In a series of patheos articles about the future of the mainline church, Bishop Larry M. Goodpaster,* was interviewed about his vision for the future of the United Methodist Church.
When the interviewer, Debera Acra, asked him about the mainline decline and specific plans, Bishop Goodpaster referenced Good to Great:
Given the membership decline in the mainline church, what specific efforts are underway in the UMC to revive the church and make it relevant for the future? Many United Methodists, both lay and clergy, have read and been influenced by Jim Collins' book Good to Great. In that book, Collins makes reference to the Stockdale paradox, which states, in essence, that we must always confront reality, but never give up hope. That, it seems to me, is where we find ourselves today. Reality: declining membership in the United States coupled with redirected resources. Hope: the vision of the Reign of God pulling us into a different future. By the power of the Spirit and the grace of Jesus, we move forward to create a future with hope. We know we are losing any sense of relevance in this rapidly changing culture.
For me, seeing the President of the Council of Bishops of the United Methodist Church, apply Jim Collins in a way that speaks to middle ground, makes me enormously happy, in large part this is an entirely Methodist synthesis of the text. Methodists like to balance personal and social piety, the present and future reality of the kin-dom of God, so why not add in the reality of church in decline with following Jesus in the future.
For the rest of his interview go here. His answers for what to do about young adults is well worth investigating.
*Yes, seriously. My love for puns is exceedingly happy about this. Much like when I heard my aunt’s stomach doctor was a Doctor Chow.
In Good to Great and the Social Sectors, Jim Collins attempts to translate the work that he had done for analyzing the highly successful businesses to the non-profit areas. I appreciate the strong emphasis that what makes for a successful non-profit organization is not a simple transposition of business world upon the non-profit areas. I myself often am skeptical of corporate measures of success, often seeing that short-term and yearly gratification (and dividends) is often valued over things like the environment, social justice, and other uncapitalizable, yet necessary long-term needs for our future.
Therefore, it surprised me that what I found most interesting in this text was one of the most corporate ideas as one of the best fits for what a church needs and how it can help growth in the future. I found the "hedgehog concept" as the basis for creating a brand to be something that is deeply important.
In my experiences, most churches don't really know why they are churches. They like to meet together and they have a deep commitment to the community, building, etc, but they rarely are able to articulate the purpose that these congregations have. Honestly, congregations have low self-esteem. I think that the hedgehog would be able to help these congregations that there are passions and missions that congregations DO WELL and then give them the opportunity to be able to articulate why they come together as a community.
Here is what Collin's hedgehog concept looks like:
What are you deeply passionate about: Churches have deep passions. Sometimes, these deep passions are about "Our church puts out the most beautiful creches for advent." Sometimes its: "We love the teenagers in our congregation, and even though they grew up in the inner city, we're going to make sure that they go to college." Each of these passions have a specific value attached to them. For the first congregation, clearly beauty and the advent story are important values. The second congregation prides itself on supporting the teens in the congregation to overcome difficult odds and values social justice. It takes a lot of work to "just do what we've been doing," being able to unearth what matters to us is a good first step for realizing we're awesome.
What are you best at: I am often amazed at what churches accomplish. Forty people put on a monthly food and clothing bank. Four hundred people come together to provide 300 children the school supplies they need to go to school, drive a van to pick up homeless men and get them to warm shelter during the winter, send 30 people on a yearly mission, and twenty or thirty other small ministries. Every week they put on a different worship service, each with its own unique character. Often, when congregations talk, they see all of the things they haven't done, not the amazing things they are accomplishing. Asking "What are you best at?" reorients the idea from "I'm not doing enough" to "We're doing this really well, because we value this." What drives your resource engine: Time, money, and volunteers are something that every single church needs more of. By being able to articulate: "We do this, because." Makes the "So you should help," part much easier to do. Making ourselves known for what we do, gives us a focus and a way to overcome our hesitancy to act.
Jim Collins' hedgehog concept would be a way of recasting the dominant narrative of a congregation from: "We're part of a dying denomination and congregation" to "This is what we do, why we're awesome, and what we value. We're so excited to be here." I think perhaps instead of understanding ourselves in terms of relevancy as dictated by the outside (perhaps even corporate) definition of the world and recasting our self-evaluation in terms of our mission and bringing about the Kingdom of God. Congregations do things well and I think this model might be a good way to tell ourselves the story that we are awesome.
I just mailed my first batch of Commissioning Documents to the Registrar.“That will be $32.06,” the clerk behind the registrar said.I didn’t blink an eye; it was after all an overnight delivery.Yet as I clicked through the DEBT card purchase, it reminded me yet again that there is a very high monetary cost for creating a minister.
I believe that it is a conservative estimate that at the end of my ordination approximately $325,000 will have been spent to turn me into a minister.Between tuition for schools, interest paid on student loans, airfare to and from seminary, and many other $30.00 dollar incidental costs all add up quickly.
I have been lucky to have a great deal of financial assistance.Scholarships have accounted for most of that aid, but others came from my community, from airline mileage donated from cousins, books that have wandered their way into my library, and Starbucks cards that show up with letters of encouragement.In the end my parents and I will have underwritten only a quarter of that cost.
As I wrestle my way through this process, I try to remember that I am able to enter the ring because of my privileged place.I am someone who has been able to carve three years out of her life to attend a prestigious seminary.I am someone who has the ability to take the extra two days for her commissioning paperwork instead of saving herself the $15.00 for groceries for that week.I am someone who knows how to find scholarship money if and when I need it.
I could not imagine what this process would be like if I did not have this financial cushion.
The Well Known Crisis of a Mainline Protestant Church The United Methodist Church (like many other mainline denominations) is in the middle of a crisis.Its church membership has halved from 12 million to 6 million people in the past 50 years.There are churches closing their doors and missions programs that are folding.Simply put, the United Methodist Church is not what it once was.If it is to remain a viable spiritual community in the future, then it must change.
Leadership and Change This is a challenge and clearly a change in the church is required for its future.According to Kouzes and Posner, in The Leadership Challenge, strong leadership is needed for any kind of change to take place.When interviewing leaders who reflected upon what projects they most proud of, they discovered this consistent theme.
“Evident in the tone of almost all the personal-best stories is that leaders are people who seize the initiative with enthusiasm, determination, and a desire to make something happen.They embrace the challenge presented by the shifts in their industries or the new demands of the marketplace and commit themselves to creating exciting new possibilities that make a difference.”
Instead of fearing the challenge, the leaders embraced it as an opportunity to learn how to do new things and make their company more relevant to the world around them.Intriguingly, what appeared as the most reliable source of change was the need for better customer service.It was not the product that these companies created, but instead the way that they related internally and to each other.
The United Methodist Rebrand I’ve been noticing a lot of rebranding for the United Methodist Church.Re-Think campaigns (which incidentally I first heard about from a Pagan friend who is a person in-the-know about marketing) that are happening online and on television.We’ve been trying to figure out ways that we can make our product of our church more attractive to the people we want in our doors.
The Good Samaritan This past weekend, I preached off of the Good Samaritan parable, and so I've been sitting with the challenging framework for community that Jesus lays out.The parable is framed by a story about a lawyer trying to figure Jesus out --- and being a well trained lawyer, he is trying to put Jesus into a corner.Vocationally, Jesus is a teacher, and teachers tend not to simply give information when he can invite his student into thinking through a problem.When the lawyer asks, “Who then is my neighbor?” Jesus answers with the story of the Good Samaritan.
This parable has been something I have been meditating on for a few weeks.The two solutions that Jesus lists out are two entirely correct religious solutions.The Levite and the Priest must maintain ritual purity (something that cannot be done if they come into contact with blood) and so they sacrifice perhaps their own personal convictions to help someone in immediate need in order to maintain a correct relationship between their community and God.The Good Samaritan crosses ancient historical hatreds to help the bleeding and battered person in need.He risks his life and spends his money to help a stranger.This compassion is also “loving your neighbor as yourself.” We know where Jesus comes down on the issue of which person acted more correctly. I myself cannot sit so comfortably with assuming that I'd take the Good Samaritan's side. Nor am I certain that the church has taken that
Rebranding and the Good Samaritan As I sit watching this rebranding campaign for the United Methodist Church I wonder who is our customer? Who does our advertising campaign try to reach out to?
The story of the Good Samaritan often seems to me to be one about exploding the circle of who we think is relevant and capable of acting with compassionate morality.I often see it as the Biblical Imperative insisting that we need to Think Outside the Box of the people who are normally inscribed as who is allowed to be inside the box.
Therefore the rebranding is our way of thinking outside the box right?Well.It’s a start.There is a TEDTalk that I often return to when I think about branding and who the product is selling to.
And while the topic of selling condoms may be slightly controversial in comparing it to the decline of the UMC, the general idea I get from it is widely applicable.Is our marketing appeasing the people who are worried about a cause or is it to actually convince people to use the product?Ending AIDS and saving the United Methodist church are two important causes in my book – and I wonder if we are falling into the same trap.
Are we selling ourselves to ourselves or are we selling to our actual customers?
Who then in our Customer? The UMC needs to market to ourselves. We need to talk about who we have been, who we are, and where we think God is taking the church in the future.This marketing is an important way of starting that conversation for ourselves. We need to see ourselves as part of the good customer service the United Methodist Church offers.
Yet the question that the Good Samaritan asks of us is to stop seeing our religious life in conventional ways and understand that our customers are more than just who is already on the inside of the box.The more I have worked at First UMC of Los Angeles, the more I believe that the future of the United Methodist Church will not be monocultural or presenting one or two styles of worship.I believe it will engage in the complicated questions of justice for the world and call us to work outside of our church walls. Worship will become a place where we God is made real and our souls are restored, not merely a place where we are entertained. I think we need to be ready to start looking at the people who make us uncomfortable, and realize that they are the neighbor that we need to ask to be in relationship to our church. Yet I see this as an exciting opportunity. We get to not just rebrand, but reimagine our whole community. This is a great new opportunity to welcome the great diversity found in the children of God and see that as precisely where the United Methodist Church will begin.
This will take leadership, risk taking, and willingness to think outside the box. This is the great challenge of the United Methodist Church for this day.
