1. Cultivating Vital Congregations
Presentation to
Mission Developers
August 25, Cherry Hills Village, CO
Linda Bobbitt
Congregational Vitality Project

2. What is a vital congregation?
Congregations with life-changing relationships with God, one another and the world.
The Holy Spirit breaths through these relationships moving us to live out:
Great Commandment
Great Commission
What is a vital congregation?

3. Measuring Vitality: Congregational Vitality Survey

4. How do we help congregations be vital?
Programs
Resources
Admin/Gov.
Culture/Attitudes
Local Context
When I’m asked how to make congregations more vital, that question makes sense for blue congregations building on their present identity. It assumes that know what success looks like and we know what a good foundation is.
We know weak blocks at the bottom cause collapse and we know we don’t want that, right? Those with blocks that fall lose right?
What if failure is really an opportunity!
Relationships
Leadership
Mission/Purpose
God’s Presence
Core Identity
How do we help congregations be vital?

5. We need to pay attention to the fact that there are seasons to everything – like it says in Ecclesiastes.
This world operates within cycles of change. They are present everywhere, in nature, societies, civilizations. In all these cycles, there are times of birth, growth, aging, death and rebirth.
A vital tree looks really different in the spring than it does in the fall.
The church goes through the same cycles. The seasons continue on even as individual congregations come and go.
Change cycles

6. Congregation starting points
Identity established – who we are and what we are all about
Crisis question: Shall we continue and if so, why?
Congregation starting points
Alan Roxburgh and Fred Romanuk, The Missional Leader: Equipping Your Church to Reach a Changing World

7. Vitality looks different in different seasons
Build
Escape
Imagine
Vitality looks different at different stages. How to improve vitality? It depends…
Green line from choice toward Red– build on who they already are. Strengthen programs and processes.
Blue line from Crisis to green zone – accompany them through adaptive change, help them recognize and release boxes, open imagination for what might be next.
Red zone – help them listen to one another and God enough to come to terms with where they are and be willing to stop looking back and start looking forward. Find missional folks in congregation, try to help their voices become dominant. If not, help them see a future beyond themselves.
Vitality looks different in different seasons

8. Interacting systems within congregations
Congregation’s life cycle
Congregation’s seasons
Programs, volunteers, program staff
Interacting systems within congregations

9. BUILD: Traditional strategic change model
Identify problem
Identify solution
Create plan
Implement
Evaluate success
Assumes clear problem and solution (goal)
Assumes there are known steps to achieving the goal
Limited by current imagination and established identity
We know how to fix things. We just need to find the right plan and implement it right?
They understand my job as researching to find best practices and then helping folks figure out how to implement those practices so we will fix the church.
So did I.
BUILD: Traditional strategic change model

10. ESCAPEIMAGINE: From Crisis to Choice
Adaptive Change Journey
Pain
Possibility
The BOX
Wilderness
Creative, faithful choice
Allows congregations to challenge their underlying identity and perhaps even discover a new identity.
Gilbert Rendle: Leading Change in the Congregation: Spiritual & Organizational Tools for Leaders

11. What if God is building something different?
What if God isn’t interesting in reinforcing monolithic towers of Bable? What if God wants the blocks to knock over so God can build something new? What if that is what happens in the cycle from green to red?
Then the role of the leader is to trust that God has this and allow the blocks to fall, relying only on God’s call and promise.
Maybe it isn’t working because it isn’t supposed to any more.
Maybe vitality looks completely different in God’s eyes than it does in our own.
What if God is building something different?

12. Adaptive change starts with steps
Discernment
Listen to each other
Listen to neighbor
Reflect
on listening
Experiment
on experiment
Whether you are a congregation or a denomination the same process applies.
Reflection is where you confront and move beyond your box.
Adaptive change starts with steps

13. Going through the steps isn’t enough.
The congregations I studied had been going through those steps for years and hadn’t shifted their imaginations.
These 7 Is describe the way in which the steps must be engaged. They move the steps beyond best practices and into a way of accompanying God into the future.
From activity to impact: Engaging in change that sticks Seven “I”s: Critical conditions for adaptive change

14. Intentional Invested Intimate Integrated
Make space and time for this work. Make it a priority in the life of the congregation.
Invested in outcomes relationally, emotionally, spiritually, financially.
Intimate
Participants are part of one another’s lives and genuinely care about the other’s wellbeing enough to take risks.
Integrated
This work is not done in a silo but is integrated into the rest of the congregation and its community.

15. Internal Inspired Imagination
Team leadership comes from both clergy and lay leaders. Outside facilitators, trainers and coaches can assist, but they aren’t leading the effort.
Inspired
This work is understood as being inspired by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit is seen as active and presently walking with the congregation and leading it forward. The Spirit is expected and trusted to show up.
A deep trust in God means there is no fear of failure.
Only when we allow the Holy spirit to draw us through the wilderness and open our imaginations will we strength our connections with God, each other and the world.
Imagination
It is expected that this process will challenge and ultimately expand the congregation’s imagination. When experiments appear to fail, leaders reflect and look to the lessons learned in the “failure”.

16. Our questions impact our imaginations.
Where is God going next and how does the church join in?
How do create more vital congregations?
It comes down to agency.
Whose agency do we trust? Is it up to us? If so we will build toward what we already know even if it isn’t what the world needs right now. We are limited to the confines of our own imagination.
But it we agree that the agency is with God we can begin to trust that God is leading us and will not let us down.
Our imagination will never be as big as God’s.
Our questions impact our imaginations.

17. Interacting systems – congregations, denom., culture

18. What if God is building something entirely new?
What if God is building a new creation with us and through us. We are living at a really exciting time in the church. We get to see some of these changes begin to take shape.
The red zone isn’t a sign of failure, it is a sign that something entirely new is now possible.
GOD IS BUILDING THE KINGDOM and needs all our blocks.
My answer to those synod leaders is that their job isn’t to improve the vitality of congregations or to fix the church. Their job is to accompany them forward helping them listen, reflect and experiment while they themselves listen and watch as God creates a new thing beyond what we can imagine.
As Lutherans we talk about being a church that is always reforming. Lets walk forward boldly trusting that God’s creation continues in and through us. We too will be made new.
What if God is building something entirely new?