Changing church culture 1

 by Eleanor Burne-Jones

I live in an area where many congregations are aging and churches are approaching closure.  Many are struggling, and even if they are just about able to manage financially, their members are getting older and  the programme is slowly diminishing.  They are unable to offer the kind of resources that draw or hold new and younger people, such as different kinds of worship services, Alpha courses, Bible studies at different levels, small groups, and a high-challenge high-support environment for discipleship with integrated mission training.  Often there are people in the congregations who have struggled to encourage renewal over decades. Often, successive waves of innovative newcomers have been driven out by the group’s change-resistance.  Often they have had leaders who have been trying over years to turn the congregations around, and who have been driven to despair by the situation.

Can anything impact church culture and enable the kinds of changes that are needed for renewal?   I believe so. I think many of our professional church leaders (of all denominations) are ‘corks that need to be popped’, discipling, developing and deploying every believer. This means thinking primarily in terms of sending out rather than gathering in, and focussing on making disciples who will make disciples, rather than focussing on controlling, managing, and all-too-often warehousing, believers. It’s a paradigm shift in overall church thinking, away from shepherd-sheep as the primary model of church.

When I moved to Cornwall as a lay person, and a sister at the time in an Anglican Franciscan Third Order, (and also a Salvationist), I realised quickly there was no local network for people who were called to pioneering ministries of different kinds.  There was a leaders network, but it was for clergy so far as I understand, and I wasn’t in any formal role in the church so was not involved. Neither were any of my friends who were lay people and out setting up new initiatives. So we set up the Cornwall Fresh Expressions Network, invited everyone interested, and got on with encouraging each other and creating a learning community. It has grown and continues to grow steadily, now including everyone from senior ministers to new believers including teens who share their dreams for the future of the church. We are ecumenical, we have about equal numbers of women and men, lay and ordained, people working alone and those able to gather a team.

Every stereotype of church planters and pioneers I had has been challenged by the people in the network. The point is that this group works not just for us to give each other encouragement in a difficult mission context, and in a context which has not helped lay people get out and serve God with affirmation and support, but we work together as a vital learning community, listening to God, Scripture and one another, even from our very different theological perspectives.

So the first thing I’d suggest, whether you are a soldier or in validated church leadership, is join, or create, a network. It really is as simple as that.  Do whatever it takes to find others with a similar calling and energy, lay on food, provide worship, pray for each other, provide pastoral care for exhausted, frustrated and despairing planters and church leaders, and keep building warm relationships with the churches in your area. I’ve seen trust slowly grow, barriers come down, and entrenched attitudes begin to change.  Find training resources and before you know it the group will be generating its own training materials and giving them away.

The next challenge, whether you want to encourage a fading congregation into renewal, or need to embed a change-prepared culture into a new church plant, is explore and understand renewal. Look at the process, look at the kind of leadership it takes, and work out what incremental steps might look like in reality. They will be as unique as each situation, but there are common themes.  Keep coming back to the question, ‘What would it take?’ to sort out the next step.  The Holy Spirit brings the renewal, not the leader or participants. But God does not force us, and in different ways we can surely derail what would otherwise be God’s life-giving movements amongst and through us. The ‘What would it take?’ question often brings us to face hard changes.  We can pray for renewal, we can pray for revival, but as the old truth says, it needs to start with us. We often need to know what to repent of, what needs to change, what our part in opening the door to the Holy Spirit needs to be. 

On reflecting on what we need to understand about ourselves as groups, here’s a useful definition of [church] culture by David Brubaker, who draws also on the work of others:

‘Culture is composed of the tacit assumptions about rules, rituals, roles, and relationships, which are expressed in values and symbols.  The equipper functions as cultivator of culture, fostering the awareness of the system’s history and depths‘¹.

For example, if one of the unwritten rules is ‘we don’t tolerate disagreements around here’, and in fact that means that conflict is suppressed, and issues are never dealt with, you have unearthed a reason a church may be stuck in impasse rather than renewed and growing.  If clergy and laity are locked in their relationship into a shepherd and sheep model, you may have unearthed a reason why lay people are not developed and sent out in mission, and a whole mindset may need to change for your church to experience renewal.

Dr Jeffrey Pugh, a senior minister in Australia, did his doctoral research², including theological reflection, on the role of leaders in congregations that experienced renewal.  In my own words, here is the summary of what he found, as I understand it.  Present in churches that turned around were: An emotionally mature, well differentiated³ leader, who leads from an ethical heart. He or she creates a sense of safety in the group, of all, the leader’s friends and enemies, being safely held in his/her warm, positive regard⁴. This leader transitions the culture of a congregation (if necessary) from a culture of control to a culture of competence⁵. This leader enables a congregation to journey through the chaos and pain of change by listening to the congregation and discerning with them those vital things that need be kept in order for the congregation to retain a sense of safety, self-identity, and their connection between past, present and future⁶.

Much of the above ties in very naturally with preaching and teaching, and lends itself to being broken down into elements, and explored in your learning community, as you listen to one another’s thoughts and experiences and reflect on your own developing leadership. Questions to ask might again be: What would it take? How do I need to change? It might be, ‘How can I articulate in a life-giving way in the group I’m part of but don’t lead, what might help us all move forward?’ It might be about how we need to change our thinking as individuals and how we respond to what God is saying to us in our reflection together.

The second most important resource for changing church culture, and here we are once again asking about incremental steps the congregation can take together, is conflict literacy training. The group can take this journey together to prepare themselves to handle disagreements, even strong differences and painful issues, in a way that demonstrates faith that God can bring good out of even the most difficult experiences we face in the church. (More on this to come in part 2.)

This process of reflection is for all of us.  Our mission contexts are constantly changing around us.  I believe renewal is possible even in the declined churches I see around me in rural UK, because nothing is impossible for God. I believe he works within our humanity, within ‘the way we work in groups’, within our God-created natures, even in our limitations, and relational holiness can be beautifully expressed as we work together on the nuts and bolts of our congregational renewal, in conflict transformation, and trust-building in our communities.  One of the most beautiful cultural renewals possible in the church is that of listening, sensitive and thoughtful encouragement. We can immediately practice this with those around us. If it isn’t happening vertically where you are within the church, then encourage it, and help it to happen horizontally across networks and groups you facilitate.

 Writer: Eleanor Burne-Jones grew up in The Salvation Army, but gradually left the Army and the church by her mid twenties. She spent more than fifteen years in the Jewish faith, before returning to Christ and The Salvation Army in 2003/4.  She was noviced as a Franciscan at the same time she was enrolled a soldier, and had nearly three years of Franciscan spiritual formation in the Third Order Soc. St Francis before asking to live out her vocation within The Salvation Army. In 2007 she set up Kres Jesu Krist, (Cornwall Church Health) with an ecumenical lay team. They offer training and spiritual accompaniment, and facilitate the Cornwall Fresh Expressions Network for people in pioneering ministries and church planting across the county. She is studying theology, and is a soldier at Penzance Corps, UK and has her own blog.

 Resources (UK): Fresh Expressions DVDs and website. http://www.freshexpressions.org.uk/index.asp?id=1

References

1. David Brubaker, adapted from Paul Stevens and Phil Collins, Alban Institute 1993.
2. Dr  Jeffrey Pugh, PhD thesis, Fantasyland Faith, the redemptive role of ethical leaders within neurotic church systems. 2007 Available from Amazon, pub on demand, and http://www.flipkart.com/fantasyland-faith-redemptive-role-ethical/3836428962-ijz3fnw23d which includes an abstract.
3. The term is as used in Bown Family Systems theory. A useful resource is Roberta M Gilbert, ‘Extraordinary Relationships’ 1992, Wiley and Sons, Canada.
4. JP refers to ‘adequate holding environment’, a concept used in psychodynamics. JP compares a number of lenses through which to understand renewal in congregations, and the psychodynamic is one of them.
5. Terms as used in organisational culture theory.
6. Transitional Objects, as the term is used in the field of psychodynamics.

3 Comments to Changing church culture 1

1. Great article, Eleanor. I think its so true that we need to just get out there and find support for ourselves. It is right there in our community. Often we sit back and look to headquarters for permission ;o) rather than take the initiative ourselves.

   You give some good advice, I’m waiting to see your part 2!

   Blessings!
   Kathie
Kathie Chiu on August 14th, 2009

2. Interesting article, Eleanor. I came back to the church in October 2002, about a year before you. You talk in your article, and elsewhere, about conflict literacy training, but you don’t say what types of things you have in mind as the basis of conflicts. Governance varies a lot between different denominations. For me, the only issue that has generated serious angst has been style of worship - but that you well and truly know! I look forward to reading part 2 of your article - please alert us in Facebook when it’s out.
   God bless you!
   David
David Truman on August 15th, 2009

3. A very refreshing and insightful article. It is unfortunate but a strong testimony to the Spirit-filled wisdom of your words that they can be transplanted across the Atlantic to the U.S. where I live and see the dug-in, resistant, unchanging ways of the Church.

   Jason
Jason on October 16th, 2009

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