During a recent, early morning walk, a heavy frost lay on the ground. At first glance, the grass beside the trail looked as if it had been covered by a uniform layer of silver icing. But as I peered further, I noticed that the uniformity was repeatedly broken by something spiking up from the ground. Upon closer examination I discovered that these ‘spikes’ were frozen dandelion stalks ready to offer up their seeds to the wind. That this tough little plant, or weed depending on one’s perspective, continued to grow and even thrive in the cold of early December was amazing. I was impressed by the dandelion’s tenacity!
Tenacity is a quality that I think we are going to need at Central as we begin to move into a new structure for doing ministry.
The Structural Consultation Team has been and remains hard at work on creating a new structure for our congregation. With the help of our structural consultant, Jerry Toomer, the Team has been building a structure model that will allow us to fulfill our three congregational goals – 1) Connecting with God through worship and education; 2) Connecting with each other through fellowship and mutual care; and 3) Changing hearts to change the world through reaching out to the people and community around us in mission.
The initial draft of this new structural model has been shared with the Session, Deacons and Trustees, and is now being tweaked based on the feedback received. In the early part of the New Year the revised model will be ready for further review, and hopefully implementation will begin in the spring!
Dandelion-like tenacity will be important to us as we embrace and live into a new structure for doing ministry, because as we all know change is hard. Doing new things, organizing ourselves differently, letting go of familiar habits and meeting patterns, saying goodbye to old traditions, starting new traditions, being the disciples of Jesus Christ that God needs for this day and age – all of these steps are challenging, and will not be accomplished easily.
When doing new things, when thinking in new ways, it is so easy – especially the first time we meet any resistance, or don’t like the new thing – it is so easy to want to return to doing things ‘as we always have’, in ways that are known and familiar and safe. But in my experience, new things need to be given a chance. New practices and new structures need to be tried for a year or even two before they begin to work. In other words, if we at Central want an organizational structure that is going to match our vision, and help us carry out our vision, we’re going to have to be tenacious in embracing the newness. We’re going to have to be like dandelions that poke up through the frost that is trying to kill them, so that they may live. Jesus doesn’t invite us to the safety of discipleship. Jesus invites us to pick up a cross and follow him, so that we may discover the abundant life of God’s Kingdom! Following Jesus takes tenacity!
Following last week’s blog post in this space about “The Gap”, Central member, Terry Phillips asked me to explain myself a bit better. I appreciate his question. Terry lifted up two sentences from the post – “Churches that are going to survive and thrive in the 21st century need to be nimble, and make faithful choices more quickly. Churches that are going to function well in the 21st century will employ a decision-making strategy that is less-formalized and relies on trust and consensus building.” — ‘How can a church be both nimble and consensus building, he asked’.
Here is my answer:
I believe the Session of a Presbyterian Church needs to be more nimble in its decision making. A Session needs to be continually looking at the big picture, and making vision decisions – how and where is God calling our church into the future. These ‘big picture’ decisions must be made at the speed of our culture. As the pace of change in our culture accelerates, we as a congregation must keep up or we will slide into irrelevance. Nimbleness is a must.
At the same time, smaller groups of church members/friends who desire to take on a particular common ministry, must approach their agreed-upon task together. They need to have common agreement on what they are going to do, and they must trust each other to carry out their common commitments. Trust and consensus are always important; and even more so, I think, when we work together on common projects.
Terry, I hope this answer is of use to you and others. As always, I appreciate the questions and the continuing conversation!
See you in worship this Sunday, where we’ll light the third candle of Advent, and work at being the tenacious disciples that Jesus invites us to be!
