I have been working a lot with churches over the past few years. One of the things that is interesting about working with mainline churches is that they are a little ahead of the curve in terms of the change of social institutions. What they are experiencing now is similar to what we might experience in the next decade or so with other social institutions like education and health, the non-profit sector and the way we organize community. There is a massive shift underway.
Thom Rainer gives a list of 11 ways you can tell a church is dying – and this would apply to many other kinds of organizations too. The questions becomes, not how do we save it, but what is the next shape?
1. The church refused to look like the community. The community began a transition toward a lower socioeconomic class thirty years ago, but the church members had no desire to reach the new residents. The congregation thus became an island of middle-class members in a sea of lower-class residents.
2. The church had no community-focused ministries. This part of the autopsy may seem to be stating the obvious, but I wanted to be certain. My friend affirmed my suspicions. There was no attempt to reach the community.
3. Members became more focused on memorials. Do not hear my statement as a criticism of memorials. Indeed, I recently funded a memorial in memory of my late grandson. The memorials at the church were chairs, tables, rooms, and other places where a neat plaque could be placed. The point is that the memorials became an obsession at the church. More and more emphasis was placed on the past.
4. The percentage of the budget for members’ needs kept increasing. At the church’s death, the percentage was over 98 percent.
5. There were no evangelistic emphases. When a church loses its passion to reach the lost, the congregation begins to die.
6. The members had more and more arguments about what they wanted. As the church continued to decline toward death, the inward focus of the members turned caustic. Arguments were more frequent; business meetings became more acrimonious.
7. With few exceptions, pastoral tenure grew shorter and shorter. The church had seven pastors in its final ten years. The last three pastors were bi-vocational. All of the seven pastors left discouraged.
8. The church rarely prayed together. In its last eight years, the only time of corporate prayer was a three-minute period in the Sunday worship service. Prayers were always limited to members, their friends and families, and their physical needs.
9. The church had no clarity as to why it existed. There was no vision, no mission, and no purpose.
10. The members idolized another era. All of the active members were over the age of 67 the last six years of the church. And they all remembered fondly, to the point of idolatry, was the era of the 1970s. They saw their future to be returning to the past.
11. The facilities continued to deteriorate. It wasn’t really a financial issue. Instead, the members failed to see the continuous deterioration of the church building. Simple stated, they no longer had “outsider eyes.”
Although I have worked for years in the United States including in and around health issues, I have never fully understood the ways in which Americans pay for their health care, or why their insurance company-based system is so important to them. This article explains how complicated it is to choose a medical plan and how expensive it is not to have one. And fundamentally this doesn’t change under Obama’s new plan. The premium this family pays, even now under the plan they want to keep, are more than twice what I pay for a family of four in a public health care system in Canada, and because we make more than $30,000 a year we are in the highest bracket in BC. We pay $133.00 a month and here’s what we get. There is no deductible. It’s basic, and extended medical plans obviously offer more benefits like dental and eye care, pharmacy and ambulance services (Great West Life’s mid-range plan is close to $400 a month). But with this basic coverage, my son has been in the emergency room twice in the past year with “12 year old testosterone accidents” – broken and suspected broken limbs – and we have incurred no costs other than paying a small fee for ambulance transport. If I wanted the same extended coverage as this family, I’d probably end up paying the same or more (and the deductibles would be WAAAAAY less), but if I don’t want to deal with an insurance company – and believe me, I don’t – then I don’t have to. My basics are covered and I have peace of mind. If I work for an employer, I just sign on with their extended plan. No problems.
Many Americans object to being “forced” to pay insurance premiums. How would you feel if you had the thought that paying premiums to the state for accessible health care was actually a peace of mind situation rather than the actions of an overzealous government seeking to limit your freedoms? This is all a matter of perspective and while I know millions of Americans share the view that I have about publicly funded health care, millions still do not and neither of course do the insurance companies who make their money by charging premiums and minimizing coverage. And now, in Washington, their political lap dogs are doing their dirty work and frankly it hurts the creative and entrepreneurial spirit of Americans who would rather be doing their own thing in the world than tying themselves to wage slavery for the benefit of a cheaper health plan.
Public health care is not perfect but it is brilliant. In Canada, we have very little stress about these issues compared to our southern cousins. Every American I know – and I know hundreds – worries about their health care insurance. In Canada we only worry about it when we have a wait for a service or a bad experience in the hospital, or we have a cranky complaining day. The rest of the time, we are cared for and cared for well, and I don’t think we know how lucky we are.
Good luck my American friends.
Henri Lipmanowicz and Keith McCandless put together their brilliant collection of participatory methodologies called “liberating structures” a few years ago. I had occasion to visit their website this week and notice that it is even more brilliant than before, containing detailed descriptions of the structures tools and processes and elegant minimal instructions for using them. For seasoned facilitators, this is a gold mine of reference, and I’ve added it to my Facilitation Resources page.
Home now from Ireland, with this marvellous extract from Flann O Brien’s “At Swim-Two-Birds” that somehow captures my experience of living a week in Ballyvaughn listening to the rush of na Gaeilige spoken from the mouths of scholars and poets and activists and to the floating tunes on the air of the night as I walked home from O Loclainn’s pub with the taste of Green Spot on my lips and my skin kissed by the breeze off the sea.
Of the musics you have ever got, asked Conan, which have you found the sweetest ?
I will relate, said Finn. When the se
ven companies of my warriors are gathered together on the one plain and the truant cleancold loudvoiced wind goes through them, too sweet to me is that. Echoblow of a gobletbase against the tables of the palace, sweet to me is that. I like gullcries and the twittering together of fine cranes. I like the surfroar at Tralee, the songs of the three sons of Meadhra and the whistle of Mac Lughaidh. These also please me, manshouts at a parting, cuckoocall in May. 1 incline to like pig grunting in Magh Eithne, the bellowing of the stag of Ceara, the whinging of fauns in Derrynish. The low warble of waterowls in Loch Barra also, sweeter than life that. I am fond of wingbeating in dark belfries, cowcries in pregnancy, troutspurt in a laketop. Also the whining of small otters in nettlebeds at evening, the croaking of smalljays behind a wall, these are heartpleasing. I am friend to the pilibeen, the red necked chough, the parsnip landrail, the pilibeen mona, the bottletailed tit, the common marshcoot, the speckletoed guillemot, the pilibeen sleibhe, the Mohar gannet, the peregrine ploughgull, the long eared bushowl, the Wicklow smallfowl, the bevil beaked chough, the hooded tit, the pilibeen uisce, the common corby, the fishtailed mudpiper, the cruiskeen lawn, the carrion seacock, the green ridded parakeet, the brown bogmartin, the maritime wren, the dovetailed wheatcrake, the beaded daw, the Galway hillbantam and the pilibeen cathrach. A satisfying ululation is the contending of a river with the sea. Good to hear is the chirping of little red breasted men in bare winter and distant hounds giving tongue in the secrecy of fog. The lamenting of a wounded otter in a black hole, sweeter than harpstrings that. There is no torture so narrow as to be bound and beset in a dark cavern without food or music, without the bestowing of gold on bards. To be chained by night in a dark pit without company of chessmen-evil destiny! Soothing to my ear is the shout of a hidden blackbird, the squeal of a troubled mare, the complaining of wildhogs caught in snow.
Relate further for us, said Conan.
It is true that I will not, said Finn.
With that he rose to a full treehigh standing, the sable catguts which held his bogcloth drawers to the hems of his jacket of pleated fustian clanging together in melodious discourse. Too great was he for standing. The neck to him was as the bole of a great oak, knotted and seized together with musclehumps and carbuncles of tangled sinew, the better for good feasting and contending with the bards. The chest to him was wider than the poles of a good chariot, coming now out, now in, and pastured from chin to navel with meadows of black manhair and meated with layers of fine manmeat the better to hide his bones and fashion the semblance of his twin bubs. The arms to him were like the necks of beasts, ballswollen with their bunchedup brawnstrings and bloodveins, the better for harping and hunting and contending with the bards. Each thigh to him was to the thickness of a horse’s belly, narrowing to a greenveined calf to the thickness of a foal. Three fifties of fosterlings could engage with handball against the wideness of his backside, which was wide enough to halt the march of warriors through a mountainpass.
I am a bark for buffeting, said Finn, I am a hound for thornypaws. I am a doe for swiftness. I am a tree for windsiege. I am a windmill. I am a hole in a wall.
On a bus at the moment travelling from Tartu to Tallinn, through the Estonian countryside. We pass by fields and forests that remind me deeply of the southern Ontario countryside I grew up, differing only in the occasional ruins of old Soviet collectivist farms and apartment blocks that housed their workers when this was part of the Soviet Union.
This is my second trip to Estonia and it is perhaps not my last one. There is some much that is interesting about this country and my friends here, including a close connection to land and culture and a strong sense of both contemporary identity and traditional practices. It somehow for me embodies the Art of Hosting.
This week we were running a Learning Village – a sort of training where we come together to work and co-create community for a week and share learning that deepens our practices of hosting and supporting authentic human being in community and organization, family and life. We were at that Sänna Kulturmoise, an old German manor that was bought by a group of families who are running it as an intentional community and a place of learning and co-creation. We lived half our time in Open Space, half our time hosted in beautiful process with a local team led Piret Jeedas and Ivika Nögel and Robert Oetjen along with Dianna, Kritsi, Kristina, Helina, Paavo and other AoH practctioners. James Ede, Luke Concannon, Anne Madsen and I represented the visiting contingent.
As beautiful as the Art of Hosting Learning Village was, for me the journey was also about exploring something deeper here in Estonia. I have noticed in my practice lately that it is hard to sustain the kind of energy, interest and creativity that I have always tried to bring to my work. I have been reflecting on this and why it is and what it all means. So the Art of Hosting gave me a chance to work with new and old friends, and to host in a radically different context where I had to be sensitive to language and culture. But it also took place in a part of the world that has something to teach me.
Travel of course, always does this…gets us out of our patterns and ruts. I have had very little opportunity to reflect on my work this year, and so I have been treating this journey to Europe (which includes a leg in Turkey and one in Ireland as well) to be a time to discover something new.
Here in Estonia, it has felt like I have gone through several gates. Arriving in Europe, arriving in Estonia, spending one night in the capital Tallinn, travelling to the rural and traditional south to work at Sänna, and then a journey with friends deep into the heart of Setomaa, the region of Estonia that is home to the Seto people, a small Finno-Ugric tribe that I have come to love. Our friend Piret has a piece of land she is working on in the village of Harma, very near to the summer home of our friend Margus, who works for the Seto Nation. Eight of us packed down to Setomaa the other night to spend the night at Margus’s house, to practice sauna together, eat at a traditional Seto guest house, sing songs from our traditions, take part in local traditional social protocols of sharing a local moonshine called hanza which is used kind of as a talking piece by Seto hosts and to rest on the land. Yesterday morning we woke up and went walking and harvesting in the forest, picking many mushrooms, blueberries and lingonberries, visiting Piret’s land, and a new local chapel called a tsässons, which is a traditional worship place of Seto people. It was a journey that seemed to go every deeper into an ancient landscape of human activity, human community, deep friendship and powerful connection. We were hosted by the land and each other and we were blessed with a quality of time and space that seems rare.
Yesterday as we were leaving, across the fields behind Margus’ place, we witnessed what I think was the teaching that this container held. James and I stood and looked across a field at two women, a man and a horse who were taking hay from a field by hand. The women were cutting it and carrying it to the man who was pitching it into a horse drawn hay wagon. It was an incredibly powerful scene of continuity and tradition and also sustainability, practicality, simplicity and clarity. We remarked that perhaps if we could simply undertake to practice these kinds of ancient human practices with such clean volition, it would be our ideal.
I am leaving Estonia for Turkey this afternoon with the thought that this simplicity of practice is what will renew me. We humans are in love with our brains, and in making things complicated and confusing. Sometimes harvesting the hay is so simple that we can do it the way we have always done it. I think much of our work in hosting is the same. We may be facing novel situiations and mproblems in the world, but there is very little that is different about how we as humans can deal with them. To practice the ancient arts of conversations, meaning making, connection and community in the service of meeting needs, and to do that simply is the lesson.
And in some small but not insignificant way, Esotina works the obvious into my tired spirit, and the close friendships and colleagueships I share here along with a land I somehow know in my bones have hosted a little insight around simplicity that may unfold more in Turkey or Ireland.
I’m staying tuned.