More metrics for a post-Christendom age: simplicity

4. Is your congregation–and its members–intentionally pursuing simplicity? My hunch is you’re not. My hunch is that church, for a lot of your members, is just another place in our cultural landscape where people are being asked to do more.

I think the absolute spiritual challenge of our age is related to simplicity. Taking intentional steps to slow down and pare down are crucial for paying attention to God. And there’s no other place where people are going to be asked to do that. Not at their work, not in their kids’ lives, not in the media they consume. Church has to be the place where that happens.

I was listening to a group of church members recently talk about what they thought was keeping their congregation from reaching their full potential. The consistent answer, stated variously, was that they needed more human resource. They didn’t have critical mass, or people with enough time, or enough staff. And several of them mentioned that church was getting less than their best because their jobs required too much of them. They perceived that the solution was more. More overworked, overstressed people just like themselves. It didn’t occur to them that the solution might be to simplify.

And while we can take many steps to make our personal and family lives more simple, we also need to make our church lives more simple. Congregations cannot do every good thing that is possible for them to do. My friend, Randy Harris, says that if you’re too busy, God didn’t get you there. And I think this applies to congregations as well. We do everything good we can think of without asking what is the one thing to which God is calling us.

And here’s the leading indicator that we’re still “if we build it they will come” churches. We spend an enormous amount of time and energy on Sunday mornings and have very little left for anything else. I’m trying not to sound like an old grumpy man here (fail), but the energy we expend on worship and classes is insane.  We keep making things more and more complex.

So, is your church fostering practices and habits of simplicity. Do you have stories of people downsizing their lives? Have you learned to value the beauty of simplicity? Do you know the value of shorter congregational lists?

If you become this kind of church, you might not be the biggest in your corner of the world. But maybe you will have traded size for spiritual sanity, spectators for communities of practice and mission.

 

When did we see you Lord: a prayer of confession

When did we see you Lord?

We thought we saw you on Sunday mornings, exalted in our praises. We though we saw you in the underlined sections of our Bibles. We thought we saw you when our cause succeeded.  We though we saw you when we got a raise or our kids turned out well.

These are the things we see, the things that arrest our attention. It is here, because here is where we look, that we thought we saw you.

But we are reminded of your claim that we saw you in things and in people to whom we pay no attention. Who knew that you were the hungry person? Who knew that you were the naked person? Or the one with HIV/AIDS? Or the stranger? Or the prisoner?

But there you were.

And we have to confess that when we saw these people we thought, “sinner, freeloader, burden, terrorist.” We confess we did not recognize these people as your glorious disguise.

And knowing that you were indeed in these places, with these people–knowing that if we had bothered to look, we would have see you there–we now realize that we are the sinners. By failing to see you, we saw a reflection of ourselves. We are the very people we thought them to be: sinner, burden, freeloader, terrorist. Surely they are bearing along with you our infirmities and our diseases.

Oh God, have mercy on us. Help us to see you rightly. Give us holy imagination so that we can see those places in the world that you have hidden yourself in glory.

Amen.

More Metrics for a post-Christendom Age

3. Can your congregation talk about difficult issues without it becoming contentious or divisive? Again, let me unpack the question. The question might also have been asked, can your congregation have a discussion at all? This question has two aspects: first, does your congregation regularly discuss things as a congregation? Or are all important discussions of the congregation’s life done by leaders behind closed doors and in gossip circles amongst the members? Second, are you capable of listening to each other? Is the goal of most communication in your congregation to understand each other or to get things done? If the latter characterizes the communication of your congregation, then you probably have damaged your ability to do the former. Finally, do you have the spiritual maturity to accept people who disagree?

This “metric” tells a lot about other aspects of your congregation’s health. Because I believe that the congregation is a product of the Word–in all of its senses–then the ability to listen and to speak is fundamental to what it means to be a congregation. Moreover, the capacity to listen to each other–to people who by virtue of their baptisms have the Holy Spirit–is crucial for determining to what God is calling the congregation. In other words, if you don’t have this capacity, you aren’t discerning the leading of God. You are likely, instead, making strategic decisions based on hunches and guesses or only an abstract notion of what God might be calling you to do or become.

Finally, this tells me about your capacity to listen to the voice of the stranger. The stranger in Scripture is often the one who sees the story for what it is, sometimes better than those who are devoted followers of God. Congregational conversations in which all voices are heard and welcomed, even the minority or odd voices, indicates whether or not you are capable of listening  for the voice of the stranger.

This metric also tells me if the fruits of the Spirit are on display in your congregation. Gentleness, kindness, peace, etc, are often only in display in times of potential conflict. Let me say this boldly. If you don’t have conflict as a congregation, I have doubts whether or not you’re doing much of anything that matters. Growth often requires conflict. Congregations that create open and peaceful “holding spaces” for tough conversations (Ronald Heifetz’s term), are likely to be congregations with a high degree of spiritual vitality.

So, think about the last congregational conversations you had, if any, and measure how you did.

Metrics Beyond Numbers: Deux (because that’s how I roll)

A continuation from my previous post.

2. Is your congregation adept at finding new partners in the mission of God? A few important words here. First of all, notice that we’re defining what we’re up to as God’s mission, not the congregation’s. This might seem like a small difference, but the biggest piece of the current, functional imagination of most congregations is the notion (often unspoken) that everything we must benefit our church and its members. As a result, churches often do not pursue opportunities unless the benefit to the organization is obvious and direct or unless there is some hope that it will result in new members. Again, this is an example of how a focus on numbers can distort things. Within this kind of imagination, people either become projects or objects (thanks, Jarrod Robinson for your observations along these lines at Pepperdine), which actually gets in the way of what we hope for–new disciples.

The mission is God’s. The church doesn’t own it. Therefore, the appropriate word to use here is partners. We’re not looking for prospects or clients, we’re looking for partners.

In Luke 10, Jesus sends the 70 to experience the hospitality of God on other people’s turf. Their job is to find people of peace and to remain among them. Again, we tend to think of God’s hospitality as our hospitality. When visitors come in the door, are they warmly greeted? But Luke 10 imagines God’s hospitality on other people’s terms. God is the host, and we embody the Christian story in these encounters when we give up our privilege and become servants.

In an age when “if we build it they will come” is no longer a viable strategy for most of us, congregations will have to be adept at cultivating relationships in the mission of God apart from our assemblies. This requires beliefs, habits, and practices that most of our congregations have not cultivated or aquired.

I like the habits/practices that Ryan and Jess Woods cultivated in the new church development they were involved with in Vancouver, WA. The first practice was to convene a group of Christians (not all from the same congregation, but all from the same neighborhood) to share a meal on a regular basis. Every time they met they asked two questions and prayed: To whom is God calling me to serve? Who has God brought into my life to serve me? I like this simple practice for several reasons. The reason I want to highlight is that they ask the second question. They see their presence in the community as one of giving and receiving, of mutuality and reciprocity, and therefore as genuine and authentic.

The second practice that makes this first one rich and meaningful is the commitment to live, work, and play in the neighborhood God has placed them. For Ryan and Jess, this meant hanging out at the same coffee shop, shopping at the same grocery store, walking through the same neighborhood with the same people on their way to take their kids to school. As a result, it was impossible to go anywhere in that neighborhood with Ryan and Jess without them being stopped by someone who wanted to greet them or see how they were doing. (Several of those who spoke at Ryan’s memorial had met him within the previous two years at a local coffee shop). This kind of saturation in the community obviously makes the first practice of a meal and prayer more meaningful. And I don’t know of anyone who did a better job of finding partners in the community for the mission of God than Ryan.

One more example from Ryan and Jess. The downtown community of Vancouver hosted an Easter egg hunt every year. It was a community event. The Easter before Ryan’s death a new church plant arrived and advertised their own, alternative Easter egg hunt. They were interested in people belonging to their church and not necessarily having their members belong to the community. This was appalling to Ryan. His imagination about finding partners in the community was different. He didn’t have to be in charge of something. The benefit of participation did not have to directly accrue to him and his. And the 1,400 people who showed up at his memorial service is but one piece of testimony to the power of these practices.

How are you doing?

Beyond Numbers and Dollars: new metrics for a post-Christendom church

It’s tougher to know these days if your church is doing well. It used to be easier to evaluate. Numbers were the key: members and dollars. And in a setting where going or belonging to a church was a cultural expectation, many of us could say we were doing fine. But we don’t live in that world anymore, and even in the age of the mega-church, growing numbers are harder and harder to find.

Some suggest in the face of this that it is more important to be “faithful than successful,” as if success could be measured in some way other than faithfulness. Too often, this is a way of saying “we’re going to keep doing what we’re doing regardless of what is happening in the world around us.” Don’t count me in that group. There’s no particular merit in becoming increasingly irrelevant.

But there is still something obviously wrong with making numbers the measure of a congregation’s life. My friend, Jeff Childers, had a great analogy this past week at the Pepperdine Bible Lectures. He compared a numbers metric to the obsession with test scores in our current educational landscape. Nothing wrong with scoring well on tests, but when those scores become the goal of learning-when we teach to the test–then things get out of whack. It’s the same with evaluating our congregation by the numbers. We hope that our churches are growing, but when that becomes our primary criteria for evaluating our church, things are out of whack.

That got me to thinking about how to evaluate your congregation. This is especially important to me as I coach congregations away from a more “attractional model,” and toward something “missional.” The standard of evaluation for a missional church has to be related to a tangible, even measurable, sense that a congregation is participating in the life and mission of God.

Participating in the life and mission of God is not always easy to evaluate. I’m often asked what a missional church “looks like.” Too often I respond in unhelpful ways. I’ll say, “It depends. Every church will look different depending on its context.” And it while it does depend (this is not a one-size-fits-all notion of church), I shouldn’t blame church members when they think to themselves, “He doesn’t know. This missional thing isn’t real. It’s like nailing jello to the wall.”

So, I want to take a stab at being more helpful. If nothing more, I want to offer some signs that your congregation is growing in their participation in the life and mission of God. In my next few posts, I’ll try some on. I offer them in no particular order.

1. Does your congregation do a good job of welcoming and involving a diverse range of individuals? You are participating in the new creation of God if you are living into Paul’s exhortation, “welcome one another as Christ has welcomed you for the glory of God.” The key here is “as Christ has welcomed you.” The welcome of Christ creates a community where there is no longer Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, but all are one in Christ Jesus.

Homogeneous congregations should be suspicious that they haven’t learned to welcome others in the way of Christ. This may indicate that the congregation is more about honoring their own cultural values than participating in the broad welcome of God’s life. And it very well may be the case that homogenous congregations grow faster than diverse groups. This is what the church growth people have been telling us for decades. The decision to be a community that functions as a sign of the coming Kingdom of God will prioritize diversity over numbers.

This goes to more than just greeting persons. The welcome of Christ will create a sense of belonging and involvement. Do poorer members belong in the same way as those who are more well-off? Are the less educated as meaningfully involved as others? These matters of belonging and involvement don’t just happen. Pathways have to be created and values articulated and ritualized for this kind of deep welcome to be possible.

Here’s my hunch. If you learn to do these well, you will be a growing congregation. You will be a church, through the struggles of learning to welcome a diverse group, that has some compelling stories to tell. You are not likely, however, to become a mega-church. Can you live with that?

Dear freshman, a little good news

I realized when making out my final for my freshman Bible class that I hadn’t adequately prepared them to write an essay on Paul for the final exam. So, I wrote one for them and asked for their reaction (haven’t graded them yet). Here’s what I wrote.

Sometimes, we make salvation like a math problem. (My sin)—(Jesus’ death)=salvation. This view of salvation makes the particulars of the life of Jesus and his resurrection, and even the presence of the Holy Spirit unnecessary for salvation. Moreover, few of us live life like we’re trying to solve a math problem. No one ever said, life is like a banking transaction. We don’t live life that way, and salvation should be about life.

The apostle Paul thought of salvation and the death of Jesus in terms very different than this. The death and resurrection of Jesus marked a dramatic turning of the ages. “Everything is passing away,” he says in 2 Corinthians. “Everything has become new.” The old age that is passing away was ruled by the powers of sin and death. But the coming age, the age of a new creation is ruled by God’s life, by faith and grace and the Holy Spirit. A different human life is possible under those conditions. Our life doesn’t have to be one of constant futility where we are always doing the thing we don’t want to do. A slogan for the old life under the powers of the old age might be, “the thing I hate is the thing I do.”

But in the new age it is possible to live a transformed life through the power of the Holy Spirit. Those of us who have the Spirit, Paul says, are constantly being transformed from “one degree of glory to another.” This is salvation; not just being forgiven for my sins, but receiving a new power for a different kind of life.

The trick is knowing what transforming power looks like. We tend to be drawn, those of us who live by the values of the old age that is passing away, by power that controls. But as you know, if you’ve been around controlling people very much, while this power can be impressive, it is also dangerous and ripe for abuse. It’s like a downed power line, arcing all over the place, threatening anyone near it.

For Paul, the cross is the sign of God’s power. How can that be? On the cross, Jesus seems like a victim, as someone having the opposite of power. And Paul admits as much. “The word of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing,” whose lives are vanishing like the old age. “But to those of us who are being saved,” he says, “it is the power of God.”

The coming new age of God’s salvation turns a lot of the values of the old age on its head. Power, real power, is not power over others. Power is a life given for others. In the death of Jesus we see other expressions of power—humility, gentleness, kindness, peacefulness, forgiveness. And these are the kinds of power that bring life, that add to life, that make life abundant. These kinds of power God honors, just like he did when he raised Jesus from the dead.

So the way to live in this power, is not to think of the death of Jesus as a variable in a math problem, but as a different kind of script for life. This is how Paul thought about it. When we are baptized, we make the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus our own. “We are buried with Christ in baptism,” Paul says in Romans 6, “so that we can be raised with him to live in a new kind of life.” This become Paul’s personal story. “I am crucified with Christ,” he says in Galatians 2, “nevertheless, I live, yet not I but Christ who lives in me.” This kind of life is made possible by the Holy Spirit, the very presence of the risen Jesus—Christ lives in me.

And when the story of the death and resurrection of Jesus becomes our story—our way of life—when we take up our crosses daily and follow Jesus—we find ourselves being transformed. This is salvation from the old age and its deathly views of power.

This doesn’t mean that we have to be nailed to a cross like Jesus, though many Christians through the ages have given their lives because of their commitment to the  Christian story. Instead, we might think about this life in relation to the description Paul gives it in Romans 12. We are “living sacrifices.” And the very first thing he says about “living sacrifices” is that they don’t think of themselves more highly than others. They put others first. They weep with those who weep. They rejoice with those who rejoice. They share their homes with others. They associate with the lowly. They don’t return abuse for abuse, but respond to abuse with a blessing.

This kind of life not only transforms those who live this way, but the world around them. This is God’s power for us, on our behalf, which does not come as controlling power—not as deathly power, not like a downed power line—but as power for and with. As love. As steadfast love. As self-giving love. This kind of power saves the world.

Repent and Believe the Good News: A Meditation on News of Decline

I wrote this piece at the request of Jason Locke, who has been hosting a series of posts on the problems/hopes related to decline among Churches of Christ on the west coast. A lot of thoughtful stuff there that you might want to check out. This is my contribution.

The good news is that you haven’t suddenly become incompetent. It would be tempting to think this because you’re doing everything you know to do, better than you’ve ever done it before, with diminishing impact.  The way out cannot possibly be to work harder or to do better, because you’re already doing that. The truth is, the world in which you do these things has changed, and for most of us this means the world of “if you build it, they will come” is over. You’re not incompetent. The conditions have changed and the way you engage the new conditions will have to change as well.

The really good news is that this has never depended on your competence. It’s simply not good news if it depends on your performance. It might be a good thing that we’re out of strategic fixes or programs. This might allow us properly to diagnose our problem as spiritual, not strategic, theological, not technical.  The frantic effort to preserve your life might just be the thing causing you to lose it. The way forward is through greater measures of trust (which is properly spiritual work), and not control. If you want to find your life, go ahead and lose it for the sake of the Kingdom.

So, the good news is that the way forward is through a deeper engagement with a living God. And if you’ve found yourself in the wilderness or in exile or nailed to a tree outside the city gates, God is not finished with you. In fact, this is where he does his best work. You might be right where you need to be.

The good news is that the gospel is bigger than we’ve imagined and addresses more human issues than just personal guilt and heaven and hell. People have rightly seen through the narrow interests of most churches, the almost self-serving hunger for heaven while the world around us is a living hell. They’re thirsting for something else, some adventure in life that brings meaning and hope and that makes a real difference.  What they want sounds an awful lot like the Kingdom of God.

The good news is that God has given his people everything they need for participating in his promised and preferred future. This is not typically how we think about church. Instead of thinking of the church as a collection of the gifts that God has actually given his people, we think of church in the abstract. That you start with an idea of what church is or must be instead of starting with what you’ve actually been given.

The good news, as G. K. Chesterton memorably put it, is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, but that it has seldom been tried. Or as Craig Van Gelder says, in North America we have substituted worship for Christianity. Christianity as a life, as a radical way of being together and for the world, has had little room in our imagination about “church.” New Christian communities are emerging that are realizing that if you practice simplicity and share what you have, that you can serve something other than your career or security or whatever else it is that is keeping you from living a sane life.

The bad news in all of this is that we really don’t believe that the things listed above constitute good news—that we really can’t trust these things to give us a different future. That somehow our future lies in different music or better packaging or a more effective pulpit guy. And these things might give us a reprieve, something better than what we have now, but they also might be settling for less than we could have—an adventure in finding the living God.

I am reminded of Jesus’ opening message in the gospel of Mark. “The time is fulfilled, the kingdom is near: repent and believe the good news.” It’s the last phrase that always strikes me. That somehow repentance and believing the good news go hand in hand. It’s not always easy to believe that the story of a crucified Messiah is the good news of God’s coming kingdom. We often don’t live as it that’s the truth of things. The exhortation to believe the good news requires repentance, the desire to head in a different direction and to learn a new way of relating to the world.

I am not oblivious to our trouble. Nor would I hurl at our trouble empty platitudes. This deserves the best, most practical intervention we have available to us. But, I am convinced that amidst all the trouble, we have plenty of good news. Repent and believe the good news.

Your Congregation Stinks at Communicating: Why I’m right about this

Congregations stink at communicating.

Leaders often think that communicating means putting something in the bulletin or email newsy thing or announcing it from the front on Sundays. Not only do people not pay the kind of attention for which we hope to these kinds of communication, but they often fail to give them the info they really need to decide why this information might be important for them. Imagine what a wife might think if her husband communicated the way we do in congregations. Their marriage counselor might agree that he is a poor communicator. The way people find out what they really need to know is through meaningful human networks. And congregations pay little attention to these interpersonal networks.

Beyond this problem, however, lies the reality that leaders in congregations tend to think of communication as one-way. We tell, you listen. I seldom find a congregation that has planned, dependable, and open opportunities for feedback. This does not mean that leaders don’t get feedback. They do. But because there are few systematic attempts to listen to the congregation, that feedback tends to be negative.

I am not a fan of congregational business meetings. Nor am I a fan of congregational “open mic” nights where the shrill voices tend to dominate. I am a fan of regular congregational conversations that are planned in such a way so that everyone shares (typically at small table) around a determined topic in an attempt to get a sense of the room. (If you can’t have a congregational conversation, I have reservations about your status as a congregation. What you very well may have is an organization in which the leaders produce a product that passive members consume).

I hear about congregations that are having trouble inching forward changes, usually in worship, in the face of increasing hostility and resistance. Often, this is the result of leaders who have “studied the issue” and now are hoping the congregation agrees with them. I think that in the face of such resistance, little can be done to improve things. People have dug in and drawn lines and now no amount of conversation or persuasion can materially change things. Early, open communication that has as its goal mutual understanding, rather than some strategic outcome, is the most likely way to prevent hostility and resistance around change.

These notions of communication are more than just good organizational strategies. They are spiritual commitments grounded in theological beliefs. The Spirit of God is among the people of God, not just among the leaders. Good two-way communication, and the virtues necessary to keep that communication vital, create the space necessary for the Spirit of God to move among God’s people and for the Word of God to continue to be heard.

Why “Bless Your Little Heart” is a Work of the Flesh and other Observations on an Ecology of the Word

In the last post, I suggested that congregational leadership could be thought of around two movements: discerning and joining. Specifically, leadership is responsible for maintaining the conditions whereby the congregation can discern the mission of God and join it. Leadership then is not just a list of jobs or tasks, but a way of maintaining a congregational culture or ecosystem in which its members can thrive in the missional purposes of God.

The discerning movement aims to keep a spiritually healthy environment so that the Word of God can be continually heard and spoken. The order here is important.  Speaking is not the first movement in discernment. Hearing, or listening, is. This reinforces the notion that we pursue a living God who continually calls us deeper into his life and mission. Hearing must proceed speaking.

Listening is no simple task, however. It’s difficult enough in interpersonal communication when the person speaking is right in front of you. Listening for the voice of God is even tougher. There’s a lot of life-static that gets in the way of listening to God. As PT Forsyth memorably put it: “Even when we desire it there are few of us so familiar with their inner selves as to be able to distinguish with any certainty the shepherd’s voice, amid the gusts and sighings of their own fitful selves.” This inability to distinguish the voice of the shepherd is even tougher to do as a community where conflict and other relational barriers create interference.  

Jesus’ parable of the soils suggests itself at this point. There are spiritual challenges that keep us, and our congregations, from being good soil, including sin and the distractions of the world. Pastoral work is not simply care of the soul for the sake of the individual, but also care of the soil for the sake of the Word of God.

A big part of keeping soil fertile, in my estimation, relates to “speech ethics.” The ways we talk to each other go a long way toward determining whether or not the word of God can continue to be heard and spoken. I’ve written about this before on more than one occasion, but I’m struck by the numerous places where Paul follows a description of his experience with the death and resurrection of Christ with a description of how this influences the way he speaks. Paul’s speech is frank and sincere, not manipulative or full of cunning or deceit. He is no peddler of God’s word. And so many of the biblical exhortations to Christian conduct talk about speech. Gossip and unwholesome talk are to give way to truth-telling and blessing.

I’m pretty sure that if Paul were schooled in our current vernacular he would name passive aggressiveness or “bless their little hearts” as works of the flesh. Learning to speak directly and kindly with one another is surely a big part of becoming Christian which allows the Spirit of God to move freely between lives in community. Leaders have to care about this and teach the church how to live within healthy patterns of speech.

Related to this, is the need to make room for the voices of dissenters or strangers. Often times in Scripture it’s the outsider or the dissenter who best knows the will of God. This is certainly not always true, but leaving room for these voices keeps the congregation honest and wards against idolatry.

One last point about an ecology of the Word. While teaching and preaching surely are a part of a healthy ecology, so are other uses of Scripture. Practices with Scripture like lectio divina and dwelling on the word have to be a part of a congregation’s repertoire. There have to be deep listening practices where we claim that the word masters us, not the other way around.

Like creation, the church is spoken into existence by the Word that became flesh. Leading as discerning allows this Word to continually be heard and spoken.

Discerning and Joining: Movements in Leading God’s People in Power

I’ve been thinking a lot about the tasks related to leading in congregations lately. More to the point, I’ve been thinking about how to create a culture within congregations in which they can act, or express their life powerfully (I like this word better than “effectively,” which carries certain  organizational baggage for me. Power is a gospel concept, albeit conceived differently than many definitions). And this has to entail a vital sense that God is living and active and ultimately leading the congregation.

So, these days I’m thinking of leading the congregation around two movements: discerning and joining. Discerning relates to the leading of God’s Spirit and concerns the questions, who is God calling us to be, what is God calling us to do, and to whom, in the name of Jesus, is God calling us to belong. The ability to answer these questions depends on whether or not the word of God, in an ongoing manner, can be heard and spoken. In this way, the church is a community continually created and sustained by God’s Word. I mean by this more than simply the teaching and preaching of Scripture, although this is certainly part of it, but whether or not the living voice of God can be heard and a word from God spoken to the circumstances in which a congregation finds itself.

Maintaining such an environment, an environment in which the Word of God can continually be heard and spoken, is a big part of what it means to lead a congregation. To use a biblical metaphor, it means keeping the soil fertile (as opposed to rocky, hard, or weed-infested soil), or maintaining a certain ecosystem within the congregation. As I see things, this requires a set of tasks or responsibilities which tend to fall into the category often referred to as pastoral care. But the tasks of pastoral care support not just the lives of the members, but also serve the interests of the congregation’s capacity to discern God’s ongoing claim on their lives.

I want to point out that this is not the way leadership often gets described or defined by congregations. Leadership is seen as primarily related to strategic vision. State the direction and manage the outcomes. But for my money this kind of leadership is ill-suited for knowing and following God. This is not to say that this kind of leadership should never be used, but rather that it shouldn’t be the primary way we think about leadership in congregations. In contrast to the “discerning” culture I am advocating, a strategic culture might be characterized as a “deciding” culture.

Those who favor a “deciding” culture over a “discerning” culture point to the need to get things done and think of a discerning culture as too passive or soft. I am in favor of getting things done. I don’t think, however, that this has to come at the expense of discernment. In fact, it’s my sense that a congregation acts more boldly if it is convinced that it is responding to a specific sense of God’s calling.

So, how does a discerning community get things done? This is where joining comes into play. To discern the calling of God is one side of leadership within a congregation, joining in that calling is another. If discerning requires the hearing and speaking of the Word, joining requires emobiment. Joining is no less spiritual than discernment, just as discernment is no less practical than joining. Remember, administration is a spiritual gift according to 1 Cor 12. So, both discerning and joining are part of the function of spiritual leadership in a congregation. They do, however, require different gifts, and most are not good at leading in both.

“Joining” includes things like making structures and process clear, recruiting, training and honoring volunteers, maintaining feedback loops which include appropriate accountability, and authorizing other leaders to accomplish their tasks. All of these tasks should be done under the rubric of understanding, not efficiency. By this, I mean that the evaluative questions should not focus on the question, “did this work?” Instead, the questions should revolve around what we are learning, and, more specifically, what we are learning about God.

Most ministers get into the game around the tasks of discernment. Many of them are poor at conceiving and maintaining the crunchy tasks of joining. It is often unrealistic to expect them to be good or even interested in both. In Churches of Christ, we have thought of elders as “shepherds” and so have selected leaders who also tend toward the tasks related to discernment. Joining is neglected, especially in smaller congregations that can’t hire an administrator who keeps the trains running on time.

I am also nervous about combining “oversight” of both discerning and joining in a senior pastor. The preaching of the Word needs to be somewhat independent of the concerns of the institution. The sermon can’t simply be propaganda supporting the initiatives of the congregation.

I don’t think there’s one right way to do this, to get both sides done. I know congregations that are good at the first, but lose the power harnessed by discernment because they are poor at joining. And a congregation focused on joining without discerning is playing fast and loose with God’s calling on their lives. Strategic concerns swamp all others and the congregation is too often only the net result of human capacities. Congregations as expressed within the power of God find a way to do both.