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The God we serve makes dry bones live again. Breathing new vitality into his people is what God loves to do. Because of this, I continue to be motivated by the idea of a “turnaround” denomination. While many concerns with the denomination draw a great deal of attention, I see more signs of hope than ever in my 30 years of ministry. In my work with presbyteries and observing ministries across the country, I am encouraged to see those of a variety of theological perspectives and approaches to ministry eager for a new fruitfulness in congregational transformation and missional endeavor.

I see pastors, executive presbyters, and synod executives asking astute questions about what generates such fruitfulness. I see an exciting new staff forming in Louisville with a clear passion to see our denomination have a fresh vitality among us and a major new impact on the world around us.

Our denomination is doing many things that matter and everywhere we hear the people in our church are ready for a new and transformational chapter in the life of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.).

I do not accept the notion that the mainline has no future — there are too many signs of hope!

Throughout my ministry I have served with a sense of a split “call” with one focus on serving a local congregation and the other encouraging the vitality of the wider church through the Vital Churches Institute (VCI), with my primary call as an installed pastor. Five years ago we realized that the most effective way to encourage congregations was to work with presbyteries in a multi-year sequence known as the Acts 16:5 Initiative that typically involves a quarter to a third of the congregations of a presbytery. So many doors opened with presbyteries since then that we knew that it was time to shift the majority of my time into specialized ministry with VCI. Clearly our Lord is doing a new thing. The training and coaching that encourages congregational leaders in their ministries of
missional transformation is exciting work.

Reach - Grow - Send

Acts 16:5 expresses a clear vision, “So the churches were strengthened in the faith and increased in numbers daily.” We see that vision fulfilled in the Acts story by means of a basic ministry cycle: Reach-Grow-Send. They reached into their communities with the good news, compassion, and justice of Jesus, they grew with those they reached as followers of Jesus, and they sent one another to serve Jesus in the home and in the marketplace. Such a ministry cycle is deeply doxological, communal, and missional as it connects people to our Lord, to one another, and to the work of service.

Those of us engaged in the leadership of the church have typically served with a missional motivation, the Missio Dei, the mission of God. Words such as these have always motivated us:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.” — Luke 4:18-19

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations.” — Matthew 28:19a

However, our congregations have tended to be focused more on the doxological, the worship of God, and the communal, the vitality of the fellowship, than on the missional.

Missional does not simply mean a program or two aimed at the community or a Missions Committee that gives money away. It is first of all a lifestyle for all of God’s people, and it is a way of shaping every ministry in the congregation to practice Reach-Grow-Send.

Change = Risk

A great challenge leaders face in moving toward a missional approach is the hard work that is required. Our pastors and executive presbyters are under tremendous pressure to cope with “the pressure of present demand” which by and large is not connected to missional thinking. Handling those demands appropriately while also making shifts in the practice of pastoral leadership is no easy task.

A second challenge is that a new missional approach takes courage. Not everyone is thrilled with new vision. There is risk and it takes a brave pastor and leadership team to move forward.

Third, we have to give people a missional vision. To ask typical church program leaders in what specific ways do their ministries actually engage those in the community with the good news, compassion, and justice of Jesus and draw them into the fellowship of the church is to receive a blank stare.

A number of discoveries and surprises have surfaced in this work. Pastors who want to lead their congregations into new forms of ministry while finding ways to affirm those who are long time participants in the life of the church walk a high wire. Books such as Deep Change by Robert Quinn are clear about the personal price a leader faces who would bring transformation to his or her own leadership patterns and to the life of the organization being led.

We have discovered that when a presbytery legitimizes transformational and missional change to its congregations, it affirms and backs its pastors and leaders who have the courage to lead in a new direction. This happens when a presbytery engages in a process of transformation such as the Acts 16:5 Initiative and as the executive presbyter and presbytery council are vocal in their encouragement of congregational leadership that moves toward a new future.

Obstacles, to missional change

One of the biggest surprises I have had is the discovery of how little formal planning happens today. I have asked people in several hundred congregations if their congregation has minimally an annual planning process in which every ministry makes plans around a few goals for the coming year. Less than two percent say “yes!” This means in our crazy busy culture that congregations are like sailing ships with no rudder, simply driven by the wind of activity rather than the direction of the helm. Planning, per se, will not turn the church around. A vision without a plan is only a wish.

There are of course many other challenges to effective missional transformation of both presbyteries and congregations as they are complex family systems. Many in leadership are deeply rooted in their current practices and are not all that interested in the personal transformation that organizational transformation will require.

No simple checklist of strategies or programs will bring about genuine changes in every setting. One of our greatest challenges in missional transformation is to “bless and add,” to show honor and dignity to the traditional elements of our ministries that have served people for a long time and for which people have an ongoing appreciation while at the same time moving forward with new approaches and practices.

I have been pleasantly surprised that, in spite of disagreements, we hunger for transformation within the church and a new level of missional endeavor. Genuine movements of missional transformation require leaders who can draw teams around them, who have the imagination to lead in new ways while having the pastoral grace to be present to those who are nervous and who have the courage to bear with those who are not supportive. God is raising up a great many such leaders.

It’s an exciting time to be in ministry. And an exciting time to be a Presbyterian.

E. Stanley Ott is president of the Vital Churches Institute, specializing in congregational transformation with presbyteries and Teaching Pastor of the Vienna Presbyterian Church.

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