Comparable situations?
As a pastor working for the German Region of UEM I have long been involved in designing missionary concepts and training for local church development. I am trained in organisational development and have applied my knowledge and skills to the situation of the churches. And I have, for many years, accompanied local churches during their development processes.
For 6 years, a colleague from Indonesia watched me doing so and used to comment that such concepts might be needed in churches affected by the secularized European context, but not in Indonesia. But when he returned home in 2005, he learned that the situation of his church had changed dramatically, and he realized that the concept of local church development might be helpful there as well. In 2008, a group of German and Indonesian pastors had a training course together on how to respond to people seeking for faith without seeking it in the (mainline) churches. The participants realized that they need concepts of church development to enable their churches to meet such challenges.
“You are a letter of Christ” – local churches and their mission In 2Cor 3:3 Paul describes the mission of the churches: “You are a letter” to the people is how he illustrates the churches’ assignment and function. And not a letter that you may compose as you like, but “you are a letter of Christ”.
The content of the letter
The church is a letter of Christ, i.e. the churches’ message is the message of Christ himself. The style in which the churches deliver the message should also follow the way Jesus approached the people. The content of such a letter may be summarized as follows:1
God is already there for each one of his children, he himself wants to be found by anybody searching for him. And even people who do not seek will be
1 Cf. Eberhard Jüngel, Keynote address at the EKD Synod, 1999, Reden von Gott in der Welt: Der missionarische Auftrag der Kirche an der Schwelle zum 3. Jahrtausend (Speaking of God in the world. The missionary task of the church at the threshold of the 3rd millenium), ed. Kirchenamt der Evangelischen Kirche in Deutschland, Frankfurt/M., 2000.
able to find him. (Is 65:1f.). To accomplish his mission God has sent his son, Jesus Christ. God wants to be with his people (Acts 21:3) and has in Jesus himself become a companion for us.
Once believing in God’s compassion and having found God, people will experience God as a God living with them personally. They will find liberation from sin, death and a new life surrounded by God’s love and compassion. This will again liberate them from all powers which have had control over their lives. They will experience thankfulness and prayer as a way to be in contact with God, and diakonia and struggle for justice and peace as practical ways to share God’s love with their neighbours.
In his mission to the world God is pleading with his people, but he is never pressing them. That is his way of mission which Jesus has made visible.
The sender of the letter
The church is already a letter of Christ. That is God’s promise and assignment to his church. The church is already shining as a beacon light (Phil 2:15) or as a light on the path (Jn 8:12; 12:46). It is chosen by Christ to proclaim him who has brought the light to them (1Pet 2:9) and to share faith with all people publicly.
In order to enable the church for mission, God has sent his Holy Spirit and will continue to do so. Through the Spirit, Christians will be able to learn from Jesus himself about how to proclaim the Gospel in love and acceptance, not pressing but inviting them, using the right words and images for people of different backgrounds and social groups.
Proclaiming the Gospel, the individual believers are not alone. There are others sharing the same Spirit; together they are members of the Christian church, usually as one denomination. This church again is not alone, but part of an (ecumenical) community of other churches.
They are part of the not yet reconciled world, but together they shall be able to distinguish between the visible church including their own culture, tradition, rules etc. and the invisible church. And they shall be capable of transcending their own boundaries of culture, tradition, nation, and social class in order to proclaim the Gospel to all people.
The recipients of the letter
When writing a letter it is important to reflect on the recipient in order to choose the appropriate style and words. People searching for faith may be regarded as the main recipients of the letter of Christ. In different cultures they may be of different backgrounds. The reasons why they do not seek for faith in the churches may be diverse. Even in one place, recipients of the letter of Christ may live in very different contexts, cultures, and milieus. They may speak different languages, belong to different social groups and practise different lifestyles.
In Germany and Europe many people are sceptical towards the traditional church because it is a big institution with rules and laws which people dislike especially when it comes to faith.2 They regard faith as something personal and private and reject general rules in connection with religion. They prefer loose networks and flexibility. This may be difficult for those who find that the rules and laws of the church reflect the intention of the churches’ rituals and actions and are necessary to secure the life of the church and the fulfilment of its tasks.
Local churches and their mission
Any local church as a sender of the letter of Christ must therefore be ready to
• know the content of the letter well and identify with it in a way that it becomes a living letter of Christ;
• make sure that its message and its ‘style of writing’ matches the way Jesus himself proclaimed the Gospel to the people;
• explore the culture and lifestyle of the recipients of the letter in order to find the right words and images to communicate the Gospel in an understandable way;
• overcome its boundaries of culture, tradition, nation, social class etc. in order to address people and to be approachable.
From the missionaries of the past centuries any local church can learn that
“convivence”,3 living together closely with the recipients, may be of great help to write the letter well.
Training for local church development The current context of German mainline churches
Before I present the concept of local church development, let me describe roughly some major aspects of the current context of the German churches:
• There is great mobility in German society. Many people do not grow old in the place where they were born. This is a challenge for the churches which were used to work with one generation after the other.
• Consumerism has become a new way of finding identity in life, supported by commerce and the media. How does Christian faith fit in?
2 Cf. Mission shaped Church: Church Planting and Fresh Expressions of Church in a Changing Context, London: Church House Publishing, 2004.
3 Cf. Theo Sundermeier, Mission – Geschenk der Freiheit: Bausteine für eine Theologie der Mission (Mission – gift of freedom: Building stones for a theology of mission), Frankfurt/M., 2005.
• Habits have changed especially in the area of leisure. People tend to choose activities which help them to relax rather than taking over more responsibility. The church usually needs activists.
• German society is highly fragmented. People live in sub-cultures and do not easily cross boundaries. Most of the local churches belong to a certain middle class culture / milieu and are simply not capable of reaching people from other segments of society.
• Most educated people are working long hours and simply do not have the time and energy to add other activities to the many commitments of their lives. In addition, many churches do not respond to the intellectual needs of this group.
• Especially middle-aged and young people have lost their connection to the church, even if they are still church members. For them, the churches’ language and rituals are not only old-fashioned but simply incomprehensible.
• There is a wide variety of esoteric approaches, other religions and diverse Christian denominations. Having been the only religion in this country for centuries, the ‘mainline’ churches are not well prepared to face a multi-religious setting.
• There is a lack of theological knowledge among the churches’ staff (church workers, volunteers, elders etc.), and identity of the institution of the church as such is diffuse. Even church activists tend to believe only certain parts of the Christian doctrines and, like society in general, prefer loose networks rather than strong and organised institutions.
• The role of the church in German society has changed. While still a highly recognised institution until the 1950s, its influence and importance have declined dramatically since. Therefore, being active in church is no longer very reputable, and people are often questioned by neighbours and friends why they are involved in the church or why they even believe in Christ.
• This may be a reason for the lack of qualified lay leadership in the church.
• German churches are struggling with decreasing numbers of members and decreasing finances.
German churches in need of change management
Facing this situation, the church in Germany needs to invest personnel, time, energy and money into training for church activists in terms of biblical and theological knowledge, assurance of Christian identity as well as concepts for
reshaping church structures.4 In addition it is necessary to improve the leadership and management skills of (local) church leaders. They need to define clear goals and strategies as well as priorities for their work.
This sounds self-evident, but it is not. Until recently, most of the churches did not work according to clear-cut priorities, but mainly added to their activities without thoroughly checking financial or staff (both employees and volunteers) conditions. It is fairly new for German local churches to decide on priorities and defend them in controversial discussions. Any church development process has to develop ways of how to overcome habits and traditional structures in order to be more flexible and to meet the needs of the
‘recipients’.
Below, the concept “Training for Local Church Development” is introduced briefly.5
Training for local church development
Local church development is started by a decision by the local church’s governing body. It calls a team of approximately 12 people which represents the church in terms of age, gender, and church groups. A pastor, elders and volunteers should be represented. It has proved helpful to invite into the group a neutral person from ‘outside’, e.g. a member of a neighbouring church.
Experiences:
It is usually fairly easy to find enough people willing to be involved in the development process and to become a member of the team. It is even possible to involve people who are not strong church-goers. In many cases people working in banks or companies are especially interested because their skills are needed in the process. Some church boards found it difficult to assign members for the team
‘from outside’. But if they had the courage to do so, these people were often very helpful.
The team needs a small leading group (called a trio), mostly: a pastor, one elder, one other team member. The trio is trained together with other trios from other churches of the same region.
4 There are a number of training programmes on the market and more and more churches are making use of them. Many German churches have started to ask their local church boards to develop concepts for their work.
5 The author has been a member a group of pastors from different German churches and mission organisations who developed the described program and accompanied teams implementing the program in their local church. Cf. Gemeindeentwicklungstraining Praxisbuch (Training for church development. A book for practice), ed. Arbeits-gemeinschaft Missionarische Dienste im Diakonischen Werk der EKD, Berlin, and Gemeindekolleg der Vereinigten Evangelisch-Lutherischen Kirche Deutschlands, Erfurt/Neudietendorf, Göttingen, 2008.
Elements of the training are:
• Basic knowledge of the theoretical background of church development processes such as theological concepts and sociological views of the church/congregation, methods of organisational development etc.;
• Introduction into the steps of the development process and methods of passing the steps to the team;
• Methods of leading groups, group education and training;
• Participative methods of leading discussions and basic skills in conflict resolution.
Experiences:
There is an interesting side-effect in training trios together. They share experiences and learn from each other. A team from the Western part of Germany learned a lot from a team in the Eastern part. Up to about 10 years ago, the church in D. was still used to full Sunday services and quite a number of active church members. Now, they were somehow taken by surprise that secularisation had reached their church as well. They were shocked and frightened. The team from the East shared its experiences of secularisation with the team from the West and succeeded in sharing their missionary approaches and giving them hope for the future.
Local church development processes follow four steps. The trios are trained to follow the steps together with their teams, but they will have to be aware that the steps are closely linked to each other. Like a triangle with its three corners, the process has three aspects which need to be worked on very carefully. While working on one aspect, teams will at some point of discussion have to come back to another aspect to clarify questions they might not have found relevant when working on the former step.
Assignment of the church Goals, objectives, strategies
Context analysis Church analysis
Step 1: Assignment of the church (the content of the letter)
A church as a letter of Christ has to realise which assignment it has. During Bible studies, using the relevant texts6 the team learns to clarify and identify the tasks of the church.
Experiences:
Defining the assignment of the church was not easy for some teams. Often, they thought this to be the work of the pastor. They had to learn to become self-confident and cooperate with the pastor rather than listening to him or her only.
Secondly, each person had his or her concept of the assignment of the church already. Those concepts were often related to how the church was when the people holding them were young. It was not easy for the team members to step back and listen to the Bible afresh to re-define their concept of what it means to be the church of Christ in a certain context today.
Step 2: Context analysis (the recipients of the letter)
The trio is trained in methods which enable the team to develop an analysis of the context their church lives in. Several methods of analysis are taught, e.g.
analysis of the
• structure of the city, town or village where the church is situated;
• living conditions of the people: what are people’s needs?
• cultures / milieus people belong to: how do people live? What are their goals in life? What are their questions?
Experiences:
Many teams claim that they know their context well and that an analysis is not necessary. Mostly, the contrary is the case. Because the team itself is part of the context, important information may be so common that people do not realise that it needs special consideration. A church in W. had started a process to draw more children into the churches’ programmes for children. The analysis was a surprise to them: figures proved that families with small children had moved out of their respective part of town and those children left went to school in the neighbouring district. It turned out to be very difficult for children to join the church programmes. Having realised this, the church decided to cooperate with their neighbouring church and offer children’s programmes together with them – and succeeded.
6 For example: Ex 3 and 4; Hebr 8; Is 65:17ff.; Rev 21; Mt 5: 1-16; Lk 6: 20-26; Mk 21:1-12; Lk 16: 11-19; Acts 4: 32ff.; 1Cor 11: 17ff.; Rm 12; 1Cor 12; 1Cor 14; Jn. 4;
Acts 10; Acts 16: 6ff; Acts 17:16ff.; Mt 10: 1-15; Mt 28: 18-20; Mt 4: 1-11; Lk 12: 35-48.
Step 3: Church analysis (the sender of the letter)
In order to develop a process of change for the church it is necessary to analyse the local church itself. Not all questions will be relevant for every church. The trio is trained in analytical methods to find answers to questions like:
• Who are the members? Age, gender structures etc. Which members are active, which are not? Are reasons known?
• Where do members live in the town / village?
• What do members / non-active members / non-members want from the church?
• Which programmes does the church offer? Which are lively?
Which are ‘dying’?
• Which successes / problems does the church have?
• Which resources are available? Finances? Buildings? Which resources are tied (e.g. salaries), which are free for disposition?
• What are the personnel resources (both employees and volunteers)?
What are their tasks? What are they trained for, and what are their skills?
Experiences:
One of the most striking results was reached by the analysis of the membership in a church located in the countryside about 30 km. from Cologne. The team found out that almost all villagers worked in Cologne. During the week, they left the village in the morning to return late in the evening after struggling hard with traffic jams. Children went to kindergarten or school in neighbouring villages. In addition, there was no meeting room left in the village because both the local shop and the pub had been closed down. From Mondays to Fridays, only elderly people spent their days in the village. Families and singles were present only during weekends. The church, therefore, decided to offer programmes for families and adults during the weekends only and programmes for children between 4.30 and 6 p.m. (after returning from school and before their parents returned from work).
The church also decided to offer their hall as a meeting place for the village community.
Back to Step 1:
The trio is trained to draw conclusions from the analysis: which information is relevant and should be kept in mind for the development of a concept for the church? Now that the team knows better the (potential) recipients as well as the sender of the letter of Christ, it is able to ask the most important question of the process: what does God want from us as his church in this specific context?
What is the special assignment we have as his church in the specific situation we are living in? In other words: what special message does he want to give to his people in this place through us as his letter?
Experiences:
The church building in E. is very old. Its history is very much related to the history of the town and people are very proud and fond of the church, even if they do not belong to the congregation. The results of this analysis made the church in E. focus on their ancient church building and develop a vision for their congregation which puts the church building in the centre. They decided to open the church during the week and to invite people to visit the church. They created a prayer corner for visitors. They use the church for almost all church programmes and have created special programmes related to the building, e.g. they started exhibitions with Biblical themes in the church and offer special services and sermons related to the themes of the exhibition.
Step 4: Defining Goals and Objectives
Having found the (special) assignment of the local church the team has to formulate goals, objectives and strategies. The trio is trained to help the team to set goals for a certain period of time (“In three years we will have accomplished the following goal …”) and to define objectives which will finally lead to the fulfilment of the goal (“If we want to accomplish the goal, we will have to do…”). The trio is also trained to plan the steps needed to fulfil the objectives and reach the set goals. They learn how to monitor the process and how to stay in permanent communication with the governing body of the local church during the process, and to evaluate the results.
Experiences:
For many teams it is hard to formulate goals. They are used to vague directions of where to proceed rather than concrete goals. But it has proved helpful to learn to formulate goals. “We want more people to join Sunday services,” is what many teams would ‘define’ as their goal. But it is easier to define the objectives and steps to reach a goal if it is defined clearly: “In two years we want to double the number of Sunday service participants.”
The effects of the training
The major effect of this church development programme is that the governing bodies of a local church as well as its employees and volunteers know what they do for which purpose. The church gains a certain profile and becomes more visible in the community. As one pastor put it:
For our situation, the ‘training for church development’ was the best thing that could happen to us!
• Some people who used to have only very loose contact to the church have found their place in the church.
• The local church board has been encouraged to take over responsibility for changes in our church.