One of the most difficult parts of my job is working out where to put the energy. I have the capacity to work with over 200 congregations in my current role, all over Queensland. A couple of years a go I worked with a group of colleagues to analyse the National Church Life Survey results for QUeensland, using critical indicators to give us clues about where churches are likely to last the distance, and where best to put our energy. We grouped the results in terms of thriving, potentially effective/marginal and terminal. One of my colleagues this week suggested four different categories: survival, stable, successful and significant.
The National Life Church Survey identifies nine core qualities, indicators of health…
Internal Core Qualities focus on the inner life of the community of faith.
1. Alive and Growing Faith
2. Vital and Nurturing Worship
3. Strong and Growing Belonging
Inspirational Core Qualities relate to leadership and direction.
4. Clear and Owned Vision
5. Inspiring and Empowering Leadership
6. Imaginative and Flexible Innovation
Outward Core Qualities are about how churches focus beyond themselves by reaching out to others in ways that proclaim and live out the Gospel.
7. Practical and Diverse Service
8. Willing and Effective Faith Sharing
9. Intentional and Welcoming Inclusion.
Three measures are provided for church attendance: young adult retention, newcomers and attendance change.
My colleagues and I worked on our triage process with a focus on inspiring and empowering leadership, clear and owned vision, willing and effective faith sharing, intentional and welcoming inclusion, along with a measure of involvement of children, young people and their parents.
What do you with “terminal” congregations? Plant a bomb or plant a church? Is it a case for moving people out of the family home and into palliative care? Or is there a chance of bringing in a new group of people with the capacity to rethink and reshape the missional challenge?
What do you do with the significant thriving congregations? Celebrate their stories, support their leaders and get behind their new learning experiments.
Marginal and potentially effective congregations could rise or fall depending on critical factors, most of them associated with leadership capacity. Coaching, training, reframing around those critical growth factors is where I’m putting most of my energy.
The four suggested categories of “survival, stable, successful and significant” are mere value judgements that reflect a concern for the continuation of the corporate, denominational church. They are not worthy of NCLS, which has a strengths based philosophy.
These categories are useful to the denomination only if it has power to decide the future of its constituent, institutional elements. In a conciliar polity such as that of the Uniting Church in Australia, that’s a very complex matter.
But what if the future viability of the any church is not the central issue? What is the central issue is present faithfulness to Christ?
Using the 4 categories above will inevitably lead to programs designed to increase performance. These are identified in comments, Duncan – leadership development training programs… which might be critiqued in terms of effectiveness (for what), efficiency (about what and to what end?) and power (Strengths to do what?). This sounds awfully like a Church that is set up to accomplish something on God’ s behalf – as if God needs the Church because with out the Church God’s options are somewhat limited.
Faithfulness, on the other hand might be more about tending to the relationships between God and the people who are the church, and god and the people who are the neighbours of those who are church. Faithfulness is about vocation, the third leg of Barth’s famous three-legged ‘stool’ – which includes justification and sanctification and vocation. All three are necessary for the gospel stool to function.
The issue with NCLS is the proposition at the centre if its philosophy – that Church health and vitality is determinative of a church’s capacity for mission. This places the Church at the centre of the conversation.
What is the central issue is not church health or vitality, but faithfulness to the missionary God who calls and sends people into God’s mission in the world? This places God at the centre of the conversation.
If faithfulness to God is the central issue then the NCLS survey is not asking the sort of questions that help a local church to be faithful.
Rather, we need to ask questions about where the Spirit of God is at work, what signs we area ware of that assist us to recognise the Spirit’s presence and work, and what actions we have taken to join with the Spirit of God in these places and peoples’ lives.
Perhaps it is only as the local church becomes aware of its collective callings and responds in faithful obedience that that church health and vital improve? What if it’s the passion for God’s mission, the urgency of Christ-like compassion and generosity typical of the first churches that drives the need for coaching, training and leadership development?
Every congregation has the possibility of a spark to ignite such passions and enthusiasms. That spark is the active presence of God’s Holy Spirit. Where and when people in a local church deny the ignition of that divine spark of the Spirit, that’s when the church is apostate and it time to shift resources elsewhere. This is what the Spirit of God often does in spite of mission consultants and others efforts to comfort the dying church.
John your assumption that looking at significance is about continuation of corporate survival may be a fair comment, and certainly Zig Ziglar’s teaching on this needs to be critiqued. The context of my conversation was unpacking this and asking about the ways in which people might see beyond “keeping the doors open” and engage with the compassionate and generous calling of God. Significance is not the same as success, and may have more to do with faithfulness and fruitfulness (don’t read size here John).
I wouldn’t see NCLS material as determinative, but more as descriptive, helping us recognise values and behaviours that may need to be addressed.
I do agree with you about the heart of compassion and generosity being the driver of our leadership development, rather than obligation, quotas and top down agendas.