Transforming Church

One thing that strikes me in my travels around the church is the lack of curiosity among leaders about connecting what they are doing to the outside world and where things are going. For a decade now, I’ve been working with ELCA churches around strategy and vision, and here are my reflections. 90% of our churches are on plateau or in decline (< 1 additional person in average worship attendance over 5 years). Often we see that the neighborhood context and needs have changed dramatically, but the church has not. It has become a closed system that does not reflect the diversity of its neighborhood.

This malaise stems from many causes, but let me suggest a couple. First, many pastors do not see their role as leader. In a large survey several years ago, only 10% of pastors self-described as a leader capable of casting a vision. Many see their role as chaplains of the flock, not evangelists or visionary leaders. So, they work with what they’ve got, and the church gets older and smaller, until it is circling the drain.

Second, there is no clear pathway to spiritual maturity in many of our churches, no clear means to disciple people. Lay leaders are so busy with family and career issues that few dig deeply into literature on thriving and emerging forms of church that are successfully reaching the next generation. Len Sweet said, at Catch the Spirit in Atlanta, that we Lutherans have a wonderful, strong theology, but a delivery system that no longer works. How do we deliver our theology to people? Presumably in our churches. But when a church fails to consistently draw a new generation of believers, it slowly dies. Creating further challenge, theological battles around divisive issues seem to distract lay leaders from a focus on discipleship and spiritual maturity. How can we learn from each other if we don’t listen to one another?

Where is the church going?

Church planting movements have shown great fruit. Movements of the Spirit are growing and multiplying churches in many parts of the developing world. I heard directly from leaders of movements in Korea, India, and Indonesia, and church planters across the USA at the Exponential Conference last April. One church, Seacoast in South Carolina, has created a network that will plant 100 churches in the next year. The ELCA has never planted more than 50 in a year. New wineskins are emerging, yet we cling to what we know, hoping for a return to the glory days of denominational churches. Yet, I find few pastors or lay people in the circles I travel who are reading about or studying these movements.

Wayne Gretzky, when asked how he scored so many hockey goals, said, “Easy, I don’t skate where the puck is, I skate where the puck’s going to be.” A visioning process is all about seeing where the church is headed, and discerning the vision God has for the church. Proverbs tells us that without vision the people perish. Rick Warren tells us that without vision, the people find another parish.

Many churches have not had a vision in place since their days as a Mission. Further, the attempt to instill a vision evokes in these places quizzical looks and worries about the status quo. They can’t see the entropy because the decline unfolds slowly. I guess this is why Jesus so often says, “For those who have eyes to see, let them see. For those who have ears to hear, let them listen.” The implication is that not everyone has eyes to see. The lesson of the Old Testament is that few seem to have the eyes to see. Why else would the people of God stray so far from His teachings time and time again? How far have we strayed today?

What Business are we in?

Mulally continues: A second focus for me is: What business are we in? What are we going to focus on? What’s going to be our business? Are we going to have a house of brands of vehicles? Are we going to focus on the blue oval? Are we going to be competitive on quality and cost and fuel efficiency? Are we going be best in class? So what’s our point of view about the value proposition of our company?

In the church, what business are we in? Is it growing the Kingdom of God, caring for the least, the last and the lost? Or, is it the maintenance of the institution? How much of your budget actually touches anyone outside the walls, beyond the campus? I think God has given us the mission. It can be stated in many varied ways, but it seems to me that Christ’s Great Commandment and Great Commission lead us to: Be Disciples, Make Disciples, and Feed the Sheep.

If you want to see how clear a given church is about what business we are in, ask this simple question: By what means do you disciple people here? A blank stare will tell you volumes about the paradigms of that community. In judging the value of new ministry ideas, one of the questions that Mike Foss suggests is, “What will this do to further discipleship?” A good answer to that question is all the permission you need to get started.

Balancing the Near Term and the Long Term

Mulally says: The third one that I really focus on is balancing the near term with the longer term. And especially in the environment like we see today, where you absolutely want to keep investing for the future, even though you could invest less and make your business performance look better in the near term. Do we have a plan that works in the near term and also creates value for the long term?

So what does this look like in a church? While most think of investing in facilities, growing the campus, I think the most important investment is in equipping leaders, servant leaders for Christ. For any organization to grow beyond its present footprint, there must be an intentional focus on multiplying leaders. For churches, this means helping people find their gifts and calling, them coaching and equipping those with the gifts to lead. Ed Setzer, at Exponential, said, “First you multiply disciples, then you multiply leaders, then you can multiply churches.”

The biggest challenge facing the ELCA is the lack of qualified church planters for mission and multi-site development. We have 500 pastors reaching retirement age each year, and are only ordaining 300. Beyond that, we are not effectively drawing lay leaders into a discipleship journey, equipping and unleashing them as the Priesthood of all Believers. The leadership skills to equip and empower are rare. Empowering leadership structures are rare, with most churches in a control rather than permission-giving mode.

It is our desire to build leadership capacity for the long-term that led our team to create the Transforming Leaders Initiative, which launches with a pilot class of 16 pastors in Ohio this month.

Living the Values, Creating a Safe Environment

Mulally concludes: And then I really focus on the values and the standards of the organization. What are the expected behaviors? How do we want to treat each other? How do we want to act? What do we want to do about transparency? How can we have a safe environment where we really know what’s going on?

Values exist in any organization, in some places they are explicit, and in others they are implicit. When values are not explicitly articulated, we often find that the unwritten values are not healthy. For example, in many churches we place such a high value on harmony, that we avoid any conflict, and sweep disagreements under a rug, where they fester. At church retreats, I have asked this question many times, “How many of you have seen behavior tolerated in your church that would never be tolerated in a professional work environment?” Inevitably, most of the hands go up. What does that say about our values and expected behaviors, when they do not even rise to the standards set in secular business settings.

In his book, Servant Leader, Ken Blanchard says this about values, “True success in servant leadership depends on how clearly values are defined, ordered and lived by the leader.” Settings norms of behavior, and creating clear expectations of how we treat each other and how we want to act are cornerstones of creating healthy teams. Without intentional work in this area, we will never see the trust develop that is necessary for a healthy Body of Christ.

Transparency is about letting people know how and why decisions are made. Sometimes, the real decisions are not made in Council meetings, but behind closed doors before the Council meets. If we help people understand not just the decisions made, but the rationale and thinking behind decisions, they are more likely to be accepted even by those who disagree.

To create a safe environment where we really know what’s going on requires that we be open to feedback, and not “shoot the messenger.” When we react defensively to feedback that is inconsistent with how we see things are going, people soon quit trying to give us feedback. The stronger the trust is in the environment, the better people are able to take negative feedback with becoming defensive. Once people figure out that the leader is not open to feedback, they will just start talking among themselves about it, and things go negative. A non-anxious presence helps us take in the feedback we really need, but don’t want to hear.

If I don’t focus on these things, who will?

In his final remarks, Mulally says: I’m the one who needs to focus on those four things, because if I do that, the entire team will have a collective point of view and an understanding of all four of those areas.

I learned a lesson in management years ago. It was said this way, “Employees respect what management inspects, not what management expects.” People notice what seems important to the leader, and people notice what the leader ignores. Ignore these things at your peril.