities in culture, taste, comfort, lifestyle, gifts, etc. seems much more tied to Madison Avenue than it does to following Jesus.

Unless we listen to words like:

“These twelve Jesus sent out with the following instructions: “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel…” Matthew 10:5-6

Or, repeated again five chapters later:

And his disciples came and urged him, saying, “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” But she came and knelt before him, saying, “Lord, help me.” Matthew 15:24-25

Or, from the marching orders of Jesus to the fledgling new church in Acts:

“But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Acts 1:8

(Although it helps), we don’t have to be experts in the Bible or church history to understand that there were stark and significant cultural differences between those living in Jerusalem and those living “to the ends of the earth”. Unless, of course, you believe that reaching the “ends of the earth” meant only connecting with the Jews of the Diaspora who were pretty much just like those in Jerusalem. In that case, a one-size-fits-all approach to the Christian faith might have worked…but probably not.

But the Bible doesn’t allow us to go there. Clearly, (Galatians 1:16), Paul understood himself as having been specifically set aside to carry the message of the faith to Gentiles. They were his target audience.

The point here is that there is biblical warrant and justification for the idea of focused effort to connect with a specifically targeted group of people.

The Rick Warren’s, Bill Hybel’s and the non-denominational world have been comfortable with the idea of target audiences for many years now. Drawing upon one of the principles of the church growth movement, the principle of homogeneity, (that birds of a feather flock together), they intentionally study their local demographics and construct their ideal church member.

Usually this is some form of “Saddleback Sam” and “Saddleback Sally”. Anglo, middle to upper class, married, well educated, doesn’t shop at WalMart, two children, a house in the suburbs and a dog. Nelson Searcy, a product of this school of thought, went to Manhattan to build a congregation among “young, urban, single, professionals.”

Ministry, especially all that goes into worship, is then carefully tailored to the “felt needs” (the culture) of the target audience. So Nelson Searcy began the first worship services of his congregation, Journey, in a comedy club. It made perfect sense in his goal of connecting with his target audience. Of the 26 people who attended his first worship service, he made a very targeted special effort to connect with four of them because they alone represented his target audience. He invited everyone back but he invited those four into his inner circle and invested his time and energy deeply into them.

Traditional Lutherans find this repugnant.

Traditional Lutherans tend to think that, regardless of demographics and sociology, there is a “one size fits all” way of doing the Christian faith together. Not only that, but they are SUPPOSED to do it that way. Ministry done that way, including worship, ought to be good enough for everyone. Ministry targeted to specific folks should happen somewhere other than worship in the life of a congregation.

Traditional Lutherans generally don’t like the idea of a “target audience.” They find it offensive. They like to think that their audience for what they offer, in worship and every other part of congregational ministry, is for everybody.

Yet reality tells us that this is not the case. If what we do really is for everybody, and if that idea is working for us, then it seems to me we should be seeing the results of effective evangelism among us – growing Christians, growing congregations, growing diversity. But it isn’t. We’re not. We’re growing older and smaller and have been for a long long time. A few congregations that ARE growing and doing effective evangelism stick out, but generally we’re not.

Looking deeper (which we seldom do), we might realize that we really operate with a subconscious sense of who everybody is – frankly, people like us. We carry our own sense of Saddleback Sam and Sally without really realizing it. We don’t SAY that our target audience is “white, English-speaking, hopefully German/Norwegian/Swedish/Danish, who love organ music, traditional liturgy, Sunday School modeled after secular education and potluck dinners.” We don’t say it…but that is what we do.

We tailor what we do to our own personal tastes, regardless of its evangelical impact in the real lives of real people in ways that are really effective.

We offer organ music because organ music is our tradition, our heritage, what we are really pretty good at. Besides, we like organ music. In our heart of hearts, “worship” means organ music to us. (I’m picking on organ music here but could easily add classic hymns, vestments, paraments, pews, candles, communion ware, acolytes, choirs, flowers, hospital visits and everything else that traditional Lutherans revolt against removing, reforming or adapting.)

Our target audience, for worship and much of our ministries, therefore is…US. Ouch. No wonder we are getting older and smaller.

But what if, far from being anti-biblical, Madison Avenue hype, we rethink the idea of a target audience? What if we discovered that it is precisely in being VERY intentional in defining our own sense of target audience, and then tailoring what we do to reach that target, we might discover the very renewal and evangelistic effectiveness that we seek?

In defense of the idea of a target audience, it is simply true that the more carefully we “aim”, the more likely we are to hit our target. The more conscious we are of what we want to accomplish, the more likely we are to align our strategies and actions to our goal.

Therefore, when I talk about evangelism with people, I like to come at this question, the question of a target audience, in such a way that it brings traditional Lutherans into the conversation. Stay tuned next week for Part 2.

How do you influence positive change in a congregation, across a synod or even across the wider church? If anyone suggests there is an easy answer to that question, run the other way. But it is a question that needs to be asked and some effort at an answer needs to be embodied in the life of the institution if there is hope for positive change.

I’ve long held the belief that there are three sources of motivation in the life of a congregation:

1. Inspiration – Call it “whispers from the Holy Spirit” or excitement generated by the passion of a leader or a life changing event or new insights given in prayer. Sometimes a congregation can be inspired with a fresh vision for the future worth striving toward.

2. Education – It is both a truism and true – we don’t know what we don’t know. Sometimes, in the face of challenges and obstacles, we can gain a fresh perspective and a new kind of action/strategy when we come across new ideas, hearing the voice of experience, from continuing education events, outside consultants, books, etc.

3. Desperation – And sometimes we get to that jumping off point where it becomes crystal clear that, if anything is going to change, something has to change.

Surely there are more motivating factors than these, but this is a good place to start. As leaders in the church, which of these do we find motivate us? Which of these do we turn to as we seek to motivate positive change in our congregations?

If our best efforts at motivating positive change don’t seem to be working…is it time to seek new insight or try a new strategy? Reading books brings the voice of those who have been there before into our lives. Continuing education events where we go (maybe bringing our people with us) can provide road maps that can help. If the congregational system seems too “change averse”, it might be time to bring in someone from outside the system who can take us places we otherwise wouldn’t know to go on our own.

I’ve been talking recently to the staff of Church Innovations, Inc. which serves the church through an effort they call the “Partnership for Missional Church.” Participating congregations form clusters for a 3-5 year process of learning how to listen to God’s voice, discover God’s preferred future, and live into that future as a community of faith. The “voice from the outside” comes in the form of three annual retreats led by a trained consultant and the experiences shared with the other cluster partners.

What I find particularly attractive about the possibility of engaging in such a process is that it “hits” all the motivating factors. We could be inspired by fresh perspectives and the witness of other congregations that turned toward more effective congregational mission in the church and the world. We could learn new personal and congregational skills that we don’t now know that will serve us in serving others. And we would be guided to submit, to surrender, in new ways to the possibility that God can do through us what we cannot do on our own – which is the life giving insight we receive when we come to that place where we become open to God’s leadership.

Where this process would start is raising the funds for our synod to join this partnership and then identifying a cluster of 12-14 congregations willing to play. The Central States Synod has been engaged in this process for several years now and those participating bear witness to the positive directions they are turning.

Is this something that our synod needs to look into?

By Pastor Jared Stillions, St. Peter Lutheran Church, Bay City, TX

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. Galatians 5:1

I am a new pastor serving in my first call. Like many of us first call pastors, I attended an ELCA seminary on debt, graduating with $30,000 owed to “Aunt” Sallie Mae with an average of 5% interest.

All through discernment and candidacy I was told, “Be spiritual; don’t let money stand in the way, God will provide you at the very least a loan.” (The gift of the Spirit is only a loan? If it’s God’s blessing why the sorrow of interest? (Prov 10:22)) As I continued through the process, I encountered this “serve yourself now, pay for it later” cheap grace attitude more and more on all different levels- institutional, synodical, spiritual, relational, congregational.

My bank of common sense – filled with deposits at a world-class research university, studying and working in engineering – was bought out and liquidated by this new thing the Spirit was doing in all our lives. “A fool dies for lack of sense” (Prov 10:21) and I was terminal.

Apparently I missed hearing Romans 13:8 “Owe no one anything, except to love one another” every time it came up on Proper 18A (Lectionary 23). Perhaps this verse was really Faux Paul or the work of a later redactor or that which did not preach Christ or something to be reduced for the sake of the Gospel or just something to be “contextualized.” And if I missed Romans 13:8, I also missed Proverbs 22:7 “The rich rules over the poor, and the borrower is the slave of the lender” (Proper 18/Lec. 23 B) and 2 Corinthians 3:17 “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (Transfiguration C).

I had not tested and discerned this spirit of the new thing, this Neuedingegeist (I made that word up to sound like an important theology word), and I was deceived and in bondage (1 Cor. 12:10, 1 John 4:17, 1 Tim 4:1, Col 2:8, Gal 4:9). I had been shanghaied! I was an indentured servant to a new master, serving Aunt Sallie “Maemmon” $317 per month for 10 years. (Matt 6:24, Luke 16:13).

I wasn’t alone. My friend Kevin who attended an ELCA college before an ELCA seminary was $100,000 over his head (with seminary and candidacy consent!). No wonder it’s difficult to find “first call congregations.” Didn’t we used to call this simony?

So there I was in the rural/small town parsonage, making synod minimum guidelines, in bondage and in need of a liberator. I was engaged to be married and without a clue or a plan. While at our First Call Theological Process retreat just before my wedding I was introduced to Dave Ramsey’s work and his Financial Peace University.

I came home and researched it. I told my fiancée about it, saying, “I think this will be good for our marriage; we could start here and develop these good habits first instead of trying to overcome bad ones later.” Of course we knew that finances were a major cause of first year strife. After a couple of days of discernment, she agreed this would be healthy for our marriage.

We both thought the no credit card thing, the no car loans thing, and the pay your mortgage off early thing were weird, but we were ready to stop conforming to Aunt Sallie’s demands and learn a better way, or maybe even be transformed like Romans 12:2 says “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds.”

The nearest class was 60 miles away and first met on our wedding night. Needless to say, we made arrangements to miss the first two classes. Thirteen weeks later we had a clue and a plan. The Holy Spirit was active transforming and liberating us and our checkbook. We heard the call to freedom and we wanted it. We knew the gate was narrow and the road was hard that led to life (Matt 7:14), but we wanted life.

As the weeks became months we came to understand the feeding of the 5,000 personally (Mark 6). “You will repay this.” “Lord, not even six months wages will repay this!” “What do you have?”

We began to see that God had already given us everything we needed even if sometimes it looked like a measly five loaves and two fish; and what is that compared to the demands of thousands? Our two salaries – a first call pastor and a teacher- were plenty, more than enough – as in with-baskets-left-over more than enough! We were given the power to avoid additional debts and other financial mistakes.

Our giving to the congregation and our alma maters cheerfully increased. We began to base our congregational giving on a percentage of our income rather than a particular dollar amount. We decided to simply give 10% of whatever our paychecks were. And we also added Lutherhill’s capital campaign, “A Place for All People” to our planned giving.

We had some help along the way. Our wedding gift registry surpassed our needs and wants. Our congregation recognized their pastor’s need for deliverance and graciously followed the synod’s Compensation Guideline’s suggestion to help me with payments. The Guidelines suggest providing 5-10% of the monthly payment in additional compensation. St. Peter gave us an additional $40 a month (12% of the minimum payment) which became $840 toward our $30,000 goal.

We lived on cash. Our honeymoon, trips home to family, furniture and inevitable car maintenance were all paid in cash- our own cash. This wasn’t some “Prayer of Jabez/Creflo Dollar/prosperity gospel/pray hard enough and God will give you more” nonsense. Instead God renewed our minds so that we would see him present and active in our actual circumstances. Or, as others like to say, we “learned to live life on life’s terms” and not Visa’s.

It turns out a plan, a clue, and minimum balance in the checking account really are “Murphy[‘s Law] repellant,” as Dave Ramsey likes to say. God had already richly blessed us for the mission at hand. We call this stewardship.

While in Financial Peace University my wife and I learned how to talk about money. We learned to articulate our wants and needs, our desires and wishes. We learned to set mutual goals and measure our progress toward them. We learned to leave our old ways and cleave to our new way (Gen 2:24). We learned a godly, reverent way to manage our finances (the eusebia of 1 and 2 Tim). We learned to live in today, trust for tomorrow and not pay for yesterday. We experienced Hebrews 13:5 “be content with what you have; for he has said, ‘I will never leave you or forsake you.’” We had no choice but to play together on the same team. Our God was big enough to provide for our future; we didn’t need Wells-Fargo to cover for him.

In January of this year we had a little over $26,000 left to repay. In February our congregation hosted Financial Peace University for our community. As I facilitated the class our desire for deliverance increased. If the devil prowls like a roaring lion (1 Pet 5:8), then debt chases you like a cheetah after a gazelle (cf. Prov 6). We shifted from repelling future financial stupidity to “gazelle intensity” to out run that cheetah.

Now for the miracle – which really wasn’t a miracle at all but what happened when we both, working like a team, worked the plan that we agreed to…On September 29, 2010 Aunt Sallie cashed our check that entirely paid off our debt! (Actually, as I type this, I am awaiting a $0.66 refund due to Aunt Sallie’s overreach.)

Today, we have no credit cards, no student loans, no personal or family loans, and no car loans. We both have life insurance, are finishing a three-month’s salary cash emergency fund and look forward to building IRAs and increasing our giving.

We can’t wait for the Friday we’ve arranged our work schedules so that we can call Dave Ramsey’s radio show and scream to the world “WE’RE DEBT FREE!”

We often think of financial stewardship questions as issues for “church administration” or “household financial management.” My wife and I have learned that our hearts and our wallets are clearly linked. This has been a journey of spiritual growth, of soul care, for us. We look forward to a new kind of freedom that God has brought us to as we will continue to manage our finances, live within our means, and avoid the ravenous cheetah of debt in our lives.

Author’s note: Thank you to Dave Ramsey for many of the Bible verses and the idea of “Gazelle Intensity”.

By Pastor Kerry Nelson

Why is “average worship attendance (AWA)” such an important number in the life of a congregation? What follows are three reasons why knowing, and tracking, this number is crucial.

1. Knowing your average worship attendance is a sign of a well-administered congregational ministry. The only way you will know your AWA is by putting in place a consistent system of counting, recording and sharing the number of people in worship at every service. This requires recruiting and training teams of ushers (or others who will count), a place for them to record the number, and a spreadsheet or other means of keeping track over time. Odds are very good that any congregation that does not have a system to do this in place, there are probably a lot of other congregational administration matters that are also not being properly managed.

2. The trend is more important than the snapshot. Just like a person’s blood pressure needs to be checked over time to get the best sense of how a person is doing, Sunday attendance numbers also vary throughout the year. Everyone knows that there are certain big day Sundays like Easter, Mother’s Day, confirmation Sunday, etc. when the sanctuary will be packed to the rafters. And that there are families for whom “regular worship attendance” means coming once a month. Thus, what really matters about AWA isn’t the Sunday snapshot but the trends over time.

Clearly, when a congregation sees a long term decline or increase in AWA, it tells them something. It doesn’t tell the whole story but it is clearly important. If a ministry shows an average 5% increase in AWA over the past five years, they are obviously doing ministry in a way that is attracting and retaining more people over that time. If a ministry is showing a 5% drop in AWA, something is going on that needs to be addressed. Figuring out “what is going on” is the work of spiritual discernment and the real challenge of leadership.

3. A congregation’s average worship attendance defines the appropriate leadership style for a given context. An analogy to parenting is helpful in making this point: Imagine what it means to “parent” a 6 year old… Or to parent a 16 year old… Or to parent a 26 year old… Each stage of life development presents different challenges, obstacles and joys. In the same way, effective pastors and lay leaders do well to understand the changing dynamics between leading a family-sized congregation (AWA 0-100), pastoral congregation (AWA 101-200), program congregation (AWA 201-300), corporate congregation (AWA 301-700) and resource congregation (AWA 700+).

If you haven’t learned the implications of different leadership styles appropriate to the size of the congregation you are leading – and the hard work required to stretch over the barriers between these levels – we’re here to help you. We can come for a conversation with your leadership team and help “diagnose” where you are at and what your next steps might look like.

This might also be a key topic for you to spend the next year or two seeking the right kinds of continuing education. The Alban Institute has some excellent learning opportunities and books written to help congregational leaders navigate the waters through the barriers of congregational growth and development.

Across our synod, these are the size ranges of our congregations based on AWA:

0-50 Cell – 35 congregations

51-99 Family – 36 congregations

100-150 Pastoral - 13 congregations

151-200 Pastoral - 18 congregations

201-250 Program - 10 congregations

251-300 Program – 5 congregations

301-400 Resource – 3 congregations

401+ Corporate – 3 congregations

Summary

28% of our congregations worship under 50

58% of our congregations worship under 100

83% of our congregations worship under 200

By Pastor Kerry Nelson

Last week I wrote a cover letter to a stewardship mailing that will go out to all 123 congregations of our synod. Included in that letter was the following:

God loves and comes to each of us individually and yet, knowing that it isn’t good that we be alone, God also shapes our lives in our families, those relationships closest to us. In the same way, as Christianity is about coming together as the Body of Christ in the world, God does that by bringing people together into congregations, assemblies of families congregating together for ministry (inreach) and mission (outreach.)

Individual congregations are the places where ministry and mission reach their focus, real life relationships for the good of the world. But there is much – like finding pastors, providing theological education, intervening into congregational conflict – that individual congregations cannot do on their own so congregations assemble into a relationship with one another called a “synod.”

In the same way, there are things that individual synods (and synod offices) cannot do on their own – like supporting seminaries, sending missionaries, responding to disasters, relationships with ecumenical partners – so the congregations of the 65 synods assemble into the church-wide organization of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America.

This is how we have organized ourselves to do mission and ministry in partnership with one another, across our country and out into the wider world.

Having said all of that, another gentle reminder that we all need to hear is that it is only at the level of individual families that the financial support of ministry is given. Families give financial support. Congregations, synod offices and the church-wide organization are merely stewards of those financial gifts.

One of the ways that the wider church supports local congregations is through the use of financial partnership support grants.

Partnership support grants are a way that the wider church can come alongside a local congregation to help propel that congregation to effective ministry. Currently, in 2010, $133,000 is coming back to our synod to support eight ministries that are receiving some kind of a partnership support grant.

Available Partnership Support Grants

Partnership support grants are available is several different categories, each connected to specific missional goals. New start grants are intended to help launch new ministries like Celebration Church in Cypress, TX. Often grant support remains available even after a congregation officially organizes – Joyful Life in The Woodlands and First Taiwanese in Houston both receive a measure of financial support as they continue as young congregations.

Renewing, evangelizing congregational grants are available to assist congregations seeking renewal in their missionary focus and ministry. Over the past couple of years, Peace/Slidell and Gethsemane/Chalmette each received partnership support.

Still other grant programs are available to congregations that seek to do ministry on the cutting edges of our mission field, including ministry among people we have historically not done a very good job of reaching.

Criteria for Partnership Support Grants

If a congregation is interested in applying for some type of partnership support, the first step is contacting me and I will help you get started. There are some key criteria that a congregation must embrace if applying for partnership support.

For example, partnership support grants are workfare, not welfare. When a ministry is approved for partnership support, they enter a new relationship of accountability to the whole church through a working relationship with their Director for Evangelical Mission. We review their ministry. We expect congregations to create a detailed missional plan with SMART goals for their future. We make recommendations for improvement and new directions and expect that those recommendations be reflected in the missional plan. We require monthly and annual reporting. We require that the ministry provide some measure of mission support. If the terms of the partnership are not followed, grant support is placed “on hold”.

Partnership support grants are seeds for future ministry, not fertilizer to protect the status quo or to prevent congregations from withering away. In most cases, partnership support grants are approved only for those ministries with an average Sunday worship attendance of 50 or more. On the other hand, even tiny congregations can chart a new course for the future if they begin with a new found willingness to do anything and everything it might take to connect with new people in new ways.

We also recognize that everything rises and falls with leadership. That means that we expect the called pastors of congregations receiving partnership support to be wholeheartedly committed to the ministry and that they live within the service area of the ministry. We also expect that our working relationship will help encourage and empower the lay leaders of the congregation to own their personal ministries within the life of their congregation.

If you are interested in a further conversation about renewal and redirection in the life of your congregation, or finding additional funding for a ministry dream you might have for future, send me an email and we’ll talk.

by John W. Wimberly, Jr.

Like many congregations and organizations, at the beginning of 2009 Western Presbyterian Church faced a serious budgetary shortfall. To deal with this painful situation, our session (governing board) needed to exhibit both leadership and management skills: leadership skills to bring our congregation along with us, management skills to work the numbers. We also needed to develop a transparent decision-making process.

As a session, our first challenge was to create a process to make the tough decisions we had to make. A flawed decision-making process could divide the congregation and us. Much to my surprise, a rather heated debate developed over this question. We were far from united about how to move forward.

Some elders wanted to move quickly to cut the deficit. If we were going to reduce staff, we needed to do so quickly so that some salaries and benefits would stop being paid. If we were going to reduce benevolences, they needed to stop immediately before the treasurer dispersed them.

Other elders wanted to take a slower planning approach. They said we needed to pray about and meditate upon the overall direction of the congregation and that we needed input from the congregation.

By the end of our January session meeting, the elders merged the two approaches. Wherever possible, they froze payments that didn’t need to be made until May. They asked committees to look for immediate cuts they could make to their budgets. They also authorized a condensed five-month planning process—complete with time for prayer and reflection—that would end no later than the June session meeting.

In February the session had an all-day retreat led by one of our members, a skilled facilitator. There was frank discussion as to what changes might need to happen to resolve the budget crisis. At times, “frank” became “contentious.”

We began the retreat with small-group discussions about what we most valued in Western’s ministry. People were asked to speak from their hearts, not their heads. As we focused on values rather than budgets, it provided a lot of unity. When things got heated, we kept coming back to the unity we embraced during this part of our meeting.

As with most congregations, the biggest single piece of Western’s budget is personnel. Some members stated unequivocally that there was no way to address a budget problem this large without reducing staff. I was grateful to those who raised this issue because I knew it was being discussed in the parking lot and elsewhere. It is always better to have these conversations where they belong—among elected leaders—rather than among folks who may or may not have access to all the information.

Some, including me, argued that reducing staff would cause some members to leave (I had already been warned/threatened by a few members in this regard). Therefore, the net gain from salary reductions might well be offset by the lost pledge revenue from members who left the church.

There was an equally heated discussion about the benevolence budget. Some elders viewed it as discretionary spending. Others saw it as money that had to be spent. They also argued we would lose members who were proud of and committed to our mission efforts.

Finally, there was a lengthy discussion about revenue. If we went back to the congregation and asked them to increase their giving, how much could we expect them to give? Some thought it would be very difficult for people to increase their giving in such a financial crisis.

With major issues identified, the session created small groups to flesh out information and possibilities in four discrete areas of our ministry: mission and benevolences, program, building/administration, and personnel. They asked a fifth group to think about creative ways to generate additional revenue, and they asked the Stewardship Committee to conduct a special fundraising campaign.

We planned a retreat in early April to hear the reports of the work groups and make decisions on a revised budget for 2009. Finally, the elders decided to create a budget not just for the rest of 2009 but for eighteen months (June 2009–December 2010). They hoped this would preclude facing another crisis in the near future.

Prior to finalizing their decisions, the session sent a detailed, seven-page letter to the congregation explaining the issues, the decision-making process, and the proposed outcomes. For the next three weeks the elders held four focus groups to which members of the congregation were invited. The feedback was extremely positive with several helpful fundraising suggestions, including better stewardship education with new members and small group stewardship meetings in the homes of members. With the feedback in hand, a relieved and excited session gathered. As it turned out, the June session meeting was anticlimactic. The combination of budget cuts, increased giving by the members, and additional revenues from other sources effectively closed the gap.

What We Learned

Our process was educational. Here is a summary of what it made clear to us:

Communication between the pastors and elders, the session, and the congregation was crucial throughout. We used e-mail letters to the congregation, announcements in worship, one-on-one conversations with key players, and small, open discussion groups to keep the process participatory and transparent.

It was very important that we had an active strategic plan in place. (It is reviewed annually by the committees and session). The plan gave us our starting point. Our priorities were already established, our values clear. Therefore, we were able to move directly to the question, “What do we want to eliminate from the plan?” When the answer was “very little,” we knew we had to solve most of our problem on the revenue side of the budget (through things like pledges, building rental, and fundraisers).

Growth fuels a commitment to growth. Despite fears that the congregation would devolve into competing interest groups (mission vs. music, education vs. personnel, etc.), it never happened. As a growing congregation, our members did not want to step back from our strategic plan for growth. To sustain growth they put their treasure where their vision is. They also realized that everyone was going to have to experience some cuts in their favorite budget line items.

Resolving the personnel piece was crucial. It was clear to everyone that we couldn’t move forward with our staff intact if we didn’t get more money. This was a key to members deciding they wanted to contribute more financially. To protect the core of our ministry, sacrifices by members were required and made.

Working in small groups was very successful. When the session discussed issues as a bigger group, things got heated. When we talked in small groups people were pragmatic and in a problem-solving mode. The small groups unleashed a lot of creativity on issues ranging from fundraising to cutting building expense.

Trust builds trust. Prior to the crisis, the congregation had a high level of trust in the session. While there was some impatience that the process took months, most members realized the decisions being made required time. At every stage of the process, the session kept the congregation informed as to what was happening.

It is alright for people to have heated exchanges in a time of crisis. At one point in a session meeting, I clashed with an elder who is also a friend. We raised our voices as we argued with one another. Everyone wondered what would happen to our friendship. We remain friends—that is what happened. As a rule, most congregations fear conflict. When it happens naturally and we don’t fall apart, the church is a much better place.

Hopefully, Western has not only resolved its own financial challenge but has been a good model for our members as they face their own personal financial challenges. An economic crisis isn’t a time to panic. It is a time to pray, to clearly identify issues, to utilize—not abandon—the strategic plan, and a time to have open communication with all stakeholders.

Adapted from “What to Keep, What to Cut: Reshaping Budgets in Times of Adversity” by John W. Wimberly, Jr. in Congregations Winter 2010 (Vol 36 No. 1), copyright © 2010 by the Alban Institute. All rights reserved.

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This is the time of year when many congregational stewardship leaders are scrambling for resources to guide their congregations in their annual stewardship focus.

As you hunt for resources – or, if you have already settled on one – please remember the purpose of the annual stewardship focus. It is more an exercise in pastoral care than in congregational administration. It is about faith-building rather than about fund-raising. And, since our faith is a relational faith, all conversation about stewardship of time/talents/treasures is best done in the context of building relationships.

Select Media Resources has made a new resource available this year that holds great promise. “Biblical Stewardship: Our Duty and Delight” by Rev. Mark Allan Powell.

This DVD features seven video sessions with group and individual study materials. The content includes:

Session I Belonging to God

Session II What is a Steward

Session III Treasures and Hearts

Session IV Motivations for Giving

Session V Duty and Delight

Session VI Cheerful Sacrifices

Bonus Session Congregational Development

In addition to providing an excellent continuing education experience for congregational steward leaders, it could also be easily crafted into the centerpiece of your stewardship emphasis this fall.

Dr. Mark Allan Powell is a biblical scholar, seminary professor and recognized steward leader in the ELCA. His book Giving to God, published in 2006, is a guide about living generously. Dr. Powell is an inspirational speaker and has presented at many ELCA synod assemblies.

This resource is available through www.selectlearning.org for $49.95.