Barnabas File

Diagram courtesy of Pinnacle Leadership Associates In a previous blog post, I introduced a new process for churches titled Crossing Thresholds developed by colleague Mark Tidsworth (see diagram).    One of the steps is “Aligning Church Expectations.”   If you think that the context in which your church ministers has not changed in the last 10 years, you must have been of the country for an extended vacation or work assignment.  The opportunities and challenges that every church faces today are vastly different than they were just a short time ago.   Without belaboring the point, there have been social changes (such as the COVID pandemic), technological changes (hello, social media and Artificial Intelligence), economic changes (and lowered expectations among young adults for a life even as good as that of their parents), and political changes (provide your own comment here).   If we are realistic, our cultural context impacts the vision if not the miss...

During a recent conversation with a pastor friend, we discovered that he had been the pastor 20 years ago of a church that I worked as a consultant last year.    As we talked about the church, we realized that very little had changed, including a major annual event that was still an important part of church life. Churches have a tendency to institutionalize events and other offerings that are successful the first time around. These events quickly become a tradition in the life of the church, whether the original purpose continues to be achieved.  One church I visited continued to have a Swedish luncheon annually even though few of the members were still Swedish and did not know any Swedish dishes to prepare! When is it time to pull the plug on activities that seem to have outlived their usefulness?  Here are some questions church leadership might consider in making that decision. First, does it still fulfill the purpose for which it was desig...

As I listen to conversations about the challenges that established churches are facing, I am reminded of the quote, “We need more churches but not like the ones we have now.”     The point of this statement is that there are people groups who are not going to be reached by the traditional, established churches.  The may be due to the context, the types of ministries offered, or lack of clarity about vision and purpose. Even with many churches in decline and some even closing, I believe that there is a place for the creation of new faith communities. When I worked with a denominational group, we talked about three types of church starts:  upstarts, restarts, and new starts.  None of these is easy. An  “upstart” is a euphemism for a church split.  In the changing denominational landscape of recent years, we have seen a lot of these. I was part of a group that was just days away from launching an upstart.  What stopped ...

In his book The New Leadership Literacies , Bob Johansen tells the story of American railroads in the 19 th century.  Telegraph companies came to the railroad owners--ambitious people we often refer to as “robber barons” --and asked if they could string telegraph wires along the tracks.  The railroad people thought this would help them keep up with their trains and agreed.  If they had been able to “see beyond the edges” of their business, they could have done this themselves and controlled wired communications.  They could have become AT&T!  Why did they miss this opportunity?   Johansen writes: “They missed it because they loved trains too much.  Also, their centralized organizational structure made it hard to see to the edges of their own businesses.  Shape-shifting organizations will make this much easier, since there is no center and they grow from the edges.” I won’t take the time here to discuss “shape-shifting organi...

When you plan a vacation, your tendency is to start thinking about what it will be like.   You think about the places you will visit, the food you will eat, the experiences you will have with family and friends.   Although reality may differ from what you imagine, your vision of the vacation gives you purpose and enthusiasm as you plan. Churches need a vision to have direction and purpose.  The terms “mission’ and “vision” are often used interchangeably, but I differentiate between the two.  Mission is the reason for your existence as a congregation.  If you embrace a missional theology, your mission is the missio Dei, the mission of God in this world.  God is a sending God who sends God’s people into the world to do God’s work.  On the other hand, vision is what you hope to become.  Throughout their struggles, the priests and prophets held out several visions to the Hebrew people--to dwell in the Promised land, to be res...

I have only watched one episode of the new version of the MacGyver TV series, but the idea seems to be the same:  a really creative guy encounters a problem, looks around to see what resources are available, and then comes up with a solution. We can learn from this approach.  When we consider a new challenge, we often think in terms of what we lack rather than what we already have.  As a church considers what God has called it to do, another basic step is to consider what has God already gifted us with. In Farming Church , my colleague Mark Tidsworth writes: “One, God has already given us many gifts for mission-congruent ministry. So, we believe God is active in everything we do as a congregation. Therefore, we do what we are able to do, giving God the glory for the gifts and capacity which allows us to do so. Two, God often provides what we need when we step into the void, when we attempt greater things for God.” (p. 54) As you stop and...