How to Hit the Ground Running: A Quick Start Guide for Congregations with New Leadership - Softcover

Michell, Neal O.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0898694752 ISBN 13: 9780898694758

Verlag: Church Publishing, 2005

Inhaltsangabe

A practical and comprehensive guide and workbook for new church leadership to set up a sustainable foundation, for pastors, vestry, and in administrative roles.

The quick-start program described in this book is designed for the new rector or pastor who wants to "hit the ground running." It is also designed for principal lay leaders who will be instrumental in the transition to new leadership.

The program takes the new pastor, vestry, or other leadership bodies from one month prior to the new leader's arrival through the first 18 months afterward. Organized in a user-friendly workbook format, this guide gives step-by-step suggestions on how the sometimes stalled and directionless period of transition in a faith community can be made dynamic and purposeful - a time of true congregational development.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

An Episcopal priest and consultant for congregational development, Neal O. Michell has served as the Canon to the Ordinary and Canon for Strategic Development in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas. A former practicing attorney, he has been a priest at churches of various sizes in Texas and in Tennessee, where he planted a church in Germantown that grew rapidly. He has led vestry retreats and workshops, focusing on vision-casting and leadership development. He holds a D.Min. in Church Growth from Fuller Seminary, where he researched contemporary Anglican worship. He has also gone on short-term mission trips to Ukraine, South Africa, Mexico, and Honduras. He is the author of How to Hit the Ground Running: A Quick-Start Guide for Congregations with New Leadership and Beyond Business as Usual: Vestry Leadership Development, in addition to numerous articles. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

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HOW TO HIT the GROUND RUNNING

A Quick-Start Guide For Congregations With New Leadership

By NEAL O. MICHELL

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2005 Neal O. Michell
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-0-89869-475-8

Contents

Foreword...................................................................
ix
Acknowledgments............................................................
xi
Introduction: How to Use This Book.........................................
xiii
Section 1: Understanding the Congregation..................................
1
Chapter 1 Understanding Congregational Size Dynamics.......................
3
Chapter 2 Understanding Church Growth Factors..............................
17
Chapter 3 Understanding Leadership.........................................
23
Chapter 4 Establishing Yourself as die Pastor: How to Connect with the 
Congregation...............................................................
33
Chapter 5 Discerning Your Congregation's Genesis Story to Further the 
Mission of the Church......................................................
41
Section 2: Bringing About Change...........................................
49
Chapter 6 Bringing About Change (Without Wreaking Havoc)...................
51
Section 3: Working with Leaders............................................
59
Chapter 7 Developing a Vestry That Makes People Want to Come to Vestry 
Meetings...................................................................
61
Chapter 8 Moving Your Vestry from a Micromanaging Vestry to a 
Permission-Giving Vestry...................................................
69
Chapter 9 Developing a Staff That Will Expand the Ministry.................
85
Section 4: Using Administrative Changes to Effect Healthy Change...........
95
Chapter 10 Building Trust through Financial Accountability.................
97
Chapter 11 Building Credibility with Tangible Results by Improving Your 
Buildings..................................................................
103
Chapter 12 Using the Annual Parish Meeting as an Opportunity for 
Motivation and Challenge...................................................
119
Section 5: Expanding Your Congregation's Reach.............................
123
Chapter 13 Developing Worship That Helps People Engage the Presence of 
God........................................................................
125
Chapter 14 Reaching Beyond Your Church by Raising Your Church's Profile in 
the Community..............................................................
137
Chapter 15 Reaching Beyond Your Church by Using Missions and Outreach as a 
Catalyst for Growth........................................................
145

CHAPTER 1

Understanding Congregational Size Dynamics

For which of you, intending to build a tower,does not first sit down and estimate the cost,to see whether he has enough to complete it?

—Luke 14:28

Developing a congregation is simply the task of developing people; making disciples. However,there are really two levels of disciple-making: one is the micro level, the one-on-one process ofhelping a person grow in faith; the other is the macro level, that is, the process of mobilizing people.Most churches that get stuck often do so at the macro level. Clergy are trained in seminaryto think theologically and to provide pastoral care to individuals; they are not trained, however, tomobilize people. They are trained to write theological papers and to conduct liturgy; they are nottrained to develop ministries. This chapter provides a way of looking at the local congregationthrough the lens of congregational size dynamics to help leaders understand their church as a corporateentity. Groups of people when gathered together in various numbers relate to their leaderand to each other in fairly predictable ways. Certain practices that make a group effective at onesize will make it ineffective at a different size.

Although there are many factors that will affect a church's growth, one of the most commonis the ability or lack of ability of the pastoral leader to adapt her style of leadership to the size ofcongregation that she is serving. Often, churches will find their growth limited because of invisiblebut very real size dynamics that keep the church at that certain size. The church has gottenused to being a certain size and will perpetuate the practices that make them effective at that size;they have grown comfortable with their ways of relating to one another as a congregation.Although they may articulate a desire to grow, they often want to grow only while maintaining thecurrent way of relating to the pastoral leader and to one another. Some churches will grow becausethey are able to adapt their system to mobilize the laity effectively. Other churches will plateauor decline in size to fit the comfort level of the system and leader that is in place.

This way of viewing the church as a system is theologically blind. These unseen limiters affectboth "liberal" and "conservative" churches as well as "broad" churches. No church is immune.You may have the best theology in the world—from your perspective—but your church will belimited in its ability to grow because of its inability to change the way the leadership and congregationrelate to each another.

Many times when church leaders first learn about congregational size dynamics, they getawfully excited. For example, they will write that their mission is to become a program-sized congregation.Attaining a larger church size does not constitute a valid mission. Lay people are notreally motivated by growing their church larger. Mission is about reaching people with the goodnews of Jesus Christ; it is not about growing to a particular size. There is nothing intrinsically holyor salvific by being one size and not another. The real need is for churches to be good stewardsof the gifts and resources that God has given them in fulfilling the Great Commission and theGreat Commandments that Jesus gave his Church. Understanding congregational size dynamicsis a tool for facilitating more effective ministry.

A Comment about Attendance versus Membership

Often when people talk about the size of their church they will say, "We have more than 400 members"or "250 families." That is a particularly unhelpful statement. In my experience, most of ourchurch membership rolls are terribly out of date. I know of one church that had more than 150members on their rolls for whom they had no current address.

The number of baptized members listed in a typical mainline denominational church bears noreal relationship to the everyday dynamics of that congregation. Most churches will have manymore members listed than those who are actively involved in the life of the congregation. A churchthat has 650 members with 150 average Sunday attendance is vastly different from a congregationwith 500 members and 350 average Sunday attendance. The larger membership church withthe smaller attendance will generally have fewer...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Church Publishing
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2005
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0898694752
• ISBN 13: 9780898694758
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 175
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
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