Hey Dunstanland!
I've been absent from the blogosphere for awhile, and it's because I'm stressed. There's a lot to do, and not enough time to do it. I have a feeling that most (if not all!) share this experience. When I'm stressed, I tend to "turtle," to get task-focused and self-absorbed. I lose the energy required to communicate with others. Does this, too, sound familiar?
This lack of energy for communication often goes double for our prayer life. There isn't time to pray, and when we do, it's difficult not to think of all the things that we "should" be doing instead of attempting to rest in God's Presence. Then prayer makes us more stressed! When we need prayer the most -- when we are stressed, or facing difficult decisions, or uncertain about a course of action -- we are the least motivated to pray.
It is precisely because of this that prayer is sometimes called a "discipline;" we are called to pray whether we feel like it or not. It requires time and an act of the will to pray when we are chronically stressed (that is, when our anxiety is more generalized and long-term, rather that a result of a particular crisis). However, if we are disciplined enough to follow St. Paul's injunction to "pray without ceasing," the benefits are huge.
There are two essential ways to pray through stress (as opposed to praying to get out of stress: good luck with that request!): to pray for creativity, and the prayer of surrender.
First, let's address the praying for creativity. This suggestion of mine is actually based on real brain science. There is a spot in your brain, about an inch and a half behind the midpoint of the back of your eyes, that brain scientists have come to call the "God Spot." It is the part of the brains that "lights up" in scans when someone is praying, especially in a deeply contemplative or meditative way. Interestingly, this is also the spot in the brain that lights up when artists paint or virtuoso musicians play their instrument from memory. What a wonder! The very part of the brain that we engage when we pray is the same part of the brain that has to do with visual and auditory creativity. It's almost as if God set it up that way ....
What this means to me is that when we pray through stress, we can pray to "see" a new solution to a problem, or "hear" God's answer to our needs. In prayer, the Holy Spirit wants to reveal a new way of looking at our lives: God wants us to be creative! So when we are stressed, it becomes all the more important to spend the kind of time in prayer (at least 20 minutes) that allows us to relax, be in God's Presence, and see and hear God's creative word to us. I often pray not for answers, but for the right questions, which require much more creativity and inspiration. I pray that God will help me see whatever is facing me in a new light: that might, after all, be how He sees it!
Finally, when all else fails, I advise surrender. Not surrender to despair, but surrender to Jesus. Sometimes the most effective prayer through stress is simply, "I don't know how to do "X," you will have to do it, Jesus -- with me or without me, as you will." In a sense, our surrender is both an act of humility and a daring challenge to God: it says, I don't have the answers, I'm not in charge, but you are, and I recognize your responsibility. Now glorify your Name!" This is the spirit of so many of the psalms: if you can't find your own words in the midst of stress, pray God's Word.
Stress is a part of every life that is lived in Christ, that is vulnerable to God's will, that is available to the world and it's challenges. Jesus wants us in the world, not out of it. Jesus does not invite us to pray our way out of stress, but our joy is that he has given us the gift of being able to pray through stress.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Monday, September 28, 2009
Where the Strategic Rubber Hits the Ministry Road
Dear Dunstanland,
The essence of our strategic plan is that must be realized; it is not simply inspiring phrases in a vision document or a spreadsheet managed by the Strategic Planning Team. After all, what we are planning is change: changes in the way ministry is done (more relationally), changes in what ministries are done (more classes, better pastoral care, new worship, etc.), and most importantly, changes in people's lives (more folks knowing Jesus, following Jesus, and sharing Jesus). There are two aspects to making sure that our strategic plan truly changes St. Dunstan's for the better.
First of all, our goals will not be abstract ideas or warm fuzzies. They will be concrete goals that are measurable, if not directly in numbers, then at the very least in the sense that we will be able to know if we have met them or not. Of course, one very important metric is Average Sunday Attendance (ASA), in which all the attendance figures from every Sunday (including Saturday night) are added up and divided by 52. Easter's high is balanced by the first Sunday of Christmas' low. Fall and spring are balanced by the summer. In the end what you get is a reasonable measure of how many people are participating in a most basic way in the church's worship and programs. Currently, St. Dunstan's ASA is 427. ASA is far more important to pastors than to their parishioners, who tend to judge the church's programs by their own experience. Think of it this way: ASA is to your individual experience what the GDP is to your company's gross sales. It's an aggregate that tells you about the size of the forest, but nothing about the health of trees. So it's useful to a degree, but is not the only measure.
Perhaps other ways to talk about achieving goals might be the net of new members and inactivations and transfers. Or the number of children in Sunday School (we set a three-year record a week ago, Sunday). Or the number of folks attending adult classes. Or the number of people involved in ministry. These are all possible ways to discern if we're really doing what we are called to do. But count we will, because generally speaking, one only grows what one counts.
The second key to the success of the strategic plan is accountability. So, who will be accountable for seeing that goals are reached? Perhaps a year ago I would have quickly answered, "Me." And while the buck does stop with the Leading Pastor, and while my final responsibility for the health and growth of the parish is a given, the answer is not so simple, anymore: and that's a good thing. It's a good thing because the parish leadership and I have come to a place where we have accepted the challenge to share responsibility for St. Dunstan's faithfulness. I chose to share leadership by calling for and implementing the strategic planning process, instead of propagating the myth that I know all the answers and possess all the solutions. The vestry chose to embrace its truly strategic vocation and share the task of overseeing the implementation of the goals with the Strategic Planning Team, instead of attempting to run the ministries of the parish by remote. The Strategic Planning Team will be sharing the responsibility of accomplishing specific goals with Project Teams, instead of being gatekeepers and enforcers. Project Teams, facilitated by Project Team Leaders and equipped by the parish staff, will share Christ's work with gifted parishioners whom they call into ministry, instead of being the doers of all ministry. And finally, our parishioners will share Christ's love with the world that Christ came to save, instead of becoming a club which imagines that it can keep that love for itself without losing it utterly.
So, finally, our entire parish -- every member who is called into ministry, which is to say, every member -- shares accountability for seeing that our goals are being reached. That's what "shared leadership" means in the end: a shared engagement in and responsibility for our parish's mission -- making high commitment sacramental Christians in community.
The essence of our strategic plan is that must be realized; it is not simply inspiring phrases in a vision document or a spreadsheet managed by the Strategic Planning Team. After all, what we are planning is change: changes in the way ministry is done (more relationally), changes in what ministries are done (more classes, better pastoral care, new worship, etc.), and most importantly, changes in people's lives (more folks knowing Jesus, following Jesus, and sharing Jesus). There are two aspects to making sure that our strategic plan truly changes St. Dunstan's for the better.
First of all, our goals will not be abstract ideas or warm fuzzies. They will be concrete goals that are measurable, if not directly in numbers, then at the very least in the sense that we will be able to know if we have met them or not. Of course, one very important metric is Average Sunday Attendance (ASA), in which all the attendance figures from every Sunday (including Saturday night) are added up and divided by 52. Easter's high is balanced by the first Sunday of Christmas' low. Fall and spring are balanced by the summer. In the end what you get is a reasonable measure of how many people are participating in a most basic way in the church's worship and programs. Currently, St. Dunstan's ASA is 427. ASA is far more important to pastors than to their parishioners, who tend to judge the church's programs by their own experience. Think of it this way: ASA is to your individual experience what the GDP is to your company's gross sales. It's an aggregate that tells you about the size of the forest, but nothing about the health of trees. So it's useful to a degree, but is not the only measure.
Perhaps other ways to talk about achieving goals might be the net of new members and inactivations and transfers. Or the number of children in Sunday School (we set a three-year record a week ago, Sunday). Or the number of folks attending adult classes. Or the number of people involved in ministry. These are all possible ways to discern if we're really doing what we are called to do. But count we will, because generally speaking, one only grows what one counts.
The second key to the success of the strategic plan is accountability. So, who will be accountable for seeing that goals are reached? Perhaps a year ago I would have quickly answered, "Me." And while the buck does stop with the Leading Pastor, and while my final responsibility for the health and growth of the parish is a given, the answer is not so simple, anymore: and that's a good thing. It's a good thing because the parish leadership and I have come to a place where we have accepted the challenge to share responsibility for St. Dunstan's faithfulness. I chose to share leadership by calling for and implementing the strategic planning process, instead of propagating the myth that I know all the answers and possess all the solutions. The vestry chose to embrace its truly strategic vocation and share the task of overseeing the implementation of the goals with the Strategic Planning Team, instead of attempting to run the ministries of the parish by remote. The Strategic Planning Team will be sharing the responsibility of accomplishing specific goals with Project Teams, instead of being gatekeepers and enforcers. Project Teams, facilitated by Project Team Leaders and equipped by the parish staff, will share Christ's work with gifted parishioners whom they call into ministry, instead of being the doers of all ministry. And finally, our parishioners will share Christ's love with the world that Christ came to save, instead of becoming a club which imagines that it can keep that love for itself without losing it utterly.
So, finally, our entire parish -- every member who is called into ministry, which is to say, every member -- shares accountability for seeing that our goals are being reached. That's what "shared leadership" means in the end: a shared engagement in and responsibility for our parish's mission -- making high commitment sacramental Christians in community.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
Hello Dunstanland!
It is great to be back in the blogosphere, and my hope is that this will be an effective way of connecting with all of you more regularly to let you know about what the Spirit is up to in our parish. I'm switching from my monthly article in the Banner (old school!), to an at-least-weekly post on Hammer & Tongs. This also gives you an opportunity to respond to what you've read, although I can't guarantee that I will respond to all notes posted on the blog. Additionally, we'll be operating under a Christian paradigm when it comes to posting responses: inappropriate, nasty, or ad hominem remarks will be removed. So, with that prolegoumena out of the way, let's get started!
It is entirely appropriate that my first blog has to do with the Strategic Plan, which was launched by your vestry on September 15th. One of the biggest areas of challenge that was identified by our leaders was communication. As our parish grows larger, communication will become a greater challenge, and there was strong consensus that we needed to branch out into the new methods of disseminating information such as blogging, Facebook, and tweeting. So, this blog is a direct response to one of our strategic mandates.
I'll address communication, per se, and why it is a key (and sometimes conflictual) issue in a future writing. But first, I would like to communicate some basic elements of the strategic plan and the process for its implementation by posing and answering some FAQS.
1. What is the strategic plan?
The strategic plan is made up of a vision document which is contained on one sheet of paper and a much longer set of specific goals for our ministries that lives on a spreadsheet stretching over ten pages. The vision document is headed by our parish's mission statement: "Making high commitment, sacramental Christian in community." This mission statement received a 90% approval rating on our recent parish web survey. Given that the participants of the survey have been attending St. Dunstan's for an average of 17 years, this tells me that we have very broadly-based support for our mission both among long-time members, and among the new members, who literally sign on to the mission statement and the personal commitments to Christian disciplines that it implies when they go through the Exploration class. Our mission statement is well-known and is a genuine rubric by which all our efforts, plans, and programs may be measured.
The core values section states some qualities that are a part of St. Dunstan's DNA -- things like Anglican worship, effective pastoral care, Biblical Christian formation, and shared leadership between clergy and lay leaders. These core values were first articulated in 2004 by the parish leadership in the search process that called me as Leading Pastor. The vision areas set out some key areas of ministry in which we want to move forward, and they were developed by our consultant, Reb Scarborough, after he went through the results of the six mission center planning sessions that were conducted in April, May, and June. The vision document is not holy writ. It was not delivered from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets. It can be worked on. Nevertheless, it should remain fairly stable over time so that it can serve effectively as a touchstone for our specific efforts under the strategic plan.
The goals document is in a very preliminary, "working document," state. It needs significant "defragging" to get it to the point where it is both clear and accurately reflective of the actual work being done and being planned by the ministers of the parish.
2. Who will do that work?
On September 15th, in addition to unanimously approving both the vision and goal documents, the vestry commissioned the Strategic Planning Team for the work of coordinating the ministry initiatives undertaken as part of the plan and making sure that the Strategic Plan is communicated to the parish and successfully executed. The Strategic Planning Team is directly accountable to the vestry. Those who have been members of the parish for awhile will remember the Parish Life Committee: the SPT has been commissioned and will operate on a similar basis.
3. Who is on the Strategic Planning Team?
The chair is Brian Matusek, who is a member of the vestry. The chair will always be a vestry member in order to ensure accountability and transparency. Two other vestry members are Cindy Carr and Matt Horak. Three members "at large" are: Ron Bahr, Paul Egner, and Traci Schluter. All the members of the SPT are experienced and dedicated leaders from various sections of our parish community. All have a demonstrated ability to see the big picture and put the parish first. I am also a member of the SPT, serving as chaplain and a continuous presence as members of the vestry roll on and off.
The SPT will model the life of ministry that we seek to spread through the parish. Our meetings will be times of fellowship, prayer, and Bible study. We will seek to do ministry in community.
The essential task of the SPT is to serve as a kind of "Dispatch of Business" committee. That is to say, in a legislature all sorts of resolutions and bills are submitted. A committee is formed for the purpose of sorting which bills and actions should go where: agriculture bills to the Ag Committee, budget bills to the Appropriations Committee, etc. Similarly, the SPT will do the important work of sorting and prioritizing the goals laid out by the parish leadership and the various mission centers. Some goals are very similar and need to be consolidated. Others may not meet our vision criteria and may be dropped. Others have actually been completed, and need to be celebrated! Some goals are harder than others and require more resources -- they may be moved down the chain until those resources can be gathered. You get the idea.
4. What about the work we did at the mission center sessions last spring and summer? Will they count?
By all means! The SPT will be going through those results and sorting them also. Again, some have already been or are being addressed naturally as our ministry leaders were inspired by the comments and ideas expressed in their areas of specialty. All the meetings will receive careful review by the SPT. However, the mission center sessions were not a means to make demands to be met forthwith. Think of them as open-ended, wild hare encouragement sessions, in which a lot of pasta was thrown at the wall: some noodles will stick, others won't, others have already been eaten.
Okay, I think that's quite enough for now! See what happens when I don't have space limitations! If you have questions about the Strategic Plan or anything else, please let me know: post them on the blog, or send them to me at rprice@saintdunstans.org. I'd love to hear from you.
Faithfully yours in Christ,
Rob+
It is great to be back in the blogosphere, and my hope is that this will be an effective way of connecting with all of you more regularly to let you know about what the Spirit is up to in our parish. I'm switching from my monthly article in the Banner (old school!), to an at-least-weekly post on Hammer & Tongs. This also gives you an opportunity to respond to what you've read, although I can't guarantee that I will respond to all notes posted on the blog. Additionally, we'll be operating under a Christian paradigm when it comes to posting responses: inappropriate, nasty, or ad hominem remarks will be removed. So, with that prolegoumena out of the way, let's get started!
It is entirely appropriate that my first blog has to do with the Strategic Plan, which was launched by your vestry on September 15th. One of the biggest areas of challenge that was identified by our leaders was communication. As our parish grows larger, communication will become a greater challenge, and there was strong consensus that we needed to branch out into the new methods of disseminating information such as blogging, Facebook, and tweeting. So, this blog is a direct response to one of our strategic mandates.
I'll address communication, per se, and why it is a key (and sometimes conflictual) issue in a future writing. But first, I would like to communicate some basic elements of the strategic plan and the process for its implementation by posing and answering some FAQS.
1. What is the strategic plan?
The strategic plan is made up of a vision document which is contained on one sheet of paper and a much longer set of specific goals for our ministries that lives on a spreadsheet stretching over ten pages. The vision document is headed by our parish's mission statement: "Making high commitment, sacramental Christian in community." This mission statement received a 90% approval rating on our recent parish web survey. Given that the participants of the survey have been attending St. Dunstan's for an average of 17 years, this tells me that we have very broadly-based support for our mission both among long-time members, and among the new members, who literally sign on to the mission statement and the personal commitments to Christian disciplines that it implies when they go through the Exploration class. Our mission statement is well-known and is a genuine rubric by which all our efforts, plans, and programs may be measured.
The core values section states some qualities that are a part of St. Dunstan's DNA -- things like Anglican worship, effective pastoral care, Biblical Christian formation, and shared leadership between clergy and lay leaders. These core values were first articulated in 2004 by the parish leadership in the search process that called me as Leading Pastor. The vision areas set out some key areas of ministry in which we want to move forward, and they were developed by our consultant, Reb Scarborough, after he went through the results of the six mission center planning sessions that were conducted in April, May, and June. The vision document is not holy writ. It was not delivered from Mt. Sinai on stone tablets. It can be worked on. Nevertheless, it should remain fairly stable over time so that it can serve effectively as a touchstone for our specific efforts under the strategic plan.
The goals document is in a very preliminary, "working document," state. It needs significant "defragging" to get it to the point where it is both clear and accurately reflective of the actual work being done and being planned by the ministers of the parish.
2. Who will do that work?
On September 15th, in addition to unanimously approving both the vision and goal documents, the vestry commissioned the Strategic Planning Team for the work of coordinating the ministry initiatives undertaken as part of the plan and making sure that the Strategic Plan is communicated to the parish and successfully executed. The Strategic Planning Team is directly accountable to the vestry. Those who have been members of the parish for awhile will remember the Parish Life Committee: the SPT has been commissioned and will operate on a similar basis.
3. Who is on the Strategic Planning Team?
The chair is Brian Matusek, who is a member of the vestry. The chair will always be a vestry member in order to ensure accountability and transparency. Two other vestry members are Cindy Carr and Matt Horak. Three members "at large" are: Ron Bahr, Paul Egner, and Traci Schluter. All the members of the SPT are experienced and dedicated leaders from various sections of our parish community. All have a demonstrated ability to see the big picture and put the parish first. I am also a member of the SPT, serving as chaplain and a continuous presence as members of the vestry roll on and off.
The SPT will model the life of ministry that we seek to spread through the parish. Our meetings will be times of fellowship, prayer, and Bible study. We will seek to do ministry in community.
The essential task of the SPT is to serve as a kind of "Dispatch of Business" committee. That is to say, in a legislature all sorts of resolutions and bills are submitted. A committee is formed for the purpose of sorting which bills and actions should go where: agriculture bills to the Ag Committee, budget bills to the Appropriations Committee, etc. Similarly, the SPT will do the important work of sorting and prioritizing the goals laid out by the parish leadership and the various mission centers. Some goals are very similar and need to be consolidated. Others may not meet our vision criteria and may be dropped. Others have actually been completed, and need to be celebrated! Some goals are harder than others and require more resources -- they may be moved down the chain until those resources can be gathered. You get the idea.
4. What about the work we did at the mission center sessions last spring and summer? Will they count?
By all means! The SPT will be going through those results and sorting them also. Again, some have already been or are being addressed naturally as our ministry leaders were inspired by the comments and ideas expressed in their areas of specialty. All the meetings will receive careful review by the SPT. However, the mission center sessions were not a means to make demands to be met forthwith. Think of them as open-ended, wild hare encouragement sessions, in which a lot of pasta was thrown at the wall: some noodles will stick, others won't, others have already been eaten.
Okay, I think that's quite enough for now! See what happens when I don't have space limitations! If you have questions about the Strategic Plan or anything else, please let me know: post them on the blog, or send them to me at rprice@saintdunstans.org. I'd love to hear from you.
Faithfully yours in Christ,
Rob+
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