At the recent “Simple Church” workshops held by Eric Geiger, Eric said something that was my grand “Ahah!” for the whole month and keeps tumbling over in my mind even now.  I’d like to share it with you. 

In a nut shell it is this:  congregations that keep their members busy with activities at the church – special events, committee meetings, lots of programming – use up all people’s discretionary time and energy before they ever get around to being salty servants out in their community.  The flip side of this observation, Eric said, is that congregations that have high mercy, justice, and evangelistic ministry impact in their community tend to have strategically streamlined their in-congregation, at-church programming.

Think about it this way: how much time do you think most people involved in your congregation have to invest in church activities beyond worship?  Sure there are those that will be there whenever the church doors open, but for most people, how much more time beyond worship do you think is realistic to expect from your people on a weekly?  Two to four more hours a week, maybe?  So, people’s time is a very precious resource.  How good are your congregation’s leaders and staff at being good stewards or trustees of the time people are willing to offer them?

Let me share with you three questions that may help you reflect on your congregation’s quality of stewardship regarding people’s time. 

First: if people came to all the activities that were in your bulletin or announced at your worship services over the last month, would they have any time left for them to be salty servants in your community?   Would they still have time to volunteer at the area elementary school or work at the soup kitchen or help build a Habitat for Humanity house or get to know their unchurched neighbor or help plan a community Earth Day event or befriend someone at work who is going through a personal crisis?  Or would they be rushing down to the church for another meeting or program?  Be honest.  Maybe one of the reasons that many people aren’t having a salty service impact in their community – besides the fact that in many congregations we have not been challenging or encouraging them to do so – is that they are being kept so busy down at the church that they don’t have any time left to go out into the world and actually be the church.

Second: how would your congregation’s leaders and staff evaluate whether a particular program or event is the most strategic use of people’s time?   I was stunned when Eric spoke about keeping people so busy they didn’t have time to be the church.  I always prided myself on getting new programs started and on initiating special events.  I always felt that a busy congregation was a healthy congregation.  But if most people only have several more hours beyond worship to invest in church related activities and you want to make the most strategic use of their time, you have to get around to asking: what is the best use of people’s time each week in our congregation? 

Keeping people busy down at the church is not the same thing as fulfilling the congregation’s mission to “make disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world.”  More activities don’t necessarily mean more or better disciples or greater Kingdom impact in the world.  If the congregation is called by Christ to be about the business of changing lives and changing communities, what is the best use of people’s time to help that happen? 

There certainly isn’t room in a blog to reflect on this question adequately.   At the very least, however, within the Wesleyan tradition, if we are going to cooperate with the transformative work of the Holy Spirit in maturing most people as disciples, there are three environments or activities that are critical.  Overlook any of these and it is almost impossible to imagine most people growing as a biblically whole and Wesleyan disciples.  They are (1) worship, (2) involvement in an intentional discipling small group, and (3) service to others in a ministry (within the church) and/or a mission (out in the community). 

Third: are there some activities, programs or events that have just run their time and need to be phased out or that should never be started because they are not the best use of people’s time in fulfilling the congregation’s mission?  This event may once have been popular; but why push and prop up a program that once worked and is no longer effective?  People may find this proposed new program to be very entertaining; but if it doesn’t help people fulfill the mission of the congregation, why start it?  No one is suggesting that you slash beloved activities in your congregation without pastoral and political sensitivity.  But there are opportune decision points for ceasing or never starting programming of which strategic leaders can and should take advantage.    
Feel free to share with me and with others your thoughts.

Blessings,
Jeff

Dr. Jeff Stiggins
Office of Congregational Transformation

As a variety of conference leaders were preparing for the section of our recent Annual Conference Event on “Making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” Vance Raines and I had an email conversation about the five practices.  He pointed out the need to present the practices less programmatically and more as a response to our brokenness.  It took me some time to process his comment, but I think he offers an important insight. 

The five discipling practices of effective congregations are not successful church growth techniques.  They are the core components of a congregation’s ministry of developing mature followers of Jesus Christ.  And each practice addresses an aspect of our brokenness, our sinfulness, how the image of God reflected in our humanity has become distorted and discolored.  I’d like to share with you some of the reflections that Vance’s comment stirred up in me on our brokenness to which each of the practices is a gracious life-changing response.

Passionate worship:  Isn’t the call to fulfill the great commandment to “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” (Matthew 22:37) part of God’s saving work in us because we have “exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator” (Romans 1:25)?  Instead of living in joyful and obedient relationship with God, we build our lives instead around all sorts of idols: family, country, prestige, security, knowledge, popularity, pleasure, entertainment, power, sex, comfort – the list is endless.  While all these have their created purpose and limited goodness, they become distorted when we make them the focus of our lives.  Jesus invites us to “seek first [God’s] kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.” (Matthew 6:33) Passionate worship isn’t about one hour a week; it is about how we live worshipful lives 24/7 centered on God’s mercy, presence,  purposes and power (Romans 12:1-2) or on God’s absence and the empty promises of false idols we have placed upon the altar of our heart.  Weekly worship that is passionate both expresses our lives of worship and teaches us to live worshipfully.

Radical Hospitality: Isn’t the call to Radical Hospitality part of God’s saving work in us because otherwise we live with fractured relationships: without authentic intimacy or belonging or civility or community?  Apart from the welcoming acceptance of Jesus’ radical hospitality (meant to work its way outward in our lives transforming our relationships near to distant) hatred, prejudice, judging, projection, scapegoating, grudge carrying, and villianizing run rampant in our world.   These lead naturally to us being at odds with our neighbor, building walls, living in gated communities, working in silos, marginalizing those who are different, ethnic cleaning, and waging war.  Without God’s intervention on the cross, without Jesus inviting us into a community where all are welcomed and can learn to do life together, without the Spirit teaching us to be agents of reconciliation out in a world of people turned against themselves, we are left with the downward spiral of destructive and dysfunctional relationships described so vividly in Genesis once Adam and Eve are banished from Eden. 

Intentional Discipling: Isn’t the call to be Jesus’ disciple an essential part of God’s saving work in us because otherwise we are like “sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36), believing we know what is best, and, doing what is right in our own eyes, wander off and get lost?  We experience repeatedly that we do not know how to live life well.  Like foolish persons building our lives upon shifting sand, when the storms of life come, we are washed out. (Matthew 7:26f.)  We buy self-help books, watch info-mercials and search for leaders that can teach us to live life better only to discover that they place on us heavy burdens and promise far more than they deliver.  Jesus befriends us and becons: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.”  (Matthew 11:28 f.)

Salty Service: Isn’t the call to Salty Service part of God’s essential saving work in us because otherwise we remain self-centered persons who do not recognize the suffering of others or when we do usually cross over to the other side of the road and hurry on by without compassion that leads to loving action (Luke 10:25f.)?  Left on our own, we are naturally like the goats in Jesus’ parable of the last judgment in Matthew 25:41-43, “Then he will say to [the goats] on his left, ‘Depart from me . . .  For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’”  The Spirit’s transformational work in us through a congregation’s practice of cultivating Salty Service also addresses our fundamental need to be part of a larger purpose that gives meaning to our lives.  “We are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.” (Ephesians 2:10)  Without getting out of ourselves and investing the unique gifts, talents and strengths with which God has equipped each of us in making our contribution to His Kingdom work, we fail to find the fulfilling purpose our lives were created to have. 

Extravagant Generosity:  Isn’t the call to Extravagant Generosity part of God’s essential saving work in us because otherwise we seek our purpose, worth and security through the anxious accumulation of money and things?  Rather than receiving all that we have gratefully as part of God’s providential care and answer to our prayer, “give us this day our daily bread,” we fearfully and pridefully work to buy more and more stuff we really don’t need and can’t afford.  Caught up in the materialism, consumerism and easy debt of our culture, we frantically and foolishly build our barns believing that when they are full we will have it made.  We spend all that we have on ourselves (and often more, becoming enslaved in debt),  working unreasonable numbers of hours at the expense of our own health, responding miserly to the needs of others, widening the gap between the haves and the have-nots, and exhausting the earth’s resources.  Our economic lives naturally become so out of balance, that we honestly can’t afford to tithe – God’s antidotal discipline for learning to trust God’s provision and reprioritizing our spending so that we live on less than we make enabling us to respond joyfully and generously to people’s needs and God’s causes as the Spirit prompts.

 

Dr. Jeff Stiggins
Congregational Transformation

“You keep talking about Bishop Whitaker calling every congregation to have an ‘intentional discipling process;’ just exactly what does that mean?”  This was the question two different pastors asked in a conversation recently.  And the truth is ten years ago, I would have had no idea how even to begin to respond.

When appointed to the first four congregations I served, I pretty much assumed that it was my job as pastoral leader to keep the programs I inherited going.  I set out to make some “improvements,” of course, which generally was interpreted to mean ‘more satisfied people involved,’ at least for starters.  In several congregations, as their size made it impossible for me personally to do all the pastoral care well, we started ministries involving lay persons visiting those in the hospital or in nursing homes or who were home bound.  We started some prayer ministries of various sorts.  We initiated several types of Bible Studies, including Disciple.  In two congregations we started an alternative style of worship service. 

But what we didn’t have was an overall plan for helping persons take the next step in their discipleship journey toward becoming more like Christ and joining him in ministry in the world.   Consequently, we had no real way of evaluating whether the programs were “effective” other than whether people “liked them.”  What we assumed was that if everyone would just participate in all the different programs of our congregation, then they would grow up as followers of Jesus Christ.  We also assumed that people at different stages in their discipleship journey needed about the same thing from the church to support them moving to their next step. 

Dr. Phil keeps asking people: “So, how’s that working for you?”  The answer according to many observers is, “Not very well.” 

• Sociologists, like George Barna, have repeatedly told us that they can find no significant difference in behavior, values and attitudes between people who go to church and people in our culture who do not.  (Except, of course, the behavior of attending church.)  But, otherwise, being involved in church does not seem to make a sociologically discernable difference in people’s lives across our nation. 
• Additionally, commentators remark that while congregations were quite influential in shaping the culture of their communities a hundred years ago, in today’s secular society, except for in some smaller towns, Christian congregations have increasingly been sitting out the culture-shaping game while watching others play.  
• Think about the people in your congregation.  Are they living lives more aligned to God’s ways than a year ago?  Are they more forgiving?  More generous?  More compassionate?  Having more of a Christ-like impact in the world?  

If congregations have been given the mission of making disciples and teaching persons to obey all that Jesus taught us (Matthew 28: 19-20), maybe we need to think about how we can be more effective in cooperating with the Holy Spirit in changing lives and changing communities. 

But where do we begin? 

I think we begin, as Steve Covey says, “with the end in mind.”    I received a newsletter from the Barna Group last week in which the lead article was “Many churchgoers and Faith leaders Struggle to Define Spiritual maturity.”  (http://www.barna.org/barna-update/article/12-faithspirituality/264-many-churchgoers-and-faith-leaders-struggle-to-define-spiritual-maturity)   The article begins:

America may possess the world’s largest infrastructure for nurturing human spirituality, complete with hundreds of thousands of houses of worship, thousands of parachurch organizations and schools, and seemingly unlimited products, resources and experts.  

Yet, a new study from the Barna Group identifies an underlying reason why there is little progress in helping people develop spiritually; many churchgoers and clergy struggle to articulate a basic understanding of spiritual maturity.  People aspire to be spiritually mature, but they do not know what it means.  Pastors want to guide others on the path to spiritual wholeness, but they are often not clearly defining the goals or the outcomes of that process.
(emphasis added)

Erik Geiger, co-author of Simple Church: Returning to God’s Process for making Disciples, said during two one-day workshops held recently in Gainesville and Boca Raton, that church leaders should distinguish between “brochure conversations” and “blue print” conversations.  When travel agents try to get you to take a trip somewhere, they show you pictures of what it is going to be like when you get there.  Likewise, when contractors sell homes, they may show you pictures of model homes already beautifully built and furnished.  Geiger suggests that church leaders intent of inviting persons of a spiritual journey toward being fully devoted followers of Jesus Christ, need to be able to describe what that may look like when we get there or when we move in.  Before having the “blue print” or “travel plans” conversation, you have to first decide where you are headed. 

We will pick up the question about how to help get people from where they are spiritually to where Christ wants us to be in next the next CT Blog.  For now, let’s pause on the question of what it means to be a grown up follower of Jesus Christ.  There are a lot of legitimate ways to describe it, I suppose.   You might ask the leaders of your congregation to take some time prayerfully brainstorming this. 

Using the Five Practices as a framework for the “Brochure discussion,” here is what a growing group of persons have come up with as “evidences or expressions of mature discipleship.”   Mature disciples:

Radical Hospitality
• Receive and offer God’s warm welcome as participants in Christ’s Body locally
• Practice forgiveness as a response to God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ
• Meet Christ in the stranger and accept persons as they are 
• Encourage others to respond to God’s invitation to discipleship

Passionate Worship
• Encounter God’s presence expectantly and responsively in all of life
• Seek to grow in love with God, to hear God’s voice and to respond with joyful obedience to the guidance of the Holy Spirit
• Engage regularly in worship within our church community
• Offer up all that we are and do as acts of worship to God

Intentional Discipling
• Share our faith journey with a small group of spiritual companions
• Seek to understand Jesus’ teaching through the prayerful study of Scripture and the Christian tradition
• Seek for our values, attitudes, behavior and character to be formed in Christ
• Help others discover and take the next step in their faith-journey

Salty Service
• Become aware of the gifts, strengths, passions and opportunities with which we are uniquely blessed
• Invest these blessings by joining Jesus in ministry responding to the needs of others both beyond and  within our local congregation 

 Extravagant Generosity
• Receive all that we have as gracious gifts from God
• Live within our financial means so as not to be enslaved by debt
• Give proportionally to God’s causes, as the Spirit urges, using the tithe as a Biblical guide
• Spend 100% of our resources in ways that honor God and bless others

Blessings,
Jeff

Dr. Jeff Stiggins
Congregational Transformation

The tone of a fair number of people’s responses to the last CT Blog now almost two weeks ago inviting readers to wonder what is expected of members in their congregation surprised me.  There was a defensive push back on the part of a couple people: how about asking what we expect of our pastors? (This isn’t a bad question at all, but will have to wait until a later blog.)  One person said such institutional expectations are exactly why he never joined a church.  It has taken me a while to reflect on the responses I received by email and that were posted on the CT Blog site.  I’d like to thank those who took the time to respond because it has certainly caused me to reflect more deeply. 

One of the things I remembered reading sometime back is that people only willingly accept accountability within the context of a caring and trusting relationship.  Without being in a relationship or covenant in which persons trust one another and share a commitment to agreed upon values and goals, accountability feels like an obligation imposed against their will.  It is something owed, like sales tax when you buy a used car, or something to which one is contractually obligated, like being mandated always to carry your car registration, proof of insurance and driver’s license as part of the privilege of legally driving around your new used car.  The point is most of us resent at some level expectations thrust upon us impersonally or bureaucratically.  Unless we trust that people really care about us and have our best interests in mind, expectations seem like unwanted, even heavy burdens placed upon us. 

Jesus said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”  (Matthew 11: 28-30)

Jesus invites persons to follow him, to enter into a discipleship relationship with him by agreeing to live life according to his understanding of God’s will.  (A “yoke” is not only a harness for beasts of burden; a rabbi’s “yoke” is his particular understanding of the way of life to which God calls us.)  Jesus expresses compassion for those weighted down by heavy expectations according to other teachers’ interpretations of God’s will.  He promises that he is gentle and humble in heart and invites persons joyfully to receive his understanding of God’s will (his yoke) and to discover through obedience “rest for your souls.”  So obviously Jesus has expectations for his followers, but they are light burdens meant to be blessings.  They are something that Jesus graciously wants for his disciples. 

Maybe the question about expectations – which some readers understandably reacted to in terms of undesirable obligations – needs to be reframed in terms of the question: what do we want for the people in our congregation? 

When our kids were young, Sue and I expected them to do certain age-appropriate chores.  It wasn’t that we wanted certain things from them because taking out the garbage or picking up their toys or carrying their dishes from the kitchen table and putting them in the dishwasher was too much work for us.  Rather we wanted them to learn to be persons of responsibility and persons who experienced fulfillment from making their contribution to our family’s life together.  It wasn’t what we demanded from them so much as what we wanted for them.  We “expected” them to do these things because we believed that through doing them, they would develop the character that we wanted for the children we loved.  What’s more, had we wanted nothing for them and expected nothing of them, we would not have been gently letting them off the hook; we would have been demonstrating that we really didn’t love them enough to help them become the persons God created them to be.

Congregations are Jesus’ strategy for cooperating with the Holy Spirit in growing more and better disciples who make a Kingdom difference in the world.  It is not the purpose of congregations to provide spiritual goods and services for people — like a Christian Home Depot.   Authentic congregations are committed to joining Jesus in his mission to transform lives and impact communities.   How can a congregation be true to this mission and not want something for their people?  By not expecting people to do what it takes to grow in Christ and to join him on mission we are not letting people gently off the hook.  We are demonstrating that we don’t care about their spiritual growth or about being a Kingdom blessing to our community and the world.

I know some of you reading are thinking: “Well, that’s not true! I do care.  I’m just not sure what expectations are life-giving blessings and which are needless, heavy burdens!”   Fair enough.  And so we return to wondering:  if our congregations are everything Jesus hoped they would be, what differences will that make in people’s individual lives and in our communities?  What do we want for the people who agree to be involved in our congregation?  Precisely because we do care about them and want for them the abundant lives Jesus promised, what do we expect from them so that they grow to become the people God has created them to be and to do the things that He has planned for them to do?

Blessings,
Jeff

Dr. Jeff Stiggins
Congregational Transformation

In the last week or so, I have had several conversations with church leaders in which I began to wonder what they expect of their members.  So I asked them.  Some were surprised by the question, as if it was not something they had thought much about. 

“Well, we expect our people to come to worship,” one person said.  “How often?”  I asked.  “Every week,” some answered; others said “most weeks.”  (I didn’t share it at the time, but several of my large church pastor friends say that many of their best leaders during certain periods of the year only attend worship about twice a month because of soccer games, trips to the beach, leaf peeking or snow skiing, or work related travel.  “Regular attendance” does seem like a minimum sort of expectation, but even that may be a challenging commitment to persons with lots of weekend options in our secular society.)

“We expect people to give to Christ’s work through the church,” was another answer.  “How much?”  I asked.  “We talk about proportional giving, working up to a tithe,” one pastor answered.  “Do you require your leaders to be contributing significantly?”  I inquired.  Several persons shook their heads, “No.”  I related how after serving a while at one church I discovered that two of the members of the finance committee made no financial contributions at all to the church.  One congregation I know decided that they expected their leaders either to be tithing or moving toward tithing within three years and even asked them to sign a card each year indicating that they were.  To be eligible for the finance committee persons needed to be tithing.  Generous giving, they believe, is a matter of spiritual maturity (not financial abundance) and they want their leaders to be the most spiritual mature persons in the congregation. 

“So you require your members to attend and give.”  I said, “As a member of the Rotary Club for a while they expected more of me than that.  Do you expect anything more of the members of the Body of Christ?” 

“We expect our members to be part of a small group,” said one person, adding that they place great emphasis on small groups as the arena in which much of their pastoral care and discipling takes place. 

“We want our members to be involved in a ministry and a mission,” said one lay leader.  “How do ya’ll understand the difference?”  I asked.  The leader went on to explain that they talk about “ministry” as service in the congregation: teaching, ushering, singing on a praise team, working in the nursery or with the youth, or being on one of the administrative committees.  A “mission” was service beyond the church family, essentially, he said, what we have been talking about as “Salty Service.”

One pastor said, “We expect our members to invite persons to church, to share their faith as the Spirit opens up opportunities and to be intentional about cultivating relationships with unchurched persons.”  “So your congregation expects its members to participate in the disciple-making mission of the church,” I responded.  “Sure, and we help people know how to do this and celebrate it when they do.  This is a core value in our congregation.” 

Another pastor told me that they expect their members to grow to be more like Jesus.  “Jesus said that we are to teach people to obey his teachings.  We take this seriously.  For example, we talk about handling conflict in a God honoring fashion.  The gospel makes it clear that people who follow Jesus don’t gossip, they relate to one another with respect, they are slow to judge and quick to forgive.  That’s the way God’s people treat people.  So, we practice Matthew 18 when people don’t act like Jesus taught us to act.  We do it gently and compassionately, of course, but we do it because that’s who we are.”  “So the Body of Christ is to be a different king of community than people normally experience,” I said.  “Absolutely,” he responded, “After all, didn’t Jesus say that people will know we are his followers by the love we have one for another?” 

As I write this, I remember another conversation I had with a new church pastor some months back who said that he expected his congregation to assume responsibility for their own spiritual growth.  He said that many leaders seem to assume that the spiritual growth of people in their congregation is their responsibility.  “But, I can’t make anyone grow spiritually.  I can provide them with resources.  I can teach them what spiritual growth requires of them.  I can help them discover and challenge them to keep making the next step in their faith journey.  But I can’t do it for them.  It’s their responsibility — and I tell them that it is.”  He went on to say that no one grows spiritually for long just by coming to worship.  “Unless people are spending time daily seeking God’s presence in prayer and His voice in Scripture, and regularly serving God in some fashion, their spiritual growth will stall out.”

So, what does your congregation’s leaders expect of your members?  If they lived up to these expectations, would Jesus be honored and his mission advanced? 

In our next CT Blog we will talk about raising the bar and communicating expectations.  I invite you to share with our readers your thoughts. 

Blessings,
Jeff

Dr. Jeff Stiggins
Office of Congregational Transformation.  

As winter wilts away and warmth returns, the plants in my yard are beginning to grow again.  Sue bought some Cannas bulbs for our yard and asked if I would get the soil ready for her to plant them.  The soil in our back yard – like much of Florida’s ground  – is more properly just called “sand.”  If you want to grow most things, you have to enrich it with compost and fertilizer.  So I was in the process of turning compost and fertilizer into the sand to create better soil when I remembered the parable Jesus taught about a fruitless fig tree in Luke 13: 6-9.

There was a man who had a fig tree planted in his vineyard.  For three years he looked for figs to grow on the tree and found none.  Exasperated, he told the grounds keeper to just cut it down, adding, ‘Why should this fruitless tree use up the soil?’  The grounds keeper said, ‘If you will give it one more year, I’ll dig around it and fertilize it.’  In some commentary I read along the way, I learned that this grounds keeper was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to help the tree be fruitful.  Unlike today, deliberately loosening and enriching the soil was not something farmers of Jesus’ day routinely did.  The grounds keeper was going all out for fig tree by providing for it the best possible environment in which it could bloom and develop mature figs.

So here I am turning together shovel load after shovel load of sand and compost and fertilizer in my back yard and suddenly it occurred to me: “soil” could be cultivated as a rich image for congregations seeking to bear the fruit of mature disciples.  Isn’t a congregation like the soil in which a person is planted for the purpose of becoming a better follower of Jesus Christ?  Isn’t that the fruit we are looking for in people’s lives as a result of being planted in the congregation’s soil over the years?  Isn’t being the best growing environment for people seeking to become more like Jesus and to join him on mission in the world the main point of congregations?  Congregations are the soil in which healthy discipleship is supposed to bloom and develop and mature. 

Suddenly, my mind flipped over to another parable Jesus told about soil.  This one was about farmers casting seed and experiencing different results according to the soil in which the seed landed and tried to grow.  It is told in Luke 8 and known by most as the parable of the sower.  Some seed falls on the hard packed path, some among rocks, some among thorny plants and some on good soil.  The seed that falls on the good soil produces a good crop.  Without going down the allegorical path too far and while acknowledging that Jesus originally told the parable about how people responded to God’s Word, isn’t it within the spirit of the parable to apply it to the soil of different congregations seeking to cultivate healthy, mature disciples?  

I’m not offering any answers or even suggestions today – just asking questions. 

• What sort of soil is your congregation judged by the crop of healthy, spiritually mature disciples that grow among you?
• After participating in your congregation for several years, are people more likely to evidence the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23) in their lives?
• Are they more likely to feel an inner satisfaction with their life – not that everything is going perfectly, but that in the midst of whatever is going on, there is a “peace that passes understanding,” a stability that comes from building their lives on the bedrock of God’s ways, and even a quality about their lives that might appropriately be characterized as “abundant”?
• Are people more likely to be compassionate and forgiving and accepting of others who are different than them the longer they are involved in your congregation?
• Are people more likely to invite someone to come to church with them or to share about their faith with others because of being planted in the soil of your congregation over time?
• Are they more likely to use their God-given abilities to serve others after being a member of your congregation for several years?
• Do people in your congregation tend to become less in debt and more generous to Kingdom causes as the years go by?

I was finished preparing the soil for Sue to plant her Cannas bulbs and was carrying the tools around to the garage when it dawned on me that as a pastor I was often less focused on whether the congregation was good soil in which persons grew into healthy and mature disciples — and more on whether people felt satisfied or thought I was doing a good job or we had enough money coming in to meet the budget.  There had often been a lot of things, like the birds and rocks and thorns in Jesus’ parable of the sower, that I let distract me from what mattered most. 

Then I remembered that it was the Lenten season – a time for letting the Spirit hold up a mirror for honest reflections, a time for turning around and getting back on God’s track.  I stopped right there in the yard, tools in hand and prayed.  I ask forgiveness for so many squandered opportunities.  I thanked Jesus for his gracious patience.  And I prayed that He might help me and all congregational leaders learn how better to enrich the soil so that when His Word was sown it brought forth a rich crop of faithful and fruitful disciples. 

Blessings,
Jeff

Dr. Jeff Stiggins
Office of Congregational Transformation

If we made widgets, we would want to know the difference between a poorly made widget and a well made widget so that we could make the best widgets we could.  If we taught people to play the saxophone, we would want to know what it takes to play the sax well so that we could teach people to play the very best that they could.  In the church, we don’t make widgets and we don’t teach people how to play the saxophone, but are called “to make disciples of Jesus Christ.”  So wouldn’t it make sense that to do this well, we need to be clear about what it means to be a mature follower of Jesus Christ — as opposed to being an immature or baby Christian? 

Members of the Conference Committee on Congregational Transformation think it makes sense and have began talking about what it means to be a fully devoted follower of Jesus Christ.  Quite a number of other persons have also added to the effort. What follows is an attempt to pull together the many thoughts of all these people and to present first a brief definition and then a more expanded description.  These aren’t finished products.  They are just where we are now in the dialogue.  I want to share these with the CT Blog readers and ask for your input.  The hope is not to say everything or to get everyone to agree on one definition 100%, but to pull together a definition that many congregational leaders might be able to say, “That’s pretty close.”  As you look at these, I urge you to comment back.  I also invite those of you whose congregations may have worked on a definition of mature discipleship to send it to me by email, with any supporting material you might be willing to include.

So here is the brief definition:

A disciple is a follower of Jesus Christ who is committed to:
¤   living in community with other disciples,
¤   becoming more like Jesus, and
¤   joining Him on mission in the world.

Before sharing the more expanded description, let me offer three comments by way of explanation.  First, because our denomination has agreed that the five practices of the United Methodist way of discipling are the key components to fulfilling our mission of “making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world,” it makes sense to use the five practices as an outline for talking about what it means to be a mature disciple.  Secondly, at General Conference the traditional membership vows of supporting Christ’s ministry through the local congregation by our “prayers, presence, gifts and service,” was expanded to include “witness.”  Consequently, “prayers, presence, gifts, service and witness” in the membership vows now corresponds to the five practices.  Thirdly, remembering the questions that Wesley encouraged disciples to ask one another in their weekly bands and class meetings, a question for each of the five practices has been offered.  Then 2-4 “essential expressions of mature discipleship” are included under each practice.  So, here is the more expanded description:

Radical Hospitality (Witness)
How are you receiving God’s grace in community and offering it to others as an agent of God’s reconciliation?
• Personally accepts the grace of God’s forgiveness in Jesus Christ
• Gives and receives nurture as part of a local community of faith
• Seeks to reconcile persons to one another and to God

Passionate Worship (Presence)
How are you learning to abide in and faithfully respond to God’s loving presence in the world?
• Encounters God’s presence regularly, expectantly and responsively in corporate worship
• Seeks to grow in love with God through prayer, searching the Scriptures and responding with joyful obedience to the guidance of the Holy Spirit

Intentional Discipling (Prayers)
How are you hearing the Spirit call you to be more like Jesus in your attitudes and actions?
• Participates in an intentional discipling small group
• Seeks to understand Jesus’ teaching through the prayerful study of Scripture and the Christian tradition
• Seeks for her or his attitudes, values, behavior and character to be formed in Christ
• Helps others discover and take the next step in their faith-journey

Salty Service (Service)
How are you investing your God-given talents and opportunities serving others and God’s purposes?
• Becomes aware of the gifts, strengths, passions and opportunities with which she or he is uniquely blessed
• In light of these blessings, joins Jesus in responding to the needs of others through ministries of mercy, justice and earth-care

Extravagant Generosity (Gifts)
How are you trusting God to provide and sharing generously as the Spirit prompts?
• Lives within her or his financial means so as not to be enslaved by debt
• Gives proportionally and generously to God’s causes, as the Spirit urges, using the tithe as a Biblical guide
• Spends  100% of her or his resources in ways that honor God and bless others

As you mull this over and pray about it, what are your thoughts?  What needs to be added?  What could be said more clearly or concisely or faithfully?  If your congregation has worked on defining what it means to be a mature apprentice of Jesus Christ, please send me what you have developed.  I welcome your involvement in this important conversation.

Blessings,
Jeff

Jeff Stiggins
Office of Congregational Transformation

In the last two CT Blog entries, we have talked about why tracking salty service is so important and about the God-flavor that salty servants give off in the world.  But how can a congregation actually measure their effectiveness at encouraging disciples to become salty servants?

We are asking every congregation to count the number of persons weekly in worship who say that they have joined Jesus in Salty Service to persons outside their congregation for at least one hour the previous week.  From that we will be able to calculate the percentage of a congregation’s worship attendance involved in the missional practice of Salty Service.  Our hope, of course, is for this percentage to grow over time.  Again, we are not aiming at a perfect accounting, but neither do we want “ministerial guess-timates!”  Rather the hope is that by drawing attention to the importance of each disciple being involved in regular salty service, congregations will have an increasing trend in this area of their ministry, because people will see it as a ministry priority.

Unlike measurements for the other four practices, worshipers will be asked weekly to self-select whether they have met the criteria of “Salty Service.”  Their self-selection will not be as verifiable as the other practice measurements.  But again, the goal is to focus on and encourage Salty Service, not gain absolutely accurate numbers.

Many persons who self-select that they have been a Salty Servant this week were involved in church-sponsored ministries.  They may, for example, be part of a mission trip, be part of the congregation’s monthly volunteers in a soup kitchen or teach English as a second language classes offered at the church.  Persons may also be involved in ministries that are not church sponsored.  A person may choose on their own, for example, to tutor at a local school, to repair a toilet for an elderly neighbor, to work with the community Red Cross, to take part in a community taskforce planning an Earth Day event, to spend time intentionally cultivating a relationship with an unchurched person or to take part in a beach cleanup day.

The gathering of this measurement will have to go hand-in-hand with communicating to worshipers what is meant by “Salty Service.”  This will require the pastor and/or liturgist regularly shaping people’s understanding about what is meant by “mercy,” “justice,” “earth-care” and “relationship building” ministries.  Perhaps a sermon series on Salty Service could be preached. Local examples of salty service opportunities will need to be  regularly announced.  Opportunities for people to share how they are being a Salty Servant will create Salty Servant role-models in the congregation.  The intent is that over time, being a Salty Servant will become as fundamental to being a normal Christian as attending worship, being involved in an intentional discipling group, being an agent of Christ’s love to others, and tithing. 

By the way, if you have a creative idea about communicating the expectation that all disciples are called to be Salty Servants, please email me.  And if you have a sermon about Salty Service that you are willing to share, send it to me.  We will post these resources on our websites to inspire others.

So how can these people actually be counted each week?  In smaller congregations, it may make sense simply to have people lift their hands and count them.  Some congregations have a tradition of registering attendance on an attendance pad in the pews.  If this is actually working in your congregation (and it’s not in many!), you might ask people to mark the pad in a particular fashion if they would like to indicate that they have been a Salty Servant that week.  Some congregations have sheets in their bulletin or worship folder that everyone is asked to fill out and turn in; if so, a place on these could be created for persons to check.  One issue that may need to be thought through for either attendance pad or bulletin sheets is the fact that often people fill them out as a family; if they are being filled out for a family, some way of indicating how many in the family were Salty Servants that week would have to be devised. 

One suggestion has been to have a Salty Servant ticket in the pews and have people put them in the offering plates as a way of self-selecting.  These could then be counted and placed back in the pews for next week.  If your congregation would like to try this idea, you can download a Salty Servant ticket from either the MVS website or the Congregational Transformation website.  (Of course, you can always create your own ticket, too.) 

Once you start taking count, you might consider once a month letting people know the number of persons in your congregation and the percent of your worshipers who are involved in Salty Service.  As these numbers go up, be sure to celebrate this and let some of the people tell what they have been doing. 

Since this is new for us all, leaders are encouraged to experiment and see what works best for your congregation.  Perhaps you will come up with a new idea that you can share with me; I’ll be glad to pass it on to other congregations.   Over the next year, as congregations around the Conference seek to track and encourage Salty Service, we will be learning a variety of ideas that seems to work best over the long haul. 

Blessings,
Jeff

Dr. Jeff Stiggins
Office of Congregational Transformation

Over the next six months, every congregation is being asked to begin tracking weekly the number of persons in worship who self-select that they have been salty servants the week before.  It goes without saying, that if people are going to do this, they have to have a pretty good idea what a salty servant is.  So, what is it?

The image of being a “salty servant” comes from Jesus in Matthew 5:13.  “‘Let me tell you why you are here.  You’re here to be salt-seasoning that brings out the God-flavors of this earth.  If you lose your saltiness, how will people taste godliness?  You’ve lost your usefulness and will end up in the garbage.’” (The Message) 

Here is our working definition for a Salty Servant:

A salty servant is someone who joins Jesus in service to persons outside their congregation for at least one hour during the previous week in one of four ways:
• Hands-on mercy ministry alleviating the suffering of others;
• Justice ministry addressing systems that cause suffering;
• Earth-care as a steward of God’s creation; or
• Relationship building to ease the emotional or spiritual needs of others.

Let’s look at this definition more closely.

A Salty Servant ministers to persons outside their church family.  For Jesus the neighbor we should love is anyone in need.  We are sent out into the world.  We are called to follow Jesus beyond our comfort zones, as his hands and feet and voice: light in the darkness.  Salty Servants are compassionately focused outward beyond themselves, beyond their family, beyond their group.   Jesus died “for the whole world,” not just for those we know in our congregation; and so, we are sent out as ambassadors of reconciliation, agents of the Kingdom which God desires to give to all his creatures. 

A Salty Servant ministers for at least one hour.  Admittedly, it is an arbitrary time period.  The point is that being a Salty Servant involves more of an investment of our time than just smiling nicely at a stranger.  Salty Service is not always convenient or quick.  (Remember the parable of the Good Samaritan?)  And like Jesus saying that we should forgive seven times seventy, the intention is for us not to stop after 490 times . . . or after  60 minutes.  The hope is that making time in our busy schedules to serve others will become something that we keep choosing week after week, until it becomes a habit in our lives and then a Christ-like part of our character as mature followers of the one who came “not to be served, but to serve.” 

A Salty Servant can be involved in hands-on mercy ministry alleviating the suffering of others.   Feeding the hungry; clothing the naked; befriending the immigrant; teaching the ignorant; providing shelter for the homeless; caring for orphans, widows or sojourners; providing medical help to those who are sick or comfort to those who are dying – these are some of the ways salty servants offer mercy to persons in need in the name of him who offers mercy to all.  Mercy ministry is messy, chaotic, even risky.  Christ’s compassion carries us into needy, painful places we would never otherwise have chosen to go, had it not been for our commitment to join Him where He is already at work: soup kitchens, neighborhoods, jailhouses, clinics, construction sites, class rooms, court rooms and living rooms.  Human need is expressed in a multitude of ways from community to community.  But where ever people suffer, Christ is with them and He calls his followers to join Him serving them. 

A Salty Servant can be involved in justice ministry addressing systems that cause suffering.  Christ calls us not only to feed hungry people, but to wonder why in a country as rich as ours, there should be so many hungry people – and then to address the broken systems that keep causing people to be hungry amidst so much plenty.  Lobbying for industries, communities and states to establish a “living wage” is justice ministry.  Working to pass a law limiting the interest that loan sharks can charge desperate people is justice ministry.  So is establishing a shelter for homeless families, becoming a guardian ad litem or taking in foster children.  Speaking out against racial, cultural or religious discrimination is justice ministry.  Justice ministries address the social, cultural, economic or legal causes of human suffering as an expression of God’s common grace, God’s love for all persons. 

A Salty Servant can be involved in earth-care as a steward of God’s creation. Genesis tells the stories of God creating all that is, declaring it “good,” and then giving Adam and Eve responsibility for tending the garden.  We humans have a history of using the earth as if it was ours to abuse, but the Psalmist declares, “The earth is the Lord’s, and all that is on it.”  Scripture repeatedly calls God’s people to be good stewards of the gifts entrusted to us by our Creator.  The consequences of poor earth-stewardship are now threatening the future of life on our planet.  Examples of earth-care service could include working on planning an Earth Day event in your community, participating in a beach or highway cleanup,  raising concern about water or air pollution in your area, getting involved in a tree planting project, or researching and then educating others about green practices that lessen our depleting impact on the earth’s resources.

A Salty Servant can intentionally cultivate relationships for purposes of easing the emotional or spiritual needs of others. To intentionally invest time to get to know your neighbor, someone who is lonely or new or different or left out, someone who is anxious or afraid or ignorant of God’s love for them – these are all salty servant examples.  We are called to be ambassadors of reconciliation, building relational bridges where once there had been walls, healing strained relationships, offering welcome instead of overlooking, warmth instead of coldness, understanding instead of judgment, and hope instead of despair.  Salty servants help weave people into community that begins palely to reflect the Kingdom community God graciously offers to all people. 

My hope has been not to define tightly who qualifies as a salty servant and who does not, but to suggest the flavor with which Jesus’ followers are called to salt the world in his name.

Dr. Jeff Stiggins
Office of Congregational Transformation

 

Over the next six months, every congregation will begin tracking weekly the number of worshipers who self-select that they have been a salty servant during the previous week.  This will be something new for just about every congregation in our Florida connection.  A lot of people are wondering why we are doing this.  And it is a fair question deserving an honest answer.

Imagine going to the doctor for your annual physical and never having your blood pressure taken.  Everyone knows that blood pressure is one of the key indicators of our health or of when we are developing a health problem.  We would have a seriously inaccurate indication of our body’s health if this metric were habitually omitted from our medical checkups.  In a way, that is exactly what we have been doing for decades in measuring the Body of Christ’s health in local congregations.  We have ignored an aspect critical to the missional health of Christ’s disciples: their lives should overflow into the world in Kingdom impact.  “You are the salt of the world,” Jesus said in Matthew 5:13 and then warns us not to lose the saltiness of our influence in the world.  

In Matthew 25, Jesus tells the parable of the last judgment when the sheep are separated from the goats.  Jesus made it clear that the criterion would be whether people had cared for him in his times of need.  The sheep, he said, will be surprised when told that they had compassionately taken care of Jesus: “‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’  And he will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these, you did for me.’”

Jesus was clear that his followers are to serve others: “Whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant . . . just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.” (Matthew 20:26-28)  Service flows naturally and inescapably from the teachings and example of Jesus.  “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will save it.”  (Luke 9:23-24)

Jesus does not see serving others as optional for those who claim to follow him.  So, isn’t it odd that historically, we have measured each of the five practices of fruitful disciple making — except Salty Service?  Not surprisingly the number one factor distinguishing healthy congregations from declining congregations is that declining congregations have increasing lost missional focus on their local community and have become increasingly self-preoccupied with continuing their beloved traditions, caring for their members and maintaining their facilities.  If a doctor never measures her patients’ blood pressure, would it be surprising that many of them had unrecognized and untreated blood pressure problems?  Likewise, if a connection of congregations never measures whether they are encouraging their disciples to join Jesus in having a salty impact in the world, should we be surprised if the most common missional problem in congregations is the loss of salty impact in their community? 

Scripture and history reveal that we humans are naturally self-centered.  Add to this the fact that we live in a consumerist society where we are encouraged daily to believe, “It’s all about me!”  ‘It’s all about my hopes, my dreams, my desires, my needs, my preferences, my comfort.  And if you don’t agree, then I will take my business down the street.’  When we add consumerism to selfishness, “normal” in our culture is a very long way from Jesus calling his followers to deny themselves, pick up their crosses and follow him in sacrificial service to others.  How can congregations cultivate such Christ-like and counter-cultural values in the people we are discipling . . . unless we are intentional enough about discipling to track whether people really are learning to step outside of themselves and serve in ways that make a salty difference to others less fortunate in the world?

Blessings,
Jeff

Dr. Jeff Stiggins
Congregational Transformation

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