Such an ominous title to the last chapter of Simple Church. This is Chapter 9 of the group blogging project on the book Simple Church. You can read more about this blogging tour by clicking here.
Chapter 9 brings it all together and clarifies some of the realities people and churches will face as they move toward being "simple."
Change is always difficult to some degree. Ch. 9 points out that the more established and complex a church, the bigger "growing" pains associated with the simplifying process. Let me start by saying that I work for an established church. A church that has served faithfully and effectively for 80+ years. We also have a degree of complexity to our process. We are however much better, but still on the journey. Our lead team and church started the process towards "simplifying" almost a year ago. Because chapter 9 gives a recap of the process already covered by other guest bloggers I thought it would be great to share part of our own journey and then make some observations of the process so far.
1. Clarity.When we started the process we first listed al the statements and documents we had created over the years. Let me list a few of the steps we were communicating
2. Movement.
While we obviously still have our Statement of Faith along with our Vision and Mission statements, we have now begin to only verbalize our simple process. Our Vision and Mission Statements inform the simple process that everyone is starting to memorize and live out. The rest of the statements are no longer used.
Click here to view our simple process and our key programs along the process. For us this helps define the key church wide program for each phase of our "simple" process as mentioned under "Movement" in chapter 9.
3 & 4 - Alignment and Focus
We are currently in the midst of Alignment and Focus. We have created a "starting point" class that is 90 mins in length and explains who we are, who we are not. In essence we explain our "simple" process. We have also created a brief survey to highlight a potential next step for each person according to what we "offer" in and through each step. We are still in the process of "Focusing." There have been many hard conversations of what does and does not fit. It's amazing how creative we can be trying to make things fit.
Some Observations
Chapter nine discusses the two options for change. Quickly vs. Incremental. We have obviously chosen the incremental approach. To be honest, our change strategy was never discussed in detail. I believe if it is not discussed and decided on ahead of time whether to move "quickly" or "incrementally", you will default to an incremental approach. For us this has been good so far, but I can say that it is much more difficult to stay on track for the long haul. I find that what can easily happen is a church completes steps one and two and then begins to think they have "arrived." So in regards to an incremental approach I would encourage the creation of a Gantt chart that marks specific deadlines when decisions need to be discussed and decided upon. Let's face it, most pastors, and people in general, have a hard time cutting out good programs. Its easy choosing between bad and good ideas, but choosing between "good" and "good" is difficult on many levels. Which brings up another point.
Rainer and Geiger bring up a great reminder. Moving from complexity toward simplicity goes hand in hand with being good at many things and excellent at nothing. In my experience perhaps the hardest thing for a team and specifically the lead pastor will be to clearly verbalized what the church is not about or will not do, no matter how "good" it may be. Make sure your lead pastor is comfortable with verbalizing not just what your church is about, but also what it is not about. In my own context i appreciate the vulnerability and willingness by our Sr. Pastor to have the frank discussions.
Some Questions.
1. What do think will be or has been the biggest obstacle for your church in moving toward simple?
2. Would you advocate for quick or incremental change?
3. Is your senior pastor on board with the process? Especially in larger contexts where programming is mostly handled by an adults ministry team this can be overlooked.
4. The bottom line in becoming simple as per Chapter 9 is "get there as fast as you can but not faster." While I agree with the statement I think it is also easy to use this as a permission granting statement to move incrementally. I think that most organizations can innovate and change much quicker than many leaders would choose to believe. (but that's just my 2 cents. :) )
I would love to read about your experience and thoughts.
Loving the journey,
dh