Healthy Church Initiative Consultation Final Report

Healthy Church Initiative Consultation Final Report

Riverside United Methodist Church

April 19, 2012

On March 23-25, 2012, the Healthy Church Initiative (HCI) Consultation Team consisting of Dan Johnson, Kay Roberts and Cindy Gregorson, conducted the weekend consultation for RiversideUnited Methodist Church (UMC). We reviewed the congregational self-study, the report of the mystery guest audit, and the results of the Natural Church Developmentsurvey. We conducted individual interviews with the clergy, paid staff and the pastor’s spouse. We held two focus groups: one group of 13 was a cross section of the congregationand another group of 17 comprised the church council members.We also received input during a congregational gathering in which 35 people attended. We were present to observe Sunday morning worship and engaged the HCI leaders in a feedback session about our observations and recommendations before finalizing them in this report.

The Healthy Church Initiative has named five key factors to a congregation’s effectiveness and vitality. The consultation team used these as a lens to assess what we heard, and to make our recommendations.These factors are:

• Purpose: a clear sense of why this church exists, what they want to accomplish, a genuine outward focus and grounded in a clear set of shared values.
• Structure: staff is accountable and empowered to fulfill their responsibilities in the context of healthy relationships with lay leadership; a future oriented church board focused on the ends, not the means of ministry.
• Connectedness: a high level of community in which people feel connected and newcomers can easily find their way in, excellent facilities that work well to facilitate ministry.
• Contemporary: music that regardless of style, is contemporary in its execution, relevant biblical preaching, clear understanding of the community and its needs.
• Passion: a genuine excitement about the church and strong desire to invite others;a sense of call to serve the community.

General Observations

For 127 years, Riverside UMC has served God in and through the Park Rapids, Minnesota community. With faithfulness and fortitude, the congregation survived and often thrived amidst challenges to its civic community and its faith community. Some of those challenges beset the church in the past five years resulting in the loss of members, participation and financial support. However, in the past year and a half, momentum and vitality are noticeably returning. This claim is supported bya number of recent church-wide achievements: remodeling the Northern Pines Lodge, resurrecting the youth program, growing the release time program, consolidating from three to two worship services, continuing vibrant United Methodist Women Circles and returning positive cash flow. This is a resilient family of faith! God’s Spirit, present all along, is empowering the congregation and its leaders with energy and hope for their future.

For Riverside UMC, the HCI process has been an instrument for discerning new directions for ministry. A high level of engagement in HCI is evidenced by congregational communications, prayer calendars, a book study and a standing HCI teaching/visioning component in Church Council meetings. The church is to be lauded for proactively applying HCI learning without waiting for direction from the consultation team. In many ways, their work as a pilot church has set the tone for this report and offers a model for other churches to emulate in the future.

When reflecting on the congregational lifecycle chart, the congregation primarily located themselves between the “maturity” and “empty nest” stage where “Vision” has faded. “Programs” begin to falter because of lack of purpose. “Relationships” are still deep among the people attending, but there is increasing challenge in extending those relationships to new people. In many ways, structure is still strong and remains a vital foundation for revisioning and rebuilding ministry.

The consultation team observes that Riverside UMC demonstrates both organizational and individual readiness for HCI. Caring and competent pastoral leadership has been in place for a year and a half. Trust has been established and leadership capital has been banked – Pastor Lee Kantonen is embraced as a spiritual leader who can shepherd the congregation through its next phase of change and growth. A danger is waiting much longer, when comfort and complacency with a “good enough” status quo reduces the urgency for change. Both the non-leader and council member focus groups overwhelmingly expressed a willingness to become personal change agents within the church. We wonder if underlying loyalties and traditions are threatened, that personal preference will still trump congregational purpose. With courage, sacred cows can make gourmet hamburger. With timidity, sacred cows can become significant roadblocks for initiating and sustaining change.

Strengths to Build On

Faith Community: Riverside UMC is a genuinely caring family of faith. Strong relationships are heralded and experienced as one of their greatest assets, particularly among the retirees. “Snowbird Riversiders” seasonally return, infusing the congregation with energy and resources. Leaders are emotionally mature and spiritually healthy, living their faith through the Wesleyan motive, “Do all the good you can, in all the ways you can, by all the means you can, for as long as you ever can!” They hold abiding compassion for the alienated and isolated; whether infirm seniors in their faith community or the economically marginalized in their civic community. The church strives to be an embodiment of the United Methodist calling to “Open Hearts, Open Minds and Open Doors” – where open is an active verb and not an adjective!

Leadership Base: Riverside UMC is blessed by the service of Pastor Lee Kantonen. He has been enthusiastically received by the congregation and well integrated into leadership. He is highly valued for relevant messages, authentic pastoral care and relational leadership. Lay leaders, both paid and unpaid, find significance and effectiveness in deploying their inherent gifts and talents for ministry. A core of capable, young retirees comprise a valuable volunteer pool that “get things done”, yet have the flexibility to consider change and new modes of work and witness. Leaders genuinely enjoy each other and seem to have fun working together. This sets a great tone for the congregation.

Upswing in Energy and Momentum: This is measured bythe growing participation of children and youth. Approximately 100 students from diverse religious backgrounds participate in Release Time Christian Education. The Wednesday night youth program multiplied from five to twenty-seven participants within the past year. Worship attendance also rebounded this year by about 17% (30/week), with the majority of growth in the contemporary service.

Material Resources: Riverside UMC is blessed with building and grounds that serve as a remarkable tool for ministry. A clean, well maintained facility on one level provides multi-use options for worship, fellowship, education and recreation. The grounds, with a memorial garden, picnic pavilion, ball field and landscaping is a setting of beauty, solace and activity. The mortgage was retired leading to greater financial stability and the fiscal flexibility to begin reallocating assets to emerging ministries, staffing and other growth oriented priorities.

Civic Engagement: Riverside UMC has a deep heritage of initiating and sustaining the development of community support services too numerous to list. Outreach includes, but is not limited to: Kinship, Community Thank Meal, School Staff Appreciation Breakfast, Widowed Friends, Faithfully Fit, Headwaters Intervention Center, PACER Puppets, Reading Buddy, Youth Drug and Alcohol Task Force, Living at Home, Community Education Advisory Council, Meals on Wheels, Hubbard County Food Shelf and Itasca Park Summer worship. These are all excellent examples of community needs-assessment and asset-based ministry development. The church is a collaborating partner in ecumenical ministries. Their excellent facility is freely shared with non-profit groups across the area; an estimated eighty different groups use the building. Members of Riverside UMC are frequently motivated to serve ably in civic roles throughout the broader community.

Concerns for Attention

Vision:“Compelling Vision” was the lowest overall Natural Church Development survey subcategory, scoring nearly one standard deviation below the mean (36). We repeatedly encountered ambiguity about what Riverside UMC values, what difference they are called to make and to whom. The broad mission statement “Extending Christ’s ministry to all for the glory of God” is well communicated on bulletins, newsletters, website and even placemats. However, it is either too vague or too undefined to be a rallying point for the congregation; it fails to focus and energize everything they do. The church is a trusting culture, granting permission to most good ideas that are backed by a willing implementer. However it is also a culture lacking alignment, with leaders often operating unilaterally – “flying by the seat of their pants”. Without clear direction and sense of purpose, the congregation does not have a way to determine priorities, allocate resources, evaluate ministries, and claim successes.

Leadership Development: Riverside UMC is blessed by a cadre of leaders who have faithfully and effectively served throughout the years, often through their own inherent skill set. Such great personal strengths can lead to organizational weakness. An estimated 74% of currently active “Riversiders” are over 60 years of age. There is no evidence of succession planning, rotation policies and training opportunities to stimulate discernment, mentoring and equipping of new leaders. The congregation is challenged by uninvolved members and a perceived shortage of leaders especially among the Gen X and Millennial generational cohorts. There are no staff meetings for team building and collaboration and if developed, no evidence of utilization of job descriptions for paid staff, let alone elected volunteers. The governance model lacks clarity about roles, responsibilities, authority and accountability.

Acting Your Size: Riverside UMC has long been at the lower end of the “Program Size” church category which begins at 150 in average worship attendance. This is an awkward time of transition – Riverside UMC is too big to be a small church and too small to be a big church (see The In-Between Church by Alice Mann). While size may preclude “everyone knowing everyone”, the unique small town charm of Park Rapids still yearns for “everyone to know and be known by someone”. In the “Program Size” church, this happens neither naturally as in the “Family Size” church nor through the individualized shepherding of the “Pastoral Size” church. Without clear processes for visitor invitation and integration, disciple formation, member engagement, leadership development, worship planning, schedule coordination, supervision, etc., ministry experiences become inconsistent in quality and isolated from the gospel imperatives of reaching new people and cultivating spiritual vitality for the purpose of bringing about transformation in the world.

Diversity: The chart below depicts the disparity between national, community and local church age distribution. Yet undefined societal and congregational barriers seem to be obstacles to Riverside UMC being more reflective of the Park Rapids community at large. Small groups for various attitudes, needs, and preferences have been cultivated, but are perceived by some as threatening. Diverse voices have been invited to be part of the leadership and church development process in order to weave a stronger spiritual fabric, but have yet to be integrated to the extent desired. “Spiritual Interconnectedness” is the second lowest Natural Church Development survey subcategory at a score of 38.

Generation Name / Ages in 2012 / % of Adult National Population / % of Adult
Park Rapids Community / % of Riverside
UMC Members / % of Riverside UMC Leaders
Millennials / 18-35 / 27 / 26 / 10 / 4
Gen Xers / 36-47 / 20 / 17 / 10 / 6
Boomers / 48-66 / 34 / 28 / 30 / 45
Traditionalists / 67+ / 19 / 29 / 50 / 45

Age Appropriate Discipleship Systems: According to MissionInsite (an online census data resource), the population of the Park Rapids area is projected to remain quite stable over the next five years (give or take a percentage point across all demographic age categories). Children and young parents comprise 42% of the total Park Rapids area population base. Despite the number of young families in the community and Riverside’s excellent nursery facilities, Riverside UMC has no nursery staffing for Sunday worship or mid-week programming, no nursery procedures, no Safe Sanctuaries policies, limited programming for young children and no fellowship or educational opportunities targeted for young parents. Although unintentional, it creates a perceived image that children and young families are unexpected at best and unvalued at worst. Adult faith formation is characterized more by intermittent, unrelated experiences than by an intentional, integrated process.

Strategic Recommendations

1. Develop Compelling Vision

Required Action Steps: Develop clear and powerful core values and ministry vision to clarify congregational identity and cast a public image. Explore a theme for ministry branding potentially around the metaphor of “river” or “down by the riverside”.

Rationale: The near unanimous consensus of Riverside UMC leaders is that the congregation finds itself between the “maturity” and “empty nest” stage of the congregational life cycle chart. Predictably, in this stage there is a lack of clarity about vision for ministry and unique identity in the community. The inability to clearly articulate congregational values and offer examples of decision-making alignment with a common purpose was evidenced in the interviews and focus groups. In an area of relatively equal distribution across all life stages, the potential for establishing significance and transferring legacy between generations is rich if vision is clear.

Possible Implementation Steps:

• The coach leads a visioning day in the spring of 2012 where she will guide the leaders in identifying their values, vision and mission. Together they will explore metaphors and images as a means of empowering and embodying that mission. This will include everything from identifying core scriptures and beliefs, values, ministry priorities and practices and what the congregation will offer to the community that makes a difference.
• In the fall of 2012, the congregation will engage in congregation-wide vision casting, through sermon series, spiritual experiences to ground them in these core beliefs and values and leadership futuring exercises.

1. Establish Systems and Staffing for Growth

Required Action Steps: Introduce an interim form of governance that places the HCI strategic initiatives at the heart of Riverside UMC’s decision-making and resource allocation structure for the next two years. Hire a ministry assistant, lay or deacon, to support the pastor in offering administrative and programmatic leadership for engaging members and reaching new people through intentional discipleship processes.

Rationale:A staff person with this organizational mindset can focus on strategy and operations, to complement the skills and passions of Pastor Lee enabling him to focus on vision, team building and relational leadership in both the congregation and the community. The church council needs to be able to morph into a new model of governance that is more focused on the future and strategic planning and working with the coach to develop an interim form of governance allowing the church to experiment with which model will work best given their vision and ministry style.

Possible Implementation Steps:

• In consultation with the coach, appoint HCI implementation leaders that reflect a diversity of ages, backgrounds, program loyalties and worship service preferences. Establish a short-term model for administrative integration with Riverside’s current governance structure. This could include Ad Hoc task forces and team member recruitment/appointment rather than traditional and lengthy officer nominating and election processes.
• Formulate a position description, create a job title and hire a ministry assistant to develop, implement and monitor systems for hospitality/visitor follow-up with attention to the bookFusion by Nelson Searcy. This staff person will also oversee leadership development, spiritual formation and membership engagement strategies.
• Apply for an Investing in Congregations grant in October 2012 through the Office of Congregational Development to help acquire this new position.

1. Bridge the Divide

Required Action Steps: Participate in Healthy Communications training as a tool for congregational healing and establishing constructive communication systems and practices. Expand and implement multi-generational programming on Wednesday Nights to relate and solidify the various constituencies of the Riverside UMC family.

Rationale:Latent conflict and unaddressed misunderstandings continue to be a barrier to congregant relationships and leader alignment. The consultation team does not perceive crippling division, but restoration of trust, team building, and honest interpersonal interaction across age and affinity groups is necessary for congregational cohesiveness. This foundation is important through the anticipated period of organizational “unsettledness” that predictably accompanies any change process like HCI. We also note that the divide between the two worship communities is not as strong as some still perceive it to be. Most people affirmed the need to offer two different worship styles and embraced the diversity of styles. Therefore, to further strengthen congregational identity and programming, we suggest multi-generational programming on Wednesday evening where the whole congregation can build relationships and community outside of worship.