StretchyChurch

I just found two great posts at the PGF Outbox.

The first one deals with the advantages a small congregation has in making a missional transition; click here for that article.

The second one tells the story of how Solana Beach Presbyterian Church (a large church here in San Diego) is using their small group ministry to begin making the missional transition; click here for that article.

Good stuff.

Here’s a picture of the Missional Leadership Model that I discuss in this post (from page 41 of The Missional Leader). I told you I’d get it to you! Thanks to Tom for e-mailing it to me.

Today we continued to talk about Roxburgh’s Missional Change Model (found on page 41 of The Missional Leader). I tried to find an image of the model on the internet, but no such luck. I’ll do my best to describe it. Keep in mind that this is only a model and doesn’t necessarily describe (nor prescribe) what every church experiences.

Generally, however, a church will begin in the “Green Zone” in which new actions bring about new and exciting life. As the church grows it moves into the “Blue Zone” where it begins to add structure to the growing congregation. This is not a bad thing; in fact, it’s necessary in order to maintain growth. Effective and efficient performative skills are important in this zone.

At some point, however, the church will begin to plateau and cease to be creative. The structures in place are important, and in order to regain growth, a church will implement rules and regulations to try to control what is happening. Eventually, the church will reach a crisis. All this is the “Red Zone”.

The crisis, however, is not necessarily an event. It is a recognition that what we’ve been doing is no longer working–we must do something different. After the crisis, the church moves into a time of confusion–what do we do now?

This is a very important phase. I think that my church is probably in the confusion stage right now. We’re not quite sure how to handle the realization that the way we’ve always done church is no longer working.

Here’s the weird thing. You have to stay in this confusion stage for a while in order to successfully move into the next stage. Living in the confusion–dealing with it, wrestling with it–is critical. We have to deeply examine ourselves, talk with each other, listen to one another before we can permanently and effectively leave this time of confusion.

Eventually, the church can move into the Transition Organization stage (back into the “Blue Zone”). Here the leaders implement some stability while at the same time inviting people into some experiments. And finally, a church can move back into the “Green Zone”–the Emergent Organization stage, which leads again to the New Actions stage where we started.

The model looks like a figure 8 on its side, but I’ll try to put up an image of the model in the near future so you know what I’m talking about.

This model, of course, led to some great discussion in the class and some deep personal reflection for myself.

More great stuff today! To be honest, though, there’s no way I can really communicate everything I’m learning. So in these updates I’m just giving a small taste of what we’re covering.

Today we talked a lot about the Missional Change Model (primarily the model found on page 83 of The Missional Leader) which says, first of all, that change never happens in a straight line. First we move this way a little bit, then that way, then this way, then another way altogether until we finally reach a destination (although, to be perfectly honest, we never really reach a final destination–we’re always moving through change).

In a nutshell, these are the five stages of change:

1. Awareness - Begin where people are at this moment and help them become aware of where they are, what the reality of the situation is. This involves a lot of listening–listening to people’s stories and helping them to know the story in which they are living.
2. Understanding - This is an ongoing process of listening and reflecting. People begin to better understand where they are and begin to think about the implications of that.
3. Evaluation - The congregation examines current actions, attitudes, and values in light of new understanding. What does what we now know say about who we are as God’s people, as a community at this time?
4. Experiment - Risk some change. People are afraid of failure. As a result, churches generally create environments in which failure doesn’t happen. We need to create an environment in which it’s ok to fail. We also need to relieve people’s anxiety by letting them know we’re not changing things, we’re just experimenting.
5. Commit - Sign on to new ways of being church. Notice it’s not a commitment to doing new things, it’s a commitment to a new way of being.

We also spent a lot of time on the Pastor/Leader Survey that we were to have filled out by people in our churches, colleagues, etc. last fall. I, however, didn’t do this survey. The professors told me to wait a year until I’ve been at my church for longer than just a few months. That way people will better be able to gauge my leadership in this church.

In the evening the whole class went to see Atonement. Pretty cool movie. I thought it was going to be a chick flick. Not so. It was a love story, but it definitely wasn’t Runaway Bride.

All in all, another really good day….

Another great day of learning today! We talked mostly about frameworks, defined as a socially constructed way of reading and understanding the world (emphasis on the word “constructed”). In other words, we generally take for granted how we see the world. But how we see it and understand it is based on a perspective that has been constructed by our history, traditons, etc., etc…

The most interesting discussion had to do with strategic planning. The point that Roxburgh made was not that strategic planning is bad (he said, “Every time I get on a plane I thank God for strategic planning”), but that it’s bad when the church does it. The problem is that strategic planning basically objectifies the people God calls us to reach (”a narrative of objectification”) and assumes a certain “preferred future” (more members, more programming, better music, more diversity, etc.) without actually doing the necessary theological reflection needed to discern the initiatives of God.

Tomorrow we begin talking about what churches can do–the Missional Change Model.

So it begins!!

Today was my first full day of class for my Doctor of Ministry in Missional Leadership at Fuller Theological Seminary with Alan Roxburgh and Mark Lau Branson. And so far I love it!

What I love most so far is the cohort aspect. That is, we meet and interact with the same group of students for the entire four years of the program. It creates a great sense of camaraderie. And I love that, while we all come from very different contexts, we’re all wrestling with the questions of what it means to be the church in our world today.

Alan Roxburgh and Mark Lau Branson are terrific, as well. We got together for dinner last night and a time to introduce ourselves to the rest of the cohort. Today we reflected on and discussed the reading we’ve been doing so far–what gave us insight, what motivated us, and what questions we still have.

But the best part, I have to admit, was our time dwelling in the Scriptures first thing in the morning. Roxburgh said that this was not simply a devotional time that we do before we get down to the work of the class–this time of indwelling is part of our work. Our time in the Scriptures informs and shapes our discussions and our learning this week.

So for half an hour we went off and simply reflected on Psalm 1 (a Psalm written, surprisingly, during the Babylonian Exile–which adds a much deeper layer of meaning when we understand it in that context). Then we came back together to discuss our thoughts and reflections with the rest of the group.

I can tell this is gonna be a great week! Not only in terms of being with the rest of the cohort, but in terms of the learning. I think that my thinking is going to be significantly challenged.

I find myself somewhat stuck in my need for a program or model of ministry to follow in order to make our church successful. But a missional approach doesn’t provide a model. What does it provide? As Roxburgh puts it, it provides a space for discovering God’s mission in the world–or something along those lines.

Part of the challenge is the “fuzziness” of missional. While the idea of missional doesn’t lend itself well to definitions, explanations, or models of ministry, it does open the possibility to discover God in the mystery–to let God be God and do what God is doing without us fourcing our programs on his working.

Anyway… I hope that makes sense. In any case, it’s gonna be a great week!! I’ll keep you posted.

I just came across two diagrams that distinguish between a typical church (regardless of worship style) and a missional church. Notice that the typical church focuses all its energy on the weekend worship service, using that as the foundation for everything else; while the missional church focuses its energy on the mission of the church, which leads to all the other minstries, including the weekend worship service.

I found the diagrams on the Uplake Church blog, though the diagrams are apparently originally from Tall Skinny Kiwi. Let me know what you think.

Can you believe it?! Another post!

I just discovered this video through the PGF Outbox, which they discovered on YouTube. It’s a neat vignette expressing what it means to be a missional church.

On this day 35 years ago, the world became a brighter place. Why? Because I was born, of course!! Heh heh… just kidding… But seriously, folks, I was born 35 years ago today. And I’ve realized that I’m entering a new phase of life. From here on out, I’m closer to being 40 than to being 30…. Yikes! I’m getting so old!!

Anyway… I know I haven’t been posting much lately, but I just came across a really great article on a website called The Off Ramp about what it means to live incarnationally. Check it out here.

Thanks to Scott over at Living Dusty, I discovered this article on Christianity Today’s blog, Out of Ur.

The article cites a study that Willow Creek Church did over the past several years to see which of their programs were best helping people become more committed disciples of Jesus. To their astonishment, not much in their of ministry was helping people to grow deeper in their faith.

Willow Creek’s assumption had always been that the more programs you offer, and the more people attend those programs, the more those people will grow spiritually. What they discovered is that this is simply not true. Here’s what Bill Hybels said at this year’s Leadership Summit:

We made a mistake. What we should have done when people crossed the line of faith and become Christians, we should have started telling people and teaching people that they have to take responsibility to become ‘self feeders.’ We should have gotten people, taught people, how to read their bible between service, how to do the spiritual practices much more aggressively on their own.

I’m not particularly surprised by this. While I love the energy of big churches when they gather together, I also realize that the greatest spiritual growth happens when small groups of believers gather together and when individual believers spend time practicing the spiritual disciplines.

I have to admit, however, I’m kind of proud of Willow Creek for owning up to this. I’m sure it’s not easy to make a discovery like this. But facing honestly the aspects of your ministry that aren’t making an impact, and then making a change, is the sign of a true stretchychurch.

You can also read Greg Hawkins’ (executive pastor of Willow Creek) response to the many comments on the Out of Ur blog here.