Bill Easums Observations

This week, Jan 3, I drove by two churches that had signs out front that advertised their Christmas Eve services.  What do you think that says to non-churched people about the people who run those churches? Not any positive I would think.  And what about the members who came to church on December the 30th and saw that sign. If I had been a member I would have called for someone’s head.

Both of these churches are around 200 in worship and should know better. Both have a full time pastor and some staff. The sad thing is one of the churches is a church plant that I had a hand in ten years ago but then the wisdom of the bishop decided to yank the founding pastor out - I guess because he was growing a church to big for a tiny island-at the time it was over 500 in worship. Three years later its on its way out.

Im really fed up with churches who put foreward such a bad image. There’s no excuse for it unless someone died in the pastor’s family. It’s just plain lazy - some would say stupid.

 Friends,

In a subsequent consultation, we encountered a classic mistake made by so many established churches. They mistake “property rental” for “Christian Mission”. (see my book “Moving Off the Map“) Churches assume that by renting or giving away space for community use, they are actually doing evangelism. They do not realize that authentic evangelism is about relationships, not property use.

It is an obvious dodge to avoid personal investment in hands-on mission. This mistake is usually compounded by an obsession with “depot” ministries (clothing depots, food banks, and other forms of “collecting things”). Church people think they are doing mission by warehousing goods, but they never actually come into contact or build relationships with the needy people they say they want to help.

Another manifestation of this mistake is the belief that hosting Boy or Girl Scouts, or housing non-profit organizations, is also Christian mission. It is as if the Cancer Society should decide the best way to use their facility would be to rent it out for pot luck suppers. The Cancer Society volunteers would have no place to meet and train, but, gosh, what a lot of fun and fellowship they could have!

Ironically, the mistake can be easily remedied. Leaders are trained to use space only in ways that 100% align to the mission of the church and nothing else. And they have a church policy that states “No property will be rented or used by outside groups unless a team of church members is actively involved in the planning and implementation of the program. Never rent property without sending a team. Relationships are the key. Now the team can shape the planning and implementation around specifically Christian mission. If the outside organization doesn’t want that (which is almost universally true for Boy and Girl Scouts), then the church does not offer property.

Tom Bandy

 Friends,

Swept away by travel and consulting, I’ve been remiss about posting from the mission field. Thanksgiving allowed me to catch up. This is from my notes …

A persistent question from would-be transformational leaders is this: Is it really possible to change the consumer, “Me First”, attitude into an authentic Mission Mindset? (see my book Fragile Hope).

My answer is yes, but it may take seven years of doggedly persistent and opportunistic leadership. This alone is hard for many established churches, because many pastors have no intention of staying that long. They are, in fact, driven by personal decisions (family expectations, school systems, retirement plans) or by career decisions (appointments by a bishop, moving up the ladder of success). That very reality reveals that the biggest difficulty about transforming a church attitude lies in the unwillingness of leaders to transform their personal attitude.

However, praise God that there are leaders ready for the challenge. They still ask: Can it be done?

My answer is yes (again), if you rigorously pay attention to the following leverage points and do not allow yourself to be sidetracked. The list is not intended to be exhaustive, but it includes:

v      Begin by mentoring leaders;
v      Hold leaders accountable for mentoring volunteers in there sphere of influence;
v      Preach it;
v      Upgrade training for newcomers and all leadership teams (beyond skills to train attitude);
v      Clarify vision, mission, and core message;
v      Intervene to break control;
v      Seize opportunities or “mentoring moments” to illustrate the mission attitude;
v      Have courage, and build personal support, to endure stress;
v      Develop a profound, visible, prayerful, personal spiritual discipline.

The real key to changing attitude is not program development … unless we think of specific continuing education or mission action. It’s really about taking relationships to a deeper, riskier, level. The word “accountability” does not begin to cover it. It is about “intensity” more than “intentionality”, because it is the intensity of eye contact, behavior modification, personal reinforcement, and modeled self-sacrifice that is important. In the end, you need to embed a kind of “Ur” story … a paradigmatic story-line of death and new life … in the hearts of members.

Tom Bandy

Friends,

The “penny dropped” for many pastors and lay leaders during my workshop this weekend as we talked about the synergy of church growth. This is the flow of thriving church life from life-shaping worship, to adult spiritual disciplines, to mission team action, and back again to life-shaping worship.

For some, the “aha” came from benchmarking this flow. 80% of the members attend worship regularly; 60% of the worshippers are found in mid-week small groups, mentoring relationships, or accountable spiritual disciplines; 40% of the people in mid-week spiritual disciplines are also doing hands-on mission that is built in and around their lifestyles. 30% of the newcomers in worship are there as a direct result of experiencing the mission-service of the members.

For example … in a congregation with 250 adult resident members, 200 would regularly show up in worship; 120 would be involved in serious adult spiritual growth. Of the 120 in spiritual growth disciplines like small groups, 48 would be intentionally involved in hands-on mission outreach in which they simultaneously did good stuff and shared their faith. Average total worship attendance would be about 260 (i.e. 200 members plus 60 seekers who were invited or inspired to come out of the mission field).

Now we all know that these are ambitious benchmarks, and it may take some years before an established declining or plateaued church could do it. And we also know that there are many contextual issues that might lower or raise these benchmarks. But these benchmarks provide a standard for evaluating your current congregational situation.

For example, many churches claim 500 adult resident members, but only expect 150 to worship at any given time (only 30%). Of these, perhaps only 10 are involved in an accountable spiritual discipline (.07%); and of these only 2 or 3 are actually involved in mission embedded in their lifestyles. Not surprisingly, nobody at all shows up in worship as a direct result of mission.

The very idea of benchmarking this synergy of growth seems startling to many church leaders. They have been so busy developing and protecting program silos that they have not paid attention to the “connectivity” of church growth. Every piece leads to something else in overall personal and missional growth. Worship is useless unless it leads to spiritual discipline … which is useless unless it leads to mission action … which is useless unless it leads to worship.

What we are really measuring in the synergy of growth is not the numbers within any given worship service or program, but rather the percentages of people who move on to the next step. Inevitably, this causes church leaders to ponder how they foster this “connectivity”. And inevitably, they suddenly realize that you have to deploy staff explicitly to do this, and train volunteer leaders specifically to do this. Leaders now become interventionists and mentors, who “move people along”, rather than administrators and managers who (“keep people doing tasks”).

Tom Bandy

Apparently, we’re a nation of addicts and the list of addictive substances just keeps on growing.

• Drugs
• Alcohol (okay, it’s a drug, but it’s legal)
• Sex
• Relationships
• Food
• Work
• Video Games
• Porn
• and the newest entry: Blackberries.

If you think that the last entry is about fruit, you’re not suffering from the last addiction. That last one is about that little black box we call a phone, calendar, web browser, to-do list, contact list, games port, photo album, MP3 player, eBible, book reader, and so on. Of course, all of that is available on a number of different phones, but it’s the Blackberry that has probably created the most interest in the world of addictive phenomenon: the CrackBerry. People are checking the email via their Blackberries (and to be fair, a number of other “smart” phones) in bed, while driving, in the bathroom, during dinner, and (horror of horrors) during worship in church (12% according to an AOL poll). About the only “safe” place to keep away from this addiction is at a movie theater, which is arguably just another cross-addiction.

What’s the implication for the church? Well, besides the fact that pastors are now competing with the Blackberry for their parishioner’s attention, if the church is going to reach those of the techno-generation, it’s going to have to come out of the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, or even the ’90s. The church is going to have to embrace technology in a new, different, and big way. I remember hearing years and years ago from Bill Easum that the church needed to start upgrading technologically then … and in general, the church hasn’t made much progress.

Here are a couple questions to shake your church’s tech-tree.

1. Our church has a website.
2. Our church’s website is updated at least monthly.
3. Our church’s website is interactive - it includes opportunities for users that include a blog, private and public journaling, devotionals with commenting opportunities, a discussion forum, polls, and live chats/training.
4. Our church provides RSS feeds so web users can keep up-to-date.
5. Our church produces weekly podcasts.
6. Our podcast’s content is more than just an recording of last week’s sermon.
7. Our church has wireless Internet available for use in the sanctuary and in all classrooms.
8. Our church has an LCD projector or large screen monitors in the sanctuary.
9. Our church uses projection technology during worship for more than just projecting words.
10. Our church produces its own video shorts for use in worship.

Bill T-B

From Tom Bandy

I do a lot of coaching, and one of the emerging themes is that clergy afraid to hold people accountable to mission. Often this fear is rooted in their own personal family history, where childhood experiences have made “accountability” a matter of retribution rather than redemption. Seminary training often ignored or failed to change that perception. Clergy cannot differentiate “accountability” and “confrontation” … and fear people will stop liking them. I’ve been brooding about this pattern.

So how to eliminate the “fear of holding people accountable”? I find that clergy need to take a much deeper look at how their personal family backgrounds influence their leadership habits. Next, they need to redevelop boundaries with their staff and volunteer leaders so that all can differentiate between “therapeutic” interaction and “missional direction”. Family church leaders are very “therapeutic” in their relationships, but as the church grows they must become more “missional” in their leadership development. Finally, clergy need to learn how to begin with mentoring mission alignment and spiritual discipline, and then talk about skills development. Otherwise, staff and volunteer leaders simply think clergy are accusing them of incompetence, or breaking off a friendship, and become defensive. Set in the right context, and with the right boundaries, accountability becomes “redemptive.”

TGB
Currently in Toronto

The other afternoon, I heard from a judicatory leader who shared a disturbing conversation she’d had with a young church pastor who was having a hard time with some “antagonists” in the church. He’d gone to several more experienced pastors to get advice, but hadn’t been able to solve the issue. So he mentioned the issue to the judicatory leader seeking her wisdom. She told me she’d listened to the pastor and then asked what advice he’d received so far. He told her, “They told me that pastors should expect to be abused by their congregation, but that doesn’t make it any easier for me.”

What a sad commentary . . . a pastor should expect to be abused. This story served as a reminder to me that many, many churches in North America are in a sorry state. In fact, abusive churches have become more the “rule” than the exception.

I know that’s hard to fathom, for some. Some of you reading this are in healthy, thriving churches that support their church leaders fully. But then there are the rest of you. And it’s you that the rest of this post is for.

First, abuse is not okay. Never has been, never will be, and there are a few things you can do about it if you are being abused. First, I invite you to read a couple of books. Start with Antagonists in the Church. Then read Clergy Killers. And finally, get your board, pastor-parish-relationships committee, etc. to work through Tom Bandy’s Kicking Habits. You’ll also want to read my article “Discipleship 101″ in the Sept-Oct 2007 issue of Net Results magazine (where I teach about dealing with Church Bullies and Church Terrorists) and Bill Easum’s article “Back to Basics” in the same issue. Finally, you simply must read “On Not Being Nice for the Sake of the Gospel.”

Second, if your church won’t put an end to the abuse, and if you can’t do it on your own, then run, don’t walk, to your bishop, DS, regional minister, area minister, mission associate, etc. and ask them to help you find another church or calling. But whatever you do, don’t allow yourself to be abused by the church because abuse is not okay.

Bill T-B

When it comes to online ministry, much has changed … and much has not. A couple weeks ago a group of computer programmers and web gurus told me about a cyber church in the Second Life world. As they described it, I became intrigued. First, the “people” that attend the church are actually avatars that are controlled by people sitting behind keyboards literally all over the world. The church service, Bible studies, discussion, etc., are in real time and are led by real ministers. There’s real music, real preaching, and real ministry going on.

At first, it would be easy to dismiss the phenomena as just another computer program attended by people who are addicted to computer gaming, etc., and that this isn’t a “real” community at all. It’s funny, though, that’s pretty much the same thing I heard ten years ago when the congregation I led took the plunge to get out from under our real estate and became a network of Seattle house churches. Having no building meant we couldn’t “really” be a church.

The first cyber church I reported on was the Alpha Church in Under the Radar by me (Bill Tenny-Brittian) and Bill Easum. That was several years ago and much has changed in the world of cyberspace. So much so, that a church that churches that treats their website like a Yellow Pages’ ad are falling further and further behind in their evangelistic effectiveness. Today’s church website must be both invitational and interactive. Sure, there are folks currently in our congregations who will never so much as fill out a poll on the church’s site, but the question is, what are we doing about those in our communities (both locally and cyber) who are looking for a safe place to explore the faith and/or ways in which to further their faith via the web? Today’s church websites can easily include blogs that invite comments, devotionals that include journaling options, prayer rooms that offer both live and long-term posting opportunities, training videos, podcasts (audio broadcasts), polls, and even spiritual self-assessment inventories that suggest the “next step” in their faith walk, based on their scores. There are scores of these “web-empowered” churches out there … you can find some at the Web-Empowered  Church website and the Examples page.

Churches that treat their website like more than an online newspaper ad with a map and service times are the churches that are telling the community “We’re here for today and are reaching into tomorrow.”

Bill T-B