Maintenance or Mission

I have been working a lot this week to get ready for our annual Grace Leadership Retreat. The subject of this year's retreat doesn't sound very exciting at first. We are going to be talking about meetings. However, when you think of the fact that everything we do as a church relates to reaching out to share the abundance of God's love and deepening discipleship, meeting become really important. How we meet affects directly how we make disciples.

As I was thinking about that, I came across a blog post from Will Willimon, Bishop of the North Alabama Conference of the United Methodist Church. It is from last year so I don't quite know how I stumbled upon it. In it, he quotes a piece from Harold Percy's Good News People. I am going to repost it here. This piece ties well into what we are doing tomorrow. Is also ties into the Congregational Transformation Process which we are in the middle of. The process makes us look at the church in terms of whether we are dying, maintaining or transforming. The theory behind the process is that churches that are maintaining, if they don't move toward transforming, will eventually be dying. This piece puts that in terms of maintenance vs. mission:

MAINTENANCE OR MISSION?

1. In measuring the effectiveness, the maintenance congregation asks, "How many pastoral visits are being made? The mission congregation asks, "How many disciples are being made?"

2. When contemplating some form of change, the maintenance congregation says, "If this proves upsetting to any of our members, we won't do it." The mission congregation says, "If this will help us reach someone on the outside, we will take the risk and do it."

3. When thinking about change, the majority of members in a maintenance congregation ask, "How will this affect me?" The majority of members in the mission congregation ask, "Will this increase our ability to reach those outside?"

4. When thinking of its vision for ministry, the maintenance congregation says, "We have to be faithful to our past." The mission congregation says, "We have to be faithful to our future."

5. The pastor in the maintenance congregation says to the newcomer, "I'd like to introduce you to some of our members." In the mission congregation the members say, "We'd like to introduce you to our pastor."

6. When confronted with a legitimate pastoral concern, the pastor in the maintenance congregation asks, "How can I meet this need?" The pastor in the mission congregation asks, "How can this need be met?"

7. The maintenance congregation seeks to avoid conflict at any cost (but rarely succeeds). The mission congregation understands that conflict is the price of progress, and is willing to pay the price. It understands that it cannot take everyone with it. This causes some grief, but it does not keep it from doing what needs to be done.

8. The leadership style in the maintenance congregation is primarily managerial, where leaders try to keep everything in order and running smoothly. The leadership style in a mission congregation is primarily transformational, casting a vision of what can be, and marching off the map in order to bring the vision into reality.

9. The maintenance congregation is concerned with their congregation, its organizations and structure, its constitutions and committees. The mission congregation is concerned with the culture, with understanding how secular people think and what makes them tick. It tries to determine their needs and their points of accessibility to the Gospel.

10. When thinking about growth, the maintenance congregations asks, "How many Lutherans live within a twenty-minute drive of this church?" The mission congregation asks, "How many unchurched people live within a twenty-minute drive of this church?"

11. The maintenance congregation looks at the community and asks, "How can we get these people to support our congregation?" The mission congregation asks, "How can the Church support these people?"

12. The maintenance congregation thinks about how to save their congregation. The mission congregation thinks about how to reach the world.

peace,

will