YOU DON'T GET WHAT YOU EXPECT

We have had some really great worship times at Cocoa lately.  Yesterday there were fourteen children for the Children's Message and, once again, Sarah and Heidi were outstanding.  I hate that the 12 Days of Christmastide are over and we will take down all the gorgeous decorations.  But that will indeed help us to enjoy them fully next year. 

So you know the adage that you don't get what you expect but what you inspect.  The word for churches, and especially sessions, in this is DON'T RECEIVE REPORTS from your committees or staff.  Rather SAY WHAT YOU WANT REPORTED.  Sessions should say what measurable results they want to see for the church (and this is really tough work that often gets avoided by getting absorbed with daily maintenance details -- hugging the trees instead of climbing the ladder to look at the forest).  For example, you can have an evangelism committee and they give a report to the session once a quarter that says something like, "We put an ad in the newspaper for $35/week."  But if you have said that the most effective, cheapest, fastest way to get more people to come to church is to increase the number of times each member invites someone, then that is what you ask to have reported.  "Please, Evangelism Committee, report to us the average number of times each member is inviting someone to church."   Or, more simply, report to us if the average number of invites per member is up, down, or the same.

Sessions need to say what they want and know why.  Then they need to ask for reporting on that.  If they do not, they have delegated and abdicated at the same time. 

Great Day Yesterday

Wow.  What a great day we had yesterday!  The music was outstanding.  The instruments shined.  The house looked beautiful.  The sanctuary was full.  Thank you to all who made it so special.   

Tough Questions & Thoughts

            As we turned out for a Saturday morning of power washing, garland hanging, and pageant practicing, I experienced the joy of God’s people working together.  I also found myself once again pondering questions that Cocoa Pres must face.  (I say, “must face,” but I a reminded of Lucy in the Charlie Brown comic strip saying that there is no problem so big that I cannot avoid it!)

            The questions spin out of one – how do we be a viable congregation?  As we covered one end of the campus to the other one had to wonder, how do we keep up this aging facility when we are a congregation getting smaller in numbers and older in years?  Will a pastor hired just part-time turn our decline around?  Will a pastor hired full-time turn our decline around?  If we don’t turn it around, we are in a hospice mode. 

            To maintain the facility, hire staff, and run programs we need cash.  That means revenue streams having to do with members – more $$ out of the members we have, more members and $$ out of them, or a combination of the two.  That means revenue streams having to do with income generation by renting or selling – renting part of the facility to another congregation trying to get started or needing more space, selling more land, running a thrift shop, opening a tea room, putting in a boat and rv storage area, …. 

            We easily say that we need to minister to the neighborhood and that is absolutely true.  However, our ministry needs also to lead to supplying us with sustaining members.  Otherwise we give away and continue to shrink and age as a congregation.  (Now I have more than once travelled to be a part of a church seriously involved in mission in their community.  So the flag that needs to be waved is, “Come join us as we are a group of people making a serious difference in our community.”  To do the ministry without getting sustaining members or to say we are doing the ministry when we are not, won’t cut it.)

            The other part of cash is, of course, cutting expenses.  There are soft and hard expenses.  Hard ones are set, like the insurance we carry on the property.  Soft ones are cut-able, like staff.  We can put services into Flanniken Hall to reduce electricity expenses.  We can go to volunteers for custodial, landscaping, and secretarial services.  
            Again lower expenses, selling property, increasing cash by micro-business enterprises … without growing the congregation just means being able to tread water longer.  Growing the congregation may mean, and this is ok, growing only at a rate that replenishes typical losses (members dying, moving, drifting away, or switching churches).   But if it is less than a replenish rate (typically 10% of the congregation's size), a trendline of decline can be plotted to a congregation’s expiration date. 

            Sounds gloomy? There are other ideas that can go on the table – merging with another church, selling the property and moving someplace where people like us can grow more easily, making the end of our life as Cocoa as we know it a giving ourselves away to become an African American or Hispanic congregation of the Presbyterian flavor or some other denomination all together. 

Who is Cocoa? Week 4 of Congregational Meetings

Who is Cocoa?  Week 4 of Congregational Meetings

What aren’t we doing that we need to start? 

·         Connecting with the proximate community

·         Getting new people, especially young families

·         Updating the worship service

·         Evangelism training

·         Asking members to do more

·         Offering our facilities to the community

What are we doing that we need to stop?

·         Being closed-minded and resisting change, living in the past

·         Judging others (incl the RFM school)

·         Thinking we are a big church

·         Territorialism

·         Being PCUSA

·         Being the big, white church on Dixon

·         Beggaring the facilities

What are we doing that is contributing to our success & should continue?

·         Our relationship with The Sharing Center and The Special Gathering

·         Being friendly

·         Mission involvement, BIRP

·         Fixing the facility

·         Music

·         Connecting with Westminster/Asbury

·         Our Shepherd Program

·         Women’s Ministry

What do we need to fix?  Keep it but fix it. 

·         Parking lot

·         Sound system

·         Lighting in sanctuary/narthex

·         Session committees

·         “Bridges” to WIC, Boy Scouts, RFM, Westminster/Asbury

What realistically are our main sources of new members?

·         Those like us who are near us

·         Those like us who are somewhat near us (Canaveral Groves/PSJ)

·         Those we have some connection to – Boy Scouts

·         Our own personal friends, family, neighbors, coworkers

What skills are most important to getting the above done?

·         Handyman

·         Senior Adult Ministry experience

·         Multi-ethnic, transitional ministry experience

Pastor Wood comments—I inserted a few comments above already.  Many of the points need a follow up question of, “How?”  Or, “What do we have to offer them?”  As in, “Get younger families.”  And what I call “the invite factor” must be owned by every member.  I’m going to Circle, who can I invite.  I’m going to clean up day, who can I invite?  I’m going to choir, who can I invite.  Thank you, those of you who came, for all your good work. 

A Little Comment on Church

In the last post I shared what we said together about what the church is and does.  In the notes you can see we made it a location and facility.  We made it a group of people doing the will of God.  Giving it that people definition means church, while being location and facility at times, exists beyond location and facility as well. 

Under us being a group doing the will of God we put sharing the Good News.  The Great Commission says making disciples.  Same thing.  But I want to niggle us on point here and I am right there in the thick of it for being responsible for this issue.  The point can be made this way.  Let's say our business was to be a pregnancy center, let's say, helping people get pregnant and then helping those babies develop in a healthy way.  And there are a 100 of us employed there and we know that that is our business.  We like our office space.  We like our co-workers.  We like our employee banquets and our employee study sessions.  At the end of the year if no one got pregnant, if at the end of five years it was the same, and so on, then using our business heads, we'd say something was wrong.  But this is the case for church after church.  People show up already pregnant and we help them.  Sometimes it is not even that.  Most of the time, however, there are ... no adult baptisms (indicating someone who wasn't a disciple becoming one).  ie, a key, if not the key, product of our business is not getting produced. 

There are lots of complicated reasons for such a state of affairs.  They're valid.  Maybe we let it be too complicated.  I'm not sure.  If we go back to Peter Drucker's two key questions for any organization (What's your business?  How's business?) and keep the answers pretty basic and simple, then many or even most churches are not doing so well.  If we were a business, needing to pay for inventory and overhead and taxes and salaries, we'd need to close. 

I don't mean to be doom and gloom or point the finger.  I am, as I said, right in the thick of the responsibility for this problem.  It does keep me thinking about how I can reach out.  It does keep me thinking that session's should spend at least a few hours each year, before doing anything else almost, in developing this year's plan for making new disciples, getting those who were'nt pregnant with Christ, pregnant with Him. 
And, of course, then a few hours on how we can do worship really well in the coming year.  Then what this group of disciples needs equiping in. 

Peace.

Congregational Meeting Week 3

Who is Cocoa?  Week 3 of Congregational Meetings

                We already went through our thoughts on what Christians believe, experience, and do.  What are our thoughts on the church?  What is it?  Who are we and what do we do and what results are we to achieve? 

    We said that a church is

·         A place for worship and for teaching the Bible (a location and two activities)

·         A group of people who as a team does the will of God (sharing the good news & helping the poor)

·         A community for mutual support in the walk of Christian faith and in the events of life (ups and downs, breaking bread, sacred ceremonies of marriage & funerals)

·         A community offering the sacraments

Who comes to Cocoa Pres?  Our answer -- about a 100

·         Middle class people

·         WASPs

·         Old but still able people

·         Medium educated people

·         Giving people

·         English speaking

           What do we value?  What gets on our radar screen and how do we do those things?

·         Being formal /  Being informal   ??

·         Being traditional

·         Being not too big

·         Being intelligent

·         Being Presbyterian

·         Being ecumenical

·         Education

·         Praying for the sick

·         Visiting the hospital

·         Pastoral care

·         Lay ministry

·         Music

·         Children

·         Pot-lucks

·         Mission conference

·         Our facilities

·         Preaching

·         Playing it safe/conservative

·         Scouting

What doesn’t get on our radar screen that gets on others’?

·         Small group ministry

·         Men’s ministry emphasis

·         Financial type classes

·         Inward Journey/Spiritual Formation

·         Spiritual gifts

·         Social justice emphasis

The interim pastor shared first impressions as an outsider were –

·         We have more facility than we can maintain

·         There were a lot of signs

·         For all the love there is interpersonal tension between some members

·         The sanctuary and narthex are not well lit

·         Getting an ethnic pastor might be the way to go

·         Being very focused on senior ministry might be the way to go

·         This group is medium on formality and being Presbyterian

·         There have been disappointments here related to some pastors

Key Questions for the Congregation Searching;

Who are we? 

            Our key experiences – highest, lowest, for us normal means a,b,c

            Assets

            Liabilities*

To have a future as a viable congregation we must

            Start _____________________________________

            Stop ­­­­­­­­­­_____________________________________

            Continue _________________________________

            Fix_______________________________________

What realistically are our main sources of new members?

What we are called to do?

a combination of what we want to do

     what the Bible says we are to do

     our assets

     the opportunities around us

What skills are most important to get done what we are called to do?

How can we best articulate who we are and where we need to do?

How can we most innovatively search for a person with the skills we want and “win” them into coming?