Presbyterians are ready for a change. GA219 is the opportunity.

I think Linda Valentine, Executive Director, and the General Assembly Mission Council (GAMC) are leading the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) toward the right path. They are inviting all of us, at every ministry and governing body level, to courageously embrace God's preferable future with hope. We talk about changing how we faithfully internalize being sent into the world, yet we do not move. We agree we must change the approach to and delivery of ministry, yet rarely evidence growth. We have difficult decisions to make in the years to come, not unlike the recent releasing of long-term staffers in Louisville. We need to courageously act to realign our ministry to achieve the objectives God has called us to.

I believe Presbyterians must again be empowered to be the salt and light in more pervasive and effective ways on the street, across the nation, and around the world. The 219th General Assembly meeting in Minneapolis in July offers a unique opportunity to gain a better understanding of what’s important, to internalize it, and initiate responsible action. If not now, the opportunities that present themselves will be gone in two years, when we hold the next national gathering. So if not now, never. A spirit of prayerful urgency and courage must be divinely inspired and evoked from this assembly. I believe we are ready for a change. How ready are you for change? What do you need to move forward in hope?

Presbyteries and their Customers

A presbytery evidences effectiveness when its congregations are vitally and effectively fulfilling their own unique purpose as sent by God into the world.

If a congregation's session is not locating expected and necessary resources for its own unique mission from its presbytery, synod, and General Assembly, then it should, and no doubt will, find resources elsewhere. It’s well past time for presbytery leaders to learn and embrace to new opportunities. We can do a better job of collaborating with our congregations and other community assets to build the capacity of our mission. Sessions constitute a presbytery’s number one customer, therefore presbyteries have a strategic responsibility to ensure a session’s continuous ministry improvement, vitality, and sustainable change. We have often acquiesced to the status quo, or mistakenly believed that we have time for incremental steps. Our persistence of decline experience will continue to impair our capacity to grow and change unless a remedy is implemented.

According to change theorists, decline is the label we give to an organization’s trajectory when neither adaptation nor learning takes place in the face of massive membership dissatisfaction. Under these circumstances we ought to expect the demise of the organization. Though the PC(U.S.A.) membership is restless, we are also increasingly disappointed with our direction. We display symptoms of increased institutional trauma and decreased institutional intelligence.

We are not bereft of information, we are bereft of the right information that helps us learn. By raising our institutional and emotional intelligence we gain insight of mind and spirit. This will fuel our courage to act differently, to act better, to act authentically in our communities and in the world. Without relevant and reliable data we remain subject to tyranny and guesses about ministry direction.

Change in Practice

All across the country, many governing bodies are taking a new approach. In the Synod of the Northeast, presbyteries and their leaders have been learning together and initiating ministry adaptation within their own structures and congregations. In Newark Presbytery, where I have the privilege to serve as General Presbyter, we have begun to internalize a commitment to redirect our energy outward, away from a flatline of self-destructive congregational survival and deficit-defined ministry to a baseline model of “everyone can choose to grow.” By authentically reconnecting out of our abundance to the 800,000 people that live within our bounds, and beyond, the world can be different.

New Jersey’s Presbytery Partnership Group’s (NJPPG) eight presbyteries have also begun to chart a new course. In March, our presbyteries were offered a learning strategy called the Listening Project to help them assess their own presbytery’s mission clarity, vitality and effectiveness. This is huge. Every presbytery in New Jersey, in its unique historical and geographic setting and phase of organizational life, can come to its own place of readiness and take responsibility for itself to grow and change. Now needed assessment tools and funds have been provided to provoke that change. Are our presbyteries ready? I believe they are. Without courage to choose God's preferred future, however, our will lead to our demise. Clarity from the NJPPG Listening Project promises to provide the catalyst. Time will tell, but time is short.

A Remedy for Forty-Years of Decline

Recently we learned that in 2009, our denomination’s membership declined 3.3%, representing in the aggregate a net loss of 1,800 people every week, a higher rate of decline year over year. This information increases our knowledge. I think this decline rate is not only unacceptable but preventable, yet the GAMC and few other church leaders have even mentioned it. The point is that this information alone does not increase our intelligence to act differently.

We need insight that derives from intelligence. Realize that the PC(U.S.A.), along with all other major denominations, are continuing a 40-year decline. A wilderness experience of a vast scale. But there's more: Our church appears unaware that every major volunteer association in North America has experienced the identical decline in membership during the same 40-year period. In our denomination's peak membership years, few knew in 1970 that the preceding years’ rising growth rate were about to become a slippery slope of decline, and even fewer knew that the decline of all churches, and all other volunteer associations from PTA’s to bowling leagues, could be attributed to the same cause. The cause for the decline? Member’s disconnecting from an increasingly fragmented community life in America. We can do something with this information. It adds to our institutional intelligence as a church. Reconnecting to our communities can reverse the cause for this decline. This is a remedy that fits our missional and social context, empowered by God's Spirit.

I humbly point you to my presentation on SlideShare, http://www.slideshare.net/kryoho, entitled The Reciprocal Church. It offers a correlation between the 40-year decline of volunteer associations to the decline of the PC(U.S.A.), and offers guidance and remedies that every congregation regardless of its capacity or location, and even the GAMC itself, can put into practice this week.

Incarnational, missional behavior transcends every current challenge and obstacle we face as a denomination and members of communities. Let’s get our heart around the world and our head out of the church long enough to not just make a difference in the world, but make the world different.

The executive team in Louisville deserve our support and prayers as they lead us as God sends us to love the world more than we love the church. When our heart is for the world, we will choose to act differently as disciples of Jesus Christ in the church. Pray for our world, our leaders, and our 219th General Assembly and its commissioners. I think Presbyterians are ready for a change. GA219 is the opportunity. Do you think we are ready? Are you?

Sincerely,

Kevin

.............................................................

Dr. Kevin Yoho,

General Presbyter

Newark Presbytery

192 Broad St., Bloomfield, NJ 07003

973-429-2500 (phone)

kevin@newarkpresbytery.org

http://www.newarkpresbytery.org

http://www.twitter.com/kevinyoho

The Readiness Factor for Growth

Readiness to Change The Future

“Start walking” never looked so good.

The Readiness Factor for Growth

People, organizations, even complex organizations like churches, change when they are ready to change. There has to be a readiness to change. In the John 5 story (see below), the paralyzed man by the pool was not ready to change until that day he met Jesus. Not ready? Nope.

Instead of taking responsibility for his situation, he made excuses. Remember he offered the excuse, “Someone always gets to angel-troubled waters before me!” (when you hear an excuse, somebody’s not yet ready to take responsibility.)

So Jesus does a little intelligence gathering and then walks over to the paralyzed man who was likely readying another excuse when he must have heard himself. Ta Da! In that moment, he saw what Jesus saw, what everybody else saw, too; a man with thirty-eight years of excuses, avoiding responsibility. He recognized that in thirty-eight years, he was no better off. He was only more miserable, still alone by the pool, and oh yeah, older too.

Jesus did not argue with the man about the past, about the angels, about the others who got in first, about his waiting such a terribly long time. Jesus essentially asked, “How’s that working for you?” Jesus said don’t jump into the pool, but into the future. He had to take responsibility for himself and take the first step he alone could make. Jesus said, “Get up, take your bedroll, start walking.”

Organizations are like people.

They are alike and they are different. Not every church is at the same place developmentally, spiritually, organizationally, or operationally. These are the psychological and sociological implications of the metaphor of the Body of Christ.

It is characteristic of island cultures to believe that the people on the island are substantially different from those on continents even to the point that the same medicines that are effective in other places will lose their efficacy when applied locally. Crazy, right?

But followers of Jesus are the Body of Christ. If we focus too heavily on our differences, we cannot learn from one another, cannot collaborate, and cannot commune. We loose the potential of a united witness to the world.

If we focus too heavily on the sameness, we stifle individualization and creativity and our unique sent-ness into the world by the Holy Spirit. So the question is not whether all a presbytery’s congregations are large or small; new or old; urban, suburban, ex-urban; predominately mono-cultural or multi-cultural; theologically diverse or unified, well financed or lacking resources; racially and/or ethnically diverse or not.

We need clarity about what is common and what is distinctive.

Common to all the people, “Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem,” by the pool was they were all in need of a hopeful future.

Distinctive to all was their individual readiness to change.

Each person, team, organization, group, or church will vary widely in their readiness to change, and what that change should look like for them. Some may be essentially decided and determined to change. The leaders can explore the depth of such apparent motivation, and begin consolidating commitment.

Others will be reluctant or even hostile at the outset. At the extreme, some groups may feel coerced by finances, context, or history to change, or remain unchanged. I respect that position. It is important to recognize, however, that remaining in that pre-contemplation stage of change is unsustainable in the longterm.

For churches, most congregations, however, have already entertained some change initiatives and perhaps even created history to express the process somewhere in the contemplation stage. They may already be dabbling with taking action, but still need consolidation of motivation for change, or clarity for their vision. This may be thought of as the tipping point of a motivational balance. If your congregation is at this stage it is critical that you move away from a seesaw that favors status quo versus the other that favors change.

There are perceived benefits of changing, and feared consequences of continuing unchanged. The man by the pool had to decide if the hopeful, promised future captured in the words, “Start walking” was more compelling than the compromise endured by of the hundreds remaining as they were; life passing them by, counting the wasted years.

Our task together, in a presbytery and session partnership, as members of a team, is to shift the balance of weight in favor of change and growth. The man by the pool learned the consequences of a lack of readiness. We can move toward God’s preferred future of hope. Let’s get up and start walking.

Intelligence Break: The readiness for growth is uniquely determined by the person or group contemplating change.

• What is the biggest downside to not growing, to the status quo winning?
• How do you know when you’re ready to take a step in a new direction?
• What is something you will change?
• How will you know it has changed?
• How will you know you have grown?

Tell someone you trust you are ready for growth. Get up, start walking!

See previous blog: The Process of Growth

John 5:1-8 Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem. Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people; blind, crippled, paralyzed—were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, “Do you want to get well?”

The sick man said, “Sir, when the water is stirred, I don’t have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in.”

Jesus said, “Get up, take your bedroll, start walking.” The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off.

The Process of Growth

Readiness to Change The Future

“Start walking” never looked so good.

The Process of Growth

The Gospel of John tells the story of God’s love for the changing world. The passage from John 5 (below) tells a story of “one man” healed among “hundreds” sick by the pool and conveys both the promise and the compromise of hope.

Thirty-eight (38) years could be considered a long time. Thirty-eight years ago I was a recent graduate from Parkdale High School, Class of 1972. Go Panthers! Yeah, thirty-eight years is a long time. Happily, I changed. I grew.

We all can change. We all can grow.

Sometimes getting ready to change takes time.

Thirty-eight years ago your house cost $25,000, the White House broke into the Watergate, the Dow-Jones hit 1020 while Hotel California hit #1, people landed on the moon, the HP-35 calculator landed in your hand, HBO handed you the first cable program, and IBM’s supercomputer filled a room. Amazing.

Thirty-eight years ago the Presbyterian Church (USA) counted 4,000,000 members. Newark Presbytery had 18,000 members in 52 churches with more than 900,000 neighbors within its bounds. Few knew in1972 that growth was on the slippery slope of decline, and even fewer knew that the decline of all churches, and all other volunteer associations from PTA’s to the bowling leagues could be attributed to the same cause; organizational disconnect from an increasingly fragmented community life.

This is huge.

Back to the story from John 5. What about that “one man” at the pool? The scope of change during thirty-eight years he experienced in real time would be as if that man settled down by the pool paralyzed with Nixon in office, and (thirty-eight years passing) ended up meeting Jesus when Obama was in office. He laid down by that pool expecting somehow or another to get better. (He was there for his health, right?) In the same way, the time it took The PC(USA) to go from 4M to 2M members; that man waited, and waited, and waited for something to change. We should not be surprised at the Master’s question upon learning how long the “one man” had been lying there when he asked: “Do you want to get well?”

Intelligence Break: The process of growth is a process, not an event.

• Do you want to get “well,” change something?
• How to you experience the process of change?
• What is something you wish to change?
• Why does growth matter to you?
• Are you ready for change?

See next blog: The Readiness Factor for Growth

John 5:1-8 Soon another Feast came around and Jesus was back in Jerusalem. Near the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there was a pool, in Hebrew called Bethesda, with five alcoves. Hundreds of sick people; blind, crippled, paralyzed—were in these alcoves. One man had been an invalid there for thirty-eight years. When Jesus saw him stretched out by the pool and knew how long he had been there, he said, “Do you want to get well?”

The sick man said, “Sir, when the water is stirred, I don’t have anybody to put me in the pool. By the time I get there, somebody else is already in.”

Jesus said, “Get up, take your bedroll, start walking.” The man was healed on the spot. He picked up his bedroll and walked off.