Deck Chairs

I just came back from the Annual General Meeting for my church Region. Well. For two church Regions that used to be one Conference. If you are not part of the United Church of Canada ignore the second sentence and focus on the first.

I want to be particularly careful in what I say here because for once, what I am about to say is not judgement but an observation. I do not think this is anyone's fault - and I do not think it is unique to the world of churches and their ecclesial hierarchy. I wager those of you who have annual corporate or shareholder, or NGO, or even parliamentary meetings could echo what I am about to say.

What a waste of time that was.

And perhaps this is human nature. Perhaps this is corporate culture. Perhaps there is absolutely no way to satisfy the needs and wants of any group larger than, say, one.

Still, and not to put anyone down, I am going to use an example from three days of church meetings involving 350 people. I don't say I have a better answer or understanding or anything - so don't hear this as chastisement or ego driven or anything - it is... as I have said... observational.

Last year the church voted to divide this group in half - for efficiency, for cost, for a new vision of how we work and are in community. So we began the next phase of church life as Regions 14 and 15 - and hired separate staff and began a separate journey of identity.

We then promptly voted to meet together for our annual meeting anyway.

And then, I kid you not, we spent somewhere up from six hours of business time debating whether or not to continue to meet together.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose

Okay - think about that a second. 350 people spent 6 hours debating how to circumvent a change to modernize our meeting and governance practices to ensure that they remained the exact same as they have been since 1925. 

That is 2100 work hours of the church to decide we need to spend the weekend together once a year. 

Do you know what other discussions or business we had? Others might interpret reality differently, but I would say nothing. Sure - we rubber-stamped a few things that now we actually do not have a say in any more - such as who was ordained and what the budget is.

Generally, this is what the changes that went into effect six months ago did - gave the power to decide things to a higher court or paid staff and made it easier to get things done.

Except for this meeting.

Now, I am not complaining. I get to take a Sunday off, go there, have my room and board paid for, hang out with friends, drink beer and commiserate.

But this is not a necessary business meeting, although people will stand up and say the reason we need to be together in this fashion is to do then work of the church. And it is not a spiritual retreat although some people will stand up and say it is. And it is not networking although that happens...

Like most of the corporate culture, no one can quite put their finger on why we do it this way and whether or not it works.

I really think this will be the epitaph on the tombstones the cockroaches erect to remember us all. "They always did it this way."

and gosh darnit, we will die trying not to change.

What is our Ministry?

I hate cutesy titles.

Just throwing that out there.

So when I look at a church bulletin and they have simply renamed every single thing they do as their "ministry" it always causes me to roll my eyes.

ministry of music, the ministry of toilet cleaning, the ministry of coffee hour, the ministry of envelope stuffing, the ministry of...

When churches do that I think they are just pulling a fast one, switching out the idea of an essential part of the workload by calling it their ministry. There is nothing inherently wrong with this... it just does not work for me.

You see - I don't think running a church is part of the ministry.

I know this is a controversial thing to say - but I want you to think about this in other ways. Maintaining a hospital is not providing health care. Painting a tank camouflage is not part of the purpose of the armed forces. Getting an oil change is not the purpose of a car.

There are in fact two distinct things happening when we look at a church and for some reason, we have never liked to separate them out. We are running an organization called the church, and we are doing the ministry of a Christian.

I think the two are separate and they do not overlap nearly as much as we think.

So we need to upkeep a building, keep records, worry about sound systems, transportation, budgets, and administration. We need to have background committees on every level to ensure the functioning of the organization. We need to hire and fire and discipline staff. And on and on and on...

This is not ministry - this is business.

Now, to follow Jesus we need to, figuratively, care for the widows and the orphans. In reality, we need to have outreach programs in the community to care for the disadvantaged, we need to host worship services for deepening spiritual understanding, we need to offer educational opportunities to learn about faith, we need to mentor and counsel people on morality and ethics, we need to provide life transition events like baptisms, weddings, and funerals in order to give meaning to existence...

In either category, there are thousands of other possible answers but I hope from these two examples you can see the line I am trying to create. There is the business and there is the outcome. And perhaps it is time to separate the two out.

Back to the cutesy titles. I think it is disingenuous of us to pretend that we are doing the latter when we are doing the former. I think most of our effort is spent on the business of being the church and too little of our time is on ministry.

And on top of that when we do ministry we are often doing it for the reason of business. We operate programs as if they were advertising campaigns... We do good works hoping that they will lead to engagement with the business.

If you do not think this is true I want you to think back to any planning meeting and ask yourself if you have not heard this statement in some form or another - "well, how does that put bums in the pew?" "Does this bring more people to church?" "Does this translate into increased giving?"

If any of those questions can be answered - then you are probably doing ministry for the wrong reasons.

Again, would it not be better to have the two things completely separated out.

We need to provide a school breakfast program... (because there is child poverty, because education is important, etc.)

What business strategies do we need to engage in to afford and manage a school breakfast program? (meetings, budgets, advertising, etc.)

You see where I am coming from?

We are always asking - how do we keep the church open? And then secondly we are asking what we can afford to do.

What if we turned that around and asked - what ministry do we need to do? And then secondly we asked how do we become able to do that?

Is Sunday Morning worship important for us? What outreach is necessary for the community? What would Jesus do if he lived here? NOW... after we answer questions like this... then ask - can we afford our own building? Where would the best place to operate out of be? How many people do we need to hire to do this? etc.

By the way - I do think we need to be very honest about staffing too... Right now most churches expect staff - whether orfained, administrative, or even volunteer - to accomplish all of category A, all of the business, while hoping that they are actually spending most of their time on category B, ministry.

I don't think we have really stopped to consider if this model works. Or if we are being honest about what we want and how to get it.