Postdenominationalism: part deux

My previous post asking whether it is the end of denominations generated a fair bit of conversation — on facebook especially. This post borrows and builds from there:

I believe that an accountable connection within a family of congregations is more desirable than the complete isolation of the local church. Those who follow the independent, unaffiliated congregational path find they face a microcosm of denominational dynamics just as soon as they begin multiple worship services, plant daughter congregations, try to train people for ministry, attempt to publish something or engage in missionary activity. Figuring out how to be church beyond a single worship service of a small group of people does not go away just because a church leader wants to function independently.

What we know about associational systems (i.e. a system that requires some sort of affiliation for it to work) is this–we like to form connections and give sacrificially to the bottom line of the whole when we feel like we are part of a movement–especially as it begins and if we are part of the formation.

The bad news: we are long past the formation stage in almost every denomination. Even as we form new configurations of being church together and build great big church buildings up the street from long-time middle-sized ones, old congregations and old denominations are dying at an incredible rate of wasted resource.

The good news: This way of doing church might be broken enough that we may be at the beginning of a possibility for new and more sustainable formation if leaders have a tenacity born from moral conviction, and if enough grace remains to reclaim and reform a constituency who believes in what they are doing.

Assuming there is metanoia (repentance) and a real desire to transform, here are the steps I have experienced as working:
• Re-orient the work of the denomination/region/institutions into being a resource to congregations and congregational leaders rather than entities that extract resources from congregations. Re-orienting in this way means determining what must be done and separating it from all the other things that are nice to do. Once it is determined what must be done, re-organization takes place accordingly. This is a painful surgery that tests the moral will of leaders and support of key constituents.

• Begin a system-wide study of what it means to engage in an apostle’s ministry. What are the functions, behaviors and strategies needed to care for the whole of the church and its work rather than just one’s desk in the department of their institution, or just their congregation? My experience is that very few denominational leaders and fewer pastors have read the letters of Paul, Peter or John from this point of view.

• Form a new covenant among institutions, congregations and leaders for the best practices of being in denominational life together. Those that want in ramp up to meet those mutually decided specifications, sign off on the covenant and begin participating in renewed denominational life. Time and resources flow in this new direction accordingly. Those who want out leave. Those who want in without responsibility are no longer allowed to influence the course of events.

This is a four-year or longer process that drains the bank account of goodwill, while also developing a new level of trust among those committed to something larger than themselves and their congregation or institution they represent. Many leaders do not have the sustained attention span for this. Even fewer boards do. And there is always the problem of whether the constituency that has already abandoned the formal denominational structure will actually let the leaders do this.

I’ve been involved in a couple of these that are making it through to the other side. Hopefully their experiences can help to begin creating momentum where people will choose this painful yet life-giving process rather than trying to resurrect something out of an increasingly unalterable crisis.

By the way, we need only look to the experience of the PC USA, the ELCA, Mennonite Church Canada and the Episcopalians in the last two years to see how important this conversation is becoming.

-mark l vincent

The Giving Project Still Gives

From 1995 until 2000, the then General Conference Mennonite Church and Mennonite Church in both Canada and the U.S. put more than $500,000 into The Giving Project, an attempt to identify what Christians believe about earning and using money, and how those beliefs could be embedded within congregational life. Michele Hershberger, now chair of the Bible and Ministry Division at Hesston College, joined me as the associate project director in 1996.

Along the way, others joined in the effort: Mennonite Brethren Foundation, The Brethren in Christ, and The United Church of Canada.

Even more denominations asked us to come and describe what we were learning. Between Michele Hershberger and myself, we addressed audiences among Presbyterians in Canada, American Baptists, The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, The Episcopal Church, Grace Communion International, Metropolitan Community Churches, The Christian and Missionary Alliance, The Assemblies of God, Independent, Christian Reformed and Reformed Churches of America, Conservative Mennonite and a variety of inter-denominational and even post-Christian gatherings. We also travelled to Venezuela, Australia, Brazil, Sicily, France and England to present to international gatherings that took the material to even more places. All this was in addition to the hundreds of Mennonite and General Conference Mennonite congregations that invited us to preach, present workshops, or who participated in our annual Giving Project Gatherings. We had access to all these audiences without pressure to change the message.

The Giving Project was so successful among the original sponsoring bodies and their congregations that the five year initiative was expanded to seven, and the materials Michele and I prepared went through several printings and translations. The extension needed to be shortened back to the original five years, however, due to the significant re-organization demanded by the merger when forming what is now Mennonite Church Canada and Mennonite Church USA. As we wrapped up the project, Michele Hershberger wrote of our key findings in the 2001 edition of Giving: growing joyful stewards in your congregation, the annual periodical of the Ecumenical Stewardship Center. They grew from our extensive focus groups, presentations and conferences conducted across Canada and the U.S.

• Wisdom with money and freedom with money are not the same thing, and both are called for in scripture. Together, they provide a creative tension for the life of the steward.
• People talk openly and freely about money. It is not a subject about which we are silent as so many claim. Instead, we are silent about what money means to us as we use it.
• Our life as a steward is first and foremost about receiving from God and responding back in worshipful generosity. Michele wrote, “Worship is the act where that interchange between God’s giving and our own is played out again and again.”
• Our connection to Jesus is the difference between philanthropy and stewardship.
• The ability to live as a steward is made much more possible when one is committed to a faith community.
• We hold to myths about money that prevent us from seeing just how complex is the life of the steward, and thereby prevent us from choosing a more faithful course of action.

A finding we should have included in Michele’s list is that percentage-based money management is a key to living out what Christians believe about earning and using money. This is true of the household and it is true of the household of faith. The intention to return one’s firstfruits as a first and consistent act forces one to save and manage resources so that the firstfruits might be given at all. This promotes fiscal solvency for the family, the church family, and even the denominational institution. Such an approach develops and reinforces practices of generosity in a way no other educational activity can induce.

Some of what The Giving Project developed or partnered to create continues to have a legacy within Mennonite Church Canada and the United States. Mennonite Foundation Canada, in particular, has maintained a significant legacy. Their entire field personnel at the time attended the two weeks of consultant training offered via The Giving Project. Most of these persons remain on Mennonite Foundation Staff today, developing curriculum and offering educational programs used by a number of Canadian denominations.

Tellingly, at the 2009 North American Stewardship Conference held in Toronto, these efforts among Mennonites were lauded by several speakers as having influenced their own efforts, including a recent, ground-breaking D.Min. dissertation by Barbara Fullerton, a United Church of Canada staffer and one of our trainees, on how congregations are able to effectively teach generosity. It is worth noting that many of her findings reinforced much of what she had heard during her own Giving Project consultant’s training nine years earlier.

Here are some other efforts where the material or persons connected to The Giving Project have brought significant influence in the Mennonite world:

• The extension of Lynn Miller’s firstfruits teachings beyond the original five year span, and the development of his work into a video curriculum.
• The itinerant stewardship ministry of Dorothy and Orville Shank that concluded in the late 1990’s.
• The development of a Stewardship Education Department and Stewardship University by Mennonite Mutual Aid.
• Mennonite Mutual Aid’s designation as the stewardship agency of Mennonite Church USA.
• Mennonite Foundation’s (U.S.) continued promotion of developing a Money Autobiography as an advising tool.
• The development of Design Group International™, the organizational development firm to which I am connected, making use of the consultative model developed by The Giving Project.

Many of the benefits in the years during and since are being reaped well beyond the sight of most Mennonites. Here are some examples of what The Giving Project also helped to influence:

 

• The Offering as Worship: songs and related worship and study materials by Ken Medema and myself, breathing life into the offering as an act of worship. This collection has now grown to three volumes. They can be ordered at http://www.kenmedema.com.
• Editorial services for Giving the annual periodical of the Ecumenical Stewardship Center. I was privileged to edit eight of the first eleven annual issues. Several former Giving Project consultants also contributed articles over the years.
• The movement of Grace Communion International (formerly the Worldwide Church of God) from central control of all finances to voluntary contributions from its congregations.
• Commissioned curriculum development for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, American Baptists and Christian and Missionary Alliance. The Evangelical Lutheran Church makes use of the materials for its pastors serving in their first congregations.
• My Ph.D. dissertation on measuring and managing the size of a denomination’s economy for its mission. Two U.S. and one Canadian denomination provided data to prove it could be done.
• The development of The Steward Leaders Game, a simulation training event that teaches congregational leaders how to more effectively manage a congregation’s finances. Learn more about this one at www.stewardleader.com.

As much as The Giving Project accomplished in its heyday, and as much influence as it bears since, Christian people and their congregations remain faced with the enormous monsters of fear and anxiety when it comes to money. Much more remains to be done to help us turn to God with hands raised in worship–whether in plenty or in want–whereby we can both give and receive. We need to do this not just as households, but as congregations and institutions, indeed our whole movement of Anabaptist faith.

-mark l vincent