Virginia Conference, 2009 June 15, 2009 Troubled Waters and Healing Wholeness

INPUT THROUGHPUT OUTPUT NOUNS VERBS DIFFERENCE (What do we use?) (What do we do with (What will be our nouns?) different in 3-5 years?) Resources Activities Purpose A Systems Approach : Edwards Deming

Primary Objective “The primary objective of All Things New is to change the culture of the Virginia Conference to a culture of fruitfulness as we shift from worrying about the loss of members to the joy of meeting the risen Christ in our growing Commonwealth.” Comprehensive 250 Task Force Report All Things New Summary

Purposefulness and Readiness [Takayama] begins by reminding us that religious organizations are, ideally, “purposive.” Accordingly, the major incentives for participation should derive from stated purposes of the organization’s theological tradition. He continues by noting that in contrast, local congregations are in practice predominantly “solidarity” or communal organizations – that is, organizations whose dominant inducements are things such as socializing, congeniality, and a sense of group identification – that they are covertly, not overtly so; and that as such they are primarily oriented toward harmony, not toward issues and causes. Roozen & Nieman, Church, Identity, and Change, 2005: p.596

Understanding A Critical Issue Leadership / Management (Moses / Aaron) o Management seeks to answer the question “Are we doing things right?” o Leadership seeks to answer the question “Are we doing right things?” We are asked for leadership… …and rewarded for management.

And Now We Are Up to Courage Being willing to lead not knowing if it will work Nashon, son of Amminiadab Being willing to lead not knowing the way Moses ______________________ Changing Ourselves

Basic (normal) Systems Responses When a system doesn’t know what to do… it does what it knows. When a system doesn’t know what went wrong… it wants to know who went wrong. Systems naturally collude to change in ways that do not change them.

Active Hope Has Two Daughters Hope has two beautiful daughters… …anger that allows us to see what is …courage to make it different. Bill Coffin quoting St. Augustine