FaithQuest Revisited

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Make-No-Wave United Methodist Church

By

Dan R. Dick

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I received an interesting email from a pastor today who “followed my advice” and raised questions about expectations and accountability in the church.  He asked the “what is the church?” and “what is the church for?” questions, and zeroed in on what our membership vows really mean.  He was shocked when the chair of the church council responded by saying, “well, we don’t have time to talk about this now.  We have church business we need to deal with.”  Later that evening, the chair of SPRC (Staff-Parish Relations Committee) called to schedule an appointment — “We need to talk.  As soon as possible.”  The pastor was surprised early the next morning when the SPRC chair, the Lay Leader, the church Council chair, and the head of Trustees all showed up together.  The conversation went something like this (church leadership in bold; pastor normal type):

We need to know what’s gotten into you?

What do you mean?

This kick you’re on to push; to make us feel bad about not doing enough?

I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad.  I’m just trying to offer people something better.  I want to help people grow in their faith.

Well, that’s fine, but a lot of people are perfectly happy where they are.

I know they are, but that doesn’t mean they should be.

See?  That’s exactly the kind of pressure we’re talking about.  Who are you to judge what kind of Christians people should be?

It’s not a matter of “judging” anyone.  It’s a matter of helping people grow in their faith.

You made a lot of people uncomfortable last night.  You made it sound like we should be doing more.

We SHOULD be doing more!  I brought up the issues for a reason.

But that’s not why people come to this church.  People come here because they know they will be loved and cared for, not judged and made to feel guilty.

Being loved and cared for and becoming faithful disciples are not mutually exclusive.  People should want both.

In your opinion.  None of our previous pastors said any of this stuff.

But it isn’t just my opinion.  It’s in the Bible.  It’s in our Book of Discipline.  I didn’t make this stuff up. 

No, you said you pulled it off the web and we all know how reliable things are you can find online.

You’re kidding, right?  You’re saying because I got the articles off the web that we shouldn’t pay attention to it?  All I raised were three questions: what is the church? what is the church for? and how do we hold people accountable to the promises they made to God and one another.  That’s all.  These are good questions to ask.

But they’re unnecessary.  We’re not trying to be super-Christians.  We’re just normal people who love God and need to know that God loves us.  That’s all.  We don’t need you telling us how we ought to live our faith.  It’s none of your business if we pray or not or read the Bible or even how often we attend church.  You are here to be our pastor, not our conscience.

But I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t preach and teach from the Bible and challenge people to be the best Christians we can be.

Look, you’re young and we want to support you, but you need to be reasonable.  People are busy — we have full lives.  We don’t have time to be saints.  We need you to do your job — lead worship, visit church members, teach confirmation, pray for us, and try to grow the church.  We just don’t need you making things harder than they ought to be.

I don’t know what to say.  You tell me you want me to do my job, but when I do my job you don’t want me to.  This is impossible.  I didn’t do anything wrong last night.  In fact, I did exactly the right thing.

The pastor received a call later in the day from his district superintendent.  Hoping for support, he was irritated to discover that his DS sided with the congregation’s leadership, asking that he “back off.”  The DS told him that he needed to make this appointment work, and that he couldn’t afford to alienate key leadership.  Again, he heard that he needed to be “reasonable.”

What am I missing here?  I was called to ministry.  I am part of a church whose mission is to make disciples, but when I bring up acting like disciples I am told to back off.  If we  can’t even have discussions about what it means to be the church in the church, we’re in big trouble.  Anyway, I just wanted you to know that your “basic” questions are not “simple” questions at all.

This is one of the more dramatic responses I have received, but in no way is it rare or unusual.  Some of our United Methodist churches are held hostage by low expectations, complacency, lack of vision, and a distinct aversion to anything remotely disciple-like.  What are we going to do about it?  When mediocrity becomes the standard, it is only a matter of time until we cease to exist.  No relevancy, no urgency, no commitment = no church.  Unless it is safe and even encouraged to rock the boat, makes some waves, and shake things up, we may be looking for a new church real soon.

124 responses to “Make-No-Wave United Methodist Church”

  1. Mike Lindstrom Avatar
    Mike Lindstrom

    @David Kueker – That is an intriguing concept you highlight, that our concept of clergy leadership creates the struggle (or, as I would say, creates other struggles). I know practically what you refer to, but never considered it as you say it.

    The reality is we lead a volunteer organization and not a business or military unit where orders are given and you follow or face consequences. We must work with the leaders (or potential leaders) to help the church step further into God’s vision for the church (another concept we have not addressed here). My focus in my current appointment has been on developing leaders with spiritual depth and a desire to discern God’s will for this church. The changes that have been “big” ones and yet were effective and received without major backlash were ones where the leaders said to me, “We’re tired of talking about making this change as a way to be faithful, we need to go ahead and do something.” My response to them was, “Okay, as long as you believe and are willing to say ‘we believe this is what God is calling us to do to step into His vision’”. I was the one responsible for casting the vision to the congregation, but the leaders were the ones promoting and supporting it around the church. it made all the difference. It was also something we did together as clergy and laity.

    Never considered that “management” but I can see how one would use that verbiage to describe that process.

    Reply
    1. David Kueker Avatar
      David Kueker

      wow – what an excellent example you gave on how to do this!

      Reply
  2. David Kueker Avatar
    David Kueker

    @Meltone – I think you expressed the opinions of many when you wrote “How does one move a church forward without asking the question of who we are as a church in the the light of Holy Scripture? It’s difficult to see how you can nurture a church forward without considering the matter of one’s mission and vision for ministry framed in biblical terms.”

    In my opinion, we don’t really move a church forward or nurture a church – we equip people and help them move forward, and we nurture people. As each of them differentiates spiritually, anxiety in the system decreases. (Your answer also reflected this fact that people are at all sorts of levels spiritually.) The real secret (to me) is to work with people at the level they are at and help them to learn and do everything they are ready to learn and then do.

    Rather than get everyone in line on the same page, we can develop systems that equip and encourage people where they are and help them move on to the next level. (The smallest I can get it in my thinking is five levels or five very different “churches” operating simultaneously at one address. When you aim at only one, you disenfranchise four others – resulting in the conflict.)

    The conflict for them and the frustration for us, in my opinion, comes when we act as if everyone is the same – which is in effect treating the church as an institution with a life cycle rather than the diverse people of God – and we are taught this “institutional world view” in seminary and by our denominational leaders. We do this without thinking. We attempt to centralize in a world that is decentralizing.

    When we ask “who we are as a church” there is no one single answer unless you see the church as an institution rather than the people of God, a body of Christ where the diversity of each person is highly valued.

    Reply
  3. Tweets that mention Make-No-Wave United Methodist Church « United Methodeviations — Topsy.com

    […] This post was mentioned on Twitter by gavin richardson, Josh Hale, Taylor , jvoorhees, methoblog and others. methoblog said: RT @smanskar: Make-No-Wave United Methodist Church « United Methodeviations – http://goo.gl/yksZ […]

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  4. David Kueker Avatar
    David Kueker

    @Dave Whitman, comment #43 – you wrote: “Yes, this is a good observation. But I have a colleague who tried this approach and it backfired. He was viewed as “circling the wagons” and pitting “us against them.” In the end, about 1/4 of the active membership in the church left. The remnant had bitter and suspicious feelings toward innovations, new ideas, assertive leadership, etc. How do we safeguard against this from happening? The last thing I want to do is repeat this… but neither do I want to be complacent and just “keep the sheep happy.” Any suggestions?”

    Taylor’s comment #44 is very wise. In my one experience of astonishing transformation in 1994-1998, I learned two things. First, if the laity lead in transformation, there is less conflict; when ideas bubble up from the grassroots, they are indigenous – there is no “us against them” and especially when it is their own children asking for a church that meets their needs. Especially if they focus on experimenting with innovation in a small group and not changing the whole, a change which disenfranchises others and increases anxiety. (My ideas as a classic innovator where too far ahead of where the congregation was.)

    I had one rule – the “rule of three” – if you have an idea you first have to find two other people who want to help you make it happen. This provided both a check against bad ideas and the support to implement them. Then you proto-typed it in a small group to learn from your experience and work out the bugs.

    So when the laity take LEADERSHIP in innovation, it slows change down to a rate acceptable to the majority … but it doesn’t slow it down much because I saw astonishing growth in the capacity of laity to lead when I got out of the way. They didn’t need my help; they were empowered and taught by the Spirit of God working through them.

    Second, if I was not the leader, what was my role? I discovered that I needed to circle the other members of the church, pay attention to them and soothe them with traditional pastoral care so that they would allow the other laity to move forward. I needed to practice MANAGEMENT to keep everything else in the church running smoothly, which kept the anxiety levels down.

    In other words, it was my job as pastor to maintain the system rather than lead it. This is exactly what Peter Senge describes in his systems archetype “Limits to Growth” (good name, eh?) in The Fifth Discipline. Senge suggests a genuine contradiction to what we are being taught: pastoral LEADERSHIP creates conflict and prevents change; pastoral MANAGEMENT keeps systems running smoothly and preserves the ability of the system to adapt rather than bog down in conflict and poor operations.

    So the biggest problem we face in my opinion is our own desire to be leaders and gather power and control to ourselves – rather than equip the laity to do the ministry as the New Testament clearly teaches in Ephesians 4. Paradoxically, our concept of clergy leadership is causing the major problems in our church today. (Thanks to all for the opportunity to express myself.)

    Reply
    1. Dave Whitman Avatar
      Dave Whitman

      Thanks for the suggestions and insights. I’ve sort of mapped out a similar course of action. I’m teaching the principles of “discontent” via a non-threatening Bible study (one gets out of the study as much as one puts in it…therefore those that *desire* more will naturally begin asking corresponding questions. To others that may not, it’s still a good vehicle to keep conversations going and manage). Also, it inspires the grass roots concept so I am not perceived as a renegade who is disrupting a system. Thank you again for your comments. They confirmed some of my thoughts and challenged others. The discussion is a blessing…

      Reply
      1. David Kueker Avatar
        David Kueker

        Sounds like a really good path you are on.

  5. Brad S Avatar
    Brad S

    It seems that one problem is the consumerist nature of many Christian Americans. We have come to believe that “Church” should be just like going to the movies or to the theater. We come in pay our ticket (in this case offerings) sit down and are entertained for an hour (no longer though, we got things to do) and then go home. We come to get something from God. Listen to the comments from the church people in this post and some of the others. “I come to be loved.” “I come to be fed.” When leaders, either clergy or laity, try to challenge that mentality they are met with anger. “We are not monks or nuns or super-Christians. We are just normal people.” I really do not think we are going to make progress until we challenge and break this consumerist mentality.

    Reply
  6. Taylor Burton-Edwards Avatar
    Taylor Burton-Edwards

    About the 12 year timeframe…

    Alan Roxburgh does not say to wait 12 years before doing anything. Far from it. The process is exactly what Steve Garnaas-Holmes and others here have suggested: find the ready and get to work with them, though there be only a handful to begin with. Meanwhile, pay the rent– keep building trust and doing the work the institution needs you to do.

    Roxburgh’s observation is that it seems to take about 12 years before there are enough people formed more deeply as disciples that their presence actually enables the congregational culture to shift enough to be “discipleship friendly.”

    Working with parallel cultures “inside” the congregation requires, to my way of thinking and based on my observation, an extraordinarily skilled pastor and leadership team to pull off without the “circling the wagons” thing becoming a fatal accusation. It’s not impossible– but very, very challenging. A key challenge is an emotional process challenge. This requires great ability to articulate differentiation within the system– and so also requires a system that is capable of allowing differentiation to take place. An anxious system will not generally allow this– so a key pastoral and leadership role is to deal with and defuse systemic anxiety.

    Extra-congregational groups that work at discipleship development– such as the early Methodist societies and class meetings– do not raise the emotional ante INSIDE the congregation to nearly the same degree. This is because the differentiation is actual and structural– such groups are simply not part of the congregational structure per se, even if people in them are.

    So while I think it would be the very rare and extraordinary pastor and leadership team who could pull off and sustain the growth of a parallel discipleship culture within a congregation, many more of us could be involved in partnerships to create external (to the congregation) structures that do the same thing– and, that, like the Third General Rule, make it clear that participation “out there” requires regular and healthy participation “inside” a congregation as well.

    That approach is not without its tensions, either. But these are much, much easier to manage from the level of systems and emotional process.

    Reply
    1. Dave Whitman Avatar
      Dave Whitman

      So change can be encouraged without disrupting a system. The reference to class meetings is a good illustration. Wesley did not start a church…he inspired a movement. A good reminder of the difference when we go about working in a firmly established system. Thank you for the clarification and insight…

      Reply
  7. Dave Whitman Avatar
    Dave Whitman

    “Rather than trying to get the Church or the Council to agree to something, focus your energy on the people who are ready. Pick the ripe ones. (Get to know your people first.) One by one, develop a shepherding relationship with them. Work with them to create a church-within-the-church…”

    Yes, this is a good observation. But I have a colleague who tried this approach and it backfired. He was viewed as “circling the wagons” and pitting “us against them.” In the end, about 1/4 of the active membership in the church left. The remnant had bitter and suspicious feelings toward innovations, new ideas, assertive leadership, etc. How do we safeguard against this from happening? The last thing I want to do is repeat this…but neither do I want to be complacent and just “keep the sheep happy.” Any suggestions?

    Reply

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