ARE:A Renewal Enterprise

What's Your Story?

It always worries me when people say "it's not personal" when they're talking about their job. Whatever our "job" is, if it matters to us, it is personal. We get excited when things go well. We get upset when we fail. We work our butts off to make things turn out right. If it's not personal, we probably need to find something else to do. In fact, Annette Simmons, the author of "The Story Factor" and "Whoever Tells The Best Story Wins," argues in a recent article that one of the things good leaders do is help their colleagues re-ignite their passion for their common work. And, she says, there's no better way to do that than to let your personal investment show...by telling your own story.

The Power of Vision

-Our webinar this week was a technological roller coaster - we spent about the first five minutes thinking people couldn't hear us when they actually could. Thanks, everyone, for the phone calls & emails letting us know you were hanging in there with us! Anyway, our topic this week was "pursuing vision" for the sake of organizational change. We argued that in today's culture, ideas (especially "moral ideas" that shape who we are, what we value, and what we are being called to do & be) - more than any other tangible or intangible factor - determine the effectiveness of an organization. Ideas matter because they motivate and mobilize people; without them nothing much happens.

The Power of Love

I don't know, maybe I'm a little odd for somebody over the age of 35, but I've never had much of an opinion about Barbara Walters, one way or the other. I don't watch "The View." I don't have any plans to read her new book. Still, I've been interested in the reaction to Barbara Walters on the release of her autobiography, called "The Audition," from pundits, other media types, bloggers, etc. In the June issue of The Atlantic, Caitlin Flanagan is especially tough of Walters. Her review is titled, "The Uses of Enchantment." And her blistering criticism of Walters is, in a sentence, that "Barbara Walters got the story by giving her subjects what they wanted." And what exactly is it that Walters gave them? According to Flanagan: Love.

Re-Imagining Success

How you measure success depends on what you were trying to accomplish. And the less clear you are about your purpose the less clear you will be about if you got it done. This may seem obvious but for many of us, we do what we do and simply keep doing it – just because we did it yesterday, too.

Why Change?

Phew! That's how I was feeling as we wrapped up our second online seminar. There were over 50 people online with us tonight for the first in a 4-part series on change. The largest number of participants were congregational lay leaders (awesome!). There were also lots of church professionals, a few judicatory leaders, and some nonprofit/business leaders, as well. Things got off to a rocky start when Dave, who was hosting tonight, couldn't get his call-in phone number to work. At 7:00 p.m. we were still on the phone with our provider, trying to get signed on to the call! That created a little confusion on our end when it came to slide & survey placement. All 3 of us were a little jittery. Thanks to everyone who is wading into these new waters with us. We value your participation and we look forward to your feedback!

How To Reconnect With Your Context

The widely reported "CLOSED" signs that recently appeared on every Starbucks in the country help illustrate that people in every organization have to work hard to remember who they are and what matters to them.

There were a couple of questions at the end of our recent online seminar that we didn't have time to address and we promised we'd do that in this space. This was one of those questions: "If our churches are made up of people who live in the world, how does the church become so disconnected from the context?" In other words, how do we end up forgetting something that is so much at the core of who we are and what matters to us?

There are many ways to answer that question. But I believe it all begins here: The church becomes disconnected from the context when we forget that the church is not, first, an institution. The church is people. As a result, a double blind spot is created in which most Christians actually forget one identity when they pay attention to the other. In the world - forget you are the church. In the church - separate yourself from the world.

It is not the church (people) that is disconnected from the world as much as it is the institution that we have settled for. What this means is the institution that is disconnected from the world is also no longer fully connected to its own people (since they still generally understand the world and just seem to develop amnesia when they enter the institution!). This mistake has been internalized over a period of generations. Both the church and society entered into an unwritten deal that if the church would coexist with the world without challenging it too much, then society would help the church flourish as a civic organization. Much of the church settled for the safety of being a civic organization. Eventually it became engrained in us - the church is an organization and the people come to it and support it (or not!). This unwritten deal is now over but the damage is still being felt.

We need to work hard today to remember that the church does not dispense religious services to people - it is made up of people of faith. Reclaiming the priesthood of believers, understanding that God is "out there," and helping people see and be intentional about how they are useful to God all the time is a key to changing this; so is learning to use our gathering time as time for equipping and debriefing. When we get together, we ought to be talking about what is happening in our corner of the world and how God is at work there. Leaders in congregations that want to take their place seriously again will discover that by asking purposeful questions and using participative processes, they will be tapping into the wisdom and experience that many people already bring with them but have been checking at the door. And in wrestling with the answers, people who have disconnected their church and world identities will discover them reconnecting again. These congregations can then send people back to be the church in the world, ready to see God at work in and through them again (and again, and again...).

The key to reconnecting with our context is to remember that the church is people who live, work and play in the world everyday! Vibrant congregations will learn to tap into what people already know about how to connect with their context and encourage them to be the church wherever in the world they go.

First Things First (It’s All About Love)

According to Tim Sanders, best selling author and former Yahoo exec who has become an irrepressible advocate for good values in the workplace, love is the killer app. Those of us who work within faith-based organizations probably shouldn't need to be reminded of this. But we do.

Within the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, for example, we have been using a lot of data from research and surveys done with Natural Church Development in our congregations. We are starting to see clear patterns about where congregations consistently need to pay more attention. These patterns are not unique to the ELCA. Similar patterns can be seen in most mainline denominations.

After the first 100 congregations' data was in we began to track these patterns and noticed that passionate spirituality, need oriented evenagelism, and holistic small groups were the most common points needing attention. Further work showed us that the common ingredient in each of these was intentional relationships (with God, with neighbors, with our selves). In other words, we are not fulfilling the Great Commission.

For the past several years, I've been running all over the country doing workshops and giving presentations about church renewal. But there is nothing that I (or anyone) can share to help renew the church if we don't first deal with the Great Commandment. The point is: Mainline churches do not have an evangelism problem - that would be easy to deal with. Mainline churches have a love problem. Collectively we show few signs that we still love God. Together, we have shown almost no real effort to love our neighbors. And the evidence shows that we have stopped being very good at loving even our selves any more.

If we want to get back to effective ministry, it will not come from techniques to get people to come to us. It will come from leaders who are willing to love and help others love as well. When that happens, finding companions for the journey will be a lot easier. This is true no matter what business you're in. And if Yahoo gets that, it ought to be a no brainer for those whose business is serving Yahweh.

What’s The Big Idea?

There is one "big idea" behind church renewal (at the congregational, coalition, judicatory, or denominational level) today. It could be summed up in a variety of ways. Try this one: The church doesn’t really “have” a mission. God’s mission has a church!

How Are You Getting The Word Out?

Is it appropriate for a faith community to "advertise?" Is it effective? What kind of advertising does your congregation or denomination do?In our experience, an advertising campaign that is connected to a special event can be very effective at tapping into pre-existing interest. For example, a multi-week direct marketing campaign tied to the grand opening of a building that people in your community have been watching go up over previous months can be a great way to let them know they are invited to come take a peek inside.Of course, the campaign needs to be well done. It should communicate who you are, what you're about, and how what you have might be of value to people; but it should not overpromise.

The Confessions (and Questions) of a Musical Junkie

Is there a soundtrack for church renewal?This is a question I've been wrestling with lately because, I admit it: I am a musical junkie.I love them! In film or on the stage, it doesn’t matter. I love the way a story is told through music. Rent is my current favorite. I can’t get the song “Seasons of Love” out of my head. It haunts me, really. My son, on the other hand, thinks this is the weirdest thing ever. He hates musicals (not counting, of course, the musical numbers in the Family Guy season premier a few weeks ago).I think I love musicals so much because the point(s) are made through song; and they just don’t leave your head. This is why my15-year old now walks around the house singing the songs from that Family Guy episode, no matter how stupid.And that, I think, is the point of our hymns: The gospel message is supposed to get stuck in your head.