Turning the Church Around - What About the Followers?

In the last three postings, I've been working on a recent Methodist proposal aimed at turning around Methodist decline.  The proposal is entitled, "A Strategic Plan for Growth in the United Methodist Church"  and was authored by Dr. Ronald R. House, an economist who serves as a consultant with the United Methodist Church's South Central Jurisdiction Episcopacy Committee.  In this posting, I would like to follow up with one last concern regarding this proposal.

Dr. House is proposing that 998 Methodist churches participate in the Benchmark Project, which seeks to increase each church's discretionary income to the end that it will experience increased statistical growth, beginning with worship attendance.
  The ones who carry the burden for carrying out the Benchmark Project are local lay leaders and pastors.  In effect, that is, the project puts more pressure and responsibility on congregational leadership without any effective support mechanism other than local advisory committees that are expected to meet only occasionally.  There is no training involved or guidelines as to where the 998 churches are to come up with additional funding.  Everything is left up to the local leadership.  The truth is that mainline pastors and sessions are already struggling with a range of pressures and issues that are the root causes of decline.  One has to wonder (and worry) whether adding further pressure and expectations to a leadership infrastructure that is already highly stressed is going to only make matters worse in the long run rather than better.  At the very least, far more thought needs to be given to support for church leaders participating in the Benchmark Project than is reflected in Dr. House's proposal.

Beyond concern for the leaders is a more fundamental issue that continues to be largely ignored in the mainline struggle with decline, namely the issue of "followership".  A couple of years ago, I posted two items on followership, (here) and (here), which make the point that in any community the health and well-being of the followers are just as important as that of the leaders, if not more so.  The community needs good followers.  The Benchmark Project stresses leadership while ignoring followership.  It is a common oversight but also an all but fatal one when it comes to finding our way beyond decline.

Is the Benchmark Project, then, of no value at all?  While it does not seem likely that it will actually reverse the decline of the Methodist Church, it does serve one important purpose.  It reminds us that financial planning is one aspect of bringing vital new life to local mainline churches.  It is not the key to renewal, but it is an aspect of renewal.  And, whatever else is involved, Dr. House deserves credit for seeking realistic approaches to decline.  He, at least, has not buried his head in the sand, which is the usual response across the mainline churches to decline.

A Good Pastor Makes for a Happy Church - Really?

The Christian Post recently posted a column entitled, "Nine Characteristics of Happy Churches," which is little short of eye-opening.  Of the nine characteristics listed, five have to do with the pastor, one with the way business meetings are conducted, and one other has to do with the church staff.  That is, seven of the nine are about the pastor and/or her leadership team.  Only two are directly related to the church's members distinct from its pastor, namely involvement in ministry and in a small group.  When a substantial number of members are engaged in those two activities, the church is more likely to be happy.  Otherwise, the person and style of the pastor is the key to a happy church.

If only it were that easy.  There is no question but that the leadership style and the personality of the pastor is one important factor in church health.  That statement, however, is equally true of the followership style and personality of the congregation she serves.  Churches are a blending of personalities, sometimes inherently quite healthy and sometimes not so much.  Thus, the same pastor with the same personality can have a healthy, happy relationship with one church and then move on to a relationship in the next church that turns out to be dysfunctional.  A church, by the same token, can get along very happily with one pastor but then not the next.

Interestingly enough, the listed characteristic overlooks the presence and influence of the Spirit in a congregation's life.  Before all else, a church where the whole leadership of the congregation, including pastoral,  is mutually committed to spirituality is a church that is more likely to be healthy and happy.

It is lists like this, to be frank, that infect pastors with both hubris and anxiety.  In spite of this list's fixation with pastoral leadership, church health is not all about the pastor.  It is about a healthy relationship between a church and its pastor grounded in the Spirit.  That is a three-way relationship.  In this relationship, church members exercise significant leadership, the pastor knows when to lead and when to follow, and the Holy Spirit is a Presence in the interpersonal and institutional dynamics of the whole congregation.  Things are not all sweetness and light in such a church, but on any given Sunday morning its sanctuary will hum with health and its singing will be infested with the Spirit.  Without a good pastor, a happy church will not happen.  Without a good church, it will not happen.  Without the Spirit, it cannot happen.  Amen.

FPC Log: Key Marks of Effective Membership (iii)

The windmills of Lewis County, NY

This is the third posting in an ongoing series on First Presbyterian Church, Lowville, and the decline of mainline churches, which began (here).

A recent op-ed piece posted on the Christian Science Monitor's website entitled, "GOP candidates and Obama: Standards for presidential leadership," listed 5 qualities that voters should look for in a presidential candidate,.  Those qualities are presidential candidates who: (1) understand the issues of government; (2)  love the daily toil and mechanics of governing; (3) have mastered the organization; (4) turn liabilities into assets; and (5) are persistent. On reflection, it could be argued that these qualities are also important for selecting a new pastor.  And taking that thought one step further, it could also be argued that they are also important for a mainline congregation that seeks to address its decline.

That is to say that in order for a church to address its own decline a significant number of its members should, first, understand the spiritual, theological, biblical, and social issues facing the congregation in its local setting.  Those members should cultivate a love for "the daily toil and mechanics" of church renewal so that they will not be easily distracted or become impatient with the hard spiritual work of renewal.  Those members should also have a good grasp of the basic operating principles of a church seeking new life, principles that are likely to be very different from its current operating principles.  It is most essential for a significant number of members of a church in decline to see its decline as an opportunity offered to it by the Holy Spirit, an institutional liability that can work to its spiritual benefit.  And a church membership seeking renewal will have to do so persistently.  Starting new churches is a breeze compared to discovering new life for an old one.

All of this presupposes that a congregation seeking renewal will cultivate in itself the qualities of leadership it once expected of its pastor.  Leadership thus will be seen as a shared function where at one point or another virtually every member will "step up to the plate" of leadership. Every member will develop a good sense of where the church is headed, how it will stay headed that way, and their personal role in moving forward.  Each member will learn to be excited by the possibilities for new life only a declining church can offer, and they will not become discouraged or faint-hearted when the path of renewal proves to be littered with obstacles, as surely it will.

The great bulk of the literature on church renewal is still focused on pastoral leadership.  It is past time that we turn our attention to the followership-leadership mix of the congregations themselves.  Amen.

Defining Followership (v)

FPC, Lowville, NY

This is the fifth posting in a series working on what it means to be a church, based on eight criteria the Mars Hill Church uses to define its branch congregations as churches, which are listed in the first posting of this series (here).

We are still working on the second criterion in the Mars Hill list, namely that, "The church is organized under qualified and competent leadership." The previous posting made the point that capable and faithful followership is as important to church life as is leadership.  "Followership" in the context of the church can mean a couple of things.  It can mean following Christ, acknowledging that he is the true head of the church.  It can also mean following the leaders of the church, meaning both duly elected lay leaders and the pastor (assuming the church has one).  Our concern here is with the second meaning, although the two are related to each other.

What constitutes effective followership?  In any human group, not just the church, certain characteristics define a "good" follower.  First, the follower is attentive to the church's leaders.  You can't follow if you aren't paying attention.  Second, the effective follower is responsive to those leaders.  Again, one can't follow another unless they are willing to get off their duff and follow.  Third, the effective follower has his or her own sense of direction, is not willing to be led too far off that path, and is willing to call leaders back to it when they seem headed in the wrong direction.  In the church, fourth, an effective follower takes time to exercise the disciplines of our faith, which include prayer, worship, study, and service.  The effective follower, fifth and finally, is knowledgeable in matters of the faith.

On the face of it, these skills and attitudes are not so different from those required for effective church leadership.  Church leaders must be attentive to those who follow, willing to lead even when its a pain to do so, have a good sense of congregational direction, be self-critical in holding to that direction, and exercise the disciplines of the faith.  Which observation leads us to an essential insight: church leadership is built into the life of the church and is shared by both "leaders" and "followers."  Leadership is carried out through two-way relationships, which brings us back to following Christ.  In a paper entitled, "Development of the Biblical Followership Profile," Rushton S. Ricketson writes that biblical followership of Christ entails five traits: "...(a) abandonment to the leader [Christ], (b) intimacy with the leader [Christ], (c) obedience, (d) faithfulness, and (e) persistence."  In other words, we take our commitment to God seriously and seek to live it faithfully.  While there's a lot more involved, in a nutshell, faithfulness to Christ is central to effective leadership and followership in the church, the point here being that faithful followership is at least as important as faithful leadership.  Amen.

Followership Matters Too (iv)

FPC, Lowville, NY

This is the fourth posting in a series working on what it means to be a church, based on eight criteria the Mars Hill Church uses to define its branch congregations as churches.  The first posting in this series, which lists those criteria, is (here).

The second criterion used by the Mars Hill Church to define its branch congregations as "churches," is, "The church is organized under qualified and competent leadership."

One of the widely touted truisms of contemporary church life is that churches live or die by their leadership.  If a church has capable, creative, effective, and faithful leadership—especially pastoral leadership—then the chances are the church will prosper.  Poor leadership leads to weak churches.  As a consequence, there is a huge literature on church leadership, just as in the business world there is a massive literature on management and leadership.

Leadership is important.  Still, there are times when a pastor who did well in one church does less well in another church, and there are congregations where conflict is endemic.  There are churches where one pastor is successful while another equally capable pastor is not.  We speak about the importance of getting a good "fit" between a pastor and a church.  In other words, there is more to church life than leadership.  Followership (as one on line dictionary puts it "the capacity or willingness to follow a leader") is equally important—and much less often discussed or considered.  There is a much smaller literature on church followership.

In American society, we have a fixation with the role of leadership, witness our long process for selecting a president during which the pundits provide us with endless daily analysis of the candidates and their latest doings.  Yet it is interesting to note that after the debate over raising the debt ceiling a record 84% of Americans, according to a Gallup pole (here) disapproved of the way Congress was handling its job.  Considering the historic election of 2010 when the public returned a seriously changed body of representatives to Congress, these figures are as much a measure of our ability to elect capable representatives as it is of Congress itself.  In a fit of ire, we turned the Republicans out in 2006 and 2008, and then in another fit of ire we began the process of turning the Democrats out in 2010.  These are acts by an irritated American followership that can't collectively decide which party it wants to run the nation.  The point is that followership matters a lot, and we usually don't give it enough attention—either in national politics or in the lives of our local churches.