A Church for Starving Artists

I loved all the comments about renting church space and it’s clear that I wasn’t clear for some in this post.  So I’ll try to clarify.

Church A has 40 members.  They have an old building that needs some maintenance.  On Sunday mornings about 20 of the 40 members gather for worship with a guest preacher because they do not have the funds to hire a pastor part-time much less full-time.

After they leave worship, another congregation begins to arrive.  That congregation is Not Like Them but they needed a place to gather and they pay $1000 a month.  They might be a different ethnicity or worship style.  Maybe they are younger. Maybe they don’t speak English as a first language or at all.  This gathering is larger and after worship, there are classes or a meal with about 200 souls.  They return for a Bible study on Wednesday night and a prayer meeting on Friday mornings.

Church A also hosts an AA group on Monday nights that makes a donation of $50 each week.  And there’s a private preschool  that pays $2500 a month with 60 families involved. Church A also rents their parking lot for $1000 month to a construction company Monday – Friday.  Members have no relationship or even face time with their assorted renters beyond the exchange of rent checks and keys.

Church B has 40 members.  They have an old building that needs some maintenance.  On Sunday mornings about 30 of their members gather for worship along with assorted visitors  – sometimes as many as 20 or 30 – who are interested in possibly being a part of a congregation that does what this congregation does the rest of the week.  They have a full-time pastor – although it’s not easy pulling that off and sometimes they have to dip into their savings.

After worship, there is a community dinner and people off the street who were not in worship join them.  They might be a different ethnicity or worship style – or no worship style.  Maybe they are younger. Maybe they are older.  Maybe they don’t speak English as a first language or at all.

Church B’s doors are rarely locked and their lights are rarely turned off.  They regularly host local choral groups, assorted support groups (Veterans, Parents of Disabled Children, unemployed neighbors, formerly incarcerated women), Noontime Group Spiritual Direction, and offices for advocacy groups working against homelessness and domestic abuse.  These groups may or may not make financial donations to the church, but the church still has a connection with them.  Four times a year, church volunteers set up an espresso bar in the lobby and serve fancy coffee to their guests as they come and go to thank them for their ministry.  About twice a year, the church invites everybody who uses their building to help with a painting project followed by a picnic in the parking lot. (Neighbors who can’t paint come over for the picnic too.)  Church leaders know the names of the people who come in and out and they openly invite people to share prayer concerns on a chalk board in the hall.  Before the support group for Parents, the pastor pokes her head in sometimes and reminds the parents that their kids are more than welcome to come to Movie Night this Friday with some church kids or to the parenting book group on Sunday mornings.  There’s a preschool and although it’s a separate 501c3 and the preschool pays $2500 each month, the pastor is a well-known face among the students and teachers. She leads a weekly chapel service that reminds the children that they are loved by God and the deacons host a welcome-back-to-school coffee for the parents every August.  The church supports ten scholarships for local children whose parents could otherwise not afford preschool.  And there’s a free Parents’ Day Out four Saturdays a year for the preschool parents staffed by trained and vetted church education volunteers with Vacation Bible School-ish activities.

Which church is a landlord and which is a community center?  And which church would be missed if it vanished from the neighborhood?

Having a church building to use for ministry is a privilege.  Are we using it to the glory of God?  Or are we using it to perpetuate our own institution?

Image is of the twin church buildings Santa Maria dei Miracoli and Santa Maria di Montesanto which stand beside each other in the Piazza del Popolo in Rome. Pope Alexander VII commissioned their construction and they were designed by Carlo Rainaldi in the mid-17th Century.

At what point does a congregation shift from being a church to becoming a landlord?

Many of our congregations – for financial reasons – rent out space to other congregations and non-profit organizations.  A couple of initial thoughts about this:

• Charging rent to other not-for-profit organizations seems to be the antithesis of partnership.  If my congregation believes that A) our building is a tool for ministry and B) the ministry to addicts, abuse victims, and children is aligned with our mission, then charging rent or expecting “a donation” feels a bit mercenary.
• If we charge rent to an organization, we cannot claim their work as “part of our ministry.”  I recently visited a congregation and asked about their mission outreach into the community and they shared a long list of organizations that meet in their building.  “Do you know them?” I asked.  “Who are their leaders, their participants, and how do you connect with them personally?”  Needless to say, their only connection is a transactional relationship involving keys and a rent check.

So, assuming your congregation rents space to a preschool or a counseling center or a support group for PTSD victims or another congregation . . . at what point in funding your church’s budget do you become more of a landlord than a church?

My brilliant colleague EH and I discuss this often.  Has your congregation declined from being a church to being a landlord if your budget is 97% rent-subsidized?  80%?  50%?  25%?

Jesus didn’t die for this.  Jesus didn’t give up his sweet life to endlessly prop up ineffective ministry or to perpetuate an institution that is sentimentally dear to our hearts.  That is not ministry.  That’s real estate management. (No offense to real estate professionals.)

So this Lenten season is an excellent opportunity to be brave followers of Jesus.  Are we willing to give up our buildings for the sake of the gospel?

If my particular church no longer has the capacity to serve the community and beyond in the name of Jesus, imagine leaving a legacy that would serve the community and beyond for years to come.   Who will be the first leader to say these words:

“I believe we are called to sell this building and give the proceeds to a congregation that can be what we can no longer be.”

These are not sad words.  They are not the words of a loser or a failed Christian.  These are holy, imaginative, faithful words.

For the love of God – literally – please consider your congregation’s ministry with a new set of metrics:

• How many people are being touched by the Holy through the work of our church?
• How are we serving our “partners” in ministry (i.e. people using our building) apart from renting them space?
• How do we love Jesus more than we love our building and property?

And for what it’s worth, I’d love to hear your opinion on the percentage of the operating budget can be fulfilled by rent before a church stops being a church.  Is it 10%?  50%? 100% (or something in between.)  Please share your wisdom here or on Facebook. Thanks.

Forbes Magazine shared 5 Hiring Trends to Watch last week which are especially helpful when translated to hiring trends for pastors.  As I work with congregations seeking new pastoral leadership, it often feels like we are looking for pastors who fulfill dated job descriptions and expectations.

Even – especially? – for small congregations barely able to afford a pastor, it’s essential that we pay attention to the kind of leadership needed for a growing 21st Century Church. It’s not just about preaching poignant sermons anymore. Or at all.

Here are Forbes’ trends with my translation for pastors & congregations:

1. “Job offers will include more perks and benefits.”  Lifelong learning is not just a perk/benefit; it’s essential for leadership development, especially in terms of figuring out how to lead a congregation in the throes of what Pew calls “America’s Changing Religious Landscape.”  Conferences addressing the landscape Pew describes are indispensable and it costs more than a couple hundred dollars of continuing education money per year.  Forward-thinking congregations will offer generous study leave funding and a sabbatical after 5-7 years of service.  If you want your pastor out in the community, you need to fund it.  I used to serve a congregation that expected me to spend money to have coffee out with both parishioners and community leaders, and it was part of my benefits package.

2. “Increased interest in boomerangs.” (Forbes reports that employees increasingly return – or would return – to former organizations.) Although this is rare in Church World, what is more prevalent is the church that hires within their staffs.  Directors of Christian Education become Associate Pastors.  Youth Leaders become Directors of Membership.  Former field education students become the new Pastor.

3. “Social media will be increasingly used to find candidates.”  Media savvy churches put pastor position openings on Facebook.  We use social media connections to ask for good candidates.  And it goes without saying (but I’ll say it anyway) that social media activity also weeds out candidates.

4. “More lucrative employee referral programs – and beyond.” Most pastor search committees do not use head hunters or other professional recruiters.  But they call seminary presidents, other pastors they know, and even relatives in other cities about pastors they need to recruit as candidates.

5. More offers will include flexibility. This is huge.  Gone are the days when pastors sit in their offices and wait for parishioners to drop by.  Today’s pastor is out in the community meeting with school, civic, and elected leaders discerning the needs that might be addressed through their congregation.  Today’s pastor spends an enormous time equipping other people to be leaders.  The work schedules of any pastor have always been flexible.  But what we do in those hours has changed dramatically since the 1950s.

Of course everything I’ve written here is contextual.  Huge churches have Preaching Pastors whose primary role is to prepare and deliver sermons.  Tiny churches can only pay for someone to spend a handful of hours serving them.  If they want a weekly worship service, there will be no time to be out in the community.

My point is that 21st Century pastoral leadership is very different from 20th Century pastoral leadership, and yet we tend to seek pastors with 20th Century expectations. There are many reasons why this is so – the first being that many of our church members haven’t been taught otherwise.  A wise colleague shared recently:  We cannot imagine what we cannot imagine.

I was a high school cheerleader.

. . . but not like this.

I would love to tell you that I ran track or played soccer in high school but Title IX wasn’t the law until I was almost done with my secondary education, so there were few options to don uniforms devoid of pom poms.

It occurs to me, though, that cheerleading was excellent preparation for pastoring.

I learned how to stand in front of large (or not so large) crowds and proclaim things.  I learned how to keep my hair out of my face.  I learned how to bolster spirits and be part of a team.

Last night – and on many nights over the past several years – I tapped my inner cheerleader for Jesus.  As I talk with weary people who haven’t experienced many ecclesiastical victories lately, offering a message about something bigger than themselves.  Yes, this all sounds very hokey, but it’s true.

Our people need to hear a simple message and it’s a message of hope – not the hope of “winning” but the hope of community and reaching out to broken people because we are broken too.  The pom poms are gone but honestly we need some heartfelt cheering in these days.  I’m not talking about ridiculous, inauthentic “cheering up.”  I’m talking about being courageous in the face of darkness.  Who doesn’t need to hear this?

My favorite salon recently convinced me to invest in peptides. Specifically, I have been persuaded to apply Palmitoyl Pentapeptide-4 to my face in order to stimulate my fibroblasts to rebuild my extra-cellular matrix.  Whatever.

Peptides have been an intentional part of my life for two weeks now and the long term impact has yet to be seen.  But I’m feeling hopeful about peptides and – for now – I’m game.

I have also learned in my peptide research that “the hype is . . .  that there is one magic ingredient or group of ingredients that is the anti-aging answer. It’s simply not true. There is no single solution for all the signs of aging—though we admit it would be great if it was really that simple.”  In other words, peptides will not make my skin look like I’m twenty. At best it will make my almost sixty-year old skin look like healthy sixty-year old skin.  That works for me.

Of course I’m going to connect this to Church because that’s what I do.

It occurs to me that there is no one program, no single model, no perfect structure, no unique path that will guarantee Church Health.  What works in my church will not work in yours.

Context is everything.  And in order to discern what our context actually is, we need to ask questions, develop relationships, become learners.  We cannot count on one magic ingredient.

What doesn’t work:

1. Copying what seems to be the recipe for success in another congregation/institution/community.
2. Quick fixes.
3. Hiring consultants who come in with a tool box and assumptions about who we are, but no desire to learn who we really are.  (See #2)
4. Calling a pastor who will save the day/make it all better/”bring in the young families“

There is no perfect pastor who will turn everything around anymore than there is a perfect peptide that will turn the process of aging around.  What worked 20 years ago doesn’t work anymore.  Heck – what worked five years ago doesn’t work anymore.  That’s a good thing.  We are learning all the time about new ways to be the Church because the Spirit is still moving.

I was talking with a pastor yesterday and as she shared the amazing things happening in and around her congregation, her words are joyfully seared into my soul:  “God wants so much more for us than most of our churches realize.”  Yes.

But we only figure out where God is leading us by trying lots of things and seeing what works for here and now in our particular time and place.  Maybe it’s the organizational equivalent of a peptide.  Or maybe it’s something else.

The bottom line is that I – Jan Edmiston – am aging and that’s a normal and lovely thing. Whether I use peptides or not, I will continue to age.  But I’d like to age gracefully and in ways that please my Maker.

The Church of Jesus Christ is also aging.  Parts die off.  Other parts are new and growing. It’s a normal and lovely thing.  How can we be the Church that ages gracefully and seeks to please our Maker?  I have so many ideas about this.

Image of Hydration Serum with Peptides by Lucrece.  I have no idea if this stuff works.

TBC and I were recalling Valentines Past the other day and we remembered shopping in Target about ten years ago looking for Valentine cards. It was about two weeks before the big day but we wanted first dibs on the best choices.  And this is what happened.

Me (to Target employee):  Excuse me.  Where are your Valentines?

The Target Employee was a young man who was not originally from the U.S. and he looked off into the distance and quietly repeated:  Valentimes.  And then he looked back at me and TBC and said:  I do not know Valentimes.

Me:  You know.  They are those little cards that children pass out at parties on Valentine’s Day.  They might have pictures of Hello Kitty on them.  Or Batman.

Target Employee:  I don’t understand.

Me:  They’re maybe in the card section.  They’re usually red or pink.  Sometimes they are lacy.  You can get them with Sesame Street characters.  Or Dr. Seuss.

Target Employee:  ?

The more we tried to explain, the more ridiculous we sounded.

Sometimes we try to explain things to people who are unfamiliar with Church World and it sounds a little ridiculous.  Or worse, we don’t even try to explain and we simply assume they know what we are talking about:

• Special Music
• Coffee Hour
• Offering Plate
• Narthex
• Blood Hymns
• Stewardship Season

Seriously, try explaining “special music” to someone who has never been in a church building.  It’s special because  . . . ?

Hope everyone had a Happy Valentine’s Day as well as a meaningful Lent 1.  Can we easily explain what that means?

Today in Havana, the Bishop of Rome –  His Holiness Pope Francis –  Sovereign of the Vatican City will sit down with the Patriarch of Moscow and all Russia – Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church –  Bishop Kirill.  The last time the Roman Catholic Pope met with the Russian Orthodox Patriarch was 1964 in Jerusalem.

You can read about the 1050 schism between the Eastern and Western Church here.  This article speaks of “ancient ‘anathemas‘” between these two branches of Christianity who have called each other heretics, held each other in contempt, and condemned each other to hell.

We’re talking about cosmic things here.

Many of us carry ancient anathemas around with us too, but they tend to be less weighty than matters of human reason versus human nature or from where the Holy Spirit proceeds.  Is it from the Father and the Son (Roman Catholic) or solely from the Father (Orthodox.)  Of course, “anathema” in the Church is a curse involving excommunication.  An anathema is “devoted to evil.”

Those are fighting words, especially if the differences are about whether or not Mary was herself immaculately conceived.  (Our Orthodox sisters and brothers say no.)  But enough about doctrine and theological truths.

Is there anyone in your life whom you consider to be an anathema? Is there any situation which you consider to be anathema?

[Here’s one.]

Some of us carry bitterness over relatively minor slights.  But others of us carry anger and fear based on the actions of people who have genuinely hurt us or the people we love.  If we have never experienced being personally wounded to the point that we are now haunted and heavy-hearted, we are most fortunate.

And so now we find ourselves in the season of Lent.  This is the season when we turn from our destructive ways to a new way that brings life.  This is the season that we try to forgive because we’ve been forgiven.  This is the season when we walk toward the light and ask to be set free.

It’s not easy.  It might even feel impossible.  But the Pope and the Patriarch are meeting today and so maybe anything is possible in these 40 days.

Images are of the men formerly known as Jorge Mario Bergoglio and Vladimir Mikhailovich Gundyayev who now wear the holy headware of the Vicar of Christ and the Patriarchal Vicar respectively.

In this presidential election year, some political nerds might remember The Big Mo.   George H.W. Bush spoke of it in the 1980 election.  He had it after the Iowa Caucuses that year.

Some of our congregations also experience The Big Mo. A colleague recently shared that his church has noticed several guests visiting from a neighboring congregation going through turbulent times. Subsequently, giving is up, there is increased energy, and people are excited to be a part of things.

When a spiritual community is clearly on a roll – reaching out in effective ministry, making an impact in their suburbs, regularly welcoming new members -momentum is up.  I loved this as a parish pastor.

In the same way, when a congregation is in a downward spiral with low energy and low satisfaction, momentum slows to a halt.  Congregations become stuck and floundering.  I hated this feeling as a parish pastor.

How do we turn around a low energy church?  Sometimes we can’t.  The leaders are too tired and the resources are depleted.  It’s a holy thing to close congregations whose momentum has slackened to a point of no return.

But it’s also possible to change a congregation’s momentum.  It happens when:

• There is a core group of leaders (more than one or two) who have energy and skills willing to work alongside the pastor.  Both the pastor and the leaders find themselves to be faithfully fearless and teachable.
• There is a strong capacity for ministry.  Resources exist – from financial to human – to expand outreach into the needs of the community in the name of Jesus.  Those in need are no longer invisible in the neighborhood and there is a spiritual craving to connect with them.

This is not about large endowments and “big givers.”  Yes, money can fuel ministry. But money ≠ momentum.  Sometimes it’s a bandage but the bandage won’t last forever.  Underneath, growth and healing are required to shed dependence on the bandage.

Momentum Killers include:

1. Long meetings with no purpose.
2. Cranky leaders who shame and blame visionaries.
3. Pastors who have given up but won’t leave/retire.
4. An inability to articulate why (theologically) our church exists.

Momentum Builders include:

1. Gatherings that feed souls.
2. A clear connection to the needs of the community.
3. Sacrificial giving of all resources.
4. A clear vision that even a child can articulate.

My favorite mission statement:  We exist to change the world for good in the name of Jesus Christ.   This kind of audacious proclamation fuels all kinds of mo.

Image of Newton’s Cradle which demonstrates the transfer of momentum.

“Remember you are dust and to dust you will return.”  Genesis 3:19b

In world where we humble-brag, where we are encouraged to climb the proverbial ladder, where we push our children to be on top, where we push our neighbors out of the way to get to the top ourselves . . . the voice of God reminds us that  – actually – we are broken, weak, ridiculous, and hurt, if we tell the truth about ourselves.

Ash Wednesday puts us in our place.  This is the day when we remember that – while wonderfully and fearfully made – we are also mortal creatures who will die one day.  And how we will live this one remarkable lifetime we have been given?

• Seeking to know who we are and who God is.
• Serving in proportion to our privilege.
• Living to bring heaven to earth.

This is my favorite season.  What an opportunity.

I faithfully voted in North Carolina until 1984 when I was briefly living in New Hampshire and couldn’t resist voting in the N.H. Primary.

Every day when I walked to work from my house past the Hanover Inn to the old Mary Hitchcock Memorial Hospital for a Clinical Pastoral Education residency, I’d see at least one presidential candidate hanging out.  Jesse Jackson would be in the bakery.  Gary Hart would be eating a sandwich in the diner.  Walter Mondale would be interviewed on the corner.  I don’t remember ever seeing Ronald Reagan but he was probably there too.

Reagan ran unopposed.  There were at least nine candidates on the Democratic ticket.  And Independents could vote in either party’s primary, so it was only fun – Democrat or not – to vote in the Democratic Primary.  We filed into a school gym on Tuesday, February 28, 1984 and did our civic duty.

But as we voters were leaving the gym, Dartmouth students handed us slips of paper that said something like this:

• If you voted for Mondale, tell the media you voted for Jackson.
• If you voted for Askew, tell the media you voted for Glenn.
• If you voted for Hart, tell the media you voted for Mondale.
• If you voted for Hollings, tell the media you voted for Askew.

You get the idea.  In the throes of media madness when we sometimes do not believe our vote matters – because somebody has already predicted who will win, so why bother? – we were keeping our votes to ourselves . . . at least until someone had time to count them.

Political Nerds have almost as much fun as Theological Nerds.  Sometimes it takes a little whimsy to get us through this political season.