This is an excellent essay that addresses church renewal, and offers a blueprint for growing congregations. the lessons apply to any organization, which makes it worth reading. Southern pastors of mainline churches, please read, take heed, and be ware! (wr/groit)

 Saving the church's soul

by David Batstone

 "I'm very discouraged about the direction our church is heading.
 No, better put, I don't believe our church knows where it's
 heading. It's getting increasingly difficult to attract new
 members, and the young families who do attend are talking about
 leaving because they aren't being inspired. And our pastor takes
 every suggestion to change as a personal threat to his
 authority. I guess at root I've lost trust in the process."

I bet this anxious confession strikes a chord with many of you
who are involved in a faith community. The concern usually
sneaks up on us. We rarely think of a church as an
organizational structure - at least when we join - but rather we
are attracted to the people who gather together for a more
transcendent purpose. Perhaps that's why so many faith
communities are plagued by internal conflict and dysfunction;
too little intentional thought and strategy go into maintaining
the organizational integrity of the operation.
 
When I was writing Saving the Corporate Soul, I honestly did not
have religious congregations and nonprofit organizations in
mind. To the contrary, I trained my eye on leadership in the
business enterprise. It has turned out to be somewhat of a
surprise, then, that a number of congregations and nonprofits
are finding the book helpful in evaluating their organizational
values and reforming their leadership practices to align with
those values.

My subsequent engagement with church leadership councils (I'll
turn my attention to nonprofits in a future column) points to
some common patterns:

* Congregations are big on the "V" word (vision) but struggle to
connect it to the "I" word (implementation).
 
* Congregations regularly confuse organizational values and
desired outcomes. Due to the graying of church members and the
general decline in attendance, church councils often admit that
their number one priority is to reach young families. As
understandable as that goal may be, it is not a mission or a
value. It's a desired outcome. The congregation must first step
back and identify the five key values that it wants the
organization to serve. That first step is the foundation for
every other leadership and structural decision that the church
makes. It also is the linchpin to how successful the church will
be in reaching its desired outcomes. You don't bring in young
families unless your community highly values, in a palpable way,
the things they care about as well.
 
* The leadership structure of congregations is typically
top-heavy, the pastor/priest carrying too large a burden. We
want our minister to be charismatic in the pulpit, affable at
our social events, decisive and efficient at the council
meeting, and wise when we are in crisis. It's a rare person who
can fulfill all these roles. In my experience, the trouble lies
at both ends of the relationship. The congregation holds
unrealistic expectations and the minister fears losing control,
so the organization sputters in misalignment. By the way, it's
intriguing to me that the typical minister, like the typical CEO
of a business enterprise, leans toward being an introvert; the
implications for organizational management are significant.

* Most congregations suffer from a lack of organizational
 transparency. Above all, the flow of finances and the process of
decision-making - why decisions are made, who is involved in the
decision-making, and who will be held accountable for each
decision - are shrouded in mystery. The transparency gap is
often rationalized as not wanting to offend particular members
of the community - "for their own good." But in reality it
maintains an infantile dependency that inevitably leads to a
breach of trust.

* I ask senior managers of for-profit companies to name the
promise that they are making to their customers. I then ask them
to look at the schedule of activities in their calendar and
consider how many of those meetings directly contribute to
fulfilling the promise. They often are shocked at the
misalignment. It is a worthwhile exercise to practice this same
evaluation with the weekly church calendar in the Sunday
bulletin. Another way of approaching this theme: What would the
church look like if it prioritized "Customer Care"?

I do not make these comments to be harsh. No organization,
including the church, is a perfect oasis - despite our worthy
ideals, we are embedded in a human story. The truly prophetic
actor in the human drama humbly takes stock of its own character
as it walks the path of transcendence. Those prophets who fail to
do so usually end up lost in a maze of their own making.

and for dessert...

Soul Works
+++++++++++++++++
Goodwill is not enough'

As you continue to progress on the path of mutual understanding
and acceptance, you become an instrument for social and
political change. If you do not succeed in your community, don't
hope for quality, because without that base of operation you cannot achieve much. People are motivated to do things, there
are plenty of them, but without the capacity of listening, of
understanding, of being compassionate, what they do cannot help.
They can make the situation worse. So, goodwill is not enough.
There must be the capacity of understanding, of compassion, and
of working together in harmony before you can hope to do
 something.
>  - Thich Nhat Hanh

Read more at: http://go.sojo.net/ct/U7zgeh91ljpO/