Church Mission Portfolio

Think of a "mission portfolio" as a range of partnerships which will advance your congregation in your current adventure of loving God and loving your neighbors as you do yourself. Of course, "the neighbors" are as Jesus would define them, so that's a range of folk like you and very unlike you, near and far, family/ friend and enemy, and to the extremes of your experience and imagination. Such a portfolio will represent well what the congregation is becoming, and the relationships and activities will have strong "take home" value as the church explores God's Kingdom and follows Christ in transformational ways.

As you think of your congregation you will definitely want a scope from entry level to advanced mission partnerships, engaging all age and stage levels, and intriguing to a variety of interests, hobbies, and skill sets. Yet, having said this, you want the right number that doesn't inundate your congregation with a lot of a little, nor do you want to hit a scale that is an easy challenge. Instead, this should be partnerships keyed to the current priorities of the congregation. You neither want to establish a "mission silo" of interest and engagement to a small percentage of the congregation, nor do you want a mission program so mired in the past that there is no future orientation. A strong mission portfolio will:

• appeal to the whole life of the congregation, 
• lend itself well to worship, discipleship, prayer, and the identity and practices of the church throughout the year, 
• welcome assessment and evaluation in light of both missional best practices and where the congregation is headed in the future, 
• weave together local, national, and international in ways which enhances each area,
• is a way the whole congregation can experience and express the Body of Christ,
• while continuing to respond to the call to love God and love our neighbor as we do ourselves.

Many congregations need to get beyond practices of mission which are too much like projects and too little like missio Dei. Too often congregational mission only appeals to a small number of church folk who have certain time, skills, and funding. Frequently mission is not a movement of the whole congregation, but the playground of a few who champion certain causes. Far too often, this has become the realm of non-profits and not of the church. 

Attention to this in a holistic way can create paths of mission for every age and stage in a church. A strong mission portfolio allows for education, action, and reflection. Developing a plan for a year helps to create balance and builds in assessment. This approach enhances strong theological grounding and church foundation so that the mission plan doesn't get lost in activity and repetition. 

Helpful background resources for a mission portfolio may include:

• theology
• guidelines

In addition, your church and conference will likely have focal points which will guide the portfolio. Here is a sample which can be adapted to your context. You also have resource people (like me in North GA and for Global Ministries) as you help your church become more strategic by using a portfolio approach to congregational mission. 

Congregational Capacity

Most congregations talk like they desire to add new and different people into the life of the church, but the reality is that most aren't equipped. Consider the news shared at the recent UMC General Conference that 70% of our churches didn't have a baptism last year. This is a shocking statistic, but one which can be turned around.

I've learned that many congregations tell the Story, yet seem to get stuck in patterns of their congregational history, replication of worship and program, and a rather serious disconnection from their community. Despite repeating the ancient words of faith, I often wonder if many congregations are serious about reaching their community or prefer to merely repeat what they have known with who they know. It's as if many churches have one or more major issues which render them incapable of accomplishing what they say. They lack the capacity to do, or to be, that of which they speak.

In my experience there are a number of factors which interact with one another to determine the capacity a congregation has to reach or impact their community. These are interrelated and in no particular order.

Theological Capacity: Most congregations have some sort of theological, biblical, and practical ecclesial focus. Now, truth be told, this is usually so intertwined with a cultural or social belief and value system that it may be almost impossible to disentangle it all. It may be lost, or somehow forgotten, buried deep within the fabric of the congregation. What are the expectations of your community of faith regarding the primary purposes of the church? Push deeper than the practices as you consider, and discuss this, otherwise you'll merely list worship, prayer, discipleship, outreach, etc. As you push deeper into the shared theology you may find a unified, deep theology. Or, perhaps you find a shallow and varied understanding which reveals fault lines and hints at possible fragmentation.

Leadership Capacity: Many congregations have limited themselves to be the size they are. This may be due to the community context, the style leadership, the congregational expectations, the theology, or some mix of the above. This isn't to say small church is bad and large church is good. In fact, I often find a powerful shared community and depth of discipleship in some small and medium membership churches. In terms of reaching your community, the key issue is if leadership of any size congregation has this as a key value and driver of the system. If it isn't as important to be in the community, developing relationships, and sharing faith, as it is to be "in" the church building, then you are likely developing leaders for the "last chapter" of church life and not for today and tomorrow.

Organizational Capacity: Too often it seems our churches begin to think that offering a presentation is our main objective. Many churches don't seem to want new and different people. Old classes and groups, concretized relationships, and set patterns become the norm. The ability to invite, engage, and retain numbers of new and different people may be a lost practice to such a church. How well do we create new, diverse leadership? Do we promote and free new leaders for service? Do we challenge existing groups to multiply or do we promote stability? Does our current organizational structure match well with our present community?

Communication Capacity: Many congregations have no idea what "tribe" they represent in the community, what people group/s the congregation effectively reaches, and which group/s the church has natural affinity with. Too often, in the past, this has been solely defined by socio-economic and racial criteria. This is worth honest, realistic examination as you consider who God is calling your church to know in your community. It may be likely that you need a local, a translator, and a missionary who is as comfortable in the community, where they are authentic in life and faith, as they are in the congregational setting. What music and language works in community life?

Integration Capacity: What room do you have in your individual life, and in the life of the congregation, for new and different people? Many groups within a congregation, and perhaps the congregation itself, is capped in its relationships. Their are skills and practices related to engaging and involving new and different people into an organization. Who is in charge of this at your church? Is it a movement, a culture within the church, or is it merely the work of one or two staff people? A church that is more of an open system with the community calls upon many to be guides, mentors, and helpers to "outsiders" becoming "insiders" and fully involved with the church.

Change Capacity: Congregational life today should look somewhat different than it did 20-30 years ago (if your community and culture has changed during that time). Is your organization capable of change? How quickly can you make adjustments? How many adjustments can you make in a year? Many congregations have placed such a high priority on repeating history and not rocking the boat that they have little interest or capacity in change. What year is it in your church? If all the momentum revolves around keeping the current "customers" happy you will never develop new constituents, customers, friends, members. You are well on your way to no baptisms, more funerals, and soon enough the death of the congregation. Talk about a change!

Consider your congregational capacity to reach or impact your community. Hopefully you can identify a few adventurous types who likely already know the community well and can assist you in opening the doors of your church to the community. Who in your church or community can help you increase your capacity to be an open congregation to your neighbors?

Church as Mission Center

I've recently had a number of clergy friends talking about what a congregation as a mission center looks like. Now, these are well read and well traveled Methodist Christian pastors, so I know full well they have pretty solid ideas of what such a creation looks like. But, it's an intriguing issue as many of us know what such a church should look like, yet it is a challenging church to implement. So, take this as a working draft and discussion starter which may be useful in your setting.

First, it mission must be defined. I find that everyone has a certain picture, certain concepts about mission. At this point a thorough study/ discussion regarding mission from scriptural, theological/ doctrinal, and historical perspectives may be helpful. Most will be prone to skip this crucial step as it may be seen as too pedantic. At a basic level, if we focus on the missio Dei we will help our cause of establishing the congregation as a mission center. The great challenge may be that we all bring our particular soap box and perspective to the table and don't focus on our call, as a group, to love God and love our neighbor as ourselves in the ways we must to become a mission center. It is most likely that we will repeat the great mistakes of the past if we skip this step.

The second issue is to do an honest assessment of our congregation and community. At this point it is useful if most US churches recognize we have leaned heavily upon models of attractional worship and program ministry as driving forces for the way we have done church over the last generation or two. The value of this will be to again focus us and reorient toward the individual and congregation in missio Dei. Our priorities have tended toward attracting people like us, keeping those folk happy and in the club, maintaining the property and finances of the club, and a certain style of worship and program that fuels everything mentioned above. Most churches do mission as project and as one programmatic option of church ministry. It could be possible to create a church as a mission center as one disconnected element of congregational ministry, but this will result in practical challenges which will only engage part of the church and likely create divisive tension. Creating a congregation as a mission center will be tougher work though it may have more transformational results for everyone touched by such a ministry.

The last issue I'd mention in this quick overview is that your congregational context and call should define who you are as a mission center. You can't possibly be everything to everybody. You don't have enough funding, skills, energy, or time to be that. Nor do you want to manage hundreds of non-profits. You are called to be the Body of Christ. What does that look like, sound like, and appear as a group process in your setting. This contextualization means that while there are certain consistent principles that mission centers will look different depending upon the setting. So, no easy cookie cutter answer to this.

I see church as mission center in many international settings. Here in the US there are a few mission centers separate from the way we do congregational life that are worthy examples for congregations. So far, my experience has been that small and medium membership churches are the ones most likely to become mission centers. It may be that they have run a certain course in their life cycle, or that is driven by the neighborhood situation, and they can't be an attractional or programmatic church. The congregation that dies to itself and gives itself away completely is one way of defining a mission center. Realizing a church is dying, or called to die, is still not an easy thing to accept and embrace.

I'd lift up Haywood Street Church and St. Luke as two different examples of mission center churches. I could mention a handful of others that are early in the process though it is uncertain if they will live or die at this point. A key element in the above churches is that they have partners and partner well. This can be a great challenge as the "other" can have some struggles to know and accept the context of the mission center church. That's an issue for another day.

A resource that may help your congregational leadership in this is a study of missiological principles as a guided study of your context. Check out Lazarus Church  and see if there might be a piece or two that lends itself to your context, to study or sermon, or in some way engages your church in the higher call of being a missio Dei center.

#GC2016 and Lazarus Church

Well, I'd intended to write something about #GC2016, but the every day work of mission and ministry has kept me preoccupied. As usual, there seems to be plenty of angst, and energy, and emotion around #umcgc. I suspect enough has already been spoken and written about this impending international UMC gathering. Let's get on with it, let the legislative branch do their thing, and we can keep at the everyday work in the field, and in our churches and communities. This is the tougher issue and the thing we can make a difference in! To me, that's where the challenge and fun is anyway as we seek to follow Christ and be the Church in our specific contexts.

I've got 18 months behind me now in my rather unique position of serving as a "field agent" for mission in North Georgia conference Connectional Ministries and as a consultant with UMC Global Ministries. Imagine church or conference coming to life through mission celebrations and a process of focus and broad engagement in great next steps in mission strategy. Over this short time I've been in hundreds of churches, in a half dozen countries, and learned much serving in a role of resourcer, trainer, networker, coach, and catalyst.

My experience in international mission has taught me so much about what is lacking in our US churches. In the last 25 years we have tended toward attractional worship, programmatic ministries, and keeping our church members happy as we meet their specific needs. Often we are owned by middle class or upper class cultural practices. I feel this contrast as much as anyone as my career spans the same time-frame and my work in church has often been as program director. Yet much of the international church has limited funding and resources, and must rely on working hard to engage their community, expressing incarnational ministry individually and corporately, and a high level of strategy at church and conference level.

In a couple of key conversations last fall I was debriefing some, and swapping ideas, with my North Georgia colleagues. One mentor on the connectional ministries team challenged me to write up what I was finding so more churches might be engaged in the conversation and adventure. Another challenged me to create some curriculum that could be useful to as many churches as possible. How do you adequately combine reflections from hundreds of conversations and contexts? These are solid challenges for a mission sensibility about contextual ministry!

The recurring conversation for me has been how many of our churches are caught in a loop of doing projects and finding it tough to get into the most challenging issues of their community. We can tend to prefer projects over transformation. In fact, many of the churches are rather disconnected from the larger community, like a small, closed system group which wants to have some flow between church and community, but manages to only talk and not act or follow Christ into the larger world. This lends itself well to our ongoing need for congregations to practice being the Body of Christ, and for both individuals and the church to have more focus on the adventure of loving God and loving our neighbors as we do ourselves. Oh, and this is neighbor as Jesus would define and not as we would.

Would you and your church, your mission committee, or your Bible study or discussion group dare to die to yourselves and follow Christ in the missio Dei? This is more than business as usual and calls us to study, prayer, and honest reflection of our church and community. Check this out as a resource that may be useful to sharing some missiological principles, engaging folk in church conversation, and rediscovering Christ who desires you follow his ways in your community.

Check out Lazarus Church, modify it to your context, and let me know how your adventure goes. Even better, let's join together in this shared adventure as we learn from one another and encourage resurrection.

Mission: From Lent to Easter to General Conference

Ugh, I can't believe a month has passed and I've again neglected my blog.

I can blame Holy Week & Easter. Plus, I live in Augusta, GA, so we have a little golf tournament once a year you may have heard about. The Masters is ALWAYS the first full week of April. So, that also brings with it spring break and a change of pace as many in town leave when the world shows up here for "a tradition unlike any other." Oh, and maybe a few days of nice weather and planting a garden distracted me.

I think I got off blog and onto all the other work around the time I helped host a mission celebration at LaGrange College. It was a phenomenal time as we enjoyed the hospitality of the historic United Methodist college, and brought in some great UMC Global Ministries staff to lead worship and discussions for the faculty, staff, and students around the topic of global engagement. See here or here for news on this exceptional mission celebration. If you have a teenager interested in a major in mission or ministry I'd recommend they check out LaGrange College. Also, I can help tailor a strategic event for your context- church, campus, district, or conference- if you want to get into some fun together.

In upcoming days maybe I'll share some of my hopes for #umcgc. Unless I get distracted with life, ministry, and circuit riding.

Secretary of the Future

Yesterday, I heard an interesting segment on the "Marketplace" radio show on NPR. The segment was based on Kurt Vonnegut's question about having someone leading national policy and sustainable actions with his children and grandchildren in mind. It's intriguing to imagine a Secretary of the Future at Cabinet level for a country. Many organizations are driven by folk rooted in history, yet with little strategic focus on "what is next?" and a futurist orientation. What are the threats and the opportunities today and tomorrow? Too often a country or an organization can get caught in replicating the past, and can be hard pressed if a new pattern emerges . In dynamic, changing times we need even more focus on tomorrow and how to best position ourselves. What about sustainability for a business? Or for a church or Church?

Check out the idea in more detail here.

Who is your church/Church Secretary of the Future? Who is on your church/Church sustainability team? How do you talk about the future for your church/Church, and how do you broaden ownership of a shared future beyond the futurist?

Lessons From an Aircraft Carrier Group, Part 2

So, I pushed my brother a little in his early response. After all, what are brothers for!

Regarding the plan and strategy I asked: "Would you say this is what it takes to 'move a fleet?' Does this pattern still hold if you are 'on the fly' or in the middle of a lot of changes... or maybe even a battle? Does urgency change the decision making process with a crowd or does it narrow the focus in any way?"

He replied, "... we 'fight as we train, train as we fight.' We try to stick to the plan, but like the saying goes, 'all plans change as soon as the battle starts and you meet your enemy.'"

Later Brother said, "... look at C5ISR- Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Combat Systems, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance. Yes, urgency can but does not always change the decision tree or process- which is why each commander (battle group commander, ship's commanding officer, airwing commander) have a staff of folks who specialize in rapid data analysis and decision processes (sometimes that works, sometimes not)."

I think there are plenty of implications to consider for both church and Church in these lessons.

How does church train in ways that match the reality of the mission? What are the individual and group implications for such a training approach? Or have we so lost, or muddled, our mission goals that we this is meaningless?

Who is doing rapid data analysis? Who specializes in decision processes? How do these various roles and systems share information and interact? How does the process change with urgency? What roles are most critical to your church/Church accomplishing the mission?

I've sometimes used the imagery of moving a church/Church being similar to moving an aircraft carrier. The more I think about it the more I wonder if many of our current US churches just aren't built for mission or for movement. 

Lessons From an Aircraft Carrier Group, Part 1

I've got two younger brothers who have done well in life, ventured away from Georgia, and have spent most of their adult lives outside the south. The middle one, who had the adjective "precocious" attached to him most often during our first 20 years, enjoyed a career with the Navy before his current government job. He spent many years on aircraft carriers (including USS Constellation [CV64], USS Kitty Hawk [CV63], USS Enterprise [CVN65] and others and concluding with USS Bush [CVN77]). After 20 years in the Navy he retired as a Lieutenant Commander. 

I asked him what it takes to move a carrier fleet and how they communicate and coordinate such movement. He's a person of deep faith, and we both recognize that we wouldn't want the Church to become a conquering, military operation. Instead, the curiosity is what might the church movement learn to become a movement again. It's not as simple a simple process as it is relational, contextual, and not a paid position. But in the complexity of people and roles and movement how do we function and can we learn from others? How does a complex organization with many people and a shared mission yet various roles arrive safely and fulfill the goals?

Brother said:

• Create a plan (crawl, walk, run- the typical stages of planning). 
• Communicate and get feedback on the plan.
• Execute the plan. 
• Learn from the event and plan for the next one. 
• Use a multi-tiered approach throughout process including in person meetings, telephone/radio/email/newsletters/planning documents shared on computer, shared drive or internet; 
• Keep up with changes to the plan and share the changes in enough time that people can react to them 

Most of this is standard systems operation though sometimes we get the stages out of order. I am reminded that too often the church/Church doesn't learn from a plan or event. We can fail to do evaluation and apply the learning to our next steps. It makes me wonder how many times a personality might dominate a plan instead of a group process which makes possible a larger mission and greater outcome. Further, I'm especially mindful that we sometimes don't share the changes in enough time for people to react. This sense of communication and timing seems even more important for Church and especially for a global denomination. And, again, while it may take one or two to lead and to facilitate the process there should be high levels of dialogue and input for mission effectiveness. 

While this may seem basic, in fact, it can be tough to keep up such practices and discipline the more complex an organization becomes. What do you see in this as you consider the way your church works the plan/s? We'll go a little deeper with this in Part 2 with more lessons from an aircraft carrier group.

Lessons From a Marketing Campaign

I have an incredible circle of friends who are talented, hardworking, generous, and fun! One of these folk is a VO talent I got to know while serving Greensboro First United Methodist Church. I had no idea a few years ago that ""voice over" was even a job. It made sense once I thought about all those voices I hear on radio, in stores, on Pandora, etc. It's been fun to follow Kelley over the years and to listen more closely "at the voices" to hear if that's a friend talking to me.

Recently Kelley got my attention again as she launched a campaign directed at/for #Jeep. What is intriguing to me in this is that it's personal, matches Kelley's life, and somewhat blurs the line between typical advertising and a friend telling their story about a product. Kelley even got the attention of Adweek. She combined her interest, her friends and their talents, and reached out in a novel way with her marketing. Check out her risky, bold, authentic campaign. If you are a #Jeep person or #JeepFamily you may especially enjoy #KB4Jeep.

I told Kelley that I wondered what church could learn about running a marketing campaign. We both recognize a difference between an advertising company and the work of the church, but I've always thought the church can learn much from creative, generous, fun people that will make us stronger. So, while I wouldn't advise a church to lose it's distinctives I know that we must be savvy about reaching out to our community and world in risky, bold, authentic ways. It's a glutted market out there, with many aggressively reaching out to people, and the church must have a plan that embraces the individual and church need for connecting with the community.

I asked Kelley to share 3 principles of a creative campaign and she advised:
1. Research, research, and research your target some more.
2. Immerse yourself in your target's brand culture.
3. Make sure any marketing effort is reflective of the target's brand personality.

I translate this in some missional ways for a congregation as:
1. Learn the people, and the people groups, of your community. Don't think you are done learning!
2. Immerse yourself in the community. It may be that you, or your church, may only represent 1 or 2 people groups in the community. Go deep with community engagement to know the culture.
3. Learn to communicate in effective ways with the people group/s in your community that you know and can reach. Speak the language of the people so that the words, deeds, and community communication of the church are in alignment. Otherwise you are talking a different language.

This is intriguing as I think about who a congregation is and who we might be trying to reach in our community. Our challenge today, in our secular, cynical world, is building real relationships as we love God and love our neighbors as we do ourselves. As I transfer these marketing principles to the life of a church it opens up some good possibilities for a church. Sharing the Good News of Jesus Christ that meets people where they live is still our calling, and we can do that in ways that connect the congregation and our community.

Check out Kelley's campaign and then imagine what risky, personal, authentic marketing plan your congregation might develop.

What's Your Momentum?

I likely should call some of these "Coffee Diaries" as I jot down thoughts based on recent conversations in a rather unedited, stream of consciousness style. Perhaps some of this will flow, and not have too many grammar or spelling problems, and might be useful in your personal and corporate church ministry.

I'm now involved with many churches in a variety of locations. Rural and urban, small membership and large, in the United States and around the world, and all the "in between" descriptors are now my world. In my own home annual conference we have 912 congregations spread across North Georgia. In many respects learning about, and growing in relationship and partnership with so many congregations, is similar to getting to know thousands of people. There are many similarities, yet each church with it's own context, history, and personality.

What is your approach when you are getting to know a congregation in a visit? For me it is always interesting to learn who they are, what they do as a church, and how they present themselves and that vibe that they give off. Some congregations present as young and sassy (sometimes full of themselves!), and others seem old and frail. Most are somewhere between birth and death, but where?

Have you ever walked into a congregation and thought, "This seems like a dynamic place full of the Holy Spirit!" Or perhaps you've been to a church and sense gloom and doom and wondered, "YIKES, what is going on here?" But, more often than not, most congregations seem to be in their particular "groove," doing what they do, with a certain routine and normalcy that they expect and perhaps even demand. As a visitor or outsider it's sometimes a challenge to really experience and know the congregation and have a "clear read" on who the church is and who they are becoming.

No matter the "age or stage" of a congregation, I'm often curious what the momentum of the church is. Is the congregation stable, declining, or advancing? How long have they been in this movement, or lack of it, and how does this match with what God and the people expect? If a church has been in decline 10-20 years, and the "youngster" in the church is 75, and all the members live outside the immediate neighborhood of the church, how are they feeling and what are they expecting as a congregation?

Here's another image that might work for you as you think about your congregation. In some ways this is somewhat similar to boarding a ship and expecting a great journey, an adventure, and that everyone must be together, work together. Along the way you'll have opportunity to add others to the crew. It's a working crew experience! To "arrive" you'll need everyone to give their all, and to add new crew along the way. With such a visual where's your ship? Are you in the harbor ready to set out again? Do you have enough hands on deck to move the ship and get up some speed? Perhaps your church is more like a ship adrift, or maybe in even worse shape stuck on a reef or with a hole in the hull! In this we also recognize there can be negative momentum or positive momentum. Once the speed picks up, in either direction, the movement itself can take on a life of it's own which might not be easily controlled.

When I think about church momentum I'm reminded of the type advance, movement, growth, engagement, and Body of Christ found in the Acts of the Apostles. This is a living proclamation in word and deed. The church is in desperate need of experiencing this as more than an old story, but reclaiming again the experience and current redemptive story of God as our way of being. If you want to track some of this skim through the book again and consider what this might look like if alive in your church and community. For me, I'm always drawn to Acts 2:42-47, Acts 5:12-16, Acts 6:1-7, Acts 8:7-8 (healing and "much joy in that city"), Acts 9:31,  Acts 10 (proclamation and response from variety ethnic groups- an ongoing theme in Acts), Acts 12:12, Acts 13:48-52 (possibility AND challenge!), Acts 16:5, and you will find other passages that reinforce this idea and form a great study for a church. Note there can be/will be opposition and persecution in such a movement (& not just silly culture skirmishes but the real thing which our international Christian brothers and sisters know too much about! Read Acts 7-8, Acts 12, and other passages again if you doubt or minimize this reality).

As you continue to read in Acts realize that Paul and company were active, unafraid of tension, and in fact saw the value of a call to response, repentance, and following in this Way of Christ. Find MANY clues about momentum in church and community in the Acts of the Apostles that could well be lived out again today.