My question is not What Would Cher Do? (Or Chaz or Calvin Coolidge.) It’s not even a question but it’s an invitation to imagine What We Could Do as communities of faith that we are not now doing.
I remember a respected colleague who found much success serving an historic congregation which had previously languished with a tired, less imaginative pastor. One evening when I was watching him in action at a Wednesday Night Live event, I commented on how obvious it was that the congregation was totally energized by his leadership. His response: “They are just now figuring out what the church could be and do.”
This is a new day for the institutional church. My own denomination has a new permission-giving constitution. Other denominations are similarly shifting from tired to fresh paradigms.
One of my goals in the coming months will be to encourage my colleagues – especially those under 40 – to talk about what we could do as a church, as a presbytery, as a community. I don’t really care what others would do. What will we do? And let’s do it.
A Church for Starving Artists 
I have a question for you about this, if I can ask…
I chair the faith formation committee in my congregation (we’re a small congregation where the pastor and the secretary are the only paid employees, so there is no staff person with specific responsibilities for education, family ministry, and youth ministry), which means I also serve on council.
Over time, a culture has arisen in our congregation where when someone has an idea to do something – plan an event, develop a new outreach ministry, etc. – it has to first go to a committee and then to council for approval. This poses several problems. First, if I came up with this great idea the day after the committee meets, it has to wait until their next meeting a month from now, then it has to wait until the next council meeting for council to vote on it. Now, some things, like an Advent family event we are planning, overlap committees, and our committees seem to be incabable of actually working with each other on things. So in this case, the Care committee will plan the elements of the event that deal with hospitality, outreach, and Faith Formation will handle all of the “learning” aspects, because there can never be any overlap between the two.
The problem isn’t the pastor – he has vision, and a commitment to giving permission, but even he gets slapped on the wrists when protocol isn’t followed.
I can tell you this…bureacracy…totally turns our few young members off. They care about the community and the world, and they want to follow Christ into the world, not just hide in our little enclave of suburbia. But we are in the very tiny minority (if I had to take a guess, our median age right now is about 65-70 – really).
How do we move beyond a model of what church was in the 50s, 60s, and 70s, which most of our members remember as the glory days, into what church can be in the 21st century?
I don’t expect answers…but I needed to vent my frustration.
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Sheryl – Your questions have also been mine. Your Session/Council is – at its core – supposed to be made of the spiritual leaders of your congregation. What’s easier than being the spiritual leader is to be the gatekeeper/controller/culture police/managers. What is your council afraid of? Losing control? Imperfect theology? Someone stepping on the toes of older members?
What if your Council decided to give blanket permission to the volunteer leaders within the parameters of the core values of your congregation? For example, if your church’s core values are 1) “caring for the community,” and 2) “following Christ into the world” then volunteer leaders are free to do whatever they wish within those parameters. Yes, this gives a lot of freedom to the volunteer leaders. But God did not so love the world that he sent a committee. We are called to use our gifts to fulfill these core values.
So, you could have this conversation with your council. You could also invite someone from the outside to come in for officer training to lovingly explain what grows a church and what makes a church wither, and how the 21st Century Church is not the 20th Century Church. (My email is jledmiston13gmail.com) I will be praying for your church.
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