Presbyterians For Renewal - Missional Leadership for Presbyterian Congregations
Do You See What I See?
Written by Tod Bolsinger, M.Div, Ph. D.
Friday, 26 February 2010 04:10
Okay, case study time… Think about this one with me:
You are facing a problem in your congregation. Nothing moral, or ethical, or theological, but a good old fashioned practical problem: Something you are doing is just not working, and you are stuck.
You have been trying really hard and not getting anywhere:
You put on a great program that people say they want, but then the attendance is weak the day of the event. You lose money and the volunteer leaders are discouraged…again.
Families are more committed to youth sports on Sundays than to worship.
You preached a great twelve week series on renewal (or prayer, or community) and while the buzz at the door was great, the noticeable change in the pews was, well, unnoticeable.
Membership is down, attendance is down, Bible study and small group participation is down.
You have hired new people, tried new programs, put in place the latest and greatest thing to come out of the coolest organizations with the hippest websites with the most awesome names…. And what’s the difference in outcome? Not much.
What do you do? If you are like me, indeed, like most people, what you do is default to what you know. You do AGAIN, what you have always done BEFORE. My Executive Pastor, Steve Yamaguchi, likes to tell about how his spiritual director once took a flying lesson in a flight simulator. When he asked the instructor why they use flight simulators so much the answer was, “In the moment of crisis, you will not rise to the occasion, you will default to your training.”
And that is our problem really. We Presbyterians are so well-trained. We have lots of education and experience and had generations of success. Indeed, most of our congregations are mostly filled with people who were deeply blessed by what ONCE worked. And so, we default back to those things. For most of us in ministry, our defaults, that once worked so well, are simple.
We talk longer (and louder!). We try harder. We preach, program, or give a personal touch.
But more and more these things are not working. We are getting tuned out, people are no longer showing up, and frankly everyone just expects a “personal touch” in a world where Nordstrom-service is now the standard. For many of us, this is so discouraging. We preachers are such good talkers. In fact, as one of my friends, Morgan Murray, the pastor and head of staff at Walnut Creek (CA) Presbyterian likes to say, “We Presbyterians are so good at talking about problems that after awhile we think that we have actually done something.”
And when we roll up our sleeves and dedicate ourselves to doing something, we—yup—go back to what we know. We hope and pray that THIS time it will work. THIS time we’ll put in enough effort, or preach with enough passion, or give it enough of our personal attention that THIS time it will be different, we say (or even pray!).
And then…usually…it doesn’t.
Okay, when talking or trying doesn’t work what next? Mostly, we turn to “tricks” and “tweaks.” We use PowerPoint. Or Twitter. We add an electric guitar or an accordion. Or, if we have the money, we buy new stuff.
A few years back, San Clemente Presbyterian was visited by the worship committees of a couple of churches who wanted to observe our growing multi-generational services. One group came to our praise band-led worship and I remember it being a particularly moving service. Our vocal team consisted of our middle-aged choir director and a college woman, joyfully demonstrating the true passion they have for multi-generational worship. The Junior High students kept standing up and singing their hearts out, the rest of us clapped along enthusiastically with the relatively limited amount of rhythm we have. It was a wonderful service where we could sense God’s presence and were so deeply aware of the great joy that comes when we all together give ourselves to God.
As soon as the service was over, some members of the visiting church’s worship committee came up to me to talk. They told me they were in the middle of “worship wars” and were losing their youth at the same time. They asked if their pastor could ask me some questions about how we got to this place in our worship. I said, “Sure. I don’t know what I’ll tell him but ask away.” When the pastor walked up to me he had only one question: “So, what did you pay for those screens?”
I didn’t cuss. But I wanted to. The pastor had sat through the whole service and had completely missed the point. And he thought that his worship issue in his church could be solved with screens? He really thought that his church, locked in conflict and hemorrhaging members was going to get better if he used a projector? It’s probably not surprising to know that that pastor has since moved on and that church is still struggling.
Congregational systems guru, Ed Friedman wrote, “When any…system is imaginatively gridlocked, it cannot get free simply through more thinking about the problem. Conceptually stuck systems cannot be unstuck simply by trying harder.”
Friedman provides us a way of understanding the challenge in front of us. We are “imaginatively gridlocked.” We can’t “see” our way to a new way of being, a new response. So what do we need to do?
First of all, we need to say the magic words, “I don’t know.” Literally: “I don’t know what to do and maybe, just maybe, NO ONE knows really what to do.” We need to clearly SEE that what we know to do doesn’t work. We need to have the clear eyed humility to take an honest assessment and recognize that this challenge is really beyond our talking, trying or bag of tricks.
The problem(s) we are facing are very likely what Ronald Heifetz calls an “adaptive challenge.” Adaptive challenges are those that are more systemic in nature. They are part of the very context and culture of the congregation. They are usually those that are a result of the ongoing competing values within the organization itself. Adaptive challenges are never solved through a quick fix. (Believe me, if talking, trying, or tricks would have worked, they would have been solved already.) They are only going to be solved through long, patient, calm, deep insight of the context, the values and the systemic issues at play in the system.
In other words, before we can “solve” any problem, we need to learn to see the possibilities within our imagination. And to see those possibilities we need to learn to see ourselves, and our system (and frankly, pastors, how we contribute even unwittingly to the status quo!) as it really is.
Once we acknowledge that, we can then start looking at the problem differently. We can start imagining different possibilities. Next time you hit a big old problem, instead of focusing on solving, try instead to focus on really seeing.
Looking Ahead, Looking to God: PFR Proposes a Non-Geographic Synod
Written by PFR
Wednesday, 21 October 2009 15:23
In June 2008 a simple majority of the 218th General Assembly proposed the removal of G-6.0106b (biblical standards of fidelity and chastity) to the presbyteries, requiring, for the fourth time in a dozen years, the time and energy of people across the PC(USA) be expended on debating the clear teaching of Scripture. When, in one vote, the same Assembly removed three decades of Authoritative Interpretation, Presbyterians for Renewal was compelled to declare the time had come to find a new way to relate to one another within the PC(USA).
We continue to contest for the historic and global witness of the Church to remain the faith and practice of our denomination. But, biblical and missional faithfulness compels us to direct energy away from answering the self-serving demands of a minority within our own denomination to joyfully proclaiming Jesus Christ in the world. Passion and energy that has been diverted to an interminable internal struggle must be released into active participation in God's mission.
To this end, Presbyterians for Renewal launched an ambitious campaign to converse with Presbyterians across the denomination. In the course of five months, we held over 40 regional gatherings, listening and responding to over 3000 people. Simultaneously, we formed a resource team to prayerfully consider new ways of relating within our denomination; ways that would allow both continued communal ties within the PC(USA), and uncompromised obedience to Jesus Christ. For over a year this team reviewed previous polity proposals and considered new ones.
As a result of these conversations and deliberations, we now offer a bold proposal: the creation of a new, non-geographic synod that could minister both through and to the PC(USA).
The Great Ends: Mission Statement for Every Presbyterian
Written by Jim Singleton and Quinn Fox
Sunday, 24 January 2010 20:58
To download this article as a PDF file, click here.
Mission statements; everyone seems to have them. Corporations, small businesses and even individuals are encouraged to reflect upon their core values and create an essential, focused expression of who or what they are (or hope to be). Increasingly congregations are adopting mission statements as well. According to a popular business website, a mission statement should be “a clear and succinct representation of the enterprise’s purpose for existence… incorporating socially meaningful and measurable criteria…. The intent of the Mission Statement should be the first consideration… (in) evaluating a strategic decision. The statement can range from a very simple to a very complex set of ideas.”[1]
Does your congregation have a mission statement? (This is a trick question.) Putting one together can be a profitable and helpful exercise for a congregation seeking to assess the unique work to which God has called them in a particular time and place. It has become normative for healthy congregations to have an established set of goals to guide them in a purposeful direction, and to provide a means to evaluate their effectiveness.
An older word that means the same thing as purpose or goal is “end.” The meaning is best understood in terms of the Greek word, telos. Rich in meaning, telos connotes a combination of our words: goal, meaning, and purpose. So it is not just the final goal, the end result or the outcome that is important; the very reason or purpose for being is also crucial. It is in the same sense that the well-known first question of The Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Confession of Faith is phrased: “What is the chief end of humanity?” Answer: “To glorify God and enjoy God forever.” Understood in this way, glorifying and enjoying God is not just something we are to look forward to when we have reached the end of our earthly pilgrimage; it is what motivates us during every waking moment of our lives.
I
So what is the mission or the end for a local congregation? Nearly 100 years ago the United Presbyterian Church of North America (UPNA), in the midst of revising its constitution, settled on six “great ends” of the church to focus their mission for a new century.[2] This now-classic statement, “The Great Ends of the Church,” originally adopted by the UPNA in 1910, was incorporated into our present Constitution (G-1.0200) in 1983 when the United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA – which had included the UPNA in a 1958 merger) and the Presbyterian Church in the United States (PCUS) united to form the Presbyterian Church (USA):
The six “Great Ends” form a timely and comprehensive focus for congregations within the PC(USA). It is interesting to compare these six with a more popular list that was formed just over a decade ago by Rick Warren, pastor of the Saddleback Community Church. He urged congregations to be “purpose-driven” by following a balance of five biblical purposes, given by Jesus Christ: (1) worship, (2) fellowship, (3) discipleship, (4) ministry (as service to others), and (5) evangelism.[3] Anything approaching a thorough evaluation of Warren’s Purpose-Driven ministry and its relationship to the Great Ends of the Church is not possible at present. Nonetheless, a simple comparison of Warren’s five purposes with the six Great Ends of the Church yields significant similarities. Furthermore, in an open letter from the moderator and stated clerk of the 209th General Assembly, language summarizing the Great Ends bears an even more pronounced similarity to Warren’s Purpose-Driven language.[4] Take a fresh look at our six Great Ends. Compare the following [moderator/stated clerk’s language in brackets], (Warren’s language in parentheses):
Moreover, when the two purpose statements are compared, the much older Presbyterian statement would appear to be more comprehensive.[7] In the Great Ends of the Church we have the purpose statements and evaluative criteria—the marching orders—for individual congregations. When a congregation needs to craft their focus, we need look no farther than the Great Ends of the Church. When there is question about a congregation’s faithfulness to our call, the Great Ends are the measurement standards. So, in answer to our “trick question” above, The Great Ends of the Church, even if they are not known or acknowledged, are in fact the vision or mission statement for every PC(USA) congregation.[8] And, as understood in the context of local congregations, we might see that every Presbyterian has, in the Great Ends, a blueprint for his or her own “purpose-driven life.”[9] Insofar as a congregation manifests the characteristics described in the Great Ends, they are being faithful to their purpose as a church of Jesus Christ. To the extent to which we fail to identify and order our corporate life after these ends, to some degree we forfeit the description of church, having become some other kind of human organization, a club with purposes it has established on its own.
II
Well, one might say, Rick Warren has written two very successful books on the purpose-driven church and life. His work is awash in Bible verses, personal anecdotes, and illustrations. What then precisely is the “back story” on The Great Ends of The Church? Where did they come from? When were they written? Who was their author? What is their biblical warrant? These are very good questions and the answers are, at first blush, less than satisfying.
Very little is known about the precise origin of the now-familiar language of The Great Ends of the Church. In 1997 the 209th General Assembly of the PC(USA) called for a two year emphasis on the Great Ends of the Church in order to “pull together around this inclusive vision for the life and mission of the church.”[10] The emphasis was an attempt to rediscover “common ground” in the wake of division over sexuality.[11] In light of the emphasis, George T. Adams, Jack B. Rogers, and Robert E. Blade undertook inquiries to uncover the historical roots of this potential point of unity.[12] They didn’t find very much. In brief, “no direct information regarding the legislative history of the Great Ends of the Church” was discovered.[13]
When the UPNA was formed in 1858, the language of “great ends” was apparently already in common currency. A simpler version than our six statements appears in the Government of the United Presbyterian Church of North America in 1865: “The great ends of the Church are the preservation of the truth and ordinances of true religion, for the glory of God and salvation of souls.”[14] Moreover, an earlier, more rudimentary instance of the phrase occurred as early as 1782, and was preserved in a document of one of the UPNA’s predecessor denominations. “The end of Church-fellowship is to exhibit a system of sound principles, to maintain the ordinances of Gospel worship in their purity, to promote holiness, and to prepare the saints for heaven.”[15]
William Keesecker has made a quite plausible case for tracing the rudimentary beginnings to The Westminster Standards.[16] Both predecessor denominations of the UPNA had a firm commitment to the Westminster Confession and Catechisms.[17] Chapter XXV.4 would appear to contain the seeds of what became the Great Ends: “visible… particular churches… are more or less pure, according as the doctrine of the gospel is taught and embraced, ordinances administered, and public worship performed more or less purely in them.” These essential commitments to ministry from Westminster reflected since the 18th century in the government and discipline of the Associate and Associate Reformed Presbyterian Churches were part and parcel of the UPNA from its inception.
When the General Assembly of the UPNA determined to revise The Book of Government and Directory for Worship in 1902 (a process finally ratified by the presbyteries and the General Assembly in 1910) The Great Ends of the Church were included in Part I with such insignificant discussion or debate that no record was kept in the minutes or (apparently) any other account of the proceedings. In other words, having been thoroughly shaped theologically by Westminster, when the time came to write its “preliminary principles” The Great Ends of the Church had become second nature to an entire denomination![18]
Although arguments from silence can be slippery justifications, in the case of The Great Ends the paucity of information—that there is no discernible history regarding the origin or history of language of the Great Ends of the Church—can be seen as a welcome set of circumstances.[19] Apparently there was no controversy; there was nary a comment recorded in the General Assembly Minutes. There was nothing at all remarkable about the Great Ends of the Church 100 years ago. And so they were easily adopted by a denomination thoroughly committed to this vision of being the Church.
Conclusion
Most contemporary Presbyterians would be hard pressed to name even one of the Great Ends. Because they appear in the Book of Order, and perhaps even more given that they were elevated by a recent General Assembly as a diversion from the squabble over sexuality and the “ordination standards” debate, conservatives and evangelicals might even be inclined to view the Great Ends with at least a modicum of suspicion. After all, what do they really mean; where do they come from? It turns out this great vision of our purposes—our mission statement—comes from deep within the heritage of our forbears, forged in the Reformed confessional tradition. Alas, at some point during the last century, the origin of this statement (and more importantly, the theological and missional significance of The Great Ends) slipped from being a second-nature summary of core values rooted in the Westminster Standards, falling out of our corporate memory.
How does such a thing happen? Sadly, it happens all the time. God’s people are characterized throughout Scripture by their propensity to forget. According to Psalm 106 Israel forgot God’s very act of deliverance from Egyptian bondage: they forgot God’s salvation. In II Kings 22 we read how the High Priest Hilkiah rediscovered the Book of the Law in the Temple; Israel had forgotten, of all things, the Bible. So the lack of historical record concerning the origin of the Great Ends ought to give us pause. And like Josiah and Israel, we would do well to repent and return to this century-old vision for a purpose-driven church.
May The Great Ends of the Church once again become our mission statement for a faithful church in the 21st century!
Quinn Fox is Associate for Theology in the Office of Theology & Worship of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Jim Singleton is Pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, Colorado Springs, CO.
Notes:
1) www.businessplans.org/Mission.html
2) The UPNA was formed in 1858 from theologically (and politically) conservative, Calvinistic, Scots-Irish roots through the union of the northern branch of the Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church with the Associate Presbyterian Church. 100 years later (1958) the UPNA merged with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America to form The United Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (UPCUSA). The Great Ends of the Church became part of the UPCUSA’s new constitution at this time.
3) The Purpose-Driven Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995). This was, of course, followed by his best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life (Grand Rapids, Zondervan, 2003), which is organized accordingly into five parts.
4) Patricia Brown and Clifton Kirkpatrick, “Open Letter to Presbyterians from the Moderator and Stated Clerk of the Assembly” (June, 1997).
5) Warren’s well-known commitment to social concerns such as global poverty, Rwanda, global warming, HIV-Aids and Katrina relief has significantly broadened the perception of his understanding of ministry in profound ways (to include the very concerns Presbyterians would include in the fifth Great End) in the years following the publication of The Purpose-Driven Church.
6) Darrell Guder, Exhibition of the Kingdom of Heaven to the World (Louisville: Witherspoon Press, 2007), rightly points out that this final Great End is itself the “end” or telos of the preceding five. In the language of Rick Warren, this last of the Great Ends might translate as “being purpose-driven.” Guder’s monograph is the final in a series of six devoted to “The Great Ends of the Church,” all of which are available through Presbyterian Marketplace (PDS) (www.pcusa.org/marketplace/index.jsp).
7) It is not our intent by making this comparison to portray Rick Warren in a negatively critical (or, for that matter, a particularly positive) light. However, given the current impact and significant popularity of Warren’s commitments, we do want to highlight the similarities, not to mention the historical precedence, of our Presbyterian heritage. The unprecedented contemporary popularity of Rick Warren’s Purpose-Driven approach to ministry can only underscore the fact that nearly a century earlier Presbyterians were saying some very similar kinds of things.
9) Catherine Gunsalus Gonzalez, Proclamation of the Gospel for the Salvation of Humankind (Louisville: Witherspoon Press, 2003), p.3, points out that the Great Ends are not to be understood as something an individual Christian is to strive for in isolation. By their very nature the Great Ends are to be attained in the context of Christian community.
10) Brown and Kirkpatrick, “Open Letter to Presbyterians from the Moderator and Stated Clerk…” (June, 1997).
11) Jerry L. Van Marter, “Summary of Issues at the 209th General Assembly,” General Assembly News, [Presbyterian News Service, June 14-21, 1997 (www.pcusa.org/pcnews/oldnews/1997/ga97024.htm)]
12) George T. Adams, “Let the Great Ends Guide Us,” The Presbyterian Outlook, May 19, 1997, p. 7; Jack B. Rogers and Robert E. Blade, “The Great Ends of the Church: Two Perspectives,” Journal of Presbyterian History 76:3 (Fall 1998), pp. 181-186 (hereafter cited as “Two Perspectives”).
13) Adams, “Let the Great Ends Guide Us,” p. 7.
14) William F. Keesecker, former moderator of the General Assembly, as recorded in “The Historical Background of the Great Ends of the Church,” Style Guide to the Great Ends of the Church (unpublished papers, Louisville: OGA Library), cited by Rogers, “Two Perspectives,” p183.
15) Reformation Principles Exhibited, Part II: Being the Declaration and Testimony of the Reformed Presbyterian Church in America (New York: Hopkins and Seymour, 1806), p. 73, cited by Rogers, “Two Perspectives,” p. 183.
16) The Westminster Confession of Faith and the Shorter and Larger Catechisms are found in The Book of Confessions.
17) “Historical Background of the Great Ends of the Church,” cited by Rogers, “Two Perspectives,” p. 183.
18) This is implied in a 1937 UPNA pamphlet, which began with words in reference to the Great Ends: “Little can be said on this subject that has not been said in substance a thousand times” (Adams, “Let the Great Ends Guide Us,” p. 7 and Rogers, “Two Perspectives,” p. 183).
19) Robert E. Blade, “Two Perspectives,” p. 184 has a little detail regarding a few of the individuals who appear to have been involved in crafting the statement.
The Place of Covenanted Same-Gender Partnerships in the Christian Community
Written by Presbyterians For Renewal
Thursday, 13 August 2009 00:00
TO: The Special Committee to Study Issues of Civil Union and Christian Marriage RE: The Place of Covenanted Same-Gender Partnerships in the Christian Community
Congregational Transformation: That’s What We’re Talking About!
January 22, 2010
by John Haberlin —one of the many people in PFR who are thinking and praying about God’s mission and the PC(USA)
Words, like actions or symbols, are only useful if there is mutual understanding of their meaning and of the desired response. If you say “You’re hot!” to an octogenarian, they may accept your diagnosis and take a Tylenol to help break the fever. Say the same thing to a twenty-something and you’ll get a very different reaction!
This kind of verbal confusion takes place all the time across cultures and generations. When miscommunication becomes institutionalized, some people excel at it. As an example, have you ever experienced “psychobabble” (esoteric language used to give an impression of plausibility through mystification)? We church geeks who like to toss around words like “missional” and “transformational” should probably have our own linguistic designation as practitioners of “theo-babble” or maybe better “renewal-babble” since the words we ply as our stock in trade often mean little or nothing to the people we’re trying to influence or persuade.
”Transformation,” like so many over-popularized words buzzing around the contemporary church, can easily fall victim to this kind of institutional hyper-babble. Hundreds of individual congregations would claim they are currently engaging in some form of meaningful “transformation” whether they’re moving the men’s Bible study an hour later on Saturday morning, or starting a satellite campus. Any word that can mean such different things to so many different people has temporarily lost its ability to communicate clearly to anyone.
What are the options? We can continue to use the word, acting like everyone understands what we mean and ignoring the consequences; we can dump the word and start using a new word (which itself will take on multiple meaningless meanings soon enough); or we can understand that the word itself is still perfectly good, usable, and worthy of our efforts to reinsert a skeleton in what has become a shapeless lump of linguistic flesh. When it comes to the term “transformation,”We're choosing the third option.
So here we go. You may take issue with me on the way I’m about to “transform” and clarify the meaning of this vital word. Great! That is a necessary part of this process!
Prior to any discussion of congregational transformation, there are some ground rules (presuppositions) we must be clear about and be in agreement on. The sixteenth-century Reformation is a great heritage we Presbyterians have in our quiver (hey, Cupid uses arrows too!). Let me suggest how a return to the foundations of the Reformation can shape our concept of congregational transformation in 2010.
The most important Reformation teaching to remember in our turbulent age is that it is the sovereign God who brings about transformation. In the biblical picture of the Apocalypse, Christ is standing at the door (of the churches) waiting for those within to open the door and let Him in. Transformation is something God deeply desires among the people who claim a relationship with Him. The Church must see itself, not as the transformer, but as those being transformed. Do we believe the breath of the Holy Spirit is the breath of transformation?
The Reformation redefined confession with a dual function that should humble each of us: 1) confession of faith and 2) confession of sin. Our confession of faith is not a pious packaging of God as though we were the theological truth mongers, possessors of all insights about God, but ascent to a system of beliefs and a world view that calls us to repentance (meta-noeo = to change one's mind) and humility, an honest confession of our own brokenness and sinfulness. We become one of those being transformed and are eager to invite others to join us in letting God change us to become more like Christ.
”Being spiritual” is a valued quality of contemporary life. We in the Reformed Tradition possess an urgent message in a culture like ours: “We are Reformed and ever being reformed according to the Word of God.” The Reformation was unabashedly committed to Scripture as the vehicle God chooses to reveal His heart and desires to love and heal a broken humanity including a broken Church.
The teaching role within the Church is historically held in high esteem in our Reformed Tradition, not as the sterile method of indoctrination far too many people have experienced, but as dynamic discovery of both the implication and application of Scripture in its original context and a determination of how that same Scripture shapes (i.e. transforms) our thoughts and actions. Because of the sweeping changes of the Reformation, homilies passed down from the hierarchy of the Church were no longer acceptable. Sermons became studied expositions of “all that Christ had commanded.” You can easily find post-modern people clamoring for “spiritual nourishment” and crying out “I’m not being fed!” We are to preach the whole “counsel of God” centering around the person, passion, and promise of our living Lord Jesus Christ, because…
the content of our teaching is always and only to be The Gospel, not “a” gospel. Within the Church universal and our own denominational family, there are many thoughtless re-creations of “a” gospel based on emotion, experience, or enchantment, not professing the birth, ministry, death and resurrection of God’s Messiah, but rather some advocated segment of culture. Culture-driven theology is vastly different from a theology (God-view) that challenges every aspect of culture, including the culture of the Church itself; not just confronting “their culture” but “all of our cultures” with radical reorientation to the purpose and mission of God.
For now, a final foundational presupposition inherent in our Reformed Tradition: God calls all people into ministry to enact the Kingdom of God in the world in community. Our mouths can so glibly declare the “parity of the clergy and laity.” Those who are not professional church-workers, however, have been subverted into an inert aggregation of passive observers whose function is to help or critique the pastor and other named leaders. This reality challenges the vogue desire to “identify spiritual gifts,” unmasking it as the American propensity to find jobs people seem to be fit for, a type of spiritual personality profile or vocational aptitude test. Yet Jesus called the most surprising people to do unbelievable things. God still does. “I’m not qualified” is a verbalized symptom of a well-nurtured spiritual sickness.
There is no question that there is a crisis in the contemporary American Church that is uncommonly well articulated within the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.). There is a perceived lack of leadership among those who claim faith in Christ. PFR’s mission is to “mobilize leaders… biblically faithful and missionally minded in their service to Jesus Christ.” But leaders are defined as those who have followers.
The point of focused congregational transformation is not to identify “leaders,” but to nurture those who are willing, eager, and committed to following The Leader. Our congregational covenant at every ordination requires us to affirm that we, “…agree to encourage, respect the decisions of, and follow…” where our leaders guide us, as we see them “…serving Jesus Christ who alone is head of the Church.” (Book of Order)
So how does all of this tie in with our understanding of congregational “transformation”? It is God who transforms and when that transformation happens it is humbling, often shattering. Scripture becomes the passionate study and the interactive learning both in and of the community. The Living Word explodesout of the Written Word, people see things in new ways and change the direction of their lives (con-vert = with turning). The schematic of the world is morphed into the will of God (Romans 12:1-2) – a new creation appears, “Your kingdom come…on earth as it is in heaven!” Transformation happens.
So what does PFR expect to see when transformation happens? We expect to see a congregation transformed from a community of comfort and convenience into a community of people engaged in ministry, willing to respond to God’s call to be His people in His world, no matter what it costs.
Throughout 2010, we are going to be exploring this topic of transformation in monthly Eighth Day articles, looking at both the opportunities and common misconceptions about congregational transformation—or what many people still call “renewal.” Here is just a taste of what is coming:
FEBRUARY – “God the Transformer” It is God who transforms, but people can develop synthetic experiences!
MARCH – “What’s Goin’ On Around Here?” The outcome of transformation is very unpredictable. When people or even a congregation is “transformed,” they will not look or act in a predictable way!
APRIL – “Nothing Will Ever Be the Same” Transformation, like the Resurrection, opens us to the future. Transformed will never take us back to the “good-ol’-days” or just “turn us on” with frequent moments of inspiration and good feelings.
MAY – “Transformation by The Book” Scripture defines transformation, and transformation is clear about the content of the gospel. There is no other “great book” about 21st century transformation, and no getting around the message of God’s Kingdom..
JUNE – “Heart and Mind” Transformation depends on minds and hearts being open to God’s active leading. Neither emotion nor busyness are indicators of a transformed congregation.
JULY – “Institutions? Maybe” Transformation alters people, individuals and the community gathered. An experience of transformation will not necessarily enhance an institution.
AUGUST – “Go Into All the World!” Transformation sends people into the community. The outcome may or may not be evidenced within the walls of the church.
SEPTEMBER – “Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Schemes” Transformation challenges both society’s schematic design and the congregation’s. Every good intention, immerging trend, issue and socio-political agenda is exposed under God’s microscope.
OCTOBER – “One God, Many Ministries” Transformation encourages a variety of expressions of ministry. A transformed congregation may experience little conformity in ministry style and compatible activity.
NOVEMBER – “Why Art Thou Disquieted, O My Soul?” Transformation is radical and discomforting. Transformation does not always help people “like” the “church”.
DECEMBER – “I need to know more about Jesus…” Transformation, like the Incarnation, is about people meeting and living with the living Christ. It is about being the Church – the continuing body of Christ on earth. Transformation is not about more people coming to church and bringing in larger offerings.
Is this just so much “Transform-babble”? Not if we can help it! Watch Eighth Day each month for future articles designed to focus this discussion even further, studying Scripture and exposing common misconceptions about “Transformation.” We’d like to have you be part of this conversation. Click on the comments feature below and join in!
Okay, case study time… Think about this one with me: 
Mission statements; everyone seems to have them. Corporations, small businesses and even individuals are encouraged to reflect upon their core values and create an essential, focused expression of who or what they are (or hope to be). Increasingly congregations are adopting mission statements as well. According to a popular business website, a mission statement should be “a clear and succinct representation of the enterprise’s purpose for existence… incorporating socially meaningful and measurable criteria…. The intent of the Mission Statement should be the first consideration… (in) evaluating a strategic decision. The statement can range from a very simple to a very complex set of ideas.”
Words, like actions or symbols, are only useful if there is mutual understanding of their meaning and of the desired response. If you say “You’re hot!” to an octogenarian, they may accept your diagnosis and take a Tylenol to help break the fever. Say the same thing to a twenty-something and you’ll get a very different reaction!