It Takes A Church...

Starbucks CEO: "We needed to get back to our Core Principles" #mgbcomm

In the world of business, where most CEOs come and go, a few go and then come back. Howard Schultz, the president and CEO of Starbucks, is one of them. When the giant coffee shop chain was faltering in 2008, Schultz returned to the helm to help save the company. Three years later, after an extensive transformation of the company, he has written a new book that details the journey to recovery, called Onward: How Starbucks Fought For Its Life Without Losing Its Soul.

via www.npr.org

Priming the (espresso) pump for my next MGB Comm Observation, I wonder if we could all articulate the core principles of the PC(USA). Could we even agree on them?

If you don't like change, you're going to like irrelevance even less.

- General Eric Shinseki, former Chief of Staff, U.S. Army

From the MGB Commission Observation Deck #6 #mgbcomm

Last Saturday evening, I performed a wedding and enjoyed a good reception for a few hours before I headed off to my early pre-Sunday morning worship bed time.  Truth be told, I usually leave right when the dancing starts.  My wife and my daughter stayed.  They dance better than I do and they don’t have to get up and finish a sermon at 5 AM like I always do.  But as I was leaving it struck me that most people don’t dance in couples anymore, it’s more like they dance in groups.  Little small revolving circles of what my teenage daughter calls “friend groups.” All the people in the groups dancing with each other, all the while chatting away, laughing at their old jokes and telling old stories.  It’s less about intimacy and more about involvement.  And it doesn’t matter if you don’t have a date (or if your husband is a boring, dud pastor who goes to bed early).  In your “friend group” you have a whole bunch of dance partners, who will all join you as part of a small subset of a larger dance, where everyone is listening to the same music and filling a much larger dance floor, both part of the whole and part of something smaller all at the same time.

For the better part of the last two months, I have been offering the observations that our Commission is making as we spread out across the country to talk to people about our church and its way of being church together.  In these periodic posts, we have been inviting you all to come join us on a balcony where we look down on the dance floor that is the PCUSA to get a glimpse of what we are seeing and to help us try to interpret what we are hearing.  I have a hunch that this post could end up being the most important one yet.  It’s not so much about the ‘dancing’ as the “friend groups” of people who are moving about and talking together and revolving around each other in the larger dance.  Consider this an observation, not so much about the dance itself, but the ongoing dance floor conversations about the dance. 

Some of the conversations are passionate, even heated.  Others are detached.  Still others are just eager to stop talking focus on the missional dance of proclaiming and demonstrating the reign and will of God to a world in need.  But even over the music, the din of voices can be heard and there is one common conversation amidst all the different “friend groups”.  Consider this Observation #4:

We are in need of more practical theology on the unity of the Church and the diversity of churches.

Specifically we need to attempt answer these questions together:

• What does it mean to be a unified Church with a diversity of churches?  
  What structures express both unity and diversity faithfully and fruitfully?  
• How can we best organize ourselves so that our unity in Christ and the diversity of witness that is present in our congregations is most faithful and most fruitful for witnessing to the God who is Three-in-One? 

For this post, I want to save my own opinions and instead offer you a chance to listen in on the conversations of others.  You will hear some interesting and creative thinking about the way we manage the polarities and deal with the competing values of trying to affirm our unity and oneness in Christ while acknowledging that there is a growing diversity of opinion on positions that are deeply held and passionately argued. Indeed, some of our “friend groups” were formed because of these positions. 

For some, this ongoing conversation IS the work of the church, seeing our mission as maybe even fundamentally engaging in a raucous but respectful conversation about theological matters (the BBC broadcasts of British parliament debates come to mind).  For others, this conversation is the greatest hindrance to the mission itself, frustrating those who feel as if we keep interrupting the dance for discussion. 

The issues are around missional purpose, community and covenant, theological affinity and geography.  Indeed, almost every experimental model that is working its way through the system at the moment is trying as creatively and faithfully as possible to ask: Within a larger unity in Christ, is it possible to find alignments where those who share more theological similarities could be joined together for the sake of our mission?  Are there some ways of being that will allow different groups to function as faithful differentiated missional entities within a larger shared unity of faith?  Are there models from the past or other Christian traditions that are helpful here? Are their fruitful possibilities that we haven't considered yet?

What would be gained if we did?  What could we lose?  Are there unintended consequences we can avoid?  Are there unrecognized possibilities that we can’t yet imagine?

And a recurring question that needs to be explored with lots of depth, wisdom and patience (not to mention creativity, imagination, and love): In a world where communication and connection is facilitated by technology, where “tribes” can affiliate and organize, connect and relate even across the globe, what is the theological rationale for structuring geographically?  

In every case clear, GOOD, healthy, faithful and COMPETING values are at stake.  Certainly, there are mistakes that could be made; unhelpful, even damaging choices, that should be avoided.  At the same time, fear of doing something wrong could keep us from doing something new that might genuinely engage our witness.  

Perhaps most heartening, this conversation is engaging some sharp theological minds even in deep disagreement.  So, let me encourage you (like our General Assembly Moderator before me) to look in (listen in?) on these conversations, add your own voice to them and take up the conversation on the dance floor.  Hopefully you’ll consider a new dance partner from another friend group than those you usually hang out with.  Maybe you’ll discover something you have in common (like that for all our diversity we are all dancing to the same song!).  Who knows? Maybe you’ll bring a few new steps back to your own group and the whole dance will take on a new fresh energy.

• Two articles from Barry Ensign-George about the unity of the faith and what exactly we are talking about when we talk “denominations.”
  

 

• A theological critique of the Fellowship PCUSA White Paper that asks us to consider if we suffer from a deficient Christology.  Meanwhile the Fellowship itself has offered up some “markers” for a way forward. (Leslie Scanlon of the Outlook has an analysis) 

• San Diego Executive Presbyter Clark Cowden uses the metaphor of the NCAA and it’s various and ever evolving leagues to ask whether geographical regions have outlived their usefulness (a question raised by the Fellowship PCUSA, too) and  that maybe realignment around theological affinity has something to offer within a larger expression of unity. 
  
  
• At the same time,  John Vest (an MGB Commissioner) calls the church to a greater urgency for church planting while he also  questions the conviction of our New Church Planters that there need be some clear theological agreement to form healthy churches (and questions whether the Council in Acts 15 got it wrong in the first place). While Vice-Moderator Landon Whitsett offers his concerns about too much emphasis on “like-mindedness” as well.

(Please add any other posts, articles or discussions on this theme to the comments and if you are interested in the first five Observations, you will find them starting from the beginning here.)

From the MGB Comm Observation Deck #5 #mgbcomm

Welcome to the fifth Observation from the balcony that is our particular place as the Middle Governing Body Commission.  (For the previous four Observations click here to begin with the first.)  While the votes on the amendments, an ongoing discussion about the Fellowship PCUSA and the NEXT Church conversations and well, frankly and very gladly, the onset of Lent are in the center of most of our thoughts, I want to offer an observation that is almost a continuation of the last and a precursor of my next.  Think of this as a corollary of Observation #4 (“We don’t have to develop any models, we only have to discover the models that are already out there”) and a bit of priming the pump for what I believe may be the most significant issue that needs to be discussed. (Yes, that's a tease for next week...)

This present observation is meant to once again focus our attention on what we believe is the work of the Spirit in the church, a work that calls for our commission to be as much about discernment as we are about “developing” anything. 

Observation #5: “The future is already here, but it is on the margins.”  

I don’t know who said it first but I remember who said it to me.  He was a Korean-American church planter who had moved his whole family across the country to plant a multi-ethnic congregation in Orange County.  That line about future and margins stuck in my brain.  Here was a guy with no money, no denominational backing, no big school credentials, no office, no buildings, no paid staff, planting a church that literally had to move to a different location every time they met for worship.  In the wild consumer-driven, user-friendly mecca of south Orange County California, he was starting a church that required people to go to a website and find the location where the church was meeting that week!  As I listened to him I marveled.  I was the pastor of an established congregation that was on prime real estate in a very desirable and growing community.  At the time we were dedicated to being as “user-friendly” and even “seeker-friendly” as possible, yet getting people to attend a church that was as convenient and comfortably, accessible and welcoming as we could make it was still a daunting challenge.  Maybe this voice from the margins had something to offer my very “centered” church. (That church is now—years later--internationally respected and is considered a model for what churches of the future could be like.)

I was reminded of this statement while at the NEXT Conference as I listened to another church planter, who said something very similar: New paradigms come from those who live on the margins between different social systems or cultures and bring their practices and insights into the “dead center.”  (I don’t know if he was intentionally making a pun with a bit of a pinch, but I certainly heard it that way.) 

When the center engages the insights from the margins, the center comes alive and moves toward the future.  

Now, while a much broader and more significant conversation needs to keep occurring about who exactly is on the margins, how we insure that all the "voices long-silenced" are heard, and while our Commission is working very hard with the Committee on Representation to avoid missing key voices from the margins who can offer us insights that are being vastly overlooked, this argument about voices from the margins is even more relevant when we are talking about changing organizational structures. 

We are finding that many who would otherwise be considered part of the center experience our very structures as marginalizing. 

In many ways that are NOT all that obvious at first glance that is what the NEXT Church Conference and the Fellowship PC(USA) have in common.  They are odd amalgams of the restless margins of the church and the "dead center" (trying!) to engage in that conversation and bring to the surface a myriad of possibilities that are being overlooked and issues to consider.  The most common and glib tweet about NEXT Church was how much it “looked like the old church” yet there were also 70 seminarians in attendance and a chorus of voices sang out the challenge of broadening and deepening the conversation to those who were missing.  (And by the way, those very same restless and creative seminarians were almost entirely absent from the conversation about Middle Governing Bodies… if there is a subject that feels like “dead center” to them, this must be it to them.) 

And while I know this is likely to draw a howl of protest from some corners of the church, many of the now over 320 signers of the “Fellowship PC(USA)” letter see themselves as on the margins, too, when it comes to discussions about denominational structures. 

(No, I don't really think that many of them would claim to be culturally marginalized.  We Presbyterians by definition are "mainline".  But whether you agree or not, this is a key tenet of Beau Weston’s equally provocative argument in Rebuilding the Presbyterian Establishment.  Many large church pastors I know agreed wholeheartedly with Beau’s description of the marginalization of “tall steeple pastors” in Presbytery structures.  And as critical as some have been toward the PCUSA Fellowship letter it is an attempt by leaders who while feeling themselves marginalized are trying to engage the broad center of the church in a conversation about the future.)

Now, even if you disagree with my descriptors of WHO is on the margin, my observation is that the most creative possibilities are coming from the interaction of those who consider themselves on the “margins” and an open and alive “center”.

Where leaders in power are listening to those who are currently bored, checked out or discouraged and engaging them in the work, there is a sense of anticipation that we are glimpsing something toward which to move.  (Which is why I think the NEXT Church leaders were prescient to work so hard to include the seminarians.)

Where “powerbrokers” and “long time stakeholders” are open to engaging the ideas, models and possibilities of the restless on the fringe, the disconnected in the back pews, those lingering in the narthex of the greater church (or even those heading out the door?) with a desire to learn, new ways of thinking and seeing are possible.  If the margins and the “not-so-dead” center can interact with each other relationally and have theological discussions respectfully, there is possibility for genuine lasting change.

James Davison Hunter wrote about this in To Change the World,

“Change is often initiated outside of the centermost positions. When change is initiated in the center, then it typically comes from outside of the center's nucleus. Wherever innovation begins, it comes as a challenge to the dominant ideas and moral systems defined by the elites who possess the highest levels of symbolic capital.” 

The key point here is that for true lasting “cultural” change to occur (even within an institution) those in the “center” and those “outside of the center” must be engaged in the conversation.  It is the interaction of the margins and the center that creates the new possibilities.

I raise this observation as a way of encouraging hope in the face of our tendency toward cynicism and resistance.  I believe we are in a moment when those in the “center” of the church, including our leaders in Louisville, our theologians and historians, our Moderator and Vice-Moderator, EPs and Synod Execs across the nation, and church leaders from across the theological spectrum are openly looking to engage the ideas and perspectives of those--especially those--who don’t consider themselves in the “center”.  

So, as one who would never have thought that I would be in the center of a denomination-wide discussion about our future and structure, (that may be the subject of another post) I want to continually use these posts to invite conversation and input--especially from those who are outside of my direct sphere of contact. 

Please help me see what you see on at your outpost on the frontier of the future.   What kinds of structures will serve your mission? 

What do you want our commission to hear? What do we need to see from your perspective?

What kinds of structures do you want us to consider so that we can move toward the future that you are entering ahead of us? 

From the MGB Comm Observation Deck #4

Thanks for joining me once more, up on the “observation deck” situated in the balcony over the dance floor that is the PC(USA).  I am writing this on my flight back from the NEXT Conference in Indianapolis and feel a bit disoriented and out of breath from the twirls, spins and moves of a most vibrant and interesting dance.  (Not to mention a tornado that blew me straight to Louisville where I needed to be rescued by friends.)

While the leadership looked a lot (but not entirely) like me (read “Old Church” not “Next Church”) the presence of 70 or so seminarians, a considerable number of GA staff members, Executive Presbyters, Seminary Presidents, the GA Moderator, the author of the “deathly ill” letter and some engaged elders led to a number of interesting conversations that have only affirmed the observations that we have offered so far and especially this fourth one I’d like to offer. 

Here is a quick recap of the Observations that we are finding along the way then on to Observation #4.
Observation #1: For Presbyterians, the Process IS the Product.
Observation #2:  Almost everybody agrees that something has to change.
Observation #3: Missional is the “coin of the realm” but we don’t all agree on its “value.” 

Now:
Observation #4: We don’t have to develop any models, we only have to discover the models that are already out there.

At first glance this may seem like we are neglecting our charge as a Commission.  Indeed, right after it says that we are to “consult with the church”, it is written: "Thou Shalt Develop Models."  (Okay, it actually says, “The commission will develop models that reflect the roles of middle governing bodies in our polity and the changing context of our witness in the United States and their relationships with other governing bodies.”)  Notice: the verb is “develop.”

But we have had a sense, only confirmed by others who are in the field, that there are already a number of “ways of being” an ordered, connectional, missional church that are “responsive both to the Spirit of Christ and the changing opportunities for discipleship” (again from our Charge).  And that we are more about discovering and discerning the lessons of missional faithfulness that are already present than we are trying to “develop” one “silver bullet” solution to denominational entropy.

One of the pastors who attended the conversation on Middle Governing Bodies was Jud Hendrix, a church planter with the Ecclesia Project in Louisville, who after hearing of the approach of the Commission, told me about the book, The Power of Positive Deviance, which I read on the flight home.  It’s a study in adaptive change that suggests that when faced with really huge, seemingly intractable, even “impossible” problems, the best solution is found by looking for and learning from those bright spots who are already beating the odds.  As the authors write: “Positive deviance is founded on the premise that at least one person in a community, working with the same resources as everyone else, has already licked the problem that confounds others.”

They key is NOT to think of this “positive deviant” as a quick fix solution, but instead to learn from them what they might not even know about why they are succeeding when others fail.  In other words, “positive deviants” are those who “get it right” even unconsciously and defy the odds for bringing change.  They are not experts who analyzed, strategized and developed a well-thought out plan with a fail-proof solution, but are “outliers who succeed against all odds”, their solution often being “hidden in plain sight.” 

I quickly realized that this approach is exactly what we are using and finding so fruitful already in the MGB Commission.  We are looking for those places where the Presbyteries and Synods contribute to flourishing growing ministries that are reaching people beyond the usual Presbys-in-the-pew.  We are looking for where the Presbytery meeting is “not deadly dull” but instead beginning to engage people in shared missional collaboration that strengthens both effectiveness and relationships.  We are hearing stories of “Virtual Synods” that have already sold their building so that more money can go into community, building, training and resource development of church leaders.  We found a “middle judicatory” from another denomination that has realigned around a shared commitment to urban church planting instead of geographical boundaries and is thriving so well they are starting to help other denominations (including the PCUSA) plant churches in cities.  We are finding common themes and ideas that are coming from majority-world countries that are growing (if you haven’t heard about the new church development success in the Presbyterian Church in Brazil, you really should) and from Presbyteries in our denomination (yes, really!) who ARE already changing.  In the words of the authors, “What’s working against-all-odds is a breath of fresh air.”

As we go about our “consultation” with the church, we are in the discovery and discernment business more than the development business. To that end, I have three personal thoughts about discovering and discerning models that are already out there. 

 

1.  This is not only a breath of fresh air, but a great source of hope.  God is at work in the church, there are signs of life.  There are green shoots fighting their way toward the light through the dark deep pavement of an old regulatory system that is stifling creativity with both rules and personal resistance. Some of that is in the restlessness and even critique found in the Tweeters at NEXT Church.  Others “green shoots” are found in the collaborative experiments that are being drawn up on napkins during conversations amongst church leaders.  Still others are found as people begin to rethink traditional "boundaries" and relate to each other in new ways for the sake of mission.  Maybe in a post-modern world form follows function-in-relationship.  
   
   
2. Positive Deviants are no guarantee for widespread change.  Whether you object to the characterization of the denomination as “deathly ill” or think that instead this a God-given “exile” to teach us some collective lesson, or that we are still mid-Phyllis Tickle-like “rummage sale” and eventually we’ll figure this, or instead think that the church is just fine because “We’ve got Spirit, yes we do!”  the fact of the matter is that the church is collectively finally aware  something needs to change.  We have to acknowledge the Positive Deviants as “deviants” that are exceptions to the “rule” of decline, discouragement and disengagement and we have to resist our own tendency to defensiveness and rationalization and our personal "immunity to change" that keeps us stuck in old, unfruitful ways.
   
   
3. Once we discover, we have some discerning to do, too. Perhaps the most important part of our charge is not a word, but a single letter.  It’s the “s” on the end of “models”.  Models. Plural.  We are not going to come up with ONE “silver bullet” model that we will seek to impose upon the church in some top-down regulatory fashion.  We might not end up thinking in terms of “models” at all, but perhaps “illustrations.”  Instead as we acknowledge that the church is in need of change AND there are positive deviants out there inviting us to learn alongside them, we are discovering not just models but truths.  We are discovering real possibilities for being the church together that will challenge our assumptions, cause us to seek changes in the constitution to eliminate obstacles and hopefully, even prayerfully, lead to renewal in our congregations, in our communities, and in our lives. 

In the meantime, know of any “positive deviants”?  If so, let us know so we can learn from them.