Congregational and Diocesan Development Issues

The purpose of this blog is to promote discussion of some ideas which I think will promote the development of first world churches, and through debate to improve those ideas. To follow the flow of my logic, read forward from the first entry; entries which form the cornerstones of my thought are flagged with "KEY--", and are listed below with a short summary of the key idea. Kindly share your suggestions and improvements with me, and I will adjust the contents accordingly. Thank you for your participation! (Direct email contact is also welcome.)

• KEY--Why are congregations weak?
  (Mostly due to defects in the culture of the judicatory: unclear mission/vision, ineffective structures, misaligned incentives, and lack of support, all of which lead to a low quality "product".)
• KEY--Correcting diocesan weaknesses
  (A summary explanation of what is involved in correcting those defects.)
• KEY--Correcting the weakness of congregations
  (How to move away from a "laisser faire" leadership style at the diocesan level in a way that has organisational legitimacy.)
• KEY--Setting Targets (Overview)
  (Dioceses now measure mostly finances and attendance, if they measure anything. Some suggestions on better measures which should have a cause and effect relationship towards wholistic growth, a Balanced Scorecard.)
• KEY--Sample Benefits from a Balanced Scorecard
  (Illustrating what wholistic growth would look like: much more than just more money or more people in church!)
• KEY--Cause and Effect for Laurentian Congregational Revitalisation
  (Shows the linkage between the different strategic activities in Laurentian churches, and growth in organisational, spiritual, financial and participatory health.)

The traditional targets, if any, which dioceses have set for themselves and their congregations are attendance numbers and financial results, both of which are supposed to go up. This is a very limited view, particularly since it doesn't provide any information on how to get to the desired goals.

A Balanced Scorecard, on the other hand, measures a broader basket of issues (normally Internal Organisational Functioning, Learning and Internal Growth in Capacity, Customers, and Finances). In our first draft version (click on the image for a detailed view), we have taken these four issues and adapted them to a congregational setting, using the following four categories of measures:

1. Internal Organisational Functioning (focuses on Managers (clergy) and "process owners", i.e. those who do the basic work of the Christian Community, i.e. the members)
2. Learning and Growth in Faith (combines measures of Adult Groups for faith-education or faith-sharing, visioning activities and ministry review, and stewardship education)
3. Worship and New Member Relationships (this is one of the prime settings in which congregations meet and convince new "customers")
4. Financial Results (without this, much of the rest is very difficult to produce)

Different rating scales are provided for each measure, including counts of people, hours of sessions provided, a scale with scores ranging from -2 to +2 and interpretive instructions, percentages, and dollar values. Progress is mapped on graphs, where applicable, but also with the use of three columns for the starting point (August, 2005), the current value, and the 5-year "Stretch Target".

None of this is of much value, however, unless the measures actually work together to guide the strategy behind the region's growth plan, which is exactly what the Balanced Scorecard is intended to do.

Every Protestant mainline judicatory that I have encountered gathers some form of statistics on its congregations. Most of them do little or nothing with the data, unfortunately. (Please comment if your diocese uses your stats in useful ways, including your email address, and I will add a page of "valuable exceptions" to my general statement; I am also working to design a Strategic Information Database for the Anglican Church of Canada, which would provide useful analytic reports--more on this in a later post!)

In our work with the Laurentian Deanery, we have tried to identify all of the information which we need in order to identify the potential (internal and external) of congregation. We call this our Congregational Summary Report, and it includes both a text description and the Niagara Assessment as described before, as well as the more statistical data, falling into the following general categories:

1. Attendance (Average Sunday Attendance, Persons in Adult Faith-Education or -Sharing Groups, Sunday School Attendance, Total Visitors of All Kinds and With Potential to Become Members, and trends; it should show the average age distribution of attenders)
2. Membership (Total members, New Members in the Last X years, Average Loss of Members per year, Age Distribution of Members, Trends)
3. Givings (Identified Givers and Average Contribution, Committed Givers (envelope or known to be regular) and Average Contribution, New Givers per year, Total Givings and Total Committed Givings)
4. Finances (Revenues, Percent of Revenues by Source, Expenses, Percent of Revenues Given Away, Savings, Savings as a Percent of Expenses, Endowment, Debt, Trends, Value of All Assets, Regularity in Paying Assessment, Percent that Salaries are above Minimum)
5. Demographics for both the Primary and Secondary Catchment Areas (Census data on Number of Residents and their Average Family Income, Number of non-Census Weekenders, if applicable and theirAverage Family Income, Age Distribution of Primary Census population)
6. Other Churches (How many, and what average attendance)
7. Quality (Rating scales for Welcoming, Preaching, Congregational Climate, Pastoral Care, Building Maintenance, Care of the Needy; should have Worship Quality)
8. Miscellaneous (Seating capacity, Attendace season)
   

These measures, taken together and in conjunction with the Niagara Scale and the written description, provide a good description of the congregation, and permit comparisons to a baseline over the years. View the single page with this data only; view the full 5-page Congregational Summary Report for a sample congregation.

To be fleshed out once permission received.

To assess a congregation requires asking the right questions. We decided to focus on a summary of the key issues:

1. The mission of this congregation; this could be a summary of the vision statement, or a short mission statement, or simply a summary of what seemed to be motivating people. If there isn't much there, we want that to show. If there is something, we want it to motivate the members and the leaders and to guide their every decision!
2. Areas the leadership of this congregation is most interested in improving right now, i.e. their top priorities.
3. The specific objectives they have set themselves, with a quantifiable target. This was developed before the Balanced Scorecard came into being, and might be dropped. On the other hand, few congregations will be able to focus on more than 6 key measures from the BSC, and this would be a way of selecting the most important ones.
4. The Strengths, Weaknesses (both internal) and the Opportunities and Threats (external) specific to this congregation.
   
5. Recent activities: what did they do in the last year that provided major support for their mission? If nothing, it is helpful to know. If what is presented is feeble, the person working with the form will see that, and may be spurred to do better in the future.
6. Culture: Current and Desired. We hope that a description of the desired culture will permit the leadership and the membership to know what they are building towards. It is like a vision statement (5-10 years into the future), but describing more specifically the culture of the congregation.

Here is a sample, based on our congregation in Ste-Agathe.

The essence of correcting the weakness of congregations is a) moving away from a "laisser faire" leadership style at the diocesan level, and b) doing so in a way that has organisational legitimacy.

A study on the state of congregations in Québec by the Partnership for Church Development found that the laisser faire style was common throughout the Roman Catholic and Protestant mainline denominations, and I have no reason to believe that this is not the case in the rest of Canada, and perhaps in the US as well. When taking this approach, diocesan leadership takes a "hands off" approach to much of the work of congregations, other than supervising the broad strokes of diocesan policy. It provides minimal support for pastoral staff (leading in some situations to a high rate of burnout and other disability claims), and certainly little encouragement for growth or improvement in congregations.

Laisser faire management is likely, at least in part, a reaction to past forms of leadership which have been autocratic, arbitrary or otherwise lacked legitimacy. When a diocese has a clear and broadly-accepted vision or mission, however, it also has the legitimacy needed to begin to implement changes in culture and congregational expections, providing they are aligned with the diocesan mission.

In this context, working to encourage healthier congregations involves several basic steps, which will be outlined in later posts; we believe that this work is best done in deanery or archdeaconry groups, because it re-inforces the relationship of responsibility and accountability from Bishop to Archdeacon (to regional dean/supervisor?) to clergy to congregation :

1. Assessment of the potential of each congregation
1. Internal potential (including perhaps a rating of mission, finances and leadership)
2. External potential (market potential: how many people in the target population which this congregation is trying to reach are there who are not yet affiliated with a congregation? What is the current normal "market penetration" that can be expected?)
2. Formulation of the SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) at work in this region
3. Some structured prayer and discernment by the local clergy and lay leaders, and likely the congregation as a whole, leading to a decision: are we willing and committed to growth?
4. Establishing some realistic but challenging "stretch targets"
5. Planning for growth (based on the regional SWOT and data on each congregation):
   
1. What are the highest priorities?
   
2. What are the cause and effect relationships which will lead to the desired results (stronger, more faithful and effective congregations; see later posts on the Balanced Scorecard)
3. What changes will produce the greatest results in the shortest time?
6. Aligning the regional and diocesan culture and rewards system to reinforce progress towards the targets which have been set, and nowhere else
7. Regular evaluation and re-adjustment
1. The whole purpose of this process is to produce a learning organisation which knows how to produce the results for which it exists (its mission)
2. There must be benefits for all levels of the organisation: new members benefit from the Gospel; old members benefit from new life and new leadership; the congregation as a whole benefits from increased attendance and higher revenues (as a start; see the later post KEY--Typical Expected Benefits); the region has increased vitality and greater investments; the diocese has greater vitality, a larger pool of potential leaders, and higher revenues. (There are, of course, costs, and there will naturally be resistance, but that is a secondary, albeit important, change-management issue)
   

For years I have heard the objection that "you can't measure how 'good' worship is", and that "good preaching is very subjective". I agree. But we still need to know whether we are succeeding at it, so here is a simple, two-stage idea that we hope to try out soon. The key issues are to know whether we are meeting the needs of our current "clients" (our present worshippers) and our "potential clients" (the people who could begin attending). We are seeking to be "client-oriented", while remaining faithful to the message of the Gospel. (I know that this may seem like shocking language, but the major issues are likely to be whether the content is made relevent and is well-presented; the Gospel is timeless and has a power to change lives all by itself...and we are charged with being its ambassadors).

1. Create a baseline and assess the congregation's opinion by handing out a short survey after worship for three or four Sundays in a row. Ask 4-5 questions, and invite comments: "On a scale of 1-5 where 1 is Very Poor and 5 is Excellent, how would you evaluate the following parts of today's service: Music (quality, selection, type, other); Sermon (clarity, contents, relevance, length, other), Worship Service (helped you worship, understandable, relevent, other), .... What suggestions or other feedback would you have for us? Thank you for your time!" Provide pens and ask people to fill it in before leaving, unless they filled it in before the service in a previous week. Tally, report and study the results. Adjust as needed, of course!
   
2. Provide the same survey to every visitor, along with a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE). Ask for a few details about whether they live close enough to the congregation to consider attending regularly, whether they had attended before, what their denomination of origin is, how they heard about the congregation, etc. Have the SASE go to an address at the diocese, and mention that only a monthly summary will be provided to the congregation, and therefore that they will not be identifiable individually. This way, you can find out what your potential members think of your "product". A good portrait should appear over time.
   

This kind of tool is crude; over time, it can become more sophisticated. Perhaps someone can refer us to a better, more professional or more standardized questionnaire. But what is important is to notice that once it has become important to measure an aspect of our ministry, we can find ways of doing it, so that we have an idea of whether we are succeeding or not. We may think we are being faithful, but are we effective? We can find out!

Here is an overview of how we believe dioceses can respond to counteract the problem of congregational weakness...in other words, to promote the growth of faithful and effective Christian congregations.

1. Develop and adhere to a clear and simple mission (what we are supposed to be doing in the present) and vision (what we hope to be and be doing in X years). Make this central to the culture of the diocese; it should be the localized expression of "the Gospel of Jesus Christ for us in this diocese". The exercise of gathering to debate the contents of this statement, and then publicizing and building support for it in the diocese, will help to focus attention on the highest priority issues for you. It should define the desired results of faithful and effective ministry in the diocese. (Strategic planning processes in general may be of interest; I hope someday to create a list of some of the diocesan strategic plans I have found on the web. If you want something sooner, add a comment to that effect).
   
2. Clarify your lines of responsibility and accountability. I suspect that it is actually unclear who is in charge (and in charge of what) in dioceses, and they are seldom held accountable for very much.
   
1. Let me explain that rash statement! I am fairly certain that Bishops are held accountable for being "nice" or "fair" to clergy and congregations, and financial officers (and perhaps Bishops) are held accountable for balancing the diocesan budgets. But, theoretically at least, Bishops are accountable for the promotion of healthy congregations, for increasing the spread of the Gospel within the diocese (increased attendance being one measure), for high quality worship and preaching of the Word, and for respectable levels of giving and generosity by members. (If not them, who else? For members of denominations without bishops, who is the senior manager responsible for getting the "results" that your judicatory values?)
   
2. But then, even if we admit that the Bishop (or equivalent) is responsible for these "results", to whom will s/he delegate that responsibility? The archdeacons (episcopal vicars, regional supervisors) should carry that responsibility and be held accountable for it, to my mind. Clergy should be accountable to them, with specific responsibility for producing the appropriate "results" in their congregation(s). More another time; I realize this is a radical concept in today's church, and I think that is a problem! Without clear responsibility and appropriate resources (see 4), there can be no accountability, and there will likely be few results.
   
3. Incentives for the desired "results": this is really a question of ensuring that the diocesan "reward system" is aligned to produce what is really desired, and it operates on the theory that systems produce what is rewarded.
   
1. It involves both the formal system of incentives and rewards (salary, perks, titles, time off in lieu of overtime, transfers and promotions) and the informal operation of the diocesan culture (including (positive) attention from senior leaders, write-ups in the diocesan newspaper, admiration of one's peers, new opportunities, being referred to as an expert in something, being assigned to the "plum" committees, ...).
   
2. It also involves the proper use of disincentives and "punishments": being "called in to see" the Bishop or Archdeacon, not being recommended for a key position or committee.
   
3. Lots of this obviously operates already. But is it all aligned so that the desirable results as defined by the diocesan vision are being reinforced and negative outcomes are being discouraged? Let me use an extreme example: the priest of a parish states openly in clericus that "at least there will be enough savings to pay my salary until I retire" and, beyond some sputtering by the archdeacon, the situation is tolerated (in a situation where the priest has, or had, a great deal of potential, and the parish has lots of room for growth). Another, more typical example: mediocrity is tolerated, even rewarded, because there is really no encouragement for growth or change. (More on how to promote and focus change in a later post, under Goal-setting and Balanced Scorecards)
   
4. A closely-related issue is support and investment for growth. At one extreme, this can be seen in the observation that one of the reasons mainline churches have not grown since the 1960's is due to a lack of church planting (Compton, 2003; Rekindling the Mainline: New Life through New Churches; see Review). At a more basic level it is the simple allocation of time to promoting growth in congregations with potential rather than chasing after the "problem children" congregations and clergy who always need or want attention.
   
1. Appropriate investment can involve judicious investing in consultants or trainers or interim clergy to help initiate change, and then having the time to follow up and ensure that the change continues. (Do the archdeacons or the regional supervisors have the time to do the job that needs to be done and for which they are (theoretically) responsible?). What I have seen looks more like investment to avoid collapse; the funds which are available are invested in subsidizing repairs for any congregation which cares to apply ($300 here, $1,000 there, trying to be "fair"), or paying for continuing education courses which are unrelated to the desired results in the congregation.
2. Appropriate investment also involves learning to plan, to measure, to set targets and to evaluate whether those targets are being met in such a way that everyone learns and everyone can grow in effectiveness. Proper investment is a matter of on-going discipline, and while not easy, should be possible.
   
5. The question of measurement and "desirable results" takes us finally to questions of quality. A high quality product can be defined as one which a) Respects the organisation’s mission and mandate and builds on it, and b) Meets or exceeds the customer’s expectations at a price that s/he finds attractive. When dioceses care enough about their ministries to measure whether or not they are achieving them, they will invent simple and effective rating systems. (See A Simple Suggestion for Rating Worship, Preaching and Welcoming). And when the diocese (in all of its forms, but mostly through the supervising archdeacon or regional minister) invests its best resources (mostly time and training, but also grants and subsidies and other rewards) on the congregations which have the greatest potential and are making progress towards realizing that potential, then congregations will start to improve. (After all, it is also in their interest to attract and retain new members and donors...).
   

It is very important to understand why mainline congregations in Europe and North America are currently so weak. (Please notice all of the limitations in that sentence. I don't think that we can suggest that, overall, Evangelical or Pentecostal congregations are weak in North America, and presumably not in Europe either. For a more complete discussion, see the Strategic Forecast: Christian Churches in Canada).

In general, most in the Church have either blamed the cultural shift away from Christianity (thus the decline of Christendom) or the lack of faith/error in beliefs of mainline Christians. These may not be wrong, but they are not sufficient explanations. In particular, they don't give us many clues about what we might do about the situation.

My archdeacon wife and I propose the following causes of weakness:

1. Unclear mission and vision in the diocese
2. Ineffective structures in the diocese for:
1. Responsibility and accountability
2. Supervision, improvement and learning
3. Few incentives in the diocese for creativity, initiative, risk, change, growth
4. Lack of support and lack of investment of resources for growth in the diocese
   
1. Planning, focus, discipline, measurement, targets, evaluation…
5. A (generally) low quality product (worship, fellowship and faith development) in the congregation
   
1. …that is being poorly promoted at either the congregational or diocesan level

Why have we laid the "blame" always at the feet of the diocese and its structures? Firstly, because we (Anglicans and other mainline Christians) are not fundamentally congregationalists. The buck does not simply stop at the senior pastor/rector. Authorization, encouragement, incentives, support, training and resources are all mediated through the judicatory and its senior management. The buck really stops at the Bishop's office, as the one responsible for the diocese and its workings. Secondly, we have witnessed examples in several denominations of vibrant, growing congregations which were suppressed rather than rewarded by their diocesan offices and fellow clergy.

It is worth noting that the only weakness from our list which is at the congregational level is actually the result of the weaknesses higher up the list. By "a (generally) low quality product (worship, fellowship and faith development)", we mean that we can't count on congregations to provide worship and fellowship (Sundays and during the week) which nourishes people. We can't count on congregations being (visibly) spiritually alive and faithful. This issue comes up whenever we need to refer a person to a congregation in another part of our diocese, in another city, in another province.... It comes up when we think about attending the local congregation while we are on vacation.... What are the odds that, if someone we care about shows up at a given congregation on a particular Sunday, that they will participate in meaningful worship, be met by vibrant, sensitive Christians, be welcomed and cared for? Not good, in our experience. And all of this, as later posts will show, can be powerfully influenced by the diocesan leadership through its mission, its structures of accountability, its internal incentives and reward systems, the support it gives and the investments it makes.

Thus, the real "system" for effecting change in congregations simply has to include the diocese. Anything less leads to an incomplete analysis. In this, I wholeheartedly support what I have seen of the work of the Church Development Institute.

All of this leads us to believe that the congregational development movement, while enormously fruitful so far, has a fundamental flaw in at its centre: it is congregationalist, in line with the mood in the American Church at the time it was founded. However, the properly-functioning, healthy and effective Church has almost always been, with good reason, "diocesan", in that it functions as a body of many congregations. More on this in another posting....

I am convinced that mainline denominations, at least in Canada but likely in other countries as well, could do a much better job of supporting their congregations and promoting their growth in faithfulness and effectiveness than they presently do. The result would be much higher vitality for congregations (which can be measured along a variety of factors), significant improvements in the situation of judicatories (dioceses, presbyteries or regions), and, most importantly, more individuals touched by the Gospel of Jesus Christ and more communities benefiting from caring Christians.

To that end, I will be posting here a series of resources (links, articles, discussions) related to the issues which I think are essential to the successful development of judicatories and their congregations. I hope that this will contribute to the what we know about creating vibrant Christian communities; I offer it all to the glory of God, and invite reader comments and suggestions.