Intercom 3rd Quarter 2014
RESTORING THE TEAM DYNAMIC!
When I arrived in my first formal ministry position back in 1980, I heard of the remarkable Sunday School ministry of a previous era at our church. It was a well-organized effort involving scores of people every week; over 75 home visits were engineered each week; and a monthly staff meeting was held for training and motivation. They worked like a well-oiled machine and with a sense of teamwork accomplished the greatest Sunday School ministry the church had ever known.
Fast-forward to the early 21st century. Most volunteers in the church do not really feel that they are members of a team accomplishing a great task. Bowing to the pressures of American life, pastors and church leaders do not attempt to do much training or motivation for their people. They try pulling people together from time to time only to find out that a plethora of other time-consumers—two-or-three income households, organized athletics, a range of conscientious schooling options being pursued by parents, health club memberships, and a wide range of electronic distractions, among others—all conspire to absorb the extra time and energy necessary for face-to-face meetings.
As a result, volunteers in the church may be asked to do a ministry with very little training on how to do it, very little supervision on their performance, and be in literal isolation from others working in the local ministry, unaware of how their task fits into the work of the church.
There are attempts to make up for this teamwork deficit by communicating information electronically…through email, webpages, and online training options. These have value, but I would argue not the same as flesh-and-blood experiences together as a team.
In March this year, we had a great response to our REKINDLE program in Bemidji at Oak Hills College. It was the greatest attendance we had ever seen there and it was largely the result of pastors who gathered together their people in sizable groups to have a team experience on that day of training and inspiration. The testimonies of the positive impact of that conference are encouraging. This just shows that this kind of team-building is still possible in the 21st century.
What am I suggesting for local ministries? Consider this regimen of team-building activities for the coming school year of service:
1. The Principle of Only Meaningful Meetings. Don’t try to gathering people just to be able to say you had a meeting. Make these substantive experiences.
2. Do a Kick-Off Event. Bring all those serving in all capacities in the ministry of the church for the Pastor and other leaders to cast vision and motivate for service.
3. Do Regular Necessary Monthly or Periodic Administrative Team Meetings in which specific teams or task forces keep one another accountable in the work. Face to face accountability is necessary: “people do not do what you expect, they do what you inspect.”
4. Do at Least One Purely Social Outing during the year to build esprit de corps.
5. Do One Outside Training Conference where you attempt to pull everyone together to experience the same practical instruction and motivation. The MCMA Minnesota Church Expo is a great opportunity for that.
6. Use Electronic Communication in all forms as effectively as you can.
7. Do an Appreciation Event of some kind to highlight accomplishment and thank people for their service.
God bless you as you foster a renewed team dynamic in your ministry!
Timothy A. Johnson, Executive Director
Intercom 2nd Quarter 2014
INDESCRIBABLE FELLOWSHIP!
The local congregation does not always get high marks in the fellowship department. The church can be neglectful and even cruel at times, leaving people disillusioned about the quality of relationships.
And yet, it cannot be denied that those who stick together in a ministry experience over time receive a blessed gift in the form of strong friendships that defy definition or explanation.
Just recently we met a group of several others who were .together with me and my wife in the same church thirty-five years ago. This was a medium-sized church with a fairly wide range of programming for the family, a traditional worship style, a central city location, and established traditions of church life within the fellowship.
As a dating couple, my wife and I joined this church, were married there, and had our children while attending there. We connected with other young adults in the same life situation…with eight couples being married the same year. We raised our kids at the same time as these friends, as well. We had a lot to do with one another.
The church itself did not see numerical growth, however. There was a decline in attendance that really started in the mid 1960’s and continued till the church finally handed the keys over to a dynamic new generation of leaders in a younger congregation in 2003.
It was at that point, after 74 years of service at that location that the Church officially ceased to exist under the original banner. BUT…the relationships that were established even through the years of decline were not eradicated. They continue to this day and will ALWAYS be meaningful.
From time to time, we have opportunity to attend a wedding or funeral involving these friends from the old church and I am always moved to tears at some point in those encounters recognizing the indescribable dimension of congregational identity we still have. There is a substantive, meaningful something there. Though we are not regularly involved in each others’ lives today, because we have had significant common experiences in church life in the past, the relationships remain important and meaningful to us.
There are many churches all over the nation today that are experiencing plateaus or declines in their statistics. Attendance, giving, outreach, expansion—all are down. It is tempting for those looking in from the outside to think, “There is nothing significant happening there. It is a dead end. Why don’t they just fold the tent?”
Actually, though, the group that hangs together, prays together, worships together, hopes and dreams together, even in lean times may be expressing far greater faith than others who are experiencing more tangible “progress”. Any investment made in the spiritual lives of other people will come back to us with a heart-warming return.
If you are in a no-growth situation today, do not despair. The relationships that continue to be nurtured even in difficult statistical environments can be life-long blessings that will give the local assembly ministry meaning and impact even beyond its organizational life time.
Timothy A. Johnson, Executive Director
Intercom 1st Quarter 2014
Eyeing the Vanishing Evangelical
During a recent vacation I had opportunity to read the late Calvin Miller’s final book, The Vanishing Evangelical. I have always had a lot of respect for Pastor Miller; he was one of the most gracious of the keynote speakers we have featured over the last thirty years in our ministry. His insights on life and ministry are very keen and this final prophetic word offers the Evangelical church quite a challenge.
In great detail, Miller identifies weaknesses in the evangelical status quo including theological laziness, anti-intellectual animus, cultural capitulation, biblical illiteracy, and general apostasy. He points out an actual 12-15% drop in overall church attendance. He concludes that the Evangelical Church is basically dead. The spiritual vitality we have known in the past simply no longer exists and revitalizing the current structures will not accomplish the true revival necessary.
This kind of thesis has always been hard for me to accept, since I am such an optimist at heart. I also am confident that the Church itself, that great body of true believers, will somehow conquer since Jesus said, “I will build my Church and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
And yet, this is a prophetic voice that the Evangelical wing of the Church needs to hear. There are spiritual weaknesses in the ranks of this historic movement that will be hard to turn around. Earth-bound values that have crept in, empire-building that has taken place, disregard for biblical standards and practices…all are troubling. We need to seriously think and pray about the way forward. Gratefully, Calvin Miller did have some practical suggestions that offered hope for the future. They include:
1. The Revival of the Church is a One-at-a-Time Revival. Emphasis needs to be placed on individuals getting their own minds and hearts set in a proper direction. We must begin with ourselves personally, revived from the grassroots.
2. Dropping the Every-Church-a-Megachurch Madness. A general recognition must be made that bigger is not necessarily better; that each local assembly can thrive spiritually without being driven by numbers and worldly measures of success.
3. Coming Home to the Spiritual Disciplines, Combined With Passion. We need to rediscover the spiritual vitality of some of the great church fathers of yesteryear. Returning to the daily practices they pursued of study, prayer, fasting, and meditation on the foundations of the faith. This developed a passion for the Lord which energized their lives. That ancient dynamic needs to be rekindled today.
4. The Recovery of an Honest Evangelism. The realities of heaven and hell have been nearly expunged from gospel presentation in so many quarters. A return to a clear message that there is a real hell to shun and a heaven to gain is needed.
All of this may seem like a modest proposal. Many of us who have been serving in the medium to smaller sized church have had these kinds of grass-roots commitments to discipleship all along. It is a poignant word, however, in the last admonitions of one of our great American leaders to challenge us to get back to the basics in our ministries. It may well be that the Evangelical Church is entering a time of remnant status as never before. We need to rekindle the fundamentals of a genuine walk with God, beginning in ourselves as leaders and then in all with whom we have influence in the life of the Church. May God give us grace to overcome any temptation to do otherwise!
Timothy A. Johnson, Executive Director
Intercom 4th Quarter 2013
Keeping The Main Thing The Main Thing
As I minister throughout the State of Minnesota and really around the world with the various opportunities God has afforded me in recent days, I see a common challenge for all church leaders that really needs to be addressed. It is necessary to keep the focus of church ministry on the ultimate spiritual goal that we are after.
That may seem to be a transparently obvious objective. The problem exists, however, in the fact that the weekly nuts and bolts of ministry can tend to obscure what is actually being pursued in the work of the Church.
The operational details of keeping church doors open and the physical machinery running tends to grab center stage. The classic discussions about what should be the color of the new carpeting typify the nature of this challenge. The minutia of church work absorbs so much energy, the spiritual goals that should be paramount are sometimes neglected.
Another aspect of church life that hampers focus on the main purposes of the church are the competing interests and agendas that many people have in local assemblies. There are some people who lack any real position of power or prestige in their daily lives who find a place to exercise a little power in the church…and that gives them meaning…but it may also cripple unified forward progress.
Others come to the church with a gaggle of personal needs…emotional, financial, and relational…and they angle to have those needs met one way or another through the church. At points pastors and other leaders get sucked dry by needy, demanding people who are absorbed with their own pain.
Still others have pet ministries or projects that they are bent on imposing on the body politic without any regard for the opinions or convictions of others. For whatever reason their program or approach is THE way to do things and they will force everyone else to see things their way.
Well, I could go on to catalog other challenges…but I am confident that you have identified yourself and others in the above description. It can get depressing if we detail these things too much! What are we to do about these congregational dynamics. A strong offense is the best defense! Let me suggest the following:
1. Develop a cogent statement of the disciple-making mission of the Church! Make it clear in writing and constantly published in print…that the end goal of all that happens in the church is to produce maturing followers of Jesus. That implies all the meaningful worship, study, and fellowship necessary to make that happen. Everything aims to bring people to faith in Jesus Christ and help them to grow to become more like Him!
2. Celebrate constantly any even partial victories in disciple-making to help flesh out what that overall mission is all about. Do this in worship services where most of the people are in attendance.
3. Constantly focus preaching and teaching on the spiritual needs of people, not the peculiarities of church politics or program promotion. Sermons that are geared to sell a program rather than lead people to maturity in Christ are illegitimate.
4. Consistently redirect any emphasis within the body that drags you off the main thing of disciple-making. Graciously but firmly rebuke, correct, and direct people to be focused on the what the church is all about.
May God help us to keep the ultimate ends of our ministry always in sight!
Timothy A. Johnson, Executive Director