Beyond Business as Usual, Revised Edition: Vestry Leadership Development

by Neal O. Michell

Overview

The revised and expanded edition includes new information, new teaching resources, and perspectives gained in the last eight years, as well as the General Convention resolutions of 2015.

Beyond Business as Usual is full of resources for forming the vestry as a learning community. It deals with the "soft" side of leadership that enables the pastor and vestry together to journey along the leadership path. Each chapter can be read and reviewed at a series of vestry meetings or as part of a vestry retreat, and includes questions for group and individual discussion. The book also contains resources for vestries, based upon different preferred learning styles, for the formation part of the vestry meeting or retreat.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780898699609
Publisher:	Church Publishing, Incorporated
Publication date:	11/24/2016
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

An Episcopal priest and consultant for congregational development, Neal O. Michell has served as the Canon to the Ordinary and Canon for Strategic Development in the Episcopal Diocese of Dallas. A former practicing attorney, he has been a priest at churches of various sizes in Texas and in Tennessee, where he planted a church in Germantown that grew rapidly. He has led vestry retreats and workshops, focusing on vision-casting and leadership development. He holds a D.Min. in Church Growth from Fuller Seminary, where he researched contemporary Anglican worship. He has also gone on short-term mission trips to Ukraine, South Africa, Mexico, and Honduras. He is the author of How to Hit the Ground Running: A Quick-Start Guide for Congregations with New Leadership and Beyond Business as Usual: Vestry Leadership Development, in addition to numerous articles. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

Read an Excerpt

Beyond Business as Usual

Vestry Leadership Development

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By NEAL O. MICHELL

Church Publishing Incorporated

Copyright © 2016 Neal O. Michell
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-89869-960-9

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CHAPTER 1

Defining Reality

Our Churches Are in Decline

"This is not your father's Oldsmobile."

— Oldsmobile Commercial, 1988

Parish ministry these days is increasingly complex and dynamic. That is because our society is increasingly complex and dynamic. The conditions today in which church leaders operate are much more demanding than they were fifty years ago, and they require a different approach to parish leadership.

Cultural Changes

In the late 1950s Americans began to be concerned about culture shock. In 1970, Alvin Toffler popularized and made readers aware of the phenomenon of "Future Shock," which is the challenge for people to cope with the unprecedented changes brought about by new technologies. We understand the problem of information overload. With e-mail, twenty-four-hour news, bloggers, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Cyber Dust, and a multitude of social media, we see the battle being waged between "old media" and "new media." A recurring question is: who is in control of the flow of information? The answer is: no one. Now anyone with a computer, smart phone, or smart pad, and access to the Internet can be a news reporter and have the world as an audience.

Suffice it to say, much changed between 1960 and the second decade of the new millennium. This is true in all areas of politics, government, and education as well as everyday life. Similarly, running a business has become much more complex, with added requirements, warnings, safeguards, methods of operations, permits, reports to be filed, and government regulations to be satisfied.

This increased complexity affects the local church as well. In 1960, a church with an average Sunday attendance of 250 could function quite ably with a fulltime priest, a volunteer Christian education staff person, a part-time secretary, a part-time organist/ choir director, and a part-time sexton. Today that same church will likely have two full-time ordained persons, a full-time secretary, and a full- or part-time administrator, Christian education coordinator, organist/choir director, youth minister, and possibly a new member/evangelism coordinator.

Additionally, the increase in numbers of denominations and nondenominationally affiliated church networks has added greater complexity. Denominational distinctions are more blurred now, with Baptist and Presbyterian churches celebrating Holy Week, United Methodist churches offering "Anglican style worship," and Episcopal churches having praise bands and projecting words for music and liturgy on overhead screens. Further, it has become easier and more common for people to shift from one denomination (or non-denominational church) to another.

As a result of the changes in our culture and the proliferation of worship styles and choices as well as the blurring of denominational identity and the general information overload that many people experience, it is difficult for the average church to set itself apart from other churches in the area. Churches must do more than tasteful liturgy, good theology, and decent pastoral care in order to minister effectively in the twenty-first century. Your parishioners can turn on the television and hear really excellent preaching. While the average Episcopal priest may not agree with the theology informing the preaching, there is no arguing that these televangelists are compelling preachers. This excellent, easily accessible preaching has put even greater pressure on all local churches.

Decline in The Episcopal Church

A review of the membership numbers of The Episcopal Church since 1965 reveals that, except for a few years in the late 1990s, the denomination has continually lost membership. The year 1965 was the high-water mark for baptized members in The Episcopal Church. From 1965 to 2003 our denomination lost nearly a third of its membership. Further, the average size of our churches has declined as well. In 1960, the average Episcopal parish reported 450 baptized members. In 1965, the year of our highest membership, the average was 480 members per church. The average membership in our churches has declined fifty percent in 2013.

Although specific statistics have attempted to draw conclusions about the growth and decline of churches according to size, these studies are inconclusive and often inconsistent. My own observations from studying Episcopal churches as a consultant over the past twenty years is that while some of our very large churches have gotten even larger, a greater number of middle-sized churches have decreased in size, resulting in more of our churches having fewer members than in years past. In 2002, sixty percent of Episcopal churches had an average Sunday attendance of 100 or less; in 2003, sixty-one percent of Episcopal churches had an average Sunday attendance of 100 or less; in 2004 this number increased to sixty-two percent; in 2014 this number was seventy percent. Likewise, the median average Sunday attendance in 2002 was seventy-nine; in 2003 it was seventy-seven; in 2004 it was seventy-five; and in 2014 the median attendance was sixty. The decline in attendance and membership looks like a ski slope.

In short, many, if not most, of our churches have not responded well to the changes that have occurred in American culture since 1965. The result is that we have fewer churches than we did in 1965, and those we do have are generally smaller than they were in 1965. Today, the typical Episcopal church is basically a single-cell, non-complex organization in an increasingly complex culture. Consequently, this means that being a lay leader in the church, such as serving on the vestry, is an ever-increasing challenge.

A Word about Church Growth

Church growth has gotten a bad reputation in many parts of the church today. Many of the criticisms aimed at the church growth movement are justified when focusing on how church growth minimizes the call to make disciples. As followers of Jesus we are called to make disciples and not simply to gather a crowd. I like to talk more about congregational development and congregational health than church growth, because our aim should be to form faithful communities of disciples rather than just getting more people to church.

However, as the saying goes, "Please don't shoot the messenger." Our dislike or discomfort with the idea of church growth should not make us complacent concerning the decline in membership in our churches. I have heard many people say that we shouldn't be so focused on numbers, that we leave those things up to God. However, each number represents a person for whom Jesus died. The Lord who left the ninety and nine for the one lost sheep would say that those are not numbers but individuals. Personally, I find it hard to believe that God is honored by a denomination that has lost nearly half of its membership over the last fifty years!

It is natural for healthy things to grow. This is true of both plants and people. Given a proper amount of soil, nutrients, water, and light, plants will do what comes naturally, that is, they will grow. If a plant does not grow as expected, we look for the reason why. The soil may be malnourished, or it may have the wrong mixture of nutrients. The plant may need more sunlight, or less; or more water, or less. Some plants cease to grow because they are root bound because the pot is too small. To discern why a plant isn't growing, look for an unseen obstacle that is hindering the growth of the plant.

Granted, there are varieties of growth to look for in a local church: numerical growth, financial growth, spiritual growth, and growth in service to our communities or the world beyond us, but our church ought to have some area of growth that we can point to that evidences health and vitality in the common life of our congregations.

Often our churches don't grow because there are unseen obstacles that have hindered the growth that is otherwise natural to the life of the church. If we, as leaders, can recognize those obstacles to growth and replace those obstacles with healthy practices, the church will grow naturally — with, of course, a life-giving gospel proclaimed and with prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit.

We start with the mission of the church. According to the catechism of the Book of Common Prayer, the mission of the church is "to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ." As the church is accomplishing that mission, one has to assume that individual expressions, i.e., local congregations, of the larger church will grow larger rather than smaller.

If our denomination is collectively in decline, it is because many of our churches are individually in decline. So how do we arrest this decline in our churches? Who is responsible for leading our churches to engage our culture with the gospel in such a way that more and more people, as former archbishop of Canterbury William Temple said, may be led "to acknowledge Christ as their Savior and King, so that they may give themselves to his service in the fellowship of His church"?

For Individual or Group Reflection

• Is your church in decline, plateaued, or growing? Make a chart of your church's average Sunday attendance for the past five years. Also, review the ministries that have been started or ended during the past ten years.

• What are the strengths of your church? What has caused the greatest growth or decline in the past five years?

• What are the largest "people groups" in your parish? Seniors, Middle Aged, Young Adults, Singles, Divorced, Married? What is your parish's ethnic diversity? What will your parish look like in ten years if the current trends continue?

• What is your church's most effective ministry? Least effective?

CHAPTER 2

Who Is Responsible?

"Who's on first?"

— Bud Abbott to Lou Costello

A number of Episcopal churches have experienced remarkable growth over the past fifty years, but as our brief survey of statistics indicates, most of the parishes within the United States that were in existence in 1965 are smaller in 2015 than they were in 1965. The Episcopal Church has been living with this decline for the last fifty years, and at this time, things don't seem to be improving.

So who is responsible for arresting the decline in membership and attendance in our churches?

In a sense, everyone is responsible for the decline; but when everyone is responsible, no one is ultimately held accountable. I believe that it is the local vicar or rector along with the vestry that can arrest this decline and spur our churches on to greater growth. Let me begin with a true story.

What Use Are Vestries?

In a town that I once served, there was a Baptist church, which we'll call Hillside Baptist Church. At that time it was the largest Baptist church in town. It originated from a conflict within the downtown church that resulted in a group of dissatisfied members splitting off from the mother church. The "split off" church really didn't do much in its first several years of existence. It was simply one more tiny congregation birthed out of a church fight.

One day they called a new pastor from a major city hundreds of miles away. Within several years, this church began growing until it was larger than the mother church.

Being new to town and having heard this story, I scheduled lunch with this very effective pastor who had turned this church around. I asked him not to be shy but to tell me the reasons for the growth of his church.

He replied, "I'll tell you, Brother Neal. When I came to Hillside Church, they had a congregational meeting once a month to decide the affairs of the church. They were paralyzed by all the arguing and voting. So, I decided to quit calling these monthly congregational meetings. We became a staff-run church, and the church grew. Now the only time we meet for a congregational meeting is when we need to borrow money or buy real estate."

Hmmm. This church grew from an average Sunday attendance of seventy-five to over five hundred without a lay governing board? This pastor was not an obviously charismatic or dynamic person. His preaching skills were adequate but not exceptional. He was a good, solid pastor to his congregation, but he would probably not draw a crowd on the lecture circuit. And the church had begun growing with the same old cantankerous people that he had inherited. So what can we learn from this?

One thing we can learn is that it is quite possible for churches to grow without vestries. I suspect that vestries more often impede growth than foster growth in the local congregation. If that is true, then what use are vestries?

Our canons require that our churches elect vestries to serve as the legal representatives on behalf of the congregation. Basically, we have them because they are required.

Are vestries, then, simply something we have to have, and we'll just have to cope with them as best we can? Or, can we do better?

I believe we can do better. I believe that service on the church's vestry can be energizing for individual members and that vestries can play a significant role in the growth and effectiveness of the local congregation.

"Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way"

Although denominational policies and distribution of resources can do much to strengthen the local congregations, it is the rector and vestry that can have the most influence on the growth or decline in our congregations. Given the fifty-year decline in our congregations, our clergy and vestries do not have a very good track record. Thomas Paine, pamphleteer during the American Revolutionary War, first said, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way." As a person who has been attending vestry meetings for over thirty years as a layperson, parish priest, diocesan staff member, and now cathedral dean, I have sat through innumerable maintenance-driven vestry meetings. Many vestries get bogged down in the smaller issues of administration and never really get to the greater issues of vision, mission, and policy.

It is possible to grow a strong church with a weak vestry. As the story of Hillside Baptist Church illustrates, some churches might grow if their vestries would simply get out of the way. But I believe that it is impossible to grow a strong church with a strong vestry that is at odds with the rector, and continuously tries to keep the rector under close reins, or tries to micromanage the affairs of the congregation.

By their nature, vestries are conservative. They were designed as a check and balance on clergy authority. When the clergy and vestry work in tandem with each other, the parish is able to move forward. When they are at odds, conflict ensues, and the parish suffers. There are five options available to vestries in their relationship to their congregations.

1. They can gum up the works. A vestry can challenge every new initiative, hold the reins on new spending in the name of fiscal responsibility, and thus stymie the growth of the congregation.

2. They can micromanage. This is a variation of gumming up the works, but the behaviors manifest themselves as paying attention to details, when in reality, the vestry has lost sight of the bigger picture and is not focusing on mission. Vestries don't pick paint colors!

3. They can follow. If they only follow, they deprive the congregation of their insights and good judgment. Further, the congregation will not necessarily be invested in the decisions made.

4. They can get out of the way. This is more desirable than gumming up the works, but in so doing, they become irrelevant. These vestries will eventually grow frustrated with being irrelevant and will likely rise up in protest and overreact in ways that are not in the best interest of the congregation. I once served on a vestry where one of the vestry members said that most of what they did was make sure that the concrete that was poured was level, and they approved the signing of checks. During my time on that vestry, they (we) rose up and challenged the clergy leadership in a healthy way and gained real ownership of the decision-making process.

5. They can lead. They can only lead in cooperation with the rector. If they try to lead ahead of the rector, then the congregation gets confused. They can hear only one voice at a time.

How can we so form our vestries that they are able to fulfill their appropriate check and balance role while not getting bogged down in minutiae, nor functioning too adversarially, nor ending up as simply the rubber stamp for the rector's initiatives?

Here's another true story. The names have been changed to protect privacy.

"He Said That He'd Never Ever Serve on a Vestry Again"

In one parish I served, we were approaching vestry elections. I was relatively new to the parish at the time, and I believed the church needed some longtime members to serve on the vestry. One of those that I considered, Bill, was a retired doctor who had been a member of the church for over thirty-five years. As I vetted his name with a couple of our current leaders, I was told that Bill would never consent to run for the vestry. When he had served on the vestry previously, he said that all they did was argue, and he swore he'd never serve on a vestry again.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Beyond Business as Usual by NEAL O. MICHELL. Copyright © 2016 Neal O. Michell. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

Part 1 A New Way for Clergy and Vestries to Think 7

1 Defining Reality: Our Churches are in Decline 9

Cultural Changes 9

Decline in The Episcopal Church 11

A Word about Church Growth 12

2 Who is Responsible? 16

What Use Are Vestries? 16

"Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way" 18

"He Said That He'd Never Ever Serve on a Vestry Again" 20

3 What is Your Mental Model? 22

The Teaching Role of the Priest 23

Choose Your Mental Model 24

4 Vestry as a Community of Disciples 28

Vestry as a Microcosm of the Larger Church 28

Vestry as a Community of Disciples 29

Followers of Jesus 30

Learning and Teachable Moments 31

Continually Looking for Ways to Expand the Reach of the Church 32

Fostering Faith that Brings God's Preferred Future into Present Reality 33

5 Discerning Your Vestry's Pinch Points 34

Spiritual Pinch Points 36

Relational Pinch Points 38

Administrative Pinch Points 38

Commitment Pinch Points 40

6 Commitment: The Glue That Binds the Vestry Together 41

Committed to the Ongoing Life of the Church 42

Committed to Participation in the Life of the Vestry 42

Committed to the Financial Support of the Church 44

7 How to Conduct an Effective Vestry Meeting 46

How to Lead an Ineffective Vestry Meeting 46

A Better Way: How to Lead an Effective Vestry Meeting 47

Preparing the Agenda 51

8 Other Means for Forming a Vestry 54

Vestry Selection Process 54

Vestry Orientation 56

Vestry Retreat 58

Teachable Moments 59

9 Urgency and Non-Anxious Presence in Healthy Tension 62

Tyranny of Complacency 63

Tyranny of the Urgent 64

Right Urgency as the Antidote to Complacency 64

Non-Anxious Presence 65

Being a Non-Anxious Presence Is Not Simply a Technique 66

Some Suggestions 67

Part 2 Exercises for Moving Beyond Business as Usual 69

10 Bible Studies 77

1 Leadership, Exodus 18:13-27 78

2 Doing the Right Thing or Doing the Thing Right, 2 Samuel 6:1-7 78

3 The Leader's Priorities, Ezra 7:8-10 79

4 Leadership and Loneliness, Luke 22:39-46 79

5 Unity, John 17:20-23 80

6 Vision, Acts 1:1-11 81 10. Lay Leadership, Acts 6:1-7 82

11 Teachings 84

1 Four Principles Every Church Leader Should Take to Heart 85

2 Four More Principles Every Church Leader Should Take to Heart 90

3 Thinking Like a Leader 93

4 Congregational Development According to Yogi 100

5 Introduction to Congregational Size Dynamics 103

6 The Family-Sized Church 105

7 The Pastoral-Sized Church 107

8 The Transitional-Sized Church 111

9 The Program-Sized Church 115

10 The Resource-Sized Church 117

11 Why Organizations Fail 120

12 Mental Exercises 124

1 How to Spend Your Summer Vacation 125

2 General Introduction Icebreaker Question-1 125

3 General Introduction icebreaker Question-2 126

4 Buy, Sell, or Hold 126

5 Is St. Swithin's a Five-Star Church? 127

6 Ministry Planning Exercise 128

7 Who Is Your Customer (1): Mystery Worshipper 130

8 Who Is Your Customer (2): Vestry Home Visits 130

9 Who Is Your Customer (3): Young Adults 131

10 Signs of the Times 132

11 Change Readiness Test 133

12 The Timeline of My Life 135

13 What Do These Numbers Mean? 136

14 More Metrics: Who Is Serving? Whom Are We Reaching? 137

15 Internally Focused or Externally Focused? 138

16 Prayer-Walking the Facilities 139

13 Reflective Readings 140

1 What Drives Your Church? 141

2 The Crucible of Leadership 142

3 How to Boil an Egg 146

4 How to Reduce the Size of Your Congregation 148

5 In Praise of Passion 151

6 The Changing Nature of Ministry 154

7 The Visitor Who Never Returned 157

14 The Vestry Selection Process 160

A Vestry Election Guidelines 160

B Vestry Candidate Recommendations 162

C Sample Commissioning Rite for Vestry Members 162