Ramblings on Weakness

I'm working with a church that is beginning the process of "Transformation." This is the newest ELCA jargon for redevelopment. In the most cynical terms it is helping those white churches that used to be neighborhood based - right up until the White Flight of the 50s and 60s - become neighborhood based once again. The challenge is that neighborhoods are now multi-racial, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, and more often than not, mono-economic: poor. The churches are still white - be it the families that never left, the families that drive in from the suburbs, or the new white folks that found the church.

So that's the set-up for this post. Here's the rub:

Monday night we had a night for feedback on our transformation/mission plan. A well respected leader and dear friend - who is African American and was the only person of color in the room - laid it out clear: our plan was based almost exclusively on our strengths.

Now granted, there were nuances that were not explicit, and it was a document for the current church, making the plan palatable to the current members, and on and on. We've got plenty of excuses, but basically he's right. The plan is deeply rooted in the strengths of the church.

The alternative - to come from weakness - is good theology of the cross stuff. We aren't being vulnerable. We aren't being open. Our plan isn't rooted in the gospel.

Transformation comes from exposing those weak areas. It is admitting that we can't do it alone. It isn't just that my church can't make budget every year and needs more people to make more money - though several in the church approved the plan for just that reason. It is really because we can't live the gospel if we are a white island. We NEED diversity. We need to be changed. In the baptismal sense, in the political sense, in the cultural sense, in the biblical sense. We NEED to be different.

But how do we do it? My community organizing background says build from assets. Start with what we're good at. Asset based planning is going to look like the plan the church adopted.

How do we work with the assets of the community? How do we remain accountable to the folks that have entrusted a fair chunk of change to this new mission while not being so stuck in our strengths that we alienate the neighborhood?

Perhaps this is pointing to the struggle of every annual report: what does successful ministry look like? Surely it isn't based on numbers alone - though so much of the reports think it does. Isn't ministry more than members gained and giving increased? Isn't growth in these terms a fairly poor indicator of health?

What is success? How do you measure a neighborhood that can recognize a church by name and place? How do you evaluate folks that don't attend on a Sunday morning but start thinking, "You know, I'm not religious, but I'm really spiritual. And that church seems more spiritual than religious."

AND THEN, are we called to get them in the doors? Isn't there something to the great commission?

"Semper Ecclesia Reformandi"