What I would do differently ... Knowing What I Know Now

By Clair Woodbury

I'm approaching one of those milestones where people want you to look back and reflect. Age brings wisdom, they say. Not always. It was Mark Twain who remarked there was a lot of difference between 40 years experience and one year's experience forty times. I'm hoping for the former. In my career I served ten congregations, did community development for ten years, and have now done congregational research, teaching, writing, and consulting for fifteen. Let me share five things I would do differently in my congregations, if I knew then what I know now.

Celebrating God's Presence ... the key to Spiritual Growth

In seminary there was a lot of talk about God. We clergy just naturally carried that on into our congregation. Our sermons, even our prayers, contained a lot of talk about God, but very little emphasis on dialogue with God.

Harold Percy, minister of Trinity Anglican Church in Mississauga was speaking to the Anglican Synod of Edmonton. "The more successful you are at doing what you were taught in seminary," he told his audience, "the faster your congregations will die." They were sobering words.

Young people today want an experience of God. When I was growing up and came back from church, my mother would ask, "What did the minister say?" When I had sons of my own, they had a very different question: "What happened, dad?" Talk about God vs. an experience of God, a happening. It is a shift in our culture, and it is a shift in people's expectations of the church.

The catch word today is spirituality. I don't remember that word being used all the years I was growing up in the church. Today it appears in newspaper articles, on the cover of Macleans and Time magazines. People are hungry for a sense of the presence of God in their lives.

It began to dawn on me how little time Jesus spent talking about God, and how much more time he spent encouraging people to relate to one another in a way that strengthened their relationship with God. He practiced the presence of God alone in his times of prayer, and when he was with others, they sensed the presence of God in a special way.

If I were doing it over, I would put a great deal more emphasis on experiencing the presence of God in our lives, because as I know now, that is the key to spiritual growth. Second hand faith is still second hand. First hand experience is life-changing..

Small Group Ministry ... the Key to Community

The next thing I would do is put more emphasis on creating community and a true sense of belonging though the encouragement of small groups.

Main-line congregations have long emphasized larger groups of 25 or more people-the women's groups, men's groups, the bridge club, the quilters, the altar guild, the choir. They are good for fellowship. There is a dynamic in a smaller group, however-an intimacy, a sense of being accountable to and for one another, a deeper caring, a sense of belonging, a love of one another-that just can't happen in those larger groups.

Small groups-and by this I mean groups of 12 or less-are places where you can share on a deeper level because you know people will keep what you say confidential. When you get over 12 people in a group, the introverts stop sharing. People can't get enough airtime to really share where they are coming from, and that means people really don't get to know one another. In small groups, friendships tend to become more important than progress. These groups become places of belonging and true community is created.

One of my sons lost his wife to melanoma. During the battle against the cancer they were part of a support group. Ian regularly plays golf with Doug who also lost his wife and has become a life-long friend as a result of being in that group.

When I think back, I've been part of a small group most of my life. In college it was a bible study led by a physics professor. In seminary it was a prayer group of students at my local church. As a world traveller it was meeting regularly with two or three friends, then for ten years a "theological colloquy" meeting monthly at St. Stephen's College. Over time, these groups have provided a sense of community, occasions of intense intimacy, opportunities for personal growth and a deepening of faith.

I once thought small groups happened naturally. Looking back, I realize how much effort I put into developing the groups that worked for me. I now know this type of group needs specific nurture and support. A lot has been learned over the past twenty years about the dynamics of small groups, insights the evangelicals have taken to heart and main-line churches are just starting to notice.

If I knew years ago what I know now, I would put a lot more emphasis on encouraging and supporting small groups. That would have gone a long way toward making newcomers in my congregations feel welcome and accepted. I would have made this the key to community.

Sharing My Personal Beliefs ... the Key to Integrity

In a court room people promise to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth." In the church we have told the truth, but have been very hesitant to tell the whole truth. We look out and see elderly Mrs. Smith or white haired Mr. Jones, and don't want to question a faith that has seen them through many trials of life. They deserve our respect and our care.

So we just don't happen to mention the questions so many younger people have about original sin, the second coming, hell being an actual place, and modern cosmology leaving no room for a physical heaven. Very few sermons question the physical resurrection of Jesus or Jesus' divine nature. The belief that Jesus was sent by an angry God to die for our sins and in order to make God less angry does not make sense to a lot of modern people. We still call Jesus Saviour, however, without making it clear what we have been saved from and what we are saved to.

In his book, The Heart of Christianity, Marcus Borg talks about the difference between an "earlier vision of Christianity"-the one mainline denominations believed fifty years ago-and the one he calls the "emerging vision of Christianity," which millions of people privately hold today. It is a reformation far bigger in scope than that proposed by Martin Luther. In the first reformation, Protestants shifted their source of authority from the Vatican to the Bible, but their picture of God as stern judge did not change. Today it is our concept of the nature of God that is shifting.

I decided seven years ago I would not just tell the truth, but share the whole truth, as I understood it. People did not vacate the pews where I spoke. I was not struck by divine lightning. It felt good, because I felt clean, I felt honest. I felt I could look Jesus in the eye, Jesus who defined integrity when he advised "let your yes be yes, and your no be no."

If I were doing it over I would be more open about all my beliefs, and about my journey as my beliefs changed. I've done it, and have a firmer sense of fellowship with God than ever. There is a sense of tranquility and deeply felt peace that comes with integrity. It leads to a deeper faith that is desperately needed in this frenetic world of ours.

A Clear Vision and Mission ... the key to Leadership

Every consultant I read today has one overriding message. Get a vision! Be clear about your mission! A clear vision invites participation. It focuses energy. It releases excitement. It creates a bond. It opens the door for real leadership, because it defines where a congregation wants to go.

At the Congregational Life Centre, our vision is a rich diversity of congregations meeting the many spiritual and personal needs of its members. There are many organizations and people also working toward that vision. Our mission tells us why we exist and names our role as one of those many organizations. We have the particular task of "assisting congregations to be effective in their ministry." A clear vision-a clear mission. It keeps us on track. It tells us to shelve the many great ideas we have for doing things that don't assist congregations, as much as they might be fun to do. That focus has meant that we have become better and better at what we do, just because we have been focused. That has meant each year we find ourselves being used more by congregations.

A vision keeps our focus on what we intend to be, and a mission defines our role in making that vision a reality.

I think back to my Scouting days. Our Scoutmaster would give us lists of things to collect for a scavenger hunt and the assignment to show up with what we had collected at a certain landmark-a distant tree, hill, or cliff. We could strike off in different directions, collecting leaves or stones or whatever was on our list, but all end up at the same place because we all knew our destination. It is the same in a church. When everyone knows the congregation's vision, each committee, group or individual can make their particular contribution and still contribute to the congregation completing its goals-without having to have three hour Board meetings or get permission every step of the way.

I was taught to do ministry in an industrial age model where every United Church began its worship with "Holy, Holy, Holy" and every congregation had identical programs coordinated from above. I was not long doing ministry before I realized every congregation was different, and every person had individual needs that were not being met by the standard church programs. People realized it too. Women's organizations often failed to attract young women. CGIT failed to attract teenagers. Men's clubs had difficulty getting off the ground. Young adults asked for discussion time where they were not programmed. Young people asked for computers that were programmed in a way that left them free to surf the internet for what met their particular needs.

We have moved from the industrial age to the information era, from a time of regimentation to regionalization and individualism. We have moved from the age of generalists who meet group needs to the era of specialists who meet particular needs.

There is no one vision for every congregation, no one mission that keeps everyone locked in the same programs. There is a different mission for every congregation within each community. God is not calling my congregation to be all things to all people, with the result that we do a mediocre job of meeting anyone's specific needs. God is calling my congregation to be exceptional at what we do best, and letting the other churches in the community do what they do best. A clear vision and a clear mission is what keeps us on track as individual congregations, and lets us honour and respect the contribution the other congregations are making, to reach God's overall vision for the people we all serve.

A clear vision and mission are the key to leadership. When there is a consensus of where a group wants to go, leadership is empowered and honoured. We have a leadership crisis in the church today. The truth is, it is not a leadership crisis, it is a vision crisis. Knowing what I know today, I would put much more emphasis on developing a clear vision and a clear mission in every congregation I serve.

Listen Harder ... the key to Disciplined Obedience.

God gave us two ears and one mouth. It is God telling us we should do twice as much listening as talking.

I have not always been good at listening. All those years in seminary and graduate school gave me a lot of answers. All I needed to do was find people with the right questions, and I would be recognized as the intelligent guru I knew myself to be.

It was not to be. I had all those answers, but people were asking different questions. I had the church's organization chart, but people wanted to chart their own course. I could catalogue all the disasters that emerged as I tried to impose the ideas I had been trained in on the congregations entrusted to my care. I won't, but believe me, there were many.

I recalled Dietrich Bonhoeffer's book Life Together-a collection of insights that came as a result of leading an underground seminary in Nazi Germany. "Your congregations are your gift from God," wrote Bonhoeffer. "Obey them." It is a matter of listening to the needs of your congregation, was the message I heard, not imposing your will on them.

My studies in Paul Tillich's theology came flooding back. His method of correlation calls for matching the questions being posed by today's culture with the deep fundamental insights of Christianity.

It changed my approach. Now it is a question of hearing your question, and then together listening for God's answer. It will not be the answer God gave the church in the past. We know that because the world has changed in many significant ways. When the situation changes, the question changes, and the answer has to change.

Finding that right answer is where we Jesus people have a great advantage. There is a treasure of insights into the human condition and human nature in the gospels. The answers are there to be discovered. Perhaps that is why Bible study is gaining in popularity, why people are devouring the new insights into how the scriptures were created and put together. The Great Code is what Northrop Frye called his book about the Bible's role in our culture. Unlocking that code reveals a lot of answers. Our openness to the insights in the other great religions of the world provides still more.

True listening is the key to being obedient to one's congregation. It is a matter, more often than not, of hearing the questions beneath the surface questions. After all, it was Jesus who often remarked, "Those who have ears to hear, let them hear."

The Keys

When I first became a clergy, researchers reported the ministry as a profession whose members could expect an exceptionally long life expectancy-because of the intense sense of satisfaction and peace that came with serving the church. A survey done recently by the Episcopal Church in the United States revealed that one-third of their clergy felt under intense debilitating stress as a result of being in ministry. What happened over these last forty years to create such a change?

The answer-a profound change in our understanding of God and the role of the church in people's lives.

The response for those serving the church and those served by the church is clear to me:

If we have spiritual growth, community, integrity, leadership, and disciplined obedience, we will have one hell of a church, and by that I mean one that is as close to heaven as we can get on this earth.

 

We would appreciate very much your feedback on this article. Are there resources you have found helpful that we can share in the next newsletter?

Send your comments by e-mail to joyceandclair@congregationallife.com

or send a letter to:

Congregational Life Centre,
#1405, 5328 Calgary Trail
Edmonton AB T6H 4J8

Congregational Life Newsletter Vol. 10 No. 4 June 2004

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