But What are You Inviting Them To?

Over the past few weeks I've had several conversations with colleagues about my efforts at marketing over Holy Week that seem to go kind of like this:

Me: (In my passionate, crazy-Tay voice) You would not believe how easy it was to set up a Facebook marketing Campaign... blah blah blah
Expert: (Cautiously) Yeah, but you can't advertize unless you have something to invite people, to. We need to make our churches more (Holy/Welcoming/Understandable/Word-focused/Sacrament-focused/Jesus-focused/Holy-Spirit-focused/Good-for-Kids/Loving etc.)

That last part depends entirely on the biases of the person I'm talking to, but it always causes me to do a mental check about whether my church is, indeed, the place I say it is. And like many parish clergy I'm probably pretty brutal in my assessment, or perhaps I'm impossibly optimistic. It's actually really hard to tell how many trees are in this forest when you are in it. The point of view of outsiders thus becomes very important for those of us seeking to draw people to a faithful-following of Jesus in our particular communities.

One such perspective comes from NCD (Natural Church Development). It has it's quirks, but is generally a good tool for measuring congregational health along multiple-axis. I know from that my congregation is generally pretty healthy. I know that we are really good at the "Loving Relationships" piece and need the most improvement in "Passionate Spirituality." That is, to what degree do people find that what we do on Sunday connects with their everyday life. Are they excited about God? And over the past year I've done a lot of work on this area, so I'll be curious to see whether our results haven't risen some.

Another is the perspective of church "experts" who encounter our community in their professional lives. An example of this sort of person would be our NCD coach, whom I ran into at the Episcopal Election on Saturday. She was very excited to hear about what I've learned about digital evangelism this Easter and wants to know more. I told her about the Messiah Commons project and that made her even more excited. She then told me about how perfectly that fits into the style and gifts of the Messiah community. She talked about how our community is so open to experimenting and trying new things and I thought to myself, "Yes. That's us." Sure, I've discerned that before, but to hear someone with a bit of distance and experienced-based-perspective is incredibly validating.

Another example of how you can assess what you are inviting people to is the experience of random visitors on any given Sunday. A few weeks ago a visitor, who has since become a member, was deeply impressed at the work I've done to make our church visible in the digital realms. He loved the fact that he got our service times right away from googling, and that our website renders beautifully on his smart phone. That just made my day in a HUGE way.

Today we had a family visiting that I know only from Facebook. The dad said to me when he shook my hand before the service, "This is monumental--I've never come to church just because of Facebook before!" They live outside of the city and belong to a church there, they only attend downtown occasionally. After the service he told me several things that made me glow with pride. First, he talked about our coffee hour: "Yours in a truly welcoming community." I pushed him to clarify and say more and he ended up telling me about how his predominate experience of Anglican Church coffee hours is one of cliquishness and that he was impressed with how open and friendly we all were. Second, he said that "Although you guys are a small church, you are remarkably complete." I asked him what he meant about this, as well, as he talked about how we seem to be doing everything. We have a beautiful worship service, good preaching (!), good community feel, a nice children's programme, and so on. It's the whole package. As he said this, his daughter was playing joyfully with some of the other kids running around the nave. Seeing our parish through his eyes, I just beamed. Yeah, we're small, but we have a really awesome thing going on here, and I'm quite pleased to invite people into it.

So the next time some well-meaning colleague tries to tell me that I need "get my house in order" before my church dare invite people, I'm gonna smack 'em with a rolled up leaflet!

A Feature about COTM

Many weeks ago Henrieta Paukov, who writes for the Anglican among other responsibilities, came by to check out the Contemplative Eucharist and ask me about some of the other projects we've started here at Church of The Messiah. It was nice to be able to share some of the excitement about the ministries we've started.

Incidentally, we've added a new regular to the Contemplative Eucharist group. That means I have about four regulars and a couple of people who come only occasionally. Perhaps this article will generate some more interest. I've also been thinking about adding another time for the service--perhaps on Saturdays before or after the Healing Prayer Service.

-t

MLK Day

We had an MLK service at church this morning. To celebrate Martin Luther King, Jr. we had a drummer and Bass player and sang lots of Gospel and civil rights hymns. This congregation has enough people of black heritage (perhaps a third of the congregation) that these themes resonate deeply. I'm blessed with a truly diverse congregation. Like last Sunday, there was a lot of joy and energy and warmth. I feel really good right now about the way things are developing here at the church. More than one person has commented that they feel like the community is very close right now.

I believe strongly that the way to achieve growth for us, besides focusing on ministry to kids and focusing on the local neighbourhoods needs, is to create a tightly bonded and loving community. In fact, that kind of tightness and enriched community life is probably prerequisite for the kind of Mission that we want to do.

You see, many people talk about how churches need a "critical mass" in order to grow. Without that mass there just isn't enough energy or people to reach, attract, and integrate new people. It is said that you can achieve this critical mass either by being in a demographically growing area or by merging congregations together, but I think a third way is by making your existing congregation denser. That is, to enrich the interconnection and intimacy within your existing community. In that way, even a very small congregation can achieve such warmth and love that growth will be almost inevitable.

I know, this probably seems like an obvious thing, but actually shifting a congregation's social culture is very, very difficult. From a leadership perspective, I think it's probably very important that the new way of being together be modelled from the top-down. It's also important to be very firm about maintaining the boundaries of psychological safety. What I mean by that is that if Pastors want warm communities they need to police bad behaviour like bullying. I know so many congregations that have a dynamic poisoned by bullying!

A colleague who is leading a fast-growing midtown congregation told me the other day that one of her recent learnings is how fledgling, emerging, or newly growing communities, especially, need pastors willing to protect them from the wolves. You have to have some sense as the Pastor about what kind of behaviour you are willing to accept or not accept. Otherwise you'll end up harbouring all kinds of nastiness.

Back to this morning. I asked Marili (my Honourary Assistant) to preach. I'm glad I did as she gave an excellent sermon about social justice and the legacy of MLK. She could even talk about visiting King's church in Atlanta. She was excellent. I'll post it when I get a chance.

Another highlight this morning was being visited by a family looking to have their child baptized. Considering how well the last two baptisms went I'm feeling fantastic about a third. I know that many pastors feel badly when families disappear after having their children baptized, but we haven't had that problem yet. I'm really proud at how well our community has integrated the new families that have come to us. Usually in Pastoral-Sized congregations it's the Rector that does the work of integration, but I feel that here the congregation itself has done that remarkably well. The new families have even started volunteering for different projects and programmes. That said, I think I probably need to beef up my baptism preparation stuff. For example, a lot of congregations have handouts they give that cover a lot of basic groundwork and get things going. On the other hand, the more informal style of COTM is part of our appeal.

Now I'm getting ready to go home to take the rest of the day off to watch the NFL Playoffs. Life is good.

-t

Trad Com Delight

Monday night, before Tuesday's Traditional Communion service, I had a dream that I was back at St. Mary Magdalene's teaching people how to celebrate Mass at the East-Facing Lady Altar. I miss doing that, I admit, and these days Tradcom (A BCP Holy Eucharist we do once a month here at COTM) is as close as I come to the precision and orderliness of SMM.

The dream foreshadowed one of the best COTM Tradcom Tuesdays since I've come. For some reason, the Spirit was really moving through the place that day. As a result, we had visitors (!) to the service including one lady who came right off the street on a whim. My sermon was better than usual for a Trad Com, as well.

For lunch we skipped the usual frozen lasagna and instead and enjoyed homemade Egyptian food provided by one of our parishioners. Discussion around the table was lively and fun. It was a very, very good day.

In reflection, I've noticed the last several weeks that the mood around COTM is very positive right now. People are leaving on Sunday feeling really good about church. One marker of this, besides my subjective feeling, is that coffee hour is lasting longer and several people who used to leave as soon as worship ended are now sticking around to enjoy conversation and coffee! It's an incredibly rewarding thing to notice. I remember a year ago when people were very anxious about the future and we had few newcomers. Now things are really taking a positive turn. Yipee!

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The Parable of the 98 and the 2

And He told them this parable:

A shepherd has 100 sheep. Two are lost. One of these is old and ragged. His wool is thin and wiry and he will not live more than another season or two. The other lost sheep is young, strong, and fertile. Does he not leave the 98 to search for one of the two? And will he not save the old, sickly one?

I know, it seems like a false dilemma, in ministry and mission it rarely seems like we are choosing in such an abstract way to appeal to one group or another, but in reality things seem quite different.

Here's the reality. I have two or three people that call me several times a week, each week wanting my care and attention. They are both very marginalized. Yet both on the phone and in person I am able to give these people great comfort and care. It seems pretty straight forward, they need care, and within reason I give what I can.

Now, on the other hand, there are lots of ways that I could be reaching out to the high-functioning urban success stories that inhabit this neighborhood. I could offer another meditation group or set up a MOPS group or do something similar. This will take a lot of time and energy and the results are uncertain.

How do I, as a Pastor, decide where my time goes between these two things? The Gospel imperative seems to favor care to the sick, the poor, and the friendless, but I'm also told I need to "grow" the church (preferably by adding young, attractive families to the rolls).

WWJD? Perhaps he would engage the most proximate mission: reach out and heal whoever is at hand? In practice that's tough to engage, since the closest mission to hand is utterly subjective. It seems like there is so much need around me and COTM that we could engage any of them quite easily, but not all of them. How does the Holy Spirit guide us to the right mission?

I barely have a clue. Prayer, I suppose. Listening, of course. Maybe something else?

This is where ministry gets really hard--like editing, the key is choosing what gets cut out. It takes a certain courage to take something off my desk and put it in the trash can. It may be a very nice and pretty thing, but the desk is overflowing already. Many times when I pray for my ministry I pray the wisdom to have the detachment necessary let so many things (and even people) go.

-t

Judy Paulsen on Leadership

Here is the Powerpoint presentation that the Rev'd Judy Paulsen (Incumbent of Christ Memorial Church, Oshawa) gave to our Momentum group a few days ago. Many thanks to her for sharing it....

| View | Upload your own

Also, a few books Judy recommended:

• Heifetz, Ronald. Leadership Without Easy Answers. 348pp. $20.46.
• Heifetz, Ronald. Leadership on the Line. 252pp. $21.75.
• Lencioni, Patrick. Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable.
• Lencioni, Patrick. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.
• Roxburgh, Alan J. and Fred Romanuk. The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World 240pp. $16.29
• Roxburgh, Alan J. The Sky is Falling.

-t

Spring Fling

Friday was full of running around. That including preparations to receive Betsy's parents. We had supper with them at home.

Saturday morning was the "Spring Fling" at church--a day for exterior planting and landscaping. The turnout was good--about 20 or more. We did a ton of work. One of the Wardens and I ended up digging up some old, trashy beds on the south side of the church and replanting them. One of the long-time members of the church (pre-fire) told me that I was the first priest he remembers who ever got his handles dirty at parish events like this. Perhaps I'm wrong, but I think laboring side-by-side on projects for the good of the congregation is a great way to lead from the front.

After working at the church for a few hours we headed to the house of a parishioner with a pool for a pool party. I did some massive canon balls into the pool, myself. The kids had a great time in the water and the adults enjoyed grilled meats and other summer pool-side delights.

I got a bad case of water in my ear--which became quite annoyed and inflamed. I tried the trick of putting in alcohol to get rid of the water. That didn't get rid of the inflammation and pain, however. So I went to the drug store and got something that did the trick. After letting the drops soak in during a nap I was mostly back to normal.

Church in the morning. I think the congregation should feel proud of itself for a job well-done today!

-t

Prayer of the Week - Pentecost 3

Beloved Parishioners,

The Church of the Messiah is grouped with ten other neighboring parishes into something called a "Deanery." The clergy from each Deanery get together about once a month to discuss common concerns, hear about things going on at a Diocesan level, and gossip. This month's meeting of the Eglinton Deanery (where we belong) presented me with a stark reality: in the eyes of the diocese we are a "blue parish."

You see, the Diocese has assessed every parish in terms of it's strategic value and viability and given it a colour to correspond. Green parishes are "sustainable." Yellow are "static." Red is reserved for places that receive the dreaded "unsustainable" stamp. Our parish, however, is blue. On the official diocesan assessment scale blue means "God Only Knows." (Yes, they actually say "God Only Knows.") It seems our parish has fallen into that vague category of places that are beyond prediction. We have sailed off the map. Our situation is simply too complex, too fluid, to predict our future.

This is good news, actually. I was concerned that decades of falling attendance combined with our proximity to other healthy parishes would earn us the dreaded "red" status. That would make it difficult to get grants and other assistance from the Diocese. The strategic plan of the Diocese is to withdraw support from places judged "unsustainable" and invest it in up-and-coming parishes. But apparently there is enough potential here to offset the negatives. They haven't made up their minds about us.

Changing our colour to "green" will require some big changes of the kind that we have begun together. It will mean shifting the congregation's mindset away from maintenance towards mission. It will also mean becoming more attuned to the spiritual needs of our neighborhood. And yet these changes are entirely possible for us. We have the people and the resources to create a place of love and transformation in the city.

On the heals of last week's "don't worry" Gospel, this week our Lord spurs us to Kingdom-building action: "Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock" (Matthew 7:24). The two things are connected: we proceed from a liberating confidence in God's providence to questing for Kingdom-come and righteousness. Join us in this work!

Lord God of Heaven and Earth, all things come from you. We thank you for sustaining our lives and providing all things we need. Inspire us, we pray, to continue your work in the world, building the Kingdom of God in all righteousness and Godly love. Give us courage to imagine and to explore and strength to plant and to build. We ask this in the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord, Amen.

-t

More on Missional Church

I preached about Missional Church this morning (big surprise). The lections were perfect: Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones and the Raising of Lazarus. Basically, I said that if God can resurrect a pile of dry bones or some corpse that's been rotting for four days, then He can certainly give new life to the Church!

A couple of reflections about the meeting yesterday with Bishop Cray...

I gotta get me a copy of Mission-Shaped Church, the report from the Church of England about Mission and Evangelism. This document is a blockbuster in terms of opening up the CoE, and everyone keeps referencing it.

I need to check out the training resources developed through the Fresh Expressions project. What's there that's worth me spending a lot of time with?

Doing traditional church better (a model based on attraction) at best means competing for only about 6% of the population--but being a different kind of church has virtually infinite potential.

Key Principles:

• Inculturation
• Planting not cloning
• "Dying to live" (cf. John 12:24)
• Less detailed advanced planning; more discernment in context
• Seeing what God is doing and jumping in

"...do not try to call them back to where they were, and do not try to call them to where you are, beautiful as that place may seem to you. You must have the courage to go with them to a place that neither you nor they have been before." Vincent Donovan

Mission to Community to Worship, not Worship to Community to Mission

A sign of maturity in a Fresh Expression is that they know they need inherited church, and vice versa.

Every form of church is provisional and incomplete.

Fresh Expressions require a new ecclesiology, but they also need a new and robust eschatology to backup all that Kingdom-talk. We need a new language for the Christian hope that is more than just middle-class suburban bliss and do-good-isms or maintaining a repository of "culture."

If the decline of the church is our fault (for not adapting to changing need) than it can be addressed through a process of repentence (cf. Bob Jackson).

-t

Missional Church Meeting

Today two of my three Wardens and myself spent a few hours at St. Paul's, Bloor Street, to hear a presentation by Bishop Graham Cray about Fresh Expressions of Church. This the third event on Congregational Development/Evangelism/Church Growth I've been two in the last month or two. They've all been a little different, but also strikingly similar in many respects. Basically, the Church is poised on the edge of great change and growth, and it's being one all over the place already. So much of this mission stuff is about giving people the permission to engage their imaginations to recognize the work of the Holy Spirit already in progress.

One priest at the event pointed out that what's happening is a network of churches and people in the Diocese interested in Mission church is beginning to emerge. That's going to develop all kinds of experimental mission projects and initiatives. Yipee!

-t

Fresh Expressions

The Conference ended well. I got some new ideas and some stuff to process. Even more importantly, I established or re-established some relationships. Again, I'm too tired to blog a lot about the conference here, but I will point those of you interested in emerging church kinds of stuff to Fresh Expressions, which is a website out of the U.K. that has a lot resources...

-t

The Vital Church Planting Conference

Yesterday and today I was attending the Vital Church Planting Conference here in Toronto--so I haven't had as much time to blog as normal. The conference itself is about more than planting churches, of course, it's also about mission, evangelism, and growth. I have heard some things that have given me some ideas for COTM, incidentally.

BTW, at the conference I've had a chance to talk about some of the moves I'm making at COTM with people wise in the ways of the force (the Bishop, Diocesan Consultants, priests I respect) and they've given me some very affirmative feedback. It seems that I'm on the right track, which is important to check out every once in a while. A good test of discernment (among other tests) is whether it stands up to the scrutiny of peers.

Hopefully I'll have a chance to write more about some of the learnings from the conference. But right now I'm tired and need sleep. I'm hoping that tomorrow, when the conference is done, I'll have time to post some overdue sermons to the blog.

-t

About the Church's Decline...

One of my parishioners called this article to my attention from the December 22nd Globe and Mail. In it the author, Michael Valpy, explores the phenomenal decline in Canadian Church membership that began in the 1960's. He thinks the most compelling theory about why this happened has to do with shifting conceptions of gender and the church's inability to adapt to them. Here's my favorite quote:

That turbulent decade, says Prof. Macdonald, illustrated "the incredible unreliability of the clergy's insights into the faith of the average person."

Christianity in Canada won't die, of course, although Canadian Christendom is destined for history's sunset. And while it remains unclear how much the rebellion of the past 40 years has been against Christianity and how much has been against the church, many of the clergy's insights have radically changed and the churches today have a pretty clear idea of what congregations must do to survive. In fact, Michael Higgins, the Catholic scholar at St. Thomas, believes the decline is bottoming out and the congregations that survive, though smaller, will be more committed. (source)

I'm interested in this idea about the "unreliablity of the clergy's insights into the faith of the average person" that Prof. Stuart Macdonald (from Knox College) talked about. I think I agree with him, most clergy are probably out of touch with the spiritual currents of mainline society, even if they are pretty aware of what's happening with their own parishioners. Partly I think this is because most of us don't know how to listen to and interpret the spiritual language of post-Christians.

For example, take the recent resurgence in Tattoos. If you listen to the stories of people who have them, you quickly realize that getting a Tattoo is a ritual about transformation, growth, and meaning. People get Tattoos because there is something happening in their lives that needs this sort of ritual to integrate it. Often they commemorate deaths, births, and important commitments. But when is the last time you heard this discussed or mentioned in church?

The work of the church is about declaring the love of God in whatever language people can understand. Maybe I should give a sermon sometime about the marks on Jesus' body as being tattoos about his love for us? I have a suspicion that this kind of preaching is important for the world right now...

-t

Visioning Workshop Number 1

Today's visioning event went extremely well. Although we didn't have a huge group (13 adults and 2 kids and 4 teachers!), we had a critical mass for the work at hand: understanding our collective past as a church. I think we all learned a few things that we didn't know, which is important, but I think we also became a bit closer by virtue of having shared our ideas and memories about COTM for 2 1/2 hours. Our Parish Administrator is going to type up the notes and we will distribute them to the congregation via e-mail. At times there has been a semi-regular e-mail to the congregation; I realize that I should revive that tradition. It's a fairly obvious application of my conception of having a media-rich church.

On Friday I stopped by the old Rectory. We let the tenants pick the paint colors and make some other decorating decisions, which was wise. They have done a marvelous job making it their home. It's amazing how much impact simple things like fresh paint and refinishing floors and replacing cabinet knobs can have. I'm also glad this all turned out well without a ton of hands-on input from me. There is nothing as satisfying as setting people loose on a project and finding that they have exceeded your expectations!

-t

A Scattered Sunday

Sunday liturgy went fine today--though I was a bit bothered by the lack of integration between the various things we were trying to do. We did a piece around Remembrance Day (reading the names of the parish war dead), and we had the normal propers from the RCL, and Megan preached about liturgy as agreed--but where was the unity of these elements? Megan had the same post-service observation.

I was also a little disappointed with my version of announcements. I have a formula for handling announcements that is meant to be energetic and engaging and interesting. But there is a real art to this kind of spiel, and sometime I do a better job of making to all fit together than others. Alas! I think that I probably need to spend more time preparing for these announcements--they really are key for communicating with the congregation about what we are up to.

The best part of today was after the service meeting with the planning group for the Christmas Pageant. The ideas that came out were very creative, and we made excellent progress in our planning efforts. It's going to be a fabulous Pageant.

I think I should do some late nights at work this week. there a several projects that would benefit from some TLC. There is the Pageant script to work on... also a Power Point sermon for Sunday talking about liturgy and our plans for Advent. I also need to fix a loose connection in the sound system (a 5 minute job with a soldering iron). And I haven't done my PC Rebuild Project, either--that's important so that I can start posting video. Oh, and of course there is the COTM website to build. Hmm. No shortage of work in the kingdom building project. The thing is, it's hard to do these kinds of projects when I'm also occupied with all the phone calls and e-mails I deal with.

I'm not complaining; I'm really glad to have things to do. It would be terrible if I didn't know what to do and spent my time in busy work or simply researching what to do. In fact, both the Bishop, the Wardens, and many others told me that they really wanted me to try to build stuff, and not simply talk about it. So all this building feels like the right thing to be doing.

After the planning meeting Megan and I did a service at Belmont House (a local retirement home). That was fine--then it was home for Football and cats.

-t

James

Here is our new kitten, James. He's adorable. Denise is not completely happy about our adoption, but she's getting used to it. The thing that amazes me about James is that he has only had a body for something like four months, so he's still really awkward about jumping and running and stuff, which is very cute to watch.

Trad-Com (Traditional Communion) service this morning. That went well, though following the BCP to the letter still irks me a little. I'm looking forward to making a few changes in the future that will be a reasonable compromise between the BCP Communion liturgy and the current liturgical theology of the Christian Church. We'll see....

Had lunch at the U of T Faculty Club with George Sumner, Principal of Wycliffe College. Very enjoyable. He did his Ph.D. at Yale and his daughter is an undergrad there, so we swapped a lot of stories about old blue. We ended up sharing quite a bit about our preaching styles, which was interesting. We also discussed the future of Messiah, etc. There is a historic connection between our two institutions, and so perhaps there are possible collaborations in the future, we'll see.

Productive staff meeting this afternoon. Lots of exciting initiatives in the works. I'm aware that in about 6 months from now our staff meetings will be less about the mechanics of what and when and more about the dynamics of who and why. It was interesting that this occurred to me very strongly during the staff meeting. I mean, what we are doing now is the right thing for this moment, but it's how we will do our jobs in the future--nice to realize that.

-t

"Low-Hanging Fruit"

The other day I ran into Dave Robinson, the lead Diocesan consultant for congregations. He had a great phrase when he said that I should "pick some low-hanging fruit," but not get side tracked from strategic initiatives that develop congregational vision and identity. In other words, while the early successes of new pianos, chairs, and paint jobs are important to build momentum and energy, it's really things like a parish-wide workshop on our history that are going to be transformative in the long run. So I'm looking to do something like in November, stay tuned.

I went to the Principal's Dinner at Wycliffe last night. Wycliffe College is one of the two Anglican seminaries at the University of Toronto. We had a little Church of the Messiah table going with two of my Wardens (Virginia and Brendan) plus Megan and her husband Chris and Betsy and myself. It was a valuable chance for me to make contacts with some valuable players in the Toronto church scene, including the Principal, George Sumner. I'm hoping to re-establish the close connection that once existed between Wycliffe and COTM, and that means having good relationships with the current leaders and players.

I'm still processing some of the great conversations from Momentum. At one point I found myself talking about the need to find a well of spiritual good stuff closer to where I live and work than where I have gone in the past (I'm speaking of both geographic and other kinds of distances). Sister Anitra suggested that I come to the convent for worship, but I noted that finding the water there, even if it's close to the surface, will still require a certain amount of digging. That is, establishing relationships and a pattern of attendance and so forth. She looked at me in that Jedi-Christian way of spiritual directors and waved her hand as she said, "Come expecting nothing." And I knew that she was right. The Force is strong in that one.

Speaking of St. John's Convent, here's a picture of their chapel for those that have never been...


Note the progression from Font to Ambo to Altar. Also note the chairs facing each other across that axis. It's simply the best arrangement for a worshiping community of that size that I've seen around: which is why all the cool kids are doing it.

I came across this interesting blog by Edward Murray today. He's a church musician in Los Angeles. Any blog that quotes Mary Oliver, Rumi, and the like deserves some attention, IMHO!

-t

Stategic vs. Crisis Management

Good staff meeting today. We are definitely making progress in getting away from a crisis-oriented way of running things and towards a strategic model. But, unfortunately, there is much progress to be made in various areas of the organization. The problem with making everything into a crisis that must be solved today is that it biases things towards the quick fix rather than the long term solution. It also tends to push people towards isolated "man-to-man" style defense rather than "zone-coverage." In other words, people tend to focus on problems to be addressed rather than their role in the process. When that happens, people start making decisions individually without seeing the larger picture.

The fact is that the only time you should intentionally lead with a crisis management model is when you have a genuine crisis to address. Alas, many churches (including SMM, for example) create cultures of perpetual crisis. Partly this happens because of a failure of strategic processes; partly it happens because crisis becomes a kind of drug that works as an institutional analgesic. It numbs people so that they don't feel the anxiety, pain, or loss associated with the "bigger picture." For example, churches in decline often get into a crisis-management culture as a way to avoid dealing with the reality that they are in decline. A healthier strategy is to actually address the real issues involved with some plan conceived of in a scale that matches the scale of the problem.

My general strategy at COTM at the moment is to get us out of the crisis-management place by putting in effective infrastructure that is structured around strategic goals. But that's much easier to do on the level of what happens in the building. Much harder when we are talking about coordinating volunteers. No wonder larger churches actually have a "volunteer manager" to help tame the chaos.

Still--we are making progress.

I set myself up on Facebook yesterday. That was very exciting. I've heard that most of the planning for youth events in the Diocese is done entirely in the Facebook universe.

Had a good lunch with a former parishioner at the ROM's new restaurant. The meal was pretty posh--and I do like a posh meal sometimes! I'm convinced that in a former life I was some kind of epicurean mad scientist. How else to explain my interest in fine dining and epistemology?

Speaking of epistemology--I've been doing some thinking and research about the most appropriate tools to do strategic thinking/planning at COTM. Today that meant learning about Ishikawa diagrams. This is a simple way of graphically organizing the root causes of a complex phenomenon. The first level branches could be populated with the 8 characteristics of growing churches according to the Natural Church Development project:

• Empowering Leadership
• Gift-based Ministry
• Passionate Spirituality
• Effective (Functional) Structures
• Inspiring Worship Service
• Holistic Small Groups
• Need-oriented Evangelism
• Loving Relationships.

Then you start to look at the ways that these characteristics contributed or harmed the effect we wish to examine (the declining attendance at COTM). The interesting thing about the NCD process, BTW, is that it focuses on core congregational health rather than church growth, per se.

Actually, there are number of tools from the literature on quality control that could be useful to us at COTM. For example, I'd love to do some scatter plots of things like length of time coming to COTM vs. length of Sunday drive, or how about involvement in congregational life vs. length of time coming to COTM, etc. Or even just a simple geographic scatter plot to show where people live. All attempts to get a better picture of the present circumstances....

Betsy made some flashcards to help us memorize the names and important facts about the congregation. I should make a resolution to spend at least an hour a day with them.

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Corporation Meeting

Last night we had the Corporation of the Parish (the three Wardens: Trent, Virginia, and Brendan plus the clergy) plus the Parish Administrator over for dinner and a meeting. Betsy prepared a great chicken dish and we toasted the beginning of my incumbency with champaign and many stories. It was a great opportunity for the seven of us to get to know each other better. After supper we cleared the table and got down to business--an hour and a half of hashing through agenda items. I was pleased that we managed to come to resolution on most of them. Considering that it was my first time actually chairing an entire Corporation meeting, I think it went quite well.

But I don't think that getting to resolution on items of business is really the best measure of success for these meetings. I'm more concerned with developing a culture of Christian leadership shared among the members of the corporation. The idea is that this then trickles down into the rest of the church. This is accomplished through "lay leadership development."

LLD is like exercise and healthy eating--everybody knows they are supposed to do it, but few actually do it with any kind of intentionality. I've asked a number of priests in this diocese how they do their spiritual development with their wardens. There are a few different models being used, but what's clear is that something ought to be done along these lines. So at COTM we are going to have to experiment with some possible ways of doing this. Stay tuned.

Today we had a nice intimate Eucharist to start the day. But considering the late night just before, it was no surprise that Megan and I were dragging. The Parish Administator caught a bug and came in around noon not feeling well--again, no surprise, the Ministry Team has been pushing hard.

After the Eucharist I spent time doing research on Sunday's Gospel lesson (also our text for the work-place Bible Study we lead downtown). The Bible Study itself went very well. After that I returned the church briefly and then went out again to visit a parishioner and run some random errands.

Met up with Betsy and we ran some of our own errands late into the evening. Weird how much satisfaction Home Depot and Costco runs can bring. I guess I'm domesticated...

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Willow Creek

Here's an interesting video by the folks at Willow Creek (one of the benchmark mega-churches) that is a 13 minute summary of where the church growth conversation is right now based on research that they have been doing. It mirrors a lot of what has been discovered in the Diocese of Toronto through the NCD (Natural Church Development) system. Bishop Johnson was reflecting just a few days ago that churches our Diocese tends to score very low in the "Passionate Spirituality" section of the NCD survey.

Anyway, here's the link to the 13 minute video...

And here is a shorter (3 minute) teaser version...

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