Back from the Dead

Gerald W. Keucher

Description

Almost everywhere throughout the greater church are unsustainable trends-endowments are being depleted, building maintenance deferred, congregations are aging and dwindling, and budgets are too far out-of-whack. And although there is much literature on what to do to grow congregations, little has been said about how to get those things done.

In highly accessible, anecdotal prose, church management expert Gerald Keucher focuses in very practical terms on how to bring the right spirit, approach, and tactics to the work of bringing a congregation back from the edge of the abyss.

Sujets

• Religion
• Christianisme
• Philosophie et théologie
• Christian Church
• Administration

Informations

• Publié par: Church Publishing Incorporated
• Date de parution: 01 octobre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780819228079
• Langue: English

Extrait

Back from the Dead
Back from the Dead
THE BOOK OF CONGREGATIONAL GROWTH
GERALD W. KEUCHER
Copyright 2012 by Gerald W. Keucher
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
Unless otherwise noted, the Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Morehouse Publishing, 4775 Linglestown Road, Harrisburg, PA 17112
Morehouse Publishing, 445 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016
Morehouse Publishing is an imprint of Church Publishing Incorporated. www.churchpublishing.org
Cover design by Laurie Klein Westhafer
Illustrations by Jay Sidebotham
Typeset by Vicki K. Black
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Keucher, Gerald W.
Back from the dead: the book of congregational growth / Gerald W. Keucher.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8192-2806-2 (pbk.: alk. paper) - ISBN 978-0-8192-2807-9 (ebook)
1. Church renewal. I. Title.
BV600.3.K48 2012
254 .5-dc23 2012005934
TO NATALIE AND MIA
May you live to see your children s children; may peace be upon Israel. (Psalm 128:6)
and in memory of
MARTHA LEWIS KEUCHER
the best mother any boy could ever have
Contents
Acknowledgments
1. The Ground Has Shifted
Writing The Book of Congregational Growth
Closing the Sale
Can This Parish Be Saved?
How Can We Talk About These Matters?
Why It Isn t Working
A Method, Not a Checklist or a Tool
How We Will Proceed
Filling in the Blanks
2. New Ways of Living in Our Structures
The Legacy of Establishment
Obsession with Hierarchy
Preoccupation with the Institution
The Seductive Power of Coercion
3. Our Conventional Wisdom Isn t Helping
A System Produces What It Is Designed to Produce
The Question of Diversity
Uniformity Versus Comprehensiveness
Talking About Decline
4. Packing Your Toolkit
Make All Relationships Two-Way
Believe That Death Is Not Inevitable
Be Enchanted
Keep Some Emotional Perspective
Remember: Laypeople Are the Solution, Not the Problem
Integrate Your Prayer and Your Work
Let Proportional Giving Change You
Figure Out How to Deal with Being Taken Advantage Of
Put on the Whole Armor of God
5. Getting Started
Get the Gestalt
The Totalitarian Vestry
Be Transparent
Remember: You Are Indispensable, But It s Not About You
Get the Right People on Board
Address the Major Sources of Anxiety
Don t Sweat the Small Stuff
Start Talking, Start Doing
If Manna Falls from Heaven, Eat It
Personal Generosity Primes the Pump
Summing Up
6. Get Control of the Buildings
Get Rid of the Junk
Tackle the Immediate Problem
Reasonable Debt Plays a Role
Note to the Diocese: You Have to Help
Develop Some Kind of Capital Plan
Learn About Buildings
Let Other Things Happen as They Can
7. Make the Budget Work
Getting from Here to Health
There Are No Bad Sources of Income
Papering Over Financial Problems
Misplaced Faith, Unrealistic Projections
Hiding Numbers in the Budget
The Shape of the Budget
The Solution Is Always on the Income Side
How to Stop Overspending the Investments
8. Healthy Leadership in a Post-Christendom Church
Remember: The People Are Part of the Solution
Difficult Things Do Not Require Conflict
A Fight Worth Having
Central Authority and Personal Faith
Control as Little as Possible
Live with What Cannot Be Fixed
I Have No Agenda: I Just Want It to Work
Endnotes
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to the people of the Church of the Intercession, New York City, and to the staff, the Reverend Fred Hoyer Johnson, Jr., the Reverend Nora Smith, the Reverend Ivan Griffith, William E. Randolph, Jr., Tommy Cheng, Eduardo de la Fuente Far as, Juliet Lowe-Tannis, and Richard Freeman for their friendship and for the work we did together. I cannot think of Intercession without thanking God for all of them. Together we truly looked into the abyss and, by God s grace and the prayers and devotion of everyone, kept that magnificent place from falling in. Wow.
I am also grateful to the people of St. Mary s, Brooklyn, another back-from-the-brink situation where I now serve. As always, the staff-Elizabeth Greaves, Charlie Monico, and Mark Victor Smith-make it possible for good things to happen. My work at St. Mary s is proving the hypothesis I brought to the work: there is a method to turning around a place at the brink of failure.
Intercession was not the first parish I saw come back from the dead. In 1982, long before I was ordained, my partner, priest, and iconographer John Walsted, became priest-in-charge and then rector of Christ Church, Staten Island, a beautiful complex then in a seriously weakened state. The diocesan office had urged a merger with another struggling parish several miles distant, but the lay leaders of both were unwilling to pursue that option. During John s tenure, we learned by trial and error both what and what not to do. There was no miracle of sudden growth; there was the work of welcoming, incorporating, educating, articulating a vision, reaching out, raising money, forming stewards, doing pastoral care, running a moderate-size capital campaign, asking for planned gifts, building the endowment-all the normal things, but made as effective as our gifts would allow by John s patent goodwill and his overflowing love for the parish. At his retirement service, a parishioner said it had been a magic time, and I realized that, however important what we did had been, the attitude and spirit John had brought and fostered was even more vital.
My years at the diocesan office in New York gave me opportunities to observe and think about what was working, what wasn t, and what might be more effective. I came away with two deep convictions, each of which led to a book. First, unless leaders understand their responsibility to the future, they will make decisions that will shortchange and perhaps foreclose that future. Second, unless leaders at the parish and diocesan levels bring true mutual accountability to all their relationships, they will abuse the powers of their offices and weaken the part of the church they should be building up.
A book like this cannot be the product of one mind or one person s experiences. I want to thank those clergy who have helped me directly with this book, either through conversations about their work or by providing examples over the years that I have remembered. A few among the many are the Reverends George Adamik, Hilario Albert, Randy and Patty Alexander, Ken Brannon, Diane Britt, Jerry Brooks, Jim Burns, Joe Campo, David Carlson, Ethan Cole, Roy Cole, Dale Cranston, Peter Cullen, Gawain de Leeuw, Michael Delaney, Terry Elsberry, Judith Ferguson, Doug Fisher, Susan Fortunato, Clarke and Sally French, Frank Geer, Bill Geisler, Richard Gressle, Tobias Haller, Lynn Harrington, Fred Hill, Chuck Howell, Frank Hubbard, Betty Hudson, Allan Jackson, Joan Jackson, Earl Kooperkamp, Larry LeSeure, Kathleen Liles, Elliott Lindsley, Lucia Lloyd, Carl Lunden, Richard Marchand, Tom Margrave, John Merz, Glenworth Miles, Loyda Morales, Andrew Mullins, Tom Newcomb, Tom Nicoll, Martha Overall, Carrie Schofield-Broadbent, Fred Schraplau, Bob Shearer, Michael Sniffen, Buddy Stallings, Herb Stevens, Astrid Storm, Barry Swain, Bill Tully, Don Waring, Richard Witt, Claire Woodley-Aitchison, and the Right Reverends Lawrence C. Provenzano, Scott Barker, Andrew Dietsche, Rodney Michel, and Andrew St. John. Such a bare and informal list is a poor way of expressing the richness of our relationships and our work together. There are so many others as well.
I want to express my deep appreciation to Bishop Provenzano for allowing me the opportunity to serve St. Mary s, Brooklyn, and for demonstrating the kind of visionary strategic thinking that makes a leader agile and supple so that opportunities can be recognized and capitalized on. He also knows how to support and encourage those he supervises.
It is quite impossible to thank the many laypeople with whom I have worked and from whom I have learned so much. One lesson my experiences have taught me is that laypeople are the solution, not the problem, as some clergy prefer to think. I hope this conviction is evident throughout what follows. The fact that the laity resist the latest innovative model, often offered by clergy or diocesan officials who are not sure what to do, is, in my opinion, generally a good thing. I believe laypeople are the solution, even though I will be mentioning numerous situations in which some lay leaders have acted badly. These actions, I believe, do not arise from personal failings, but rather because these leaders have been part of an unhealthy system. Making the system healthy will allow the people in it to be healthy as well.
I am grateful to Susan Fowler for reading the manuscript and making valuable suggestions.
Finally, it is always a pleasure to acknowledge the supportive team at Church Publishing. When he retired, Frank Tedeschi, a friend of many years, handed me off very smoothly to Nancy Bryan, who has been gracious and helpful. Vicki Black, who edited this manuscript, has ensured that my points are made clearly, and I am very grateful for her contribution to this book.
Staten Island, New York May 2012

CHAPTER ONE
The Ground Has Shifted
I will lead the blind by a road they do not know, by paths they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I will do, and I will not forsake them.
- I SAIAH 42:16
S ome years ago I had an experience that changed my life. While I