A Volley from the Canon, Number 135--Action Plan 1

A VOLLEY FROM THE CANON, NUMBER 135 “What Must We Do to Be Saved?” Small Congregations Plead For Their Lives Part III: “Action Plan, Step One” You’ve had a good, cleansing heart-to-heart discussion as a group, and you’ve decided to move forward and try to re-start your congregation, to get on a firm footing, and to have a chance for continuing life as an Episcopal presence in your community. You know the odds are against you. But you’ve assessed your situation, and you are confident that you have all of the following resources to support your efforts: • The key leadership, elected representatives or not, are thoroughly invested in this decision. • You have a core group of committed lay ministers to carry it through for several years. • You have or can get the financial means to hold on for at least three years, even without any windfall or new member contributions. • You have enlisted the aid of outside resources, especially your bishop and canon, for support. • You have clergy available at least on most Sundays and major holy days, and trained lay worship leaders for the rest. Now, what do you do first? The difficulty is that everything cries out to be done first, and to a degree, a lot can be accomplished by dividing and conquering, among the available ministers. Don’t rush into it!--not until the foundations are being laid in the two vital areas of spiritual renewal and ministry team development. That is because you won’t get far without strong roots in these two basics. Beginning to grow those roots is likely to take the better part of a year (or more.) So let’s get crackin’! MINISTRY TEAM DEVELOPMENT In consultation with your canon (Canon Faith Perrizo for the North, and Canon Donald Vinson for the South), begin to form a ministry team. You will focus on discernment first, because you need to draw on the guidance of the Holy Spirit for a number of decisions. What is the mission of the congregation, as it is and as it could be, now and into the future? What ministries will be required? Who in the congregation might be best suited for each of these ministries (that answer may be plural!). Keep in mind two very important provisos: the best people might not be the ones who have been doing these things all along! In fact, this is a good time to build in some term limits, so that a natural rotation can occur, and no one need get burned out in a particular ministry area for too long. Secondly, the right person may not be the one who “feels called” to a particular ministry or project. It is the calling of the community to the work that matters, not just the interior musings of the individual. (Many people feel called to ministries to which they are patently unsuited.) At the same time, the discernment of the group must be tested and borne out in the individual as well. This is a complicated dance, and it takes time to implement. As the ministry team begins to take shape, it is time to begin training the team for mutual ministry. In several places, we have used a curriculum called “Life Cycles” with benefit to the congregation and participants. It has the advantages of being affordable, readily available, and group-led. It truly models the Team Ministry concept, and the content serves as sound preparation for lay ministry in a community. At this point, someone is bound to say, “I don’t have time to take on another meeting now! I could take charge of the ushers (or something), but I can’t come to a class every week.” That throws us right back to the first two segments of this series. Are we willing to make some significant changes in the way we do things? Do we have the commitment to follow through? Yes, we feel pulled in a number of different directions. Yet people in other church communions manage to attend worship, Bible study, and other church activities, and they have busy lives, too. It’s all in where we place our priorities. Too many of our congregations have gone virtually without adult formation activities for far too long. In part, this is because we have suffered from the delusion that only clergy can teach adults about the faith, and clergy attention has been stretched thin, or not consistently available in many places. We must cultivate and prepare more lay teachers. I’ve heard clergy retort, “You can offer all you want, but it still takes people showing up to make adult formation work.” And that is true. We must focus on making quality, life-affecting formation experiences available, and developing the commitment to take part in them, at the same time. What we must NOT do is continue to invite people to ministries for which they are not equipped and not prepared, as if there were no spiritual or theological basis for them—and as if they aren’t really important enough to require some preparation and reflection. We are not talking about just ticking tasks off a check-list here, but about creating a true team for ministry. While the Ministry Team is a-borning, the first thing it needs to take a good hard look at is the spiritual life and health of the congregation. Some will say, “We just need to build up the congregation, by inviting people to come to worship with us.” That time will come soon. But there is work to be done first. Suppose we invite friends to attend our church: to what would we be inviting them? Would it be spiritually uplifting, prayerful, inspiring, informative, and truly hospitable? If it is not presently attracting (and keeping) committed members, then perhaps that answer is not as clearly affirmative as we would like for it to be. At any rate, it is time for a spiritual check-up, and maybe a bit of palliative or preventive medicine. Looking to the spiritual life of the congregation, especially in what happens on Sunday morning, is Job Number One for rebuilding a faltering congregation. That will be our focus for next week.