HOW WE DEVELOPED OUR VALUES AND VISION
Pastor Lou Forney
Many organizations these days are talking about Vision or Mission. Some churches are working toward being Purpose Driven. What does that mean for the average church? Why is it even important to declare our values and vision? I believe that every church already has values and every church already has vision. But there is a problem. Most churches have not gone through the process of determining their collective values or vision. What that means is that one person may think caring for children is the main mission of the church and another may think that starting new missions in China is the key. Churches face the same problem when it comes to values. A treasurer may think the most important value is to preserve capital so they have a large positive surplus of cash at the end of the year. Someone else may think that every penny given to the church ought to be given away by year end so the church operates on faith more so than on cash reserves.
The net result is constant struggle, conflict, debate, and even battle as each side tries to move toward their sense of the purpose of the church (even as the various ‘visions’ remain at cross-purposes with each other). The reasons for this are manifold. Some people don’t see the problem. Some are afraid of the difficult work or don’t know where to get started. Many good Christians seem to assume that everyone who joins a church is there for the same reason and consequently share the same values. That is not true. The Christian faith certainly has some values that we might think are widely shared. But the way in which we live those things out in real life can be quite different. For instance, if a church is tight on money and has more expenses than income - which bills get paid first? Some churches would always pay foreign & domestic missions first, others would pay a required apportionment to their denomination, some would always pay the mortgage, some would hold that salaries are most important, while some would argue that we should care for the poor before all others. Depending on the values of the organization, radically different conclusions might be drawn.
Another example may be seen in three churches that see their church buildings very differently. One church does not allow "outside" groups to use their building for any purpose. It is the house of the Lord, an asset which must be protected from soil and damage. One church allows some outside groups to use their building, depending on the ‘religious’ purpose of the meeting. Another church does not allow its own church members to use the church building; but sees it as an evangelism tool which should be used to house as many non-church meetings and get-togethers as possible. The church choir must practice at the local high school and the local community chorale uses the choir practice room at the church. The values are different.
Try to imagine the impact on church decision making. If a congregation had a three person board making a decision on non-member building use - with varying values - they could come to loggerheads as they try to decide what to do. One might give "outsiders" an advantage in hope of attracting someone into the building so they can possibly gain an opportunity to share the love of Christ. While another might see allowing any non-member into the church for any purpose would be poor stewardship of the gifts that God has entrusted to us. Congregations that do not spell out their collective values and the vision God has for their congregation are inevitably bound for conflict as each decision maker tries to do what he or she thinks is right.
Every congregation should take the time to collectively determine their values and vision
Let’s clarify some terms for the purposes of this paper:
Values - pictures of our life together that define who we are & what we think is important (our past)
Vision - where the church is going, why we’re here, what we do to make our dream a reality (our future)
(For the purposes of this document we are not going to distinguish between vision, mission, and purpose; while it can be helpful is some ways to talk about them distinctly and provide careful definitions, we find that many experts in the field use the terms in different ways, and many readers end up confused. For our purposes, we’ll talk about them as the same thing)
This is a paper that describes one congregation’s journey to determine their values and vision. Please understand we are not setting ourselves up as experts. We learned what we have learned the hard way. We had plenty of conflict and many values that were operating at cross purposes. Let me begin by sharing a bit of our history. We were a denominational church plant, a new start with our first core beginning to gather together for worship in 1989. We began as a fairly traditional Lutheran congregation. Our worship services and Sunday School were traditional Lutheran stuff - by the book. Our governing structure from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America Model Constitution had a Church Council and a group of 9 programmatic committees. If a committee came up with a new idea - they were supposed to have the committee make a proposal and bring it to the Council. The Council would haggle it out - and decide what to do. For lack of resources, or fear of making a mistake, or risking doing something wrong - we usually stopped innovative or new ideas. Often times conflicting values or vision were at the core of our problems, but we were unable to see that at the time.
The values problem came to the surface as we began to ask questions about worship style in the early years of our church. Our congregation has been focused on outreach and evangelism from the very beginning. As a new congregation, we worked hard to reach out to new people and invite them to become a part of the congregation. It was a strongly held value of the founding pastor and the early leaders. That meant that we designed many of our programs to reach out to new people. We contacted new residents of the community and invited them to worship with us. We tried to conduct our worship services in such a way that first time attenders could easily follow the worship service. We always announce when to stand and sit, we pasted the Lutheran liturgy into the Worship Folder so that people could easily follow the service. Our practices were in response to our values. But as we continued to reach out, we found that our style of worship (no matter how much we worked to interpret it to new comers) was a stumbling block to first time worshipers. In 1993 we made a decision to launch a less liturgical, more contemporary style worship service. It was consistent with the (unwritten) values of the pastor and the core leaders. It seemed to be the right thing to do. We tried to do everything "right". We had two traditional services and left them alone. We took a year to add the third worship service. We used some of the more contemporary worship music at the traditional services, which was well received. Everything seemed go. We regularly communicated with the congregation. Everyone seemed in favor of things. We launched the service.
We were surprised at the number of folks who reacted negatively as the decision was made. Some of them were decision makers who had been involved in the process from the beginning. When the worship discussions and plans became reality - they dug in. A handful of people left the church. Others publicly spoke against the worship service. Statements like "that’s not Lutheran" and "God can not hear the music of a guitar" were made and repeated. What went wrong?
We had a conflict over values and vision. None of the values were written, many were not spoken. Many of the values were in conflict with each other. For some, the vision for worship was holding fast to a form that was traditional to them. For others, the vision for worship was to help people connect to Jesus Christ regardless of the form of worship. My point in this story is not to get into a discussion about worship. It is to point out that when a collective statement of values and vision are not articulated by the organization, conflict is inevitable. Further - no congregation can become an empowering or permission-giving congregation if these are not in place. Decision makers will be reluctant to empower people who are headed in a different direction or hold different things as important. This is the part of ‘permission giving’ that we did not at first understand. We thought that as leaders it would be good to re-tool the organization. Instead of having a command and control structure, we wanted to develop a more team-based, permission-giving structure. As the senior pastor here, I was a self-defined control freak. I would regular ask myself, "How am I supposed to let go of control? What will be in control? Who will keep us from doing bad things?" As the pastor, I often was the one who used my own Vision and Values to evaluate a new ministry. When some new idea came up, I ran it through my internal, unarticulated, values and vision. I would say yes or no (or speak for or against something) based on my own values and vision. Others would do the same.
It took a long time for me personally to understand that the task of leadership was not to maintain vision and values internally and be sure everything was brought to my desk for scrutiny and approval. It was also irresponsible to say, we will let the "people" be in charge. They had widely varying values and visions themselves. The task of leadership is to help the organization articulate its values and vision and then become the keeper and caster of the vision for the organization. The goal is for everyone to know and hold the values and vision and for every decision to be made in light of the congregation’s values and vision. The first step for us was to develop our values and our vision. Let me try to retrace some of the steps we took in doing so.
APPOINT A VISION TEAM
We decided that there were no existing structures that ought to have the task of re-visioning the church. The staff, the Council, and other groups were too invested in the status quo to have the courage to do anything radically different. Although we had representation from various existing groups, we felt it was important to appoint a separate Vision Team to accomplish this task. Some congregations call this a Futures Committee or a Long Range Planning Committee. We wanted to avoid the term committee - and we wanted the sole task to focus on developing a clear collective vision, thus the name: Vision Team. We invited about a dozen people to be a part of the team. In retrospect, I would use a smaller number of folks if I were to repeat the process. Teams of 5-7 people tend to be more effective. We carefully chose people who were well respected influencers, but we also chose people with strong process-thinking skills, who were emotionally mature so they would be able to resist being too invested in their own agendas. We watched gender balance, average membership tenure, and looked for varying backgrounds. We tried to seek out people with skills in strategic planning, business experience, and strong faith.
HOW WE GATHERED INFORMATION
We knew that we needed a lot of information and ideas. We wanted to carefully examine a variety of models. We wanted to hear from many different perspectives. We wanted to look at values and vision and we knew that our traditional ministry structure was probably on the table as well. We sent people to conferences by people like Herb Miller, Tom Bandy, Bill Easum, Carl George, George Barna, Steve Sjogren, and John Maxwell. Many of our "sources" were not Lutheran. We also looked at churches that had what seemed to be particularly effective ministry structures. We studied churches like Ginghamsburg United Methodist Church in Tipp City, OH; the Vineyard Church in Cincinnati, Ohio; Frazer Memorial United Methodist Church in Montgomery, AL; Willow Creek Community Church in South Barrington, IL; Community Lutheran Church in Las Vegas, NV; Prince of Peace Lutheran Church in Burnsville, MN; and Community Church of Joy in Glendale, AZ. We read books like the Power of Vision by George Barna, The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt, Managing the Non-Profit Organization by Peter Drucker, Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren, Developing the Leaders Around You by John Maxwell. There are many other excellent books and conferences and churches. The important thing is not what church you look at, but that you look around. Look at values and vision - look at structures and how ministry in done. We asked each person on the Vision Team to attend one conference, read one book , and thoroughly check out one church. Some of them combined their business trips with a weekend at a church. Some called ahead for an appointment and some just dropped in. Across the board we found congregations incredibly helpful and ready to share their experiences. One stroke of genius that we had was that each person had to do their share of investigation - we then had a Vision Team of "experts" on various models and approaches and we could sift from the wide variety to gather the best ideas for our context. We also tried to use the best information and models from the business world. We have much to learn from business. We also looked at various scriptural principles that applied to congregational values, vision, and structure. Here at King of kings, we decided to develop our Values and a combination Mission & Vision.
We did that by having each person who read a book do a good old fashioned book report. Each person took ten minutes to tell us what the heart of the book was about. Each Vision Team member was welcome to write up to one page that summarized things - some did, but most did not. We found that verbal summaries worked well and kept the time frame compact. The same thing was done with church visits and church conferences - each person had ten minutes to tell us what the church does or what was taught at the conference. One of the advantages of this was that the pastor was not cast in the role of expert who was trying to move the church in a given direction. This was especially important in light of the pastor being a control freak. One of the tools that got more time on the Vision Team agenda was the appendix in Barna’s book, The Power of Vision - where a very helpful Old and New Testament Bible Study was outlined. Each participant took a piece of it. The pastor worked through the whole thing. We came together and were able to watch a set of Values and a clearer Vision get articulated by the group. We decided that our values would not be descriptive - telling people what our values actually were. (We felt that would boil things to a lowest common denominator.) Rather we felt the values should be prescriptive - a picture of where things ought to be or where we felt they should be. For example - not every individual in the church felt that the Bible is the Word of God or that we should live according to biblical principles. But we felt that is where we ought to be - so we declared that to be the value. We knew not everyone was there - but that is where we were headed. Some have said that vision is a picture of God’s preferred future - we wanted our values to be a picture of the preferred future as well - not just a picture of where we are. God is still working to shape us as a community of faith.
The process was bathed deeply in prayer. The overall work of the Vision Team took about a year. They articulated the Values and Vision that are listed below, a process that took about six months working in both small and large group settings. Here is what we ended up with:
VALUES AND MISSION-VISION at KING OF KINGS LUTHERAN CHURCH
Statement of Values
MISSION - what we do: WELCOME PEOPLE IN
HELP THEM GROW IN FAITH
GO OUT TO CARE FOR OTHERS
VISION - what we are becoming: AS WE BECOME PEOPLE WHO PUT CHRIST FIRST
WE’VE GOT OUR VALUES AND VISION - WHAT IS THE NEXT STEP?
Merely possessing a collective set of Values and a common Vision for ministry in a congregation does not solve the problem. While most congregations do not possess common Values or Vision - those that do, often leave them buried in some brochure, annual report, constitution, or set of meeting minutes for the governing board. The real challenge as we have come to understand it is to make the values and vision a part of our culture - to make them a part of the DNA of the congregation. Everyone needs to know them and be able to share them with others. We’ll talk about the steps we have taken, that have helped us build our ministry around our collective Values and Vision.
One of the initial steps that the Vision Team took was to suggest that we rework the governing structure around the Vision. At first we thought about trying to retrofit the new Vision on top of the old Structure. We were originally going to group our existing programming committees around the new Vision. The first draft of the plan looked like this:
Welcome: Worship Committee, Evangelism Committee
Grow: Education Committee, Fellowship Committee, Youth Committee,
Care: Community Ministry Committee
Didn’t know what to do with: Finance Committee, Property Committee, Stewardship Committee
Our concern was that we needed radical surgery - not a band-aid placed on top of a large wound. We didn’t want our Worship Committee to keep on planning worship like they always had - we wanted to do what it took to make our worship service more Welcoming. It wasn’t enough to keep scheduling ushers and assigning lay readers, finding people to pray, and picking songs. We wanted our worship service to be more welcoming. To do that, the planners needed to think outside the box. Most existing committees made it clear as we began to unfold the Values and Vision that they thought everything the Vision Team had done was "nice" but that they were likely going to continue to function in the same way they had always functioned. In fact, when we suggested that the Worship Committee spend some time finding ways for worship to be more welcoming - they told us they would still be quite busy trying to schedule ushers and pick hymns. Real change seemed unlikely in our old structure. We began to look at our structure in new ways.
Someone suggested that we consider a principle from accounting called "zero based-budgeting". Ordinary budgeting is done by looking at what we spent this year, and maybe what we spent last year; and tweaking it to come up with next year’s budget request. Zero based budgeting says - lets start with zero and see what we need to accomplish and what it will cost to do that, and then determining our budget request - without paying much attention to last year. Sometimes, knowing the way we did it last year is a helpful tool and sometimes it is binding straight jacket that forces us to do again what we did last year, even if it didn’t work well. We decided to look at our structure the same way - rather than look at how our nine committees fit in to our new Vision - we decided to look at the new Vision (from a "zero" base) and see what might work in terms of structure.
The old adage that Form Follow Functions made a lot of sense to the group. Once we had articulated the centrality of Welcome-Grow-Care; we all felt strongly that we ought to organize around those same three headings. We now have three Core Ministry Teams, one each to focus on Welcome, Grow and Care. We gave each one of the Core Teams the power to organize themselves in what ever way they saw fit in order to accomplish their "part" of the Vision. Over the last five years, we have transformed and restructured our staff, our small group ministry, our annual budgeting process, our ministry reporting structure, parts of our newsletter, and just about everything else around here so that it followed the Welcome-Grow-Care Vision. We pulled together all of the people working in existing structures and shared the Vision. We also asked them about their frustrations in their work. Here is some of what we heard about how things had been working. See if any of it sounds familiar:
1) We can’t get people to step up and serve or they come and only want to work on one thing
2) We spend too much time talking about things and not enough time actually doing things
3) We are tired of other people sitting back and criticizing our work - like armchair quarterbacks
4) We are tired of other people telling us what we ought to be doing as a committee
5) We are tired of working hard on an idea, only to have the Council or some one else say "no"
We told each of the Core Teams that they could set up a structure that worked for them. We suggested that some of the former "committees" had too much responsibility and we ought to have more, but smaller teams that would oversee a smaller portion of the ministry, and have more control over things in their individual area. Instead of a large Education Committee trying to do everything; we would have a Sunday School Team, a Confirmation Team, an Adult Bible Study Team and so on. The people in charge of Vacation Bible School would come together; plan and execute Vacation Bible School and then go out of existence. The Sunday School Team only had to focus on Sunday School. We found that passionate people stepped up to serve on specific ministry teams all over the church. Many people felt if they could focus on their prime area of interest, serving might be fun.
NEW "RULES" FOR LIFE TOGETHER
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Do your own work. For example: The Sunday Morning Bible Study Team (under the Growing Core Team) was in charge of Sunday Morning Bible Study - they could pretty much do anything they wanted, as long as it agreed with our Values and Vision - it was their job to help people Grow through the Bible Study. This singular focus helped many groups become more effective.C
No one on another team could criticize the Sunday Morning Adult Bible Team. We decided to label this as "cross talk" - where I talk about your ministry or business. We don’t want to hear your thoughts on how we ought to be doing ministry - unless you are ready to commit to the team.C
If you begin a sentence with the words, "I think you ought to ... " or "I think the church should ..." we hear those words as "I’d like to be in charge of ..."C
If you came up with an idea that was aligned with the Values and Vision and it helped you accomplish your part of the Mission - permission was already granted for you to do it. If someone wanted to object (even those in power) - the only basis they could use to object to the new idea was the Values or Vision. Personal opinions were no longer the basis for decisions or leadership.C
If nobody wanted to do something, we just stopped doing it. (The only exception to this was a few core ministries that we felt were essential - such as worship.)C
We lost some ministries that we had been struggling to support because we thought we were supposed to do them. Some things died right away, like the acolytes who assisted at the traditional worship service. Some things took time to die, like our work to support a food closet. No one wanted to donate food and almost no one ever needed food in this fairly affluent suburb. In a year or so - the food closet ministry actually morphed and some folks started collecting food for another church that had a food closet that was heavily used. Some ministries took time to fade and die - like our women’s ministry. No one wanted to lead the group. Normally, I would have worked with the appropriate committee to hunt someone down to take over. Someone met with the Women’s Group and no on wanted to lead it. They wanted someone to find them a leader. We didn’t. The group eventually died. Within a year or so, a new group of women came forward to initiate a new women’s ministry - one that has grown and blossomed every year since. Other ministries that target women regularly grow up alongside the larger, existing ministry.HOW DO WE KEEP THINGS IN LINE?
The first step in being Vision-driven is that the leadership of the congregation needs to live and breathe the vision. As Senior Pastor, I decided to memorize the Values and Vision. They needed to become a part of how I think. We took time the first year after things were developed to teach the Values and Vision. We took time at staff meetings to teach through the Values, spending 20-30 minutes on each of the values. We spent time at each of the Council meetings teaching through the Values. I designed a topical sermon series around the Values - so everyone would know what they were. The second year I preached a series of sermons on the Vision. We found that to be a good sequence - so every year we repackage the Values or the Vision and we present a new series on the Values or the Vision. Six years later, we continue to repeat that familiar pattern.
We decided that existing Ministry Teams that were working within the Values and Vision would be turned loose to keep working. Permission was granted. If your team is in charge of the Blood Drive and you have a new idea about how you want to do the drive this fall - do it. If someone complains - they have to join the team or we can’t hear them. There used to be pressure to keep doing things the way the former leader had done something - so that we wouldn’t offend them - even if we had a better idea. If you are a leader and always want something done your way - you have to stay on the team. If you step down - the ministry now belongs to the new leader. If you don’t develop an apprentice leader to keep something going and you step down, the ministry may die.
As best we could, we said that people were going to be allowed to do what ever they wanted to do to accomplish the Values and Vision. New Ministries began to spring up. In five years, we’ve grown from nine relatively benign committees to 153 Ministry Teams with about 90% of our members actively involved in ministry. Some of them are small. Some of them are seasonal. Some come and go. We keep hearing that younger generations (the baby boomers and baby busters) want to avoid long term commitments. Our new structure is the perfect answer to this. Get together, do your work, and then you can go home. You don’t have to meet if there’s nothing to do. One of the collateral benefits is that people volunteer to serve on short term teams within existing ministries. For example, the Sunday School Teachers don’t have to plan the Sunday School Christmas Program. A different group of people come together in the fall to plan the Christmas Program.. The load for teachers actually gets lighter during the holidays, and other people who have been doing less - can jump in and give their full energy to the special project they have volunteered to help with.
We eventually found that we needed and developed a New Ministry Launch process to help people think things through. A reflection paper was developed for people to think about new ministries. Questions were asked like: What do you want to do? What need are you trying to meet? Who is your target audience? What resources will you need to accomplish your ministry? What is your plan to recruit the team you need to carry out your mission? How does it align with our Values? What part of the Vision will it help us fulfill? Who do you think you ought to report to in the structure? We have someone sit down with a potential new ministry leader and guide them through the process. Ministry is no longer top-down. The People of God who are gifted and called are usually the impetus for launching new ministries. For several years, we had a New Ministry Development Team who worked along side of various new ministry leaders to help them launch their new ministry. This group of entrepreneurs would help new ministries get connected to the structure and maneuver the system. They would help them learn how to reserve building space, write newsletter articles, recruit volunteers, make posters, get bulletin board space, and find funds. At first, we thought that everyone knew how to do this - but we found that many people benefitted from this support. A year ago, this team said that no one was coming to them for help. We learned that as we have become more staff-driven, that most people who want to start new ministries were turning to staff members, not to the New Ministry Development Team. The team was dissolved. At the same time, we learned that there were so many new ministries launching that many people said they did not know what was happening. As we dissolved the New Ministry Development Team we allowed those who were clamoring about the lack of communications form the Communications Development Team.
Accountability is a very important issue and a diversified bottom-up ministry structure can create its share of problems. We developed a comprehensive written reporting structure. Every ministry team is supposed to fill out a written report monthly:
1) What were your action steps last month - what have you done?
2) What resulted from your actions?
3) What are you going to do next month?
4) What barriers do you anticipate? (So the Core Team Leader can help remove the barrier)
Those brief written reports (often 4 sentences) go to Core Ministry Teams & the Leader compiles them for Council to review. Most active teams are pretty good about reporting. Some teams only report seasonally while they are active. Some drag their feet and resist the reporting structure. We leave those details in the hands of the Core Team Leader to work out with the individual Ministry Team Leader. If a Ministry Team is working well, perhaps the team will only report if they have a problem or need help. The Core Team Leaders started as volunteer positions. As the ministry has grow (membership climbs about 20% annually) we added part time staff to lead the Core Teams. One of those positions has now grown to full time and another is going to full time next year.
WHO RUNS THE CHURCH?
Earlier I wrote that we didn’t know what to do with the Finance, Property, and Stewardship Committees, as they had previously existed. It took us a while, but we finally figured out that Ministry and Governance are two different things. What I mean by Governance is the money side, the business side, the human resources side, and the policy side of things. You need to have all that business stuff in the church - but they really are not ministry. They must exist and function in order for ministry to take place - but they serve more as a support for the ministry teams than they are actual ministries of the church - especially as it relates to the Vision of the congregation. Having a nicely mowed lawn is important and well-balanced books are helpful - but those business-related functions do not directly contribute to the Welcome - Grow - Care Vision of the congregation. They are support functions.
We initially gathered all those support functions together and were going to call them a Support Core Team. It then became clear to us that those were necessary for the running of the business of the church. We assigned all of those functions to Support Teams. The leaders of those Support Teams eventually comprised the Council. The Council would be designated to handle the business of the church - and the ministry teams would do ministry. The "job" of the Support Teams was to be the "grease" in the wheels of ministry. If the Ministry Teams need money, Support Teams find them money. If the Ministry Teams need resources, get them resources. The Council exists to empower Ministry Teams and help the various Ministry Teams do their ministry. What was clear was that the Council was not here to say no to new ideas or to re-work the decisions that had been made by Ministry Teams. The Council was not here to serve as gate-keepers of ministry. They were here to empower the various Ministry Teams. We eventually clarified the role of the Council as:
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Council helps to periodically clarify and communicate the Values and VisionC
Council works to be sure that everything we are doing is consistent with our Values and VisionC
Council helps do long range strategic planning, big picture goal setting, etcC
Council may make decisions about things that are beyond the scope of a single Ministry TeamC
Council runs the business of the church, so the Ministry Teams can concentrate on doing MinistryC
Our Council currently invests their time and are organized around:C
Finance Development (existing facilities and planned expansion)C
Facility Development (budgeting, investments, endowment)C
Policy Development (written policies and procedures)C
Leadership Development (human resources, leadership training, nominations)C
Communications Development (new ministry looking at internal communication)C
Strategic Development (staff planning, infrastructure, impact on wider church)HOW DO YOU CAST VISION?
We teach the Values and Vision on a regular basis. First the Vision itself must be simple. We suggest one short sentence. Can a 5 year old remember it? It ought to appear in print everywhere, on newsletters, announcements, banners, name tags, and wall posters. Is it broad enough to allow some flexibility in interpretation and narrow enough to actually mean something. Redundancy is the key to casting vision. Redundancy is the key to casting vision. (Get it?) It is not something that can be printed once and taught once. It has to be something that becomes part of the culture. Boy Scouts always talk about being prepared. Here are King of kings I’ve been accused of mentioning the Vision in my preaching 48 of 52 weeks. If I hadn’t taken vacation, it might have been 52 of 52.
We also try to interpret everything in light of the Vision. When I make an announcement about a new Bible Study, I "couch" the Bible Study announcement in Vision language. For example: God has called us to help you Grow in Faith here at King of kings, so we are launching a new men’s Bible Study on Tuesday nights at 7. We talk about our Values and Vision all the time. Over the last several years we’ve done some checking with new attenders and most people who’ve worshiped here for a month or two seem to have some sense of the Vision (even if they don’t know what its called yet).
Everything is organized around the Vision. Our new Communications Development Team has suggested that we develop a Monthly Tape for Leaders to help our leaders know what is happening in ministry. Not everyone reads the newsletter cover to cover. We recently developed a 20-30 minute audio tape that is circulated to about 125 households. Every household with an identified Ministry Leader receives a tape. It is called Fireside Chat with Pastor and can be listened to on the way to work or driving around town. We organized it around our Vision: Welcome-Grow-Care. In recording the first monthly tape, I used "Vision" language all through the tape. I mentioned something about welcoming people in or growing in faith or caring for others about a dozen times. It is now part of the DNA, its gets repeated without thinking.
BACK UP AND TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF
It is important to do regular self evaluation. If helping people grow is a part of your vision, you need to be sure and ask if you are actually succeeding. For us it meant that we needed to define significant arenas of growth for Christians. If we are growing in faith and following Jesus Christ - we are disciples. But we found wide latitude in what people thought the word disciple meant. We decided we needed to define 7 Marks of Discipleship. Here’s what we share with new members:
< WORSHIP - worship God regularly, hear God's word, receive the sacraments, grow in faith
<
PRAYER - cultivate an active prayer life, with time set aside to talk to God and listen to Him<
STUDY - spend time growing with God through daily devotions, personal study, or group study<
RELATIONSHIPS - build accountable relationships with others, one-on-one or in small groups<
GIVING - set aside a tithe of your financial resources and return them to the Lord, giver of all things<
MINISTRY - use your God-given gifts to become actively involved in the ministry of the congregation<
MISSION - find ways to connect faith to everyday life in your world - at home, work, and other arenasHow are we doing at helping people in these areas? While some things are harder to quantify, it at least moves us in the right direction as we lay down expectations and measure our progress.
"SECRET SHOPPERS"
We found one part of our Vision gave us particular difficulty. Becoming a Welcoming Church was not only difficult to do - but even more difficult to measure. Almost everyone thinks their church is friendly. It doesn’t matter what long term church members think about the church’s friendliness - what matters is how a first time guest experiences the congregation. One of the things we did early on was to invite people from a nearby church to come and "investigate" how we were doing in terms of our Values and Vision. Were we welcoming or not? We asked them to come and worship with us and come back mid-week to a meeting and tell us about their experience.
We now offer this as a ministry to nearby churches. We call it "secret shoppers" We will send a pair of folks to your church to worship. They use a Hospitality Inventory and write a detailed report about their experience. How did the building appear? Was the entry door easy to find? Could they find their way around? Did people talk to them? Could they find restrooms and nursery? Could they follow the worship service? These and many other questions are answered so that we can provide a great snapshot of real life. Find a church to partner with and exchange a team and learn.
LESSONS WE’VE LEARNED
C:\My Documents\HowWeDevelopedOurVMV.doc