Building a Smart Church

I have been thinking about how the church and business can learn from each other in my Quixotic attempt to realize the presbytery (local governing body of all ministers and elders; all churches within our geographic boundary, i.e. district, clasis). as a whole, not just the staff, as a learning community. Many critique those who espouse any business/church commonalities with Inquisitor judgement, defaulting to say, "if the world does 'this,' the church will do 'that' instead." Others may embrace inquisitive and synergetic resonance between business and church but sadly be dismissed by their critics of mistakenly applying so-called "business principles" which considered contrary to so-called "Bible-principles forgetting that all truth is God's truth from the start. So the Jesus-saves folks sometimes spend more time in saving "their" Jesus then leading salvific responses and market-place, town-hall Eucharistic responses to God's grace in the world through authentic actions of compassion and justice.

The church is unique, of course, and is unlike business in many, many respects, but at the heart there is something a smart church (referring to both the people and institutions) and a smart business (referring to both the people and institutions) should have in common: their persistent focus on others. I simply call this mission, or missional, but whatever the term, the inside of the church must get out! A church is not smart when it drinks its own Kool-Aid, focuses its self on its self, and hoards its content in inaccessible crypts and catechisms instead of giving away what it itself received free by the Grace of God.

I am particularly interested in the pastoral/congregational/presbytery opportunities during this financial crisis, so I am offering this as a blog. It would be easy to observe that the church has not conducted its mission with clear objectives or strategies or vision. The church is inextricably bound up with its own survival, taking everything in and holding its incredible content within its grasp. The church has been a ship, no, more like a boat, or sometimes more like a piece of barely floating sail-less plank moving with the water currents (as aquanauts), not where the Spirit-the wind (as pneumanauts) sends it, yet complaining along the way of their predicament. There are many full-sailed spirit-driven vessels out there, of course, but sadly, too few. To congregations with less capacity, impaired for one or more reasons, they view the sailed vessels as lucky or opportunistic betraying a deep hurt and pain of from years of decline and loss of meaning, and even more tragically, ignoring that a plank does not become a ship by accident nor the whimsy of chance, but from an intentional love for the sea, not the vessel they ride on.

There is no quick fix in economic or any other kind of down-turns or upswings. There are though many creative and proactive action steps besides putting off that second-home purchase, buying off-brand peanut butter, reducing mission giving, or turning the thermostat down; or once again, complaining about the pastor's salary relegated mistakenly to the last page of the budget as overhead instead of taking the pastor's costs and apportioning them throughout the budget coinciding with the value-add the pastor brings to the various categories of the budget, a/k/a the mission of the church.

In the real world, smart businesses use downturns to, yes, make strategic cost reductions where necessary, but more importantly, they refocus their mission on the key mission-critical tasks, even reaching out in expansion and extension of programs that would lead to optimized growth in services and/or goodwill to customers. Additionally, smart companies do not chase the decline or downturn, reducing where necessary in incremental bits of dollars thirty to ninety-days behind the reporting period. Instead, smart companies lead the downturn by drastically cutting from unproductive areas ahead of the indicators and drastically increasing line items and resources to the mission-producing parts of the business, the mission of the church.

Smart companies try to remain right-sized so they don't have to down-size when provoked by unexpected financial situations. There is no crystal ball, but the definition of a surprise is insufficient insight. Smart companies do not need to layoff staff in a knee-jerk reaction somehow admitting they did not need that staff all along. Or, maybe they simply were too arrogant to consider alternative future scenarios. Most churches and middle governing bodies and executives, me included, set a limited, artificial, local, horizon to craft our work when at the end of the day it is too little, too late to matter anyway. Smart companies take advantage of market bargains and opportunities they already had their eye on, consistently trying to increase their market value, market share, or just increased value to their shareholders and customers. For God so loved the world is a claim to a territory that God chose to make a difference in. We don't need churches to make a difference. We need smart churches to be different, to bring about different lives, different communities, and a different world.

Smart companies try to make good choices now that are in-line with their values and ideals. They are not pre-occupied with the past, with boxes of dusty trophies, or memorial plaques, or ruinous routines of resuscitation of that which should be brought back to life. Instead, moving forward with skills and competencies, a smart church and smart businesses will build on what was done before without longing for what used to be done. It is the living that need raising from the dead; from the death of irrelevance, the death of meaninglessness, the death of self-righteousness.

Churches have values and their people exemplify those values and ideals in everything they do. In crisis, companies and churches show their true values and commitments in their responses to the crisis. Their attitudes, their behaviors. Presbytery staff should look at this indicator in their churches very carefully. How a church responds in crisis reveals their default values at a DNA-level, their driving force of that church organization and organism. The insight gained after careful assessment can help presbytery staff and committees frame assessments on the move that lead to strategic transformational rebuilding during and especially after the immediate crisis subsides. History teaches us that every crisis subsides, though while experienced, it often renders us immovable. But our immovability is an illusion for the Spirit's wind of change knows no limits or boundaries it cannot push with us to the other side.

Smart companies pick up the pace, not cut back and see what happens. There are seasons to life, to economies, and to social ecologies and communities too, and smart people try to prepare for the eventualities, and when a true outlier, something unexpected, comes along they still pursue the opportunity and position themselves for the eventual upswing. In other words, even in crisis, a congruent, authentic company or individual will continue to pursue their previous corporate or life goal, modified or scaled appropriately. This line of thinking has enormous implications for middle governing body work we can explore later.

For now, let's consider a shopping experience I had in a shopping mall last week. I saw store front after store front with signage that spelled out: big SALE, 50% OFF, 10% off, REDUCED PRICES, 2nd CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION GOING ON NOW!, and the like to woo shoppers inside. From the GAP to GUCCI to RITE-AID, merchants were actually reducing their product's perceived value evidenced by the price by inadvertently admitting on that big 50% OFF sign that the products for sale now were actually never worth their full asking price prior to the sale at or before Christmas. Not every store had a discount sign, but almost all did. And in spite of the discount-mania, almost all the stores were empty. Their sales strategy for the downturn was to reduce their content's value, but the content was not worth even the lower price, apparently, or the product was just not needed, or people just had too little money to spend even on a supposed bargain. You can't save money on something you don't want and don't actually purchase.

In stark contrast, while walking that shopping mall, the Apple store had no discount sign posted in its big windows. There was nothing on sale, no price reductions, just photos hanging up of their products, and on display were countless computers, iPhones, and iPods on the tables ready to touch, feel, play with, and helpful staff to answer questions. They didn't have cash register lines because store clerks walked around with little computers in their hands ringing up the purchase and printing the receipts out on the store floor. And by the way, there was a line of shoppers out the door trying to get in! Why? Insanely great products. You don't have to discount great products to attract people because they are worth the price, they add value, they meet many people's needs so perfectly. They fit right, they work out of the box and they work the way you would expect they should, they maximize and honor their users talents. Price points are important, but people are drawn to great content and they will exchange their money, time, talent, and resources to get what they want and need.

So if a church, for example, put a sign out front and said NO MORE OFFERINGS COLLECTED, or NEW PEW CUSHIONS, or NEW BOOK OF ORDER ADOPTED, or WE REDUCED OUR BUDGET, or OUR PASTOR LEFT, would have little effect on the community's response. Maybe a smart church or group of churches would get together and learn practical tips on growing not merely surviving during our immediate financial crisis. Learn easy to apply lessons and techniques or develop new products or program content that would help others. Maybe the front sign of the church building might read:

30 ECONOMIC TIPS IN 30 MINUTES. Guaranteed!

2 FREE SESSIONS with FREE REFRESHMENTS

Wednesday: 7:00 AM and 7:00 PM

30 Minutes could save you $30

Of course, you need the content, the solid practical advise that can be put into practice. No fluff. No end times of doom and gloom. Content that will work for others. Spiritual things and even more, a way to stop compartmentalizing spiritual living and instead, offer a way to integrate one's whole life around something and someone who really matters.

Hey corner church! Instead of cutting back on the pastor's pay, giving out tracts, and putting new rubber tips on the legs of your folding chairs, why not give something of real value to the community instead? What difference does it make that the church is there? Each church decides, smart churches decide strategically with other faith-based groups in town together, collaboratively, what resources a smart church has and what a community needs.

Here in the Newark-New York area, we have not only lower income, working poor, folks, with food distribution, jobs, housing, and clothing needs to meet, but some of the highest paid executives in the world live here. And many are loosing their jobs, too, and their $2M home is now worth $500K but the mortgage is twice that. For the executives now looking for work, I am thinking of offering free workshops of how to market yourself in tough economic times, or a session on how to help your resume zoom you into an interview for a new job, or how to give yourself fully to a lower paying job, or a 10-minute seminar on the web with a simple message: It's YOU not what you DO that will get you through, or how to give your Lexus as a charitable donation to a church and a whole consortium of other churches helps the giver negotiate a great deal with a bank down the street for a cheaper downsized car at a great rate. Instead of a repossession, you get realigned with what is authentic and true.

The church needs to be offering something worth living for since Jesus gave his life on the ground (incarnation) in trade for us, (substitutionary atonement) so that everyone (God loves the whole world), can know they all worth dying for (sacredness of life) and to choose to be in a position to give what you have but can't keep (grace) to others (mission) in response to God's love (praise). Nothing's for sale or on sale in the church. We have "product" content that is of eternal worth that has already been paid for. How can we "charge" for such a gift? We all have something to give away to help another human being cope with enormous life stressors; job training, how to keep your mortgage, partner with CVS to freely deliver medications to elderly shut-ins, start new, ambitious programs for youth that further the mission of the church, acquire property assets that can later house future and expandable ministries in neighborhoods of need.

A smart church, like a smart business, will choose to offer quality content during this financial crisis and opportunity that government, communities, or other organizations can't give. Content that fits into people's lives of every language, race, location and age, that just might serve someone what they need and make the message of the Gospel simple, workable, powerful, practical, visible, attractable, meaningful, and transferable. Transformation must be transfer-mational if its to be authentic and real. Its got to be something that one can give away in relation to another person. After all, that's how the church grew smart in the beginning by giving themselves away one to one, one to others, others to many, to many, many more yet to come.

How smart is your church?

Kevin Yoho

General Presbyter

Newark Presbytery

kevin@newarkpresbytery.org

Great Commission: Communion in Context

Great Commission: Communion in Context

 
Jesus put the mandate right out in front when he said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. As you go, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.”

When the Gospel moved out of Jerusalem on Pentecost, amazing results occurred. Instead of hoarding the Good News in the Upper Room, the Holy Spirit moved the people of God to get up and MOVE. TRUE Communion with God always results in a blessing in the Context, on the street.
In Acts 16, we come across an incredible story.
Acts 16:6-15
(New International Version)

  Paul and his companions traveled throughout the region of Phrygia and Galatia, having been kept by the Holy Spirit from preaching the word in the province of Asia. When they came to the border of Mysia, they tried to enter Bithynia, but the Spirit of Jesus would not allow them to. So they passed by Mysia and went down to Troas. During the night Paul had a vision of a man of Macedonia standing and begging him, “Come over to Macedonia and help us.” After Paul had seen the vision, we got ready at once to leave for Macedonia, concluding that God had called us to preach the gospel to them.
  From Troas we put out to sea and sailed straight for Samothrace, and the next day on to Neapolis. From there we traveled to Philippi, a Roman colony and the leading city of that district of Macedonia. And we stayed there several days.
  On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. One of those listening was a woman named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth from the city of Thyatira, who was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message. When she and the members of her household were baptized, she invited us to her home. “If you consider me a believer in the Lord,” she said, “come and stay at my house.” And she persuaded us.

In Acts 12-13, Paul completes his first missionary journey, traveling from Jerusalem to, Phrygia. The Spirit prevented Paul and his group from ministry in Asia at that time, but in a vision, recorded in Acts 16, Paul heard the cry for help from Macedonia, in Europe. So they took a boat from Troas, leaving Asia behind, and went across to Europe where God blessed their ministry. Was that visit about Europe alone? I don’t think so!
They ended up in Philippi, a place that became a dear and special place in Paul’s heart, people to whom the Letter to the Philippians was written.

It was there they were led to do a Bible study by the river, (but who could have known), that a woman named Lydia was there. She was a merchant, a business woman who sold purple cloth. Incredibly, the text says, “The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.” But the blessings was not to her alone. Here entire household believed. And there’s more!

A friend ofmine, a gifted preacher and colleague in the Presbyterian Church, the Rev. Steven Yamaguchi from Los Ranchos, California, recently shared this story: I heard a very talented and gifted preacher once say in discussing this text, “So Lydia was the first European convert to the Gospel.” Well, that sounds good, right? But look closely at the text, or take a look at a map of the region. Lydia was not a European! The text says she was from Thyatira, a city in ASIA! She was Asian. She was a very successful, educated, resourceful, ASIAN who as an ex-patriot, an ASIAN immigrant living in EUROPE, believed in Jesus Christ. My preacher friend was right that Lydia was in Europe when she believed, but he was dead wrong that this story described the first European convert. God chose an ASIAN woman (in europe) who met Jesus and through her, to bring the Gospel to EUPOPE and through Lydia, an entire continent was blessed. We are here today because an Asian woman heard the Gospel! The Gospel got to Asia through a ministry in Europe.

The Macedonian call was to Paul a cry for help. In Communion with Christ, he now needed to pay attention to his Context. He had to cross borders. He heeded the invitation of the Spirit to take the Gospel into a new area. Asians, Africans, Europeans, everyone. Each person we serve in kindness and love, in the name of Jesus, can become another launching pad for the Gospel moving into new areas. We do not need to go to Europe to share the Good News with Europeans.

Many of you today are, through your ministry and love, sharing God’s blessings with people from all over the world. Not just in Taiwan, but everywhere. The world is at our doorsteps and the principle of Contextual Intelligence reminds us that God is planting us as grapes in his vineyard in communion, to bear fruit that the world would be blessed in context.

John 1:14 (in the Message), says, “The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.” We need to pay attention to our context. In communion with the Holy Spirit, we must listen to God calling us into NEW neighborhoods. What can those of us living in Livingston have to offer to those living in Newark? Already many of you have been assisting with the ministry at Memorial West. What a wonderful expression of love! I commend you for this ministry.

What other voices are calling? Where is God calling you now? Is there a clearer voice from God’s Spirit, like the Macedonian vision, to come and help? How can your work with others in Newark Presbytery by serving on presbytery committees, or volunteering at Presbytery Center, or supporting community service and educational programs in Newark? How can your effort at Memorial West be a launching pad to even greater capacity to do even more?

Lydia knew that the inside had to get outside. She could not keep the Good News to herself. Lydia modeled her communion with Jesus Christ in her context in four ways:

1. Be real. Lydia was an authentic human being. One of the most frequent observations non-church folks make about church folks is that they don’t seem real. Since God loves you so very much, you need not act greedy nor be fearful. We can become more real, generous, and loving toward others!

2. Be a friend. Lydia was a good friend. Many don’t invite friends to their church experiences is because they don’t have any. Be a friend. Act as a friend. That’s the way we demonstrate God’s love for us. We can become more generous as a friend and loving toward others!

3. Be involved. Lydia was involved in her community. She was with others (ethnically diverse) by the river. Maybe you could volunteer in the neighborhood. Since God loves the world, how will your neighborhood know if you are not involved? We can become more generous with our time and loving toward others!

4. Be a leader. Lydia was a leader. Pastors, Elders, Deacons, key congregational people need to be leaders, not only managers. She responded to opportunities all around her. We are not put on this planet for such a short time to serve ourselves. Instead, we need to listen to God’s Communion call to bless our Context. We can lead by modeling humility and being more loving toward others!

Let’s understand that we must not continue to do the same things in the same way if we want different outcomes. If we are committed to reaching new people, the same old ways are no longer working, and to do ministry the same old way will not result in different outcomes.

Contextual Intelligence: The ability to read the forces that shape the times in which we live and seize on the resulting opportunities.

Our context is changing more rapidly than ever. We must change in meaningful ways to keep up. The world is on our doorstep. Our communities are looking for real friends and involved leaders who hear God’s call to demonstrate God’s love to all people. God so loved the world.... that's our true mission in context.

Greed Never Produces Good Fruit

Greed Never Produces Good Fruit

“Listen to another parable: There was a landowner who planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a winepress in it and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. When the harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.

What a great story. A man had resources, land, lots of fertile land and he put a vineyard on it. Following General Assembly a few months ago in San Jose, California, my wife, Melissa, and I visited vineyards in Napa valley. Beautiful vineyards, great wine. Wonderful. Well, this man in Jesus’ parable has a similar goal as Napa valley’s landowners. He wanted to grow grapes. So he hired workers to complete the task. You reap what you sow, right? So the landowner expected a great harvest at harvest time. Not before harvest time! No. The grapes would be ready when they were ready and the workers, the servants in the parable, cultivated and tended the vineyard so that when the time was right, the fruit of their labors, the return on the landowner’s investment in that land would come forth! Well, the vines were bursting with life and the presses were working overtime, but the workers said to themselves:

“The tenants seized his servants; they beat one, killed another, and stoned a third. Then he sent other servants to them, more than the first time, and the tenants treated them the same way. Last of all, he sent his son to them. ‘They will respect my son,’ he said.

“But when the tenants saw the son, they said to each other, ‘This is the heir. Come, let’s kill him and take his inheritance.’ So they took him and threw him out of the vineyard and killed him.

Wow! Instead of the grapes being pressed into useful and life-giving wine produced by the workers in COMMUNION with the landowner, the workers cared only about themselves and in GREED, too not only the wine, but killed the very son of the landowner!

When we are not in communion, when we are not in a right relationship with one another, we care only about ourselves, our needs, our wants, our desires, and in this state of greed, want what is not ours to have. The vineyard belonged to the owner, and to the owner’s son. Like some executives on Wall Street, they took what was not theirs and they cared only for themselves. The results were devastating.

The Harvard Business School established a database about the top 900 executives and published a book entitled In Their Time: The Greatest Business Leaders of the Twentieth Century by professors Mayo and Nohria.

They wrote about three leadership types in business, government, and the church, as well. Mold-makers, Mold-breakers, and Mold-takers. Mayo and Nohria offered an incredible insight when they considered the question: Was there one ingredient these great leaders had in common? Yes, they concluded, and here it is:

The ability to read the forces that shape the times in which they live and seize on the resulting opportunities. They called this ability Contextual Intelligence. Not being selfish about their own needs and viewpoints, but taking the time to see the community, the world, through the eyes of others is the key to healthier living. Contextual Intelligence refers to thoughtfully understanding the real world right now, and instead of taking from it, giving to it in Jesus’ name.

The church can choose to be less concerned about the church itself, and instead, invest its more energy in the real-life experiences of people outside our churches. Congregational transformation occurs when a congregation takes Communion with God so seriously that it considers its Context just as seriously, too.

What the vineyard workers did not understand was that if they were in Communion with the vineyard owner, they would have received great blessings. But greed led them to take what was not theirs and in the end, they received nothing, loosing their very lives.

The missional theme of our presbytery is Together Transforming Lives, Congregations, Communities, and World.

How we understand our context is critically important, not only for business leaders, city officials, individual congregations, but for the whole church and all its leaders. Greed never produces good fruit.

Creating Congregational Identity

Creating Congregational Identity
One of the SIX Dynamics of Congregational Transformation

The Who wrote the music, but CSI has forever tagged the tune to our information-mining culture. Using the latest forensic and computer-assisted technologies, Grisom and his CSI’s let the evidence speak for itself. When applied to congregational identity, the “let the evidence speak for itself” often belies a serious identity crisis in the American church today. Who we are generationally is a helpful beginning (see chart below). Identity is the elusive pursuit of generations like Generation X, earning the Who Are We?

Generationally…
Adapted from Wikipedia article, “Generation-X”

Silent Generation 1925-1945
Baby Boomers 1946-1964
Baby Busters 1958-1968
Generation X 1961-1981
MTV Generation 1975-1985
Generation Y 1982-2003
iGeneration 1986-2000
New Silent Generation 2001-

Wikipedia comment: “In math, ‘X’ stands for 'substitute anything', and Gen X takes some collective pride in their own tolerance, diversity and inability to be labeled.

Who we are positionally is another way to assess identity. Famously, Jesus posed a question concerning his own label to his disciples (Mark 8:29). “Who are you?” is a persistent question in the Bible with as many as 50 occurrences (depending on the question’s actual phrasing). From Jacob’s deception of Israel, to Joshua, Abner, Isaiah, and dozens of inquiring minds in the New Testament, identity begs clarification of our positions.

In the first few hours of life, children are already identifying smells, sounds, and sights. This developmental process continues exponentially. Identity and self-awareness are part of what it means to be human. If you took this one essential trait of humanness, identity development, and applied it to the local congregation, you might conclude that there is a distinct lack of humanness in our churches! Developmentally, redevelopment experts and transformation teams try to help congregations honestly and accurately answer the question for themselves.

Congregational Identity is as an important dynamic of congregational transformation and spans two domains:
1. What is the congregation’s self-identity?
2. What is the congregation’s neighborhood identity?

Self-Identity: What sets your congregation apart from the Scouts or the Rotary? What sets you apart from other churches in your town? Who is the congregation to the membership?, or the leadership?, or to the older or younger people in your church?

Neighborhood Identity: When you ask someone about your church what do they say? Who is your congregation?, What does it look like? to the community at large?

Lots of times respondents will give you a funny look and say, “I haven’t a clue.”

Our church morphed from a closed and isolated fortress into a street-present, hope-bearing, community of faith. Through a vigorous and often painful process of transformation, we reneighbored. (You can learn more about the reneighboring idea and view photos of the transformation by clicking here for Kensington). We re-connected with the neighborhood. We self-identified not as a congregation to the neighborhood, or in the neighborhood, but of the neighborhood. We became a transforming agent, giving a new face and a new voice to people who called our neighborhood home.

Over many decades, Wilkey Memorial Presbyterian Church in north Philadelphia went from a thriving, effective neighborhood-centered ministry to a stranger to the people it once served; a stranger to itself and its identity. Likewise, the neighborhood felt like a stranger, too. The task of transformation required us to reneighbor the ministry to the people.

What did we do? We didn’t have much by way of resources, but what we had we decided to give, namely ourselves. Instead of acquiescing to drive-in, disconnected worshippers, we recruited families to move back into the neighborhood.
To become present for others is really pretty simple. Be there. Be there in the morning. Be there at noon. Be there at night. Be there on weekends. Be there during the week. We needed to be present. We told a neighborhood that God loved it, 24/7. We opened those red church doors to let us out, and the neighborhood in!

Each congregation’s identity has to connect with its assets in order to do mission. For Wilkey, we were a safe place for kids to have fun and hear about Jesus. We met our neighbors. And what’s more, our neighbors became us as much as we became them.

When people outside your fellowship says to the query, “Who are you?” “Oh, that’s the church that... helped when our house burned; is a safe place for kids; or has the great senior lunches; offers a super music program, or pre-school, provides for creative and meaningful worship, etc., you know you are on the right journey.

The real proof of a transformed identity is how your ministry impacts the people around you.

I wonder what Grisom would conclude, based on the evidence?

Kevin
Dr. Kevin Yoho, (email: dr.kevinyoho@comcast.net
Consultant for Congregational Transformation, Presbytery of West Jersey

Enhancing Spiritual Energy

Enhancing Spiritual Energy
One of the SIX Dynamics of Congregational Transformation

Have you ever read a book that once read, keeps reading you? It’s message percolates in your mind. You put it down, but it continues to pop back up. Chuck Meyer’s Dying Church Living God: A Call To Begin Again is one of those books for me. He offers a bold, radical plea for enhancing spiritual energy in the Church using the metaphor of Lazarus' death and resurrection.

The persistent spiritual-energy truism is that all things spiritual are sourced, discovered, experienced, and controlled INSIDE the church. This may sound like classical Roman Catholicism, but recent trends such as membership downturns, Louisville pink slips, synodical vaporware, and clergy dissonance, suggest that many euphemistically called main-line denominations have containerized the Good News, hiding the light under the proverbial bushel basket.

Chuck Meyer refers to Numbers 11:24-29 when the Spiritual-Police complained to Moses that non-priests, those OUTSIDE the Tent of Meeting, were prophesying! I love the response: But Moses said, “Are you jealous for me? Would that all GOD’S people were prophets. Would that GOD would put his Spirit on all of them.” Spiritual energy is not a controlled substance. Jesus said the Living Waters would flow! Its disturbing that the church thinks of itself more like a dam then a spigot.
Did you know that microwave ovens were tested for leakage using a florescent bulb? They proved they were working when the bulb glowed…outside! Where do you see the glow in your community? Outside the church buildings? See any real halos on the heads of believers? Anything emanating from the pews during worship, or in the parking lot afterward?

There is a demonstrable lack of spiritual yearning in many of our churches. But there is an inversely demonstrable spiritual yearning outside our churches! It’s ironic that denominationally we are loosing 1,000 “insiders” a week. One reason may be our snubbing of spiritual energy. (See 10 Sure Ways to Snub Spiritual Energy in Your Congregation list in the sidebar. http://www.kevinyoho.com/fuel.html)

We can’t even connect with the spirituality of those inside the “tent” of what Chuck Meyer calls the Dying Church, let alone those outside.

Our transformation journey suggests that many of our structures and theology make no sense today and haven't for decades. The point is not whether our structures or theology are correct. They could be! The missional point is that whatever our structures and theology, we are not connecting with people’s spiritual yearnings today.

With Moses, we must first courageously admit that it is God who seeks us where we are and as we are. Second, we must not allow nostalgic irrelevance to monolithically stand in the way of the Spirit.

People are desperately seeking hope, nurture, purpose, and God. They are looking for the glow of spirituality but often are not finding one lumen of light among churched people.

Remember to take some spiritual energy TO-GO inside your congregation and in your community. By enhancing spiritual energy IN our congregations, we can rediscover our missional capacity to pray with Moses that God would put the Spirit on everyone.

Kevin
Dr. Kevin Yoho, (email: dr.kevinyoho@comcast.net)
Consultant for Congregational Transformation, Presbytery of West Jersey

Capacity Building Book List

Capacity Builders

Bowling Alone : The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Robert D. Putnam

The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman

Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change by William Bridges

Leading Change by John P. Kotter

Blink : The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell

Becoming Nehemiah: Leading With Significance by David L. McKenna

Whose Religion Is Christianity?: The Gospel beyond the West by Lamin Sanneh

Jesus in Beijing: How Christianity Is Transforming China and Changing the Global Balance of Power by David Aikman

The Next Christendom : The Coming of Global Christianity by Philip Jenkins

These are active Amazon.com links in the online version of this issue. (http://www.kevinyoho.com/fuel.html).
Look for a future annotated bibliography and book reviews with these titles.

Kevin
Dr. Kevin Yoho, (email: dr.kevinyoho@comcast.net)
Consultant for Congregational Transformation, Presbytery of West Jersey

Sign, Sign Everywhere a Sign

Sign, sign, everywhere a sign
Transformation and Change

The Presbyterian Church (USA) is not an immovable juggernaut. Anything will change when afraid, or in Kotter’s words, when there exists a sense of urgency. In fact, the institution has shown three signs of its re-imagined self.

The first sign of change occurred in the 80’s when declining membership fear fueled a desire to structurally reorganize and geographically run away,. It reunited the sinking Northern with the regionalized Southern churches to the Midwest heartland. Sweet? Not really. It may have reduced overhead costs, but it also effectively marginalized itself from the world marketplace of ideas and commerce in New York. From hardly a voice at all, the reunited church became dumb. (Yes, a double sens, or entendre.)

The second sign of change within the Presbyterian Church was again motivated by fear. The “problem must have a solution” people decided to make evangelism the church’s number one priority. So in 1987, programatic efforts were underway to stop the membership tailspin. Little did they know, but every association and group, including religious ones, were experiencing the same decline (See Bowling Alone). Acting in isolation however, a desperate evangelistic crusade was fought. “Bring the people in and everything will be fine,” mantra fell on deaf ears. Sadly, the denominational decline through the mid 90’s was growing worse. Evangelism fails when motivated by fear.

We are in the midst of the third sign of change within our denomination. With little left to organize, the GA, Synod, and Presbytery Trinity of our church structure is morphing into what is essentially a two-legged stool. The middle judicatories are being gutted leaving presbyteries even more removed from the mother ship. What’s worse, fear of survival has decimated the mission units of the church.

Change is not transformation.

Intentional congregational transformation is a proactive response to change. Signs of change have sociological and demographic indicators. Signs of transformation have missional and contextual indicators.

The Transformation To-Go redevelopment groups (http://www.kevinyoho.com/fuel.html) will explore best practices in order to redirect the congregation’s energy toward the communities it seeks to serve.

Hang on, new signs will direct us on a great ride!

Kevin
Dr. Kevin Yoho, (email: dr.kevinyoho@comcast.net)
Consultant for Congregational Transformation, Presbytery of West Jersey

Yellow Lines and the Super Bowl

Learning from the Super Bowl

O.K. I am not a sports fanatic. I’m not a big turkey-eater either, but I still celebrate Thanksgiving. So when the annual and arguably the biggest eating day in America arrived, I was enjoying the event with my family, watching on a big HDTV, pizza in hand, hoping the 2006 Super Bowl commercials to be as interesting as the football game. One Ad, in fact, had a compelling message. Remember viewing the commercial from Budweiser about the young Clydsdale hourse during the telecast?

(visit www.budweiser.com to view the Ad)

The commercial was all about energy, community, and confidence in moving forward and fulfilling one’s dreams. You don’t have to enjoy the beverage to experience the Ad. It may be a most surprising source for such a message. Maybe a better observation to make is think when a message this compelling was recently made at your church. Transformation, anyone?
Just when I thought the commercials would win the day, the game got interesting, as well. But it occurred to me the very most interesting aspect of the Super Bowl for me this year was when I began to notice that yellow yard marker line. The video overlaid graphic on the field is so awesome. The TV audience can see how far the ball has travelled toward the end-zone and specifically, to the next first down. (Yeah, a couple of years ago, it took me a while to figure out it was actually a video graphic, and that not only couldn’t the players on the field see it, but they couldn’t get that yellow paint on the soles of their shoes, either. Nice.)

Of course, movement, measurement, and markers define games. And life.

But those ever moving Yellow Lines were something to watch!

According to The New York TImes, the computer generated yellow line markers, “introduced on Sept. 27, 1998…, has been well received by viewers: a 1999 Harris poll found that 92 percent of football fans wanted to see the virtual first-down strip in future broadcasts” (NYT on the Web, January 27, 2000). A company in Princeton, NJ, PVI, (and Sportvision) developed the super-advanced video system to calculate the yellow line marker from several possible camera angles, making sure the line looks painted-on the Astroturf, or like chalk on a grass field. The real trick is to offer the production engineers split second control of the line as it moves, sometimes rapidly, to keep up with the pace of the game.

Presbytery Mission
When I compare personal transformation to a game played on the field, I believe a lot of the energy we exhibit correlates and fluctuates with the perception of our achievement. How far down the field, and how close are we to our "yellow line," regarding our life goals? Who would know?

We need indicators so our energy can at least be congruent with real data. We have fuzzy goals and unclear markers. We do not have a yellow line. We don't need more negative, draining connotations as to our lack of progress or get more blame thrown on ourselves by ourselves or others. But we all could benefit from our own Yellow Line. We could use indicators, milestones, objectives, goals, achievements, needs, projections, or resources for each priority of our life. SImple is best. Clear is better. Congruence builds energy. The Yellow Line.

We could make the the idea of “movement” desirable and welcomed. A Yellow Line could be a tool to offer clarity and build ownership of our priorities from the ground up. More importantly, energy could correspond with actual, measurable, data which all of us have a stake in. I am ready to offer whatever I can to help carry a bucket of yellow paint!

Like the Young Clydesdale, our life's mission can show progress in achieving our dreams.

The Super Bowl was not just about football!

Thanks for thinking.

Advocacy for Passionate Hope

"All ideas must have passionate advocates behind them."
—Thomas Davenport, Professor, Babson College

Passion is not optional, at least not when you want to do something outrageous like love the world. Do you think the world matters? Well, I do. God loves you and your neighborhood. That's awesome news and exactly why helping transform congregations into missional agents in their own community is mission critical.

How often do churches have to be castigated for being irrelevant before they choose to change?

How often does faith have to be dismissed from the marketplace of ideas or from the conversations at the water cooler before those of faith learn to infuse, not impose, their faith in ethical, real world living?

The true test of relevancy for the church is as its always been; mercy, justice, and love. How will our culture and community realize that God loves it, if we refuse to be passionate about making the Good News visible and relevant? If you believe that Jesus is the Living Water, what kind of containers will you craft to hold it?

The practice of missional transformation can become every congregation's passion. You can learn to use practical tools for contextual, collaborative, faith-based ministry. www.kevinyoho.com is a neat place to get some tools. Every congregation can increase it's capacity for mission with a passion.

Now that I think about it, that "It's all about me!" t-shirt is actually a pretty accurate faith statement. Here's why: the relevancy of your faith experience and it's expression depends on YOU! Sounds an awful lot like something I read somewhere... umm. Nah.*

Build your passion, build your mission. Be an advocate for passionate hope. It’s that important.

Kevin



*Oh, yeah. Now I remember. Take a look at the book of James; around James 1:27.

Missional Life

What does a missional life look like? Well this is just a work in progress.

I am a man in relationship and in love with God by grace through faith. This relationship and the relationship with my children and my significant others are my first priorities. I accept my call by Jesus Christ, Lord of the universe, to be both a sign and agent of God's kingdom in the world and will try to balance the mind, body and spirit dimensions of my life in the world around me.

I believe all of us in community as Christ’s Church are the true ministers of the church—ordained by God and gifted by the Holy Spirit for all the ministries required in the retrieval of our neighborhoods and culture. I will seek to affirm physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wholeness. I believe the Church must be liquid, dynamic, flexible, fluid, adaptive, and relevant.

All things belong to God, not to us, and I commitment myself in loving, enthusiastic service to Jesus and his kingdom, together with all my sisters and brothers in Christ. I believe the people of God in church, institution, media, health care, and government, must once again be change agents in the neighborhoods they serve. That applies to me, too. I must show and tell the true Good News of sin, repentance and forgiveness to the hurting, the poor, and the lost, even while I try to understand the real, physical, social, political, and relational context we are in and attempt to make a positive difference in measurable ways.

I will reach out in whatever language or form necessary to build bridges of friendship and care, and in the church, offer a relevant experience of worship and in the community, a relevant expression of mission. I will not impose my own models or expectations across race, class, age, linguistic, physiological, gender, or physical lines, but rather seek to be a servant of all.

Well, that's a start. What do you think?

From Babel to Pentecost and Beyond

As I have reflected on my own leadership style, Biblical images inform my perception of reality. I recall the great tower of Babel which was built by a homogeneuos group of self-centered persons who had lofty aspirations of god-hood, not the God-head. (People just don’t seemto get it that there can be only one God. Even the Lord God cannot make another God, for anything the one and only God makes is by definition a creation, and anything that is created cannot by definition be God.) In the stiffling, sameness of pseudo-community, people seek god-likeness. They become crazed with ability and define everything from their own point of view, shared with others. Perception is reality. The Babel multitudes envisioned a great stairway to heaven and needed a paradigm shift, a fundamental change of reference which of course could not come from within. Paradigm shifts do not usually come from within, but rather are observed by looking at a set of conditions from a different vantage point, a different perspective, a different field of view, so that what is obvious or hidden, good or bad, in one paradigm may in fact be totally opposite in another paradigm. God introduced the paradigm shift, God reoriented the masses and with one fiat act (of grace, I should add!) changed everybody in a moment. Like the youth mixer where each person is given one of many different barnyard sounds to imitate and thus have to hook up like-sounding others. The activity divides the crowd into smaller groups. At Babel, God assigned a langauge distinction which made communicating others of a different langauge impossible. The great multiplication bacame a great migration.

This is chaos, plain and simple. But on Pentecost, something amazing happened. God’s Spirit took a chaotic, dysfunctional community of people, namely those gathered in Jerusalem for the high holy day, and again introduced another paradigm shift. A fundamentally different way of looking at life. The Spirit of God descended on the believers and each bagan to speak in a langauge of someone they did not know. A reverse-Babel, a new community, the Church was born. Finally, the commonality of the Spirit brought the potential for true community but I notice one important feature of Pentecost: God, instead of giving the gift of tounges to his people, couldhave just as easily (Is one miracle any more or less difficult for God than any other?) changed people’s hearing to hear, say Hebrew, or Aramaic, or Greek, or any other langauge, but he didn’t. God condemned the self-centered sameness of Babel but affirmed the beauty of diversity at Jerusalem on Pentecost. Our differences are not the problem. Diversity is not the problem. My goal in this class was not to conform to someone else’s style, attitude, learning model, type or proclivity. Rather, my goal was to discover all the diverse richness of Kevin Richard Yoho, his uniqueness, his giftedness, his strengths and weaknesses, my preferences and likes, AND affirm, appreciate, encourage, others in their distinctiveness and complexity, and learn from them. From pseudo-community to chaos, to emptying to real community. A journey begun with intentionality which will find its finality in Christ and his body, the Church.

Many years ago I recorded an unatributed poem in the back of my Bible which has often reminded me of the reality of growth:

“There was a very cautious man,
who never risked or tried.
He never hoped.
He never failed.
He never laughed or cried.
And when one day he passed away, his insurance was denied.
For since he really never lived,
they claimed he never died.”

Beyond Pentecost. That's what I'm talking about.

Transformation Begins at Home

Did you hear the story about the French ornithologist who went out into the deep woods to try out his bird calling. He was shot by a hunter.

I have learned that it is pretty foolish and even self-destructive to pretend to be someone you’re not. There seems to be a tendency displayed in the pseudo phase of community building where we surround ourselves with people like us. We pretend to be like the people we admire, so we can act like them and justify our desire to be with them. We invest a lot of energy in being phony and artificial. Self-centered instead of self-less, many never discover who they actually are. We deny our uniqueness and force ourselves into molds and methods that just aren’t us. Personal transformation for renewal begins with community building at its core and I have learned the value of self-knowledge in the context of community for like often quoted lyric, “no one is an island.” Diversity is reality and I have come to appreciate my own uniqueness and that of others which has enriched my life.

Homogeneity is the god of the church growth movement, not diversity. The church growth gurus since the eighties have promoted this as a preferred method of accelerated membership and even as a desirable outcome of ministry. But it is instead a feature of pseudo community where differences are negated, similarities are superficial, and communication is inauthentic. The beauty of creation is complexity, the radiance of the Church is diversity, the strength of the person of God is acknowledging his or her own gifts and uniqueness. The Triune God is the God of the Church and where the Church embraces diversity and gifts expression, the Church becomes real and authentic. This is the beginning of transformation.

Wet Water's Wonder

“If you are thirsty, come to me! If you believe in me, come and drink! For the Scriptures declare that rivers of living water will flow out from within.”

An average adult human body is 50 to 65 percent water. That’s roughly 45 quarts. O.K. That's a lot of water. Water plays several crucial roles in the body. It helps regulate temperature, carries nutrients and oxygen, and removes waste. It also cushions joints and organs. I even like the taste. The taste of my well water, that is. Cool.

And even more essential are the “rivers of living water” that Jesus refers to. Yes, water is essential to existence, and the Holy Spirit is essential to living. Living water refers to water that flows, not stagnant. Living water refers to water that not only "lives" but is life-giving. The Bible tells us that the power of the life-giving Spirit frees us from the power of sin that leads to death.

Water is mentioned in the Bible more often than any other natural resource. The waters are divided on the Second Day of Creation. John the Baptist baptizes Jesus with water. In John 19, Jesus on the cross cries out that he is thirsty. And today we are baptized to show our commitment to new life in Christ.

Next time you reach for a bottle of water, think about the potential of the water to refresh and renew and to rebirth. Thank God for the Spriit of God that hovers over the face of the deep and calls forth life from arid death.

Ahh.

Reneighbor: Yes or No?

Churches: When should they close? When should they open?
Why do churches disconnect from their neighborhoods in the first place? This displacement is complex and can even be demonic. It can also be historical and political, racial and financial, personal, generational, and spatial. In our post-Christian culture we rarely invest our best assets in places with the least resources.

If we did, we would understand a theology of location as much as our other theological amusements. If we really got it, w would be putting skilled and fully funded teams of transformational leaders in strategically critical urban areas to build collaborative ministries.

It takes time and faith to earn the love and respect of a stranger. What’s more, it takes courage.
We have incredible social capital to reinvest in our urban places. Sure, there are identical problems facing people in our suburban and rural places, too. But the tragic fact is that despite or because of the challenges of scale, it is in the places of greatest concentration of need that the fewest spiritual and other resources are invested.

We should think twice before closing a vital neighborhood resource like a connected congregation. And we should not hesitant to close ineffective, unable-to-be-reneighbored congregations, nor hesitate to start a new neighborhood-based ministry.

Blessings,

Kevin

Slipcovers

My Aunt Alyce was the most loving person I could imagine. She loved everybody. She loved her family. She loved dogs. She loved the neighborhood kids. She loved her life. She loved her church. She loved God. And, what was very evident to me: she loved me, too. I know that because she always called me her favorite nephew. (Yes, there were other nephews. :))

But her love had an anomaly. It was a confusion between now and then. A present offering of love versus a future one, and it had to do with slipcovers.

Aunt Alyce apparently loved the people who would eventualy get her living room furniture when she decided it was time to get rid of it. You see, she put clear, plastic slipcovers on the couch, chair, and ottoman. You ever sit on a plastic slipcover on a warm day with shorts on? Whoa. It always amused me that she should be so careful. I had always wanted to ask, "Aunt Alyce, why do you use slipcovers? You should enjoy your furniture. (Thought bubble: I want to enjoy your furniture!) The only thing you are doing is making the furniture nice for the next owners, while you can't even sit without sticking to it." I suppose my Aunt Alyce would just have smiled. She didn't get it.

Churches have slipcovers, too. Things that keep the hardware preserved for some future What?, yet esentially un-useful to people now is a sign that the church has become absent for people it is called to serve. To become present for others is really pretty simple. Be there. Be there in the morning. Be there at noon. Be there at night. Be there on weekends. Be there during the week. Allow the resources to be used to meet needs, of course according to the mission plan, but serve now.

In my congregation, we decided that we needed to be present. To tell and show a neighborhood that God loved it, 24/7, not just for an hour or two Sunday mornings, but every day became my passion, not just my mission.

We opened those red church doors and took our imagined, but just as real, "slipcovers" off the gym floor (not used for twenty-years or more !), and let kids from the community reclaim our assets as their own. Whoa, did we have kids in the neighborhood!? Not a few of our Elders shuddered at what we were nervously trying to do: give ourselves away. This was our social capital, our God-given assets for the common good.

Note to church: barriers, even plastic ones, diminish mission. Future potential is not the same as realized present. Aunt Alyce was right about everything, except the slipcovers. She was also right about who her favorite nephew was, because she was my favorite Aunt, my Aunt with slipcovers.

Blessings,
Kevin

Nouns and Verbs

Every church building I pass seems to turn into a time portal, of sorts. I am transported back to Miss Espenshade's fifth grade English class. Whoa. Not an entirely pleasant trip. A crystal clear image rises in my memory of drill exercises on the difference between nouns and verbs. Nouns are objects. Verbs are action words. Nouns are objects. Verbs are action words. Ahhh. O.K. Miss Espenshade, I get it!

As the church blurs by me on the right, I think: the Church. It's a noun. An object. Not an action word. Church, an action word? Umm. Miss Espenshade, I have a question.