Presbygrow

[Web Editor's note: the following is an actual letter from an actual pastor discussing their experiences with congregational transformation.  While we have obtained permission from the letter's author to publish this missive on PresbyGrow, names, places, and other identifying markers have been altered to preserve full anonymity.]

Dear,

Three or four months ago, you asked me to consider two questions. The first is, “What are the three things I’ve had to overcome to move forward with transition?” and the second is “What is one thing that GA can do to help?” I’ll start by answering the first question.

I. What are the three things I’ve had to overcome to move forward with transition?

Number 1- Overcoming the congregation’s ignorance to current situation, compared to their history. Basically, it was the “rose-colored glass” syndrome. Many people really didn’t realize how much the congregation had changed (in terms of losing people) and for how long it had been changing (several years, not just the interim period). Making the congregation aware was fairly simple (just sharing statistics that the church has reported for the past number of years). But doing it once isn’t enough. We talked about it extensively at Session, and a couple of our committees, and then it was brought to the attention of the congregation at congregational meetings, in a couple of sermons, as well as in writing in a couple formats – all over the course of about 18 months.

Number 2- Helping the congregation understand why new things must happen, and then getting the congregation supporting those changes. The first part wasn’t terribly hard. People voluntarily shared with me (in small group settings soon after I came) that they wanted to reach younger families. A few people recognized (before I carried out #1 above) that the church used to have many young families, and now didn’t. The one consistent theme I heard was “We’d like to reach families with kids.” This church had a history of that, and people remembered it and the joy it brought into the life of [our church]. Then came the hard work of getting the congregation to buy into and support changes needed to reach families with kids. Some people thought we needed to add new programs. I gently steered them away from thinking a new program will draw people to Jesus Christ and our church. My recommendation was that we start a new service. Eventually, we started the new modern worship service, and even put it at 11:00. I still get a little flack for the traditional service at 8:30, but for the most part that’s gone pretty well. We’re working on updating facilities to be a little more pleasing to the eye for young families who weren’t alive/don’t remember when 1970′s decor was fashionable, and therefore have no attachment to it. Most people bought into these changes with proper explanation for why we were doing them, which we did extensively up front, throughout the planning period for the new service, and again when the new service launched. Same thing with many of the decor changes, though that hasn’t required quite so much communication.

As for deeper changes of being a more “missional” congregation, that is being worked on. Our congregation has a pretty large presence in the community, and is fairly well known for it’s benevolence (Red Cross shelter, support of food bank, homeless shelters, etc.). The problem is, many people in the community don’t actually know where our church is. We do all this great service in the community, but it doesn’t seem to be “in the name of Jesus Christ through this church.” People in our church serve the community as though we’re just another organization like Rotary. No sense of combining mission with evangelism. So that is a change that needs to be under way soon. Some things are happening to move us in that direction.

The last area of support is financially. This has been a hard one. It’s one thing to support change in principal. It’s another to realize that this may mean spending money differently. That has been a challenge.

Number 3- Lack of leadership. This is probably the biggest hurdle to clear. Many, if not most, of the people who are genuine leaders have moved on to other churches. (And by “leader” I mean people who are willing to say, “Is there a way we could be doing ________ better/differently so as to disciple people better or reach more people for Jesus Christ.) If a church isn’t willing to be led into a new future, the people who envision that future get frustrated and move on. Many of the people who left from 1998-2006 (see #1) are those kind of people. As a result, more of that leadership burden is put on a smaller number of people, including the pastor. This is also seen in our mentality about quality of our ministries. Our competition is not other churches. Our competition (in some ways) isn’t even other religions. Our competition is entertainment and media that are well-produced and well-run. For example: our old-school, flannel-graph teaching materials just don’t hold a candle to what a non-Christian kid or adult is experiencing in the classroom, their job, or in most any other public arena. And yet we expect those people to engage with our 1950′s teaching style? Sorry…that’s a huge obstacle to overcome, and it takes leaders who are willing to bring the church into the 21st Century to make it happen.

Along this same line of leadership, I think a huge problem is a lack of leadership from our pastors. I talked with a pastor in our Presbytery who had been fretting for a couple of years about not wearing a robe on Sunday mornings. He’s scared that people in his church will leave. Tragically, he’s probably right. I also think that simply discarding the robe isn’t going to have a huge impact on reaching people with the gospel message. But it’s this inability to lead our congregations and our sessions, to look at our history and see how we’ve stagnated, or dwindled, and then have the courage to do something about it. As one pastor once told me with regards to the “remnant” left at his church when he came as pastor, “I’m grateful for those people because they’ve stayed. But I also have to recognize that many of the people who (came and) left this church may very well have left because of those people who are still here.” It takes skilled leadership on the part of the pastor, as well as staff and lay people, to navigate one’s way through that kind of church – and many of our churches are in that boat.

II. “What is one thing that GA can do to help?”

Here’s my 2-part answer: We need to have two national campaigns (this is actually part one “A” and “B”) that every church is strongly encouraged to participate in, and (part 2) better pastor training. Available funding for churches who do would be nice incentive, but I know that may not be possible. One campaign is “inside” the church, the other, “outside.” The inside one should be something like this, and I’m fairly serious about this: “Change or Die.” Let’s be honest: that’s the whole point of Jesus dying on the cross, isn’t it? To admit that we’re sinners and rely upon him for the forgiveness of our sins and for eternal peace with God? That’s a huge change from the mentality of “I’m ok, you’re ok”. And without that change, we are dead in our sins. (And for those who say, “But if we change, we’ll lose all of our members” I say, “Then you’re just speeding up the process.”) As for how this would impact churches: Relevant worship is a good place to start. Evangelism training is another. A strong sense of community/belonging…but embraces new people easily is needed in our churches (safety). Recognizing that we are in a mission field here in North America and that we have a vital role to play in reaching lost people is needed. The fact is, many of our churches are simply stuck in old ways of “doing church” and refuse to support new endeavors that would make them a vital presence in their communities, and encouraging all churches to consider meaningful change and supporting it is needed.

That brings me to the second campaign that most of our churches would need to adopt to share with people outside of the Church, and it would need to be something like, “We exist, and we’ve got something good to offer to you.” That’s not worded very well…but my experience is that many people don’t know we even exist. Or if they do, they know nothing about us. I have had 2 conversations in the last four months where someone said part way through a conversation about my church, “So are Presbyterians Christians?” Two other people who grew up here in our fairly small town did not know that our building was a church. They drive by it every single day. “Presbyterian” is an obsolete word. We’re in a post-Christian world. We have got to tell people who we are in a way that they can understand it, and live out our faith in a way that compels people to find out more.

The second piece is “pastor as leader” training. I don’t know just how one goes about training a pastor to lead a congregation. Maybe it’s innate. But I have to think that there are skills that can be learned, some techniques that can be shared. Presbytery meetings could be utilized as training opportunities (we’ve done that some here in this presbytery and I’ve appreciated it, though I think it could be really expanded). Bring in outside speakers to give a two-hour lecture…make it a series of them at every presbytery meeting…use people within our presbytery who have had “success” at transitioning churches from decline to growth. Encourage pastors who want to transition their churches to invite pastors who have done that to speak at a Session meeting. This might mean looking outside of our Presbytery and even outside of our denomination. (We did that with a pastor from an AG church in a community a couple hours from us and it was absolutely transformational for my Session. Easily the best thing I’ve done since coming here.) I think this training almost has to be at the Presbytery level and the church level. Too many national conferences are just too expensive. I would think a Presbytery could swing it, however, and keep the cost to zero for pastors. (It might be a change in how money is spent, as discussed earlier, but it may be needed.)

I’m not saying in any of this to abandon the ministries that are dwindling but still reaching the older generations. Maybe there are some cuts at the local church level, but I think many of those things can continue until they just die out and are no longer supported. But if the PCUSA is going to reach people for Jesus Christ and be a viable place where they can be molded into his disciples, we have got to begin offering ministries that will reach the younger generations in addition to what is going on already. Then as those other ministries fade out, the newer ones will evolve and grow and essentially replace them. To do this, however, it takes leaders, it takes support, it takes buy-in from the congregation, it takes an honest look at who we are, where we’ve been and where we’re going if we don’t change, and it certainly wouldn’t hurt to have denominational encouragement for this, either. (It also takes the Lord’s leading, which I have completely “left out” of this document, but to me that’s a given. God doesn’t want his church to die. We are the bride of Christ, and God wants the Church to be a beautiful bride that’s alive and full of the Holy Spirit!) I think of the definition of insanity that you’re probably familiar with too, “Insanity is doing things the same way and expecting different results.” We’ve seen the results of doing things a certain way, and I don’t know anyone who likes the results. And yet so many in our churches resist doing this differently.

I could write a dissertation on this. Sorry for the wordiness of this [letter] already, and sorry for the delay in getting it back to you. I hope it’s helpful. I also hope this doesn’t sound like I’m angry, because I’m not. But I know written words can be read with emotion not intended by the writer. This is something I have a passion for, and so my words are charged with passion and fire (maybe some frustration, yes) and a desire to see churches become places of vitality and vibrancy for Jesus Christ and his mission on earth that impacts eternity.

Sincerely,