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‘Radical Welcome’ Leads to Growth
In the heart of the old town of Markham, Grace Church's front wall features a colourful art installation. It is a patchwork quilt of tiles, each one created by the church's parishioners. It is a reminder that all are welcome, and that the congregation is richly diverse and united in the church. There is also a lot of room left for new tites.
The Rev. Canon John Read, incumbent, and his wife, Janet, came to the parish four years ago with a mandate for growth from the parish selection committee.
“We had been at St. John's in Port Hope and we loved it dearly,” says Canon Read. “The thing that enticed us to come here was that the parish had a strong desire to grow, and that was the challenge.”
Markham, just north of Toronto, is a town on the verge of becoming a small city, with a population of more than 200,000. It's projected that in the next three years, 281,000 people will be calling Markham home.
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Attending the Seminar
The three pastors came to learn more about helping their congregations grow. They went home with a clearer understanding of themselves, concrete ideas for leading needed change, and a renewed sense of hope.
Corey Keyes is nearing his tenth anniversary as pastor of West Bloomfield Congregational Church, a United Church of Christ congregation in West Bloomfield, NY. The congregation is located about thirty miles outside of Rochester, NY—in a town that was founded in 1799 and more recently has made the transition from rural to bedroom community.
After Keyes’ arrival, the congregation grew rapidly from an average Sunday attendance of about thirty to close to 200. Then during the past two years, the congregation’s attendance plateaued and even decreased slightly.
A couple of years ago Keyes picked up Raising the Roof: The Pastoral-to-Program Size Transition, an Alban book by Alice Mann. Keyes said that he used the book—which focuses on the size transition with which his congregation was struggling—“the best that I could.”
As his three-month sabbatical neared last spring, Keyes discovered that Mann would be leading an Alban event on that exact topic in nearby Rochester. He changed his initial plans and registered for the Raising the Roof seminar. He calls it one of the wisest decisions that he’s ever made.
“I had reached a point where I didn’t know what to do next,” he recalls. “I had maxed out the personal relationships that I could maintain.”
A New Outlook
During the seminar, Mann led participants in exploring theory and tools related to helping a congregation move from pastoral size (up to average attendance of 150 to 200) to program size (average attendance of 200 to 400). One area of exploration was the participants’ leadership style. This was a turning point for Keyes.
“I realized that I first needed to change my own outlook and to open myself to change,” he explains. “Alice helped me identify what I did well as a leader, but she also helped me become clear about where I needed to improve—such as coaching others within the congregation.”
This new understanding of self has gone hand in hand with what Keyes learned during the seminar about the structure of change and its effect on a congregation.
“I was dealing with growth as a linear process,” he says, “which meant that the larger we grew, the less intimacy we could have. I learned that if I would release control of some things and give control to others, we actually could increase intimacy within our congregation.
“Alice taught me that we could separate the words small and intimate. It was a true mark of genius on her part.”
Keyes began to experience the impact of what he learned even before his sabbatical ended. One of his congregation’s key leaders was so anxious about change, that Keyes sat down with her the week after the seminar. He took her through some of the seminar’s materials and helped her see how they could restore a spiritual sense and community feeling to their congregation. “I even used some of Alice’s phrases,” he adds.
On the following Sunday morning, that leader stood up in front of the congregation and told about her talk with Keyes. “You can’t believe the wonderful things we are going to do,” she reported, “and Corey is going to help us.”
Dipping into the Toolkit
Now that Keyes is back from his sabbatical, he is beginning to implement the principles he learned during the seminar. Even when there is push back, he has strategies for responding. “I feel equipped to deal with the transition,” he says.
That feeling was tested on his first day back from sabbatical when a crisis erupted within the congregation. Keyes pulled together a leadership team, explaining to the members that “we have to change the way we do business.” The team created circles of information, using structural strategies from the seminar. As a result, the congregation was able to deal with a difficult situation in a constructive manner.
“I now have a more specific bag of tools,” Keyes explains. “As a church grows, a pastor needs new tools. I had tools for the church we used to be. I’m excited about the future that lies ahead for us.”
Keeping Up with Rapid Growth
The congregation that Bruce Roth pastors shares several things in common with Keyes’ congregation. It recently has experienced rapid growth, and it has only one full-time employee—the pastor.
But St. Stephen Martyr Lutheran Church, an Evangelical Lutheran Church in America congregation in Canton, OH, differs in other ways. This suburban congregation is only forty years old and stands at the crossroads of several different communities. The congregation is a mix of suburban and mid-size city folks, whose median age is 35, and has students from ten different school districts.
Roth describes the congregation as having a “pretty experimental spirit.” St. Stephen had just finished a family life center building project when Roth arrived six years ago.
Since then, the congregation has doubled in size—growing from an average Sunday attendance of 135 to 300. The congregation also has added a third worship service—The Gathering—that has reached out to a new segment of people; developed a second time slot for adult Sunday school; and created the Holy Grounds Cafe in the congregation’s original sanctuary space as an opportunity for “environmental evangelism.”
Roth decided to register for Raising the Roof, in part, because he was feeling the squeeze staffing wise. “I felt like a duck,” he adds, “calm on the surface, but paddling like heck underneath.”
Staffing and Leadership
He realized that if the congregation were to continue its growth, it would need to move from its patchwork of part-time staff members to a more intentional plan to provide more program and support staff. In addition, it was difficult for Roth to find a substitute worship leader who could do the different styles of worship in the congregation’s three Sunday-morning services and preside at communion.
“We were trying to figure out the best way to get at our staffing issues,” Roth recalls. “Our question was what staffing model would work best.”
During the seminar, Mann provided practical solutions and guidelines for staffing that Roth describes as “very helpful.” As a result, Roth has been able to help his congregation develop a pastoral relations committee, as well as a personnel plan for the future. The congregation currently is in a search process for an associate pastor.
Roth shared Keyes’ experience of learning about his own leadership style. He went to the seminar hoping to learn skills that would enable him to grow with his congregation as it goes through change.
One of the things that Roth learned was that he needs to be more directive. That self discovery already has impacted the way that Roth is working with a staff member to find a solution to a particular issue.
“I wish that I’d had that kind of information in seminary,” Roth says. “Alice provided a very visible description about what leadership skills are needed at each level of congregational size. It helps to know what you need and when.”
Hope Rekindled
Renewed hope is something that Chris Xenakis shares with his fellow seminar participants. While Keyes and Roth’s hope relates to the future of their congregation and their ability to lead during times of change and transition, the renewed hope that Xenakis experienced as a result of Raising the Roof is a bit different.
“Although the seminar was about the pastoral- to program-size transition,” Xenakis says, “I found it in a broader, more cosmic way to be about the vitality and future of the American mainline. The issues and concerns of the seminar were relevant and extremely helpful. It helped rekindle my love and hope for the church—beyond the current congregation I serve.”
Xenakis serves as pastor of Groton City United Church of Christ in Groton, NY. Before moving to this rural congregation in central New York a year ago, he was pastor of a tall-steeple downtown church—a congregation that he says was “lowering the roof” rather than raising it.
“Today there are a number of congregations whose glory days are behind them,” he explains. “The remnant that is left in those congregations often is frightened. Those congregations are declining from program size to pastoral size or even family size.”
Mann’s seminar reminded Xenakis that change and vitality are possible regardless of a congregation’s size. He found the systems change index that she presented to be a helpful diagnostic tools that congregational leaders can use—not as a health or survival index, but as a measure of a congregation’s resilience.
As a result of his participation in the seminar, Xenakis is more aware of the faith aspect of size transitions. He appreciates Mann’s insight that congregations facing such transitions are living in “not enoughness”—not enough staff, money, or other resources. For Xenakis, faith calls for a congregation to be aware of and grateful for the resources that are available rather than being paralyzed by the deficit.
He adds that the Raising the Roof seminar is about much more than the mechanics of size transitions. He praises its emphasis on leadership, as well as its serving as a clearing house of excellent resources.
Xenakis is raising issues of growth and congregational vitality with his congregation. While acknowledging that such conversations make some people a bit nervous, he contends that these conversations are important. He is planning a fall series of sermons that will focus on the church, growth, and congregational conflict. He also plans to share his learning with other congregational leaders in his UCC association.
A Sacred Experience
While the three pastors came from different ministry settings and brought different issues and concerns, they all agree on the value of the seminar—for their congregations, but also for themselves as individuals.
Each pastor credits Mann with shaping and leading an event that was much more than simply a management seminar.
“Alice leveraged her own experience as an Episcopal priest,” explains Keyes. “She came onto our turf and helped us reinterpret our recent experiences that provided renewed hope and focus.
“By recognizing the holy nature of our work, she was as much a spiritual counselor as a management consultant. She allowed me to bring every part of myself—my faith journey, my personal relationships, and my professional relationships—into the seminar, which made it a sacred experience.”
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