choosing to experilearn
For the practical application of Full Week Faith, congregations should consider their relative health, the working relationship among paid staff and between staff and lay leaders, and the laity’s willingness to be open to an experiment of this scale in their congregational life. These congregations will have some shared core qualities. Internal discernment and/or conversations with professional colleagues or UUA regional staff may help assess a congregation’s tolerance for change and the extent to which the enthusiasm for trying something new may counterbalance any resistance that inevitably accompanies an experiment of this scale. In short, how might you know if your congregation might be part of the Unitarian Universalist division of God’s department of research and development?
The bullet points below represent a (not exhaustive) list of some of the core qualities a congregation might exhibit or cultivate before undertaking a significant shift in ministry:
shared qualities for experilearning congregations
· Staff regularly engages in spiritual practice together, has a current staff covenant, and intentionally embraces collaborative practices.
· Religious professionals exhibit a commitment to continuing education and at least some exposure to the ideas around Faith Formation 2020, and other 21st century church theory.
· The congregation values spiritual depth, healthy governance and communication practices.
· Lay leaders exhibit commitment to attending leadership schools, General Assembly, or other District learning and leadership opportunities.
· There is a sense of partnership and shared leadership between the religious professionals and lay leaders.
· The congregation has at least a website and Facebook page, and safe congregations policies that extend congregational accountability in virtual as well as physical space.
· There have been positive experiences of intentional multigenerational worship.
return on community vs. return on investment
Every good experiment has articulated goals and a way to assess and evaluate its relative success. If ‘growth’ is one desired outcome in undertaking an experilearn, congregations should think carefully about how to assess and evaluate measures of growth in spiritual depth, or growth in congregational and associational connections, and not just think about growth in terms of attendance numbers. Thinking about the results the congregation hopes to see in the short run, as well as mid-term and long-term goals, will help them craft good metrics to measure the impact of their work. In her book, Holy Clarity, Sarah Drummand quotes evaluation experts warning, “Do not assume that because your work is urgent or even sacred that you do not need to provide evidence of competence or effectiveness. You do.”[1] It may be harder to develop tools to measure a strong return on community, as opposed to a fiduciary return on investment, but it is not impossible. If a shift to a Full Week Faith paradigm is to be effective, we will need to have barometers to measure our expectations and how nearly we are achieving what we hope to do. Both quantitative and qualitative measures matter. Collect the data you can count – the number of congregants attending worship or family potluck and homework help nights. Also account for the stories. Talk with people about how they are carrying our faith with them to work and school and the myriad other places life takes them. What from your ministry goes with them when they travel outside your church walls? What do they wish they had? These, also, are valuable data points.
a well grounded partnership
Congregations considering shifting their faith formation ministries away from the Sunday School only model towards a Full Week Faith, should provide some trainings on systems theory with their lay leadership to help them recognize unhealthy responses that sometimes accompany change. Remember that when people resist change, it is actually loss that they are grieving, and that loss may be real or perceived. There are a couple strategies that can help religious professionals and lay partners prepare for and perhaps head off some of that resistance.
Understand how innovation grows in human systems. Sociologist Everett Rogers developed a model to describe how innovation is adopted. The model has been used to describe all kinds of cultural shifts and adaptations in a variety of fields. It has more recently been adapted by Patrick Scriven to describe how innovations are best adopted in congregational settings.[2] The model suggests that significant innovations in congregational life require the collaborative support and promotion of both lay and clerical leadership.
Briefly described, Rogers’ description of the diffusion of innovation identifies a small percent of the population as innovators – he puts this at about 2½% of the population. Innovators have the big, bright, fresh, out of the box ideas – think of the first people to imagine phones you could actually walk or drive around with.
The next group is made up of early adopters – people who see the bright new shiny idea and decide they want in! Early Adopters account for about 13½% of a sample group. These are the folks who walked around with mobile phones the size of shoe boxes, back in the day. Their early support of the innovation creates excitement for it and directs resources toward it that makes the innovation stronger and better.
Rogers describes the large middle group broadly as early majority and late majority adopters; those who to a varying degree hang back and jump on the bandwagon after a sufficient number of others have proven it is safe to jump. Rogers named the final group ‘laggards,’ which is not a name I would use in a faith setting. Despite the somewhat negative connotation, the model merely suggests that there will be some number in any population that does not adopt the innovation. There will always be those holdouts who will proudly say they won’t have a computer in their house, or they will never get a cell phone. There will always be some people who will not adopt whatever innovation is presented, and yet they still remain part of our communities. We just have to call them on their landline or knock on the door to say hello.
-------------------------------------------------------------
[1]. Marcia Festen and Marianne Philbin, Level Best (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007), quoted in Sarah B. Drummand Holy Clarity (Herndon: Alban Institute, 2009), 4.
[2]. Patrick Scriven, “The Church Needs More Innovative Pastors Like MTV Needs More Twerking*,” The News Blog of the Pacific Northwest Conference of The United Methodist Church, Pacific Northwest Conference, August 28, 2013, http://www.pnwumc.org/news/the-church-needs-more-innovative-pastors-like-mtv-needs-more-twerking/.
For the practical application of Full Week Faith, congregations should consider their relative health, the working relationship among paid staff and between staff and lay leaders, and the laity’s willingness to be open to an experiment of this scale in their congregational life. These congregations will have some shared core qualities. Internal discernment and/or conversations with professional colleagues or UUA regional staff may help assess a congregation’s tolerance for change and the extent to which the enthusiasm for trying something new may counterbalance any resistance that inevitably accompanies an experiment of this scale. In short, how might you know if your congregation might be part of the Unitarian Universalist division of God’s department of research and development?
The bullet points below represent a (not exhaustive) list of some of the core qualities a congregation might exhibit or cultivate before undertaking a significant shift in ministry:
shared qualities for experilearning congregations
· Staff regularly engages in spiritual practice together, has a current staff covenant, and intentionally embraces collaborative practices.
· Religious professionals exhibit a commitment to continuing education and at least some exposure to the ideas around Faith Formation 2020, and other 21st century church theory.
· The congregation values spiritual depth, healthy governance and communication practices.
· Lay leaders exhibit commitment to attending leadership schools, General Assembly, or other District learning and leadership opportunities.
· There is a sense of partnership and shared leadership between the religious professionals and lay leaders.
· The congregation has at least a website and Facebook page, and safe congregations policies that extend congregational accountability in virtual as well as physical space.
· There have been positive experiences of intentional multigenerational worship.
return on community vs. return on investment
Every good experiment has articulated goals and a way to assess and evaluate its relative success. If ‘growth’ is one desired outcome in undertaking an experilearn, congregations should think carefully about how to assess and evaluate measures of growth in spiritual depth, or growth in congregational and associational connections, and not just think about growth in terms of attendance numbers. Thinking about the results the congregation hopes to see in the short run, as well as mid-term and long-term goals, will help them craft good metrics to measure the impact of their work. In her book, Holy Clarity, Sarah Drummand quotes evaluation experts warning, “Do not assume that because your work is urgent or even sacred that you do not need to provide evidence of competence or effectiveness. You do.”[1] It may be harder to develop tools to measure a strong return on community, as opposed to a fiduciary return on investment, but it is not impossible. If a shift to a Full Week Faith paradigm is to be effective, we will need to have barometers to measure our expectations and how nearly we are achieving what we hope to do. Both quantitative and qualitative measures matter. Collect the data you can count – the number of congregants attending worship or family potluck and homework help nights. Also account for the stories. Talk with people about how they are carrying our faith with them to work and school and the myriad other places life takes them. What from your ministry goes with them when they travel outside your church walls? What do they wish they had? These, also, are valuable data points.
a well grounded partnership
Congregations considering shifting their faith formation ministries away from the Sunday School only model towards a Full Week Faith, should provide some trainings on systems theory with their lay leadership to help them recognize unhealthy responses that sometimes accompany change. Remember that when people resist change, it is actually loss that they are grieving, and that loss may be real or perceived. There are a couple strategies that can help religious professionals and lay partners prepare for and perhaps head off some of that resistance.
Understand how innovation grows in human systems. Sociologist Everett Rogers developed a model to describe how innovation is adopted. The model has been used to describe all kinds of cultural shifts and adaptations in a variety of fields. It has more recently been adapted by Patrick Scriven to describe how innovations are best adopted in congregational settings.[2] The model suggests that significant innovations in congregational life require the collaborative support and promotion of both lay and clerical leadership.
Briefly described, Rogers’ description of the diffusion of innovation identifies a small percent of the population as innovators – he puts this at about 2½% of the population. Innovators have the big, bright, fresh, out of the box ideas – think of the first people to imagine phones you could actually walk or drive around with.
The next group is made up of early adopters – people who see the bright new shiny idea and decide they want in! Early Adopters account for about 13½% of a sample group. These are the folks who walked around with mobile phones the size of shoe boxes, back in the day. Their early support of the innovation creates excitement for it and directs resources toward it that makes the innovation stronger and better.
Rogers describes the large middle group broadly as early majority and late majority adopters; those who to a varying degree hang back and jump on the bandwagon after a sufficient number of others have proven it is safe to jump. Rogers named the final group ‘laggards,’ which is not a name I would use in a faith setting. Despite the somewhat negative connotation, the model merely suggests that there will be some number in any population that does not adopt the innovation. There will always be those holdouts who will proudly say they won’t have a computer in their house, or they will never get a cell phone. There will always be some people who will not adopt whatever innovation is presented, and yet they still remain part of our communities. We just have to call them on their landline or knock on the door to say hello.
-------------------------------------------------------------
[1]. Marcia Festen and Marianne Philbin, Level Best (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2007), quoted in Sarah B. Drummand Holy Clarity (Herndon: Alban Institute, 2009), 4.
[2]. Patrick Scriven, “The Church Needs More Innovative Pastors Like MTV Needs More Twerking*,” The News Blog of the Pacific Northwest Conference of The United Methodist Church, Pacific Northwest Conference, August 28, 2013, http://www.pnwumc.org/news/the-church-needs-more-innovative-pastors-like-mtv-needs-more-twerking/.
This particular illustration has been specifically adapted to illustrate how innovations take hold in congregations. While it has not been subjected to the rigorous testing of Rogers’ original model, it suggests that innovation is more likely to thrive when it is not seen as being imported to the system by the minister or other religious professional. When the innovators are already part of the church family, the innovation is more likely to be taken up by their close friend and family networks within the congregation. The religious professionals in the building have an important role to play in identifying the innovators and partnering with them to shape appropriate experiments, and also in lending their enthusiasm and authority in support of the innovation. Religious professionals can encourage early majority adopters to get on board. Congregational innovations like a shift in paradigm to a Full Week Faith model require the early selection of innovative partners who can craft a congregationally specific model with the highest chance of success. Religious professionals seeking to make change in congregational ministries would do well to know who their innovators and early adopters might be before they bring ideas to a wider congregational audience.
strategic disappointment
Together with lay partners, imagine what would be essential to your congregation’s ministry of faith formation if you were creating it from scratch today. What is it that speaks to and serves your church’s families best today? What do they most wish they had that you don’t presently offer? What seems to be a fading ministry, or a habit born of long ago generations? The congregation will need to let go of some of what is currently expected on Sundays in order to free up time, energy and resources to support faith formation on the other six days of the week. What you keep should align with your church’s mission and help you answer the Who are we? and What is our purpose? questions.
Keep the baby, and the tub, even if you do end up tossing out some of the bath water. Shifting the centrality of Sunday School in your faith formation ministry does not mean eliminating Sunday School and religious education classes altogether. It may mean holding 2 Sunday School sessions a month instead of 4. It may mean trying Wednesday evening faith formation potlucks and Religious Education. It may mean offering some curriculum in a hybrid model using both face-to-face and online platforms. Whatever it might look like, someone will undoubtedly hear “You are getting rid of something I love(d).”
Whatever gets decided about which pieces of your current ministry will be retired with grace and gratitude to make room for something new, know that someone will notice, and feelings may be hurt. The Rev. Tandi Rogers, of our UUA’s office of Growth Strategies recounts her time serving as Interim Director for the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministries. She knew when she took the job that she could not continue to run all of the programs the office ran in a single year and have time and space to do the Interim work of preparing the office for new directions and new leadership. She made some decisions about what she would not do that year, and consulted with her supervisor, one of our UUA’s vice presidents, to learn who would be most deeply upset by her decisions. She then made personal calls to each one of those stakeholders, and very forthrightly told them, “I have made a decision to strategically disappoint you this year.” She laid out her well- discerned reasons for not running their beloved program. She acknowledged their likely disappointment and sense of loss. She gave them space to share with her how meaningful those programs had been to them personally and grieve what they would miss. She invited them to remain connected to see what would come of the new directions.
Know who it is in your congregation who will likely be most upset by the loss of long-held traditions and expectations. A personal conversation like Rev. Tandi’s “strategic disappointment” calls could go a long way to defusing any behind the scenes resistance to the change. More importantly, it affirms the congregation’s commitment to travel together, leaving nobody behind, even in times when things are changing. It opens space for pastoral response to sadness and uncertainty and opens possibilities for unexpected partnerships.
strategic disappointment
Together with lay partners, imagine what would be essential to your congregation’s ministry of faith formation if you were creating it from scratch today. What is it that speaks to and serves your church’s families best today? What do they most wish they had that you don’t presently offer? What seems to be a fading ministry, or a habit born of long ago generations? The congregation will need to let go of some of what is currently expected on Sundays in order to free up time, energy and resources to support faith formation on the other six days of the week. What you keep should align with your church’s mission and help you answer the Who are we? and What is our purpose? questions.
Keep the baby, and the tub, even if you do end up tossing out some of the bath water. Shifting the centrality of Sunday School in your faith formation ministry does not mean eliminating Sunday School and religious education classes altogether. It may mean holding 2 Sunday School sessions a month instead of 4. It may mean trying Wednesday evening faith formation potlucks and Religious Education. It may mean offering some curriculum in a hybrid model using both face-to-face and online platforms. Whatever it might look like, someone will undoubtedly hear “You are getting rid of something I love(d).”
Whatever gets decided about which pieces of your current ministry will be retired with grace and gratitude to make room for something new, know that someone will notice, and feelings may be hurt. The Rev. Tandi Rogers, of our UUA’s office of Growth Strategies recounts her time serving as Interim Director for the Office of Youth and Young Adult Ministries. She knew when she took the job that she could not continue to run all of the programs the office ran in a single year and have time and space to do the Interim work of preparing the office for new directions and new leadership. She made some decisions about what she would not do that year, and consulted with her supervisor, one of our UUA’s vice presidents, to learn who would be most deeply upset by her decisions. She then made personal calls to each one of those stakeholders, and very forthrightly told them, “I have made a decision to strategically disappoint you this year.” She laid out her well- discerned reasons for not running their beloved program. She acknowledged their likely disappointment and sense of loss. She gave them space to share with her how meaningful those programs had been to them personally and grieve what they would miss. She invited them to remain connected to see what would come of the new directions.
Know who it is in your congregation who will likely be most upset by the loss of long-held traditions and expectations. A personal conversation like Rev. Tandi’s “strategic disappointment” calls could go a long way to defusing any behind the scenes resistance to the change. More importantly, it affirms the congregation’s commitment to travel together, leaving nobody behind, even in times when things are changing. It opens space for pastoral response to sadness and uncertainty and opens possibilities for unexpected partnerships.