Is this the same old record? Part II.

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 experience this turns into an opportunity to complain, make superficial changes, and ultimately pat ourselves on the back for succeeding in doing something different.

I really don’t like the way that kind of process has gone for me and the staffs that I’ve worked with over the years. But, I let you know that this time I was a bit more optimistic that this time it could be different.

Over these past couple of months, I watched as this process began to spin in what I think is its typical pattern. I grew frustrated and bitter about how the whole thing was playing out. In fact, my wife finally looked at me at some point in June and asked when I had lost all of that optimism I had when we first began dating. She ultimately let me know that I had become a rather negative person.

This was one of those moments in which I was faced with looking at my true self, and I’ve got to let everyone here who reads this know that I really didn’t like what I saw. It’s pretty humbling when what you see in reality doesn’t match your perception.

Our staff took several afternoons to sit down and discuss our ministry. We went through the process that I explained in the last post, getting to the point where we had no real ‘change’ or focus on what we needed to be about. What we did come up with was an understanding that our area of ministry needed additional help to do some of the things I’d been doing a bit differently. I can’t tell you that I wasn’t hurt by this realization. After all, I’d been doing those things before—what made them think that having another person do it would make it much more successful?

I got to a point where my frustration and hurt was affecting how I interacted with everyone—and I realized that I needed some help. I felt even more frustrated as I couldn’t find the help I needed. Here I was, needing to take some time to tend to my spiritual side—and at the same time I was being asked to help make decisions for a congregation seeking to tend to their spiritual side. It was one of the toughest spots that I can remember ever being in. I mean how can you possibly lead when you have no clear direction yourself? (A side note: I’m not claiming that I felt as though I needed to be somewhat better at faith than my congregation to lead them. I’m simply telling you that I had somehow lost the ability to listen to God.)

And so, looking at this process that seemed to be at a place where nothing really changes, and knowing that I needed to do some soul searching (for lack of a better description) I took the leap to find the help I desired. I went to see a spiritual director for a couple of sessions and made the decision to take some time off as soon as my busy season wound down. I realized that the one thing that I could change in this process of figuring out a focus was to seek change myself.

More to come.

Is this the same old record?

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.