Earlier this year, our staff decided that we really needed to focus on where we needed to head as an organization. I immediately had the same feelings that I always have whenever a conversation like this takes place—one of excitement and dread.
Over the years, I’ve been in many conversations like this one. Working within the confines of a church for the past 10 years, it seems as though there comes a point where the status quo just isn’t good enough anymore. The things that used to happen with ease aren’t so effortless as before. When looking at the statistics of attendance and participation, we wonder if what we’re doing is “meeting the needs of the people”. Most often the conversation will begin because those statistics have dropped, or comments are made about how what we’re doing just isn’t challenging and exciting the congregation as much as it did x number of years ago.
Two things stand out to me every time this conversation begins to take place: 1) We want to make sure that the people who we have been reaching will still be committed and involved in our ministry and 2) We realize that there are a lot more people out there who we haven’t reached yet.
First, I’d like to tell you that those having this conversation (more often than not) are committed staff members who have great intentions. They care for this community so much that they want to see it touch the lives of all who are involved. Unfortunately, they are also directly involved, making it extremely hard to let go of the things that they themselves have helped create.
Sometimes, it seems, they don’t really want to have this conversation at all. In fact, they’d rather jump to tweaking their own programs and formats of doing things so that they can bump up the statistics and report that things are going better than before with the “changes” they’ve made. Which leads me to mention that this isn’t really “change” at all—it’s a facelift on the things that are currently in place.
In my experience, this talk of “change” upsets many people—making them more focused on keeping things one way or updating them to another. The people who weren’t happy before come back for a short time, and sensing that this is only a superficial “change” leave once again. The people who were content before either feel as though they’ve made the sacrifices to update the status quo and don’t understand why it isn’t working, or are upset because the status quo had been upset and the way things were aren’t anymore.
That’s a lot of negativity for something rather minor, and it really only focuses on the people who have been involved in our ministry—not the vast number of people who we haven’t begun to reach yet.
That’s why I often feel dread at the onset of these conversations.
On the other hand, I’m excited about these conversations! It has the potential to really bring clarity to the mission and values that the community shares. It has the potential to help us dream big and let go of the things we’ve made untouchable before—all so that we can meet people where they’re at and walk alongside them as we discover our call together. I love to dream, and the potential to do something that will let the current community meet and encounter others is exciting!
We’re pretty far along in the first step of this conversation, which has taken a different twist than all those I’ve had before (so far). I’ll be updating you as to how that conversation goes and where we’ve ended up in the posts to come.
[...] the same old record? Part II. 6 08 2008 You might recall that a couple of months ago, I wrote about how my church had decided to focus on where we needed to head as an organization. I lamented about how in my [...]