We can minister to the children in our communities in a multitude of ways. We then entered into a season when we shifted into caring for our own kids, and then we aged out and stopped biologically having our own kids. Vital congregations quickly determine and allocate their resources to at least one ministry to children.
This is not devaluing the seniors in our congregations, but rather a return to generational balance. Here are a couple of examples: One of the churches in our Conference worked hard to change its dysfunctional internal culture of decline. As soon as the church became healthy enough and passionate about reaching new people, not only did older adults come, they also started drawing young families. That church now has several hundred children. Vital churches are spiritually alive. They are not social clubs or places where business meetings dominate.
Folks have to be invited to grow in their relationship with God and to understand what it means to be a disciple and how to pray. Every vital congregation has clergy who are committed to developing lay leadership and equipping the saints for ministry. Clergy must understand that developing strong lay leaders is a primary task of their ministry. Growing the core lay leadership team and being committed to leaving a legacy of leadership strength is essential.
Vital congregations develop exceptional teams where lay leaders understand their roles, but they build those teams in order to help every person be all that God has gifted them to be. We want all of our laity to be free to be all that God has called them to be. And it is happening all around us, in spite of the numerous challenges we are still facing. The age of decline and despair is over. We are yet alive! George Hunter, in one of his books on church life and North American culture, offers the picture of a corn farmer whose family has been successfully raising and marketing corn for generations.
He ask us to imagine that one morning, as this farmer and his crew wake up to go into the fields to harvest the corn, they discover to their amazement that overnight the cornfields have turned to vineyards.
Instead of acres and acres of rich, ripe corn waiting to be harvested, instead there are vines dropping with juicy grapes waiting to be picked. A preposterous picture to be sure, but go with it for a minute. Hunter says that in this situation there are a number of options open to the farmer. In fact, the harder they worked at this, the more damage they would be likely to cause. Hunter says this is the situation facing churches for our purposes, particularly mainline churches and especially the Anglican Church in North America.
But in recent years the changes in the culture have been rapid and significant. The result is that the churches are much like the corn farmer, surrounded no longer by corn but by grapes. The harvest has changed, and changed dramatically. And, if we as the church are going to be effective in what we are called to do, we must change as well. To insist that we can continue to do just exactly what we have always done, and hope that our results will eventually change, is folly. We need to rethink what we are doing and how we are doing it.
The following acrostic on the word VITAL provides a convenient framework for me to make a few observations about some of the things I think we need to be paying attention to if we are going to revitalize our congregations and carry on effective ministries.
We need visionary leadership at every level because the nature and scope of the changes required go far beyond simply tinkering a little bit with what we already have. What we need is new DNA, and leaders who get this, and can model and communicate it. The number one job of leadership is to explain why the organization exists and to communicate this clearly and effectively. I read somewhere that the two most radical questions any organization can ever ask itself are these: Why are we doing what we are doing?
And why are we doing it the way we are doing it? These are questions that have to be asked on a regular basis in every congregation, parish, and diocese across the country. What should be the result of all this work and effort we are putting into church life? Again, for my money, the worst possible answer to the second question why are we doing it this way? The leadership in a vital congregation needs to be able to inspire the people of that congregation with a vision of who they can become as they work this out, to dream of what such a community of people might look like in their particular context, and to nurture such a community into being.
That is always an exciting journey for everyone involved. The challenge is that our systems of formation and oversight do not produce and nurture such leaders.
We are pastors called to the work of interim pastoring and leading Christ-centered churches through a season brought on by some type of transition or crisis. We direct, empower, and facilitate change in churches, leading them to pathways of healing, hope and revitalization. For more than 20 years, we have prepared churches to be vital and vibrant places, ready to call a new pastor, through a proven process that is theologically and biblically based.
We are a leading organization in the area of intentional interim pastoring and church diagnostics, having written numerous resources used by other Christian organizations. VitalChurch is made up of a team of pastors dedicated to church revitalization. They are experts in the fields of church diagnostics, intentional interim pastoring, and leadership coaching. Their published resources and training materials are in use by pastors and churches throughout North America, and they are often called upon to speak at conferences and brought in to train individuals to do effective intentional interim work.
Is your church in a season of transition or crisis? Are you a part of a denomination needing an assessment of member churches or training for your interim pastors? VitalChurch would love to talk with you about how we can help.
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