Nouslife: Church Engagement and its discontents

16 February 2014

Church Engagement and its discontents

I have to confess that in the past, enthralled by leadership teaching and church growth and management insights and still not having fully and properly co-ordinated the secular management insights with theological reflection, I recall having similar niggles to those mentioned in this insightful article:

weary of such teaching as we realised that it didn’t really resonate with the picture we see in Jesus who would not only ‘lay down his life’ for his sheep but would willingly leave the ninety-nine in order to find the individual who had become lost.

This was a propos of teaching about leaving behind those in a church who weren't buying into the leaders' vision. This, of course, comes out of reifying the vision into, in effect, the very word of the Lord. Yet what had always troubled me was the way the there was so little in Scripture about vision casting. About the only text is the Proverbs verse 'Where there is no vision the people perish' -which only works in the AV 'translation' and seems to actually yield very little backing for vision casting. in fact, the Pauline and Johanine exhortations to unity would seem to count against 'leaving behind' or, in effect, excluding those who don't 'catch' the vision. And, of course. the parable of the lost sheep is rightly brought to the bar above.

What this piece does rather well is to pick up and explain in churchly terms the basic three stages of church engagement -drawn from observation of organisational life (and which I'm adding to my reflections on being part of a university which is morphing into a self-aware business). The suggestion is also that expecting an ever upward engagement is cutting against the grain of a natural human engagement entropy:

suggest that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a
person’s engagement to a group, community, or vision. Most of the
models that I have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend
to paint a picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased
adherence. I am not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps
desirable.

I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:

1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpu

... there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person's engegement to a group, community or vision. ... a three-phase journey experienced within a community:

1) Enthusiastic

2)Realistic

3) Apathetic

In each of these phases there are not only normal and expected patterns and psychodynamics of engagement (all of which are perfectly recognisable and understandable from our own experiences) but also tend to be exploited or drawn on by leaders in certain ways. We can also see these phase at work when people buy new products -and we may be aware of how the company that supplies it is really keen to get us to give re-usable feedback in the first few days of ownership -when we're still enthusiastic about it and before 'reality' sets in in the form of us having found that it doesn't actually change our life as much for the better as we thought it might or its downsides start to become apparent and a certain disillusion sets in. And of course it may only be a matter of time before we become non-users -apathetic, looking for something better or at least simply instrumental about it. Similarly with churches -doubly so if they are 'marketed' with visions, missions and vibe. So people drop out or move on from one church to another.

Accordingly, we need to teach leadership skills not just to do the first phase stuff but to pastor through phases 2 and 3. Informally this already happens, of course, we all know churches that do phase 1 stuff really well but have open back doors as well as front doors. Many of us are also aware of churches which tend to 'receive' at least some of the refugees from phase 1 churches, and some of us know people who don't reconnect with church. I'm also aware of some people who don't connect with phase 1 churches at all because they at a subliminal level understand only too well the marketing dynamic of the vibe and vision thing and shy away from the 'machine' that threatens to eat them.

So the question is not only how do we train priests to be leaders for all three phases, but how do we disciple Christians to work through them maturely (and are 'sabbaticals' part of this)? And that latter question morphs into a question about how we build church life so as not to be using up the first-phasers?

The fact is, I suspect, that churches that do phase one stuff well are doing so parasitically on the rest of the body of Christ: using up people's enthusiasm and 'letting them go' when they realise that all is not as shiney as it first seemed: then other churches pick them up and sometimes help put them back together. Sometimes, of course, no church is trusted thereafter. We badly need phase-ecumenism in order to cope with this natural life staging under our current 'system' -but it would be hard for many leaders to do this as it would mean admitting a certain relativity or contingency to their self-perceptions of ministry, theology and mission. Meanwhile the mission of the whole church is compromised.

I hope I'm wrong, but I fear i'm not.

there
exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person’s engagement
to a group, community, or vision. Most of the models that I have seen
explaining how to secure human engagement tend to paint a picture of an
onward and upward journey toward increased adherence. I am not sure that
this is either possible, or even perhaps desirable. - See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf

suggest
that there exists an organisational entropy when it comes to a person’s
engagement to a group, community, or vision. Most of the models that I
have seen explaining how to secure human engagement tend to paint a
picture of an onward and upward journey toward increased adherence. I am
not sure that this is either possible, or even perhaps desirable.

I would want to suggest a three-phase journey experienced within a community:

1) Enthusiastic

2) Realistic

3) Apathetic

- See more at:
http://www.redletterchristians.org/three-phases-church-engagement/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+RedLetterChristians+%28Red+Letter+Christians%29&utm_content=Netvibes#sthash.mj0PAxL0.dpuf