Tag: church

What’s Up with Pastor Todd? 1-8-21

What’s Up with Pastor Todd 1/8/21

On Nov. 23, 2020 First Congregational Church of Granby narrowed five “lanes” to the future to two: consolidation and downsizing. Two task forces were created to explore these alternatives and create reports, which will be discussed (not voted on) at a congregational meeting Jan. 17, 2021. 

At the Nov. 23 meeting a request was made for information on current best practices around these two models, and I was asked to help with that. This week’s topic: downsizing. There are any number of approaches to downsizing. Three I will consider are downsizing/revitalization, downsizing/restart, and downsizing/hospice. Downsizing could also be a part of a larger consolidation/merger process, but our purpose is to consider each approach as “stand alone.”

Downsizing/revitalization is the approach we’ve been experimenting a little bit with for the past 18 months. It involves pointing as many of the church’s resources as possible at the goal of reaching new people. It means taking a hard look at buildings/property, staffing, organizational structure, worship, and mission focus. If it’s not growing the church, we eliminate, repurpose, or redirect it. Overall it’s doing more with less because we are no longer doing things that don’t directly contribute to the growth of the church. One small example of this is shifting 20% of the pastor’s time budget toward building relationships with people who are not yet members of the church while meeting ongoing pastoral care needs with lay volunteers. For more detailed information see: Reconstructing Church: Tools for Turning Your Congregation Around by Todd Grant Yonkman. The book is a case study of one downsize/revitalization project.

Downsizing/restart is when the congregation sells its property, changes/reduces its staffing as a part of a larger strategy of reinventing itself in ways that will move it from a decline trajectory to a growth trajectory. In other words, an “old” church starts behaving like a brand new “baby” church. The whole point of this downsizing is a disruption of the status quo. For more information see Dying to Restart: Churches Choosing a Strategic Death for a Resurrected Life available in paperback and as an e-book. Two examples of downsize/restart congregations right here in Connecticut are First Congregational Church of Stamford and United Congregational Church (Bridgeport). 

The goal of downsizing/hospice is to maintain the congregation’s status quo as much as possible for as long as possible so the current membership can be as comfortable as possible. Some of the main pieces of hospice work are pastoral care, maintaining familiar worship, events, and programming, planning for a meaningful closing that celebrates the church’s history, and leaving a legacy that can provide resources for new churches and ministries. 

The hospice approach to downsizing tends to focus on reducing staff. This makes sense. Staff are usually the biggest part of any church budget. A brief Internet search reveals that recommendations for staffing as a percentage of overall budget range from 45% to 65%. (Many churches spend much more. Contrariwise, some have no paid staff whatsoever! See Shalom UCC in New Haven, CT. Our 2021 budget allocates 66.4% for staff with several positions as of right now unfilled.) 

Hospice staffing usually consists of an administrator who runs the church office,  coordinating groups and rentals, printing the bulletin, and the newsletter, etc. There’s a sexton/cleaning company to maintain the building. A part time musician and a part time pastor lead worship, do funerals, and care for the church members until they gradually become too few to maintain the church assets. 

The good news is that even at this point, new life is possible. The dying congregation plans a “funeral” to celebrate all of the wonderful ministry it has done. Then it can leave a legacy to another organization or entity in some form. The UCC has a process whereby the assets of closed churches can be used to start new ministries to reach new people in desperate need of hearing the UCC’s inclusive message. For more information see Toward the Better Country: Church Closure and Resurrection by UCC minister Gail Irwin. 

Downsizing can be very liberating. Freeing ourselves from that which is unnecessary and burdensome can open space for new possibilities. What other downsizing models do you see?

What’s up with Pastor Todd 2-23-20

What’s Up with Pastor Todd 2-23-20

I didn’t know it at the time, but looking back I can see that my childhood was filled with stories of what I would now call “mystical experiences,” that is, encounters with God. I sat on mom’s lap as she read from my Children’s Story Bible about God’s search for Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. I remember illustrations of Abraham’s meeting with the three strangers under the Oaks of Mamre. I was fascinated and frightened by the mysterious angel who wrestled through the night with Jacob on the banks of the River Jabbok. Equally scary but in a different way was Moses’ encounter with God on Sinai. I remember the visions of the prophets: Isaiah’s throne; Ezekiel’s vision of wheels within wheels was something out of a Marvel comic book, and his vision of the valley of dry bones was spooky. Then there was Jesus’ vision of the Holy Spirit at his baptism. Peter, James, and John climb with Jesus to a mountaintop where Jesus is transfigured before their eyes. Paul encounters the risen Christ on the Road to Damascus. “Mystical” in the religious context has come to mean a direct experience of ultimate reality.

I don’t explicitly talk about mysticism very often because it’s famously difficult to do. God is, as the hymn says, “beyond all knowledge and all thought.” From a mystical standpoint, God is “unspeakable.” Simply saying the word “God” is already missing God. “God” is a placeholder for that which is by definition incomprehensible.  Nevertheless, inadequate though it is, language is a tool we use to point toward a direct experience of–you pick your expression–God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Higher Power, the Divine, Ultimate Reality, Awakening, Buddha Nature, Allah, HaShem. The names are many.

Another reason I don’t explicitly talk about mysticism is the term carries with it all kinds of unhelpful baggage. People expect bright lights and heavenly voices and strange sensations. When these don’t manifest, they imagine either that it’s all just a bunch of hooey or that they are lacking the special whatever-it-is that one needs to have a mystical experience. Neither of these conclusions is true. It’s not a bunch of hooey. Have you ever had an “Aha” moment? Have you ever been moved to tears? These and other everyday experiences of “breakthrough” are what mystics consider “divine encounters.” And everyone has them or has the capacity to recognize them. So you are a mystic! Some breakthroughs are big and life-altering. More often they’re small and go unrecognized.

Church is a community gathered around the intention to recognize, name, and ever more deeply live out of these unspeakable mystical encounters. 

What’s Up with Pastor Todd 2-7-2020

What’s Up with Pastor Todd 2-7-2020

When I was a kid, we had our own slang. Now that I have kids of my own I find myself in the role of deciphering the distinctive, sometimes confusing languages of their tribes. “Salty” is a term my youngest, Olivia, likes to use. From context clues I gather it means something like “annoyed,” as in “I was salty with my professor because she gave a list of assignments for the week on Monday but then added more on Wednesday.” “Salty” can also be used in the context of disagreeing with something someone said in class, a friend forgetting a birthday, someone undeserving getting recognition. When Olivia uses it, “salty” isn’t particularly angry, resentful, or mean, but I think that has more to do with Olivia, who is a naturally happy and loving person, than with the term itself, which, according to the Urban Dictionary, is more along the lines of “angry, bitter, resentful.” For Olivia, “salty” is along the lines of “feisty.”

“Salty” as a term for angry, upset, “suddenly enraged,” is actually throwback slang first used in 1938 and associated, not surprisingly, with sailors, who had a reputation for gruff, rowdy, and drunken behavior. 

The other common use of “salt” as an adjective comes from our Scripture text for this Sunday. In his Sermon on the Mount Jesus says, “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt should become insipid, by what shall it be made salty?” From this famous text we get the phrase “salt of the earth.” I hear people use this term to describe folks who are humble, have moral integrity, and are generally considered “good people,” “pillars of the community,” whose goodness often goes unrecognized. While I think there’s some of that meaning in the text, it certainly doesn’t capture all of it.

To get the rest of the meaning, we need to look at the rest of the sentence: “You are the salt of the earth; but if the salt becomes insipid, by what shall it be made salty? It is no longer of any use except to scatter outside for people to tread upon.” “Insipid” means “dull, boring, flavorless, weak, vapid, spiritless.” Yes, “salt of the earth” has to do with humility, moral integrity, and all of those things we tend to like as Christians. But I hear Jesus giving a sharp, dare I say, “salty” warning to his followers against dullness, irrelevance, blandness, a kind of false humility that is really just acquiescence to the status quo. It’s a form of spiritual laziness that views the church’s role as being “chaplains to power,” reassuring the wealthy and spiritually satisfied that everything is “OK.”

I am super grateful that my children are faithful Christians and dedicated churchgoers. I don’t attribute that to any special example that their parents set, other than that while they were living at home, we brought them to church every week. If you asked them, my guess is that they would agree with many young people that the church is too often “insipid, boring, and irrelevant.” And, by the way, it has little to do with whether a band is used in worship or video clips or anything like that–though these things can help. The reason my children are still engaged is that church provided the context in which they could build authentic relationships with “salty” Christians, that is, feisty Christians who had some flavor, some fire, who were not satisfied with the status quo but who risked their personal comfort to stand up against injustice, who viewed the church not as a social club where “we take care of our own,” but as a social movement whose purpose is to change the world.