Annual Meeting Day
26/01/14 04:48
People who have been around me know that I don’t put a lot of faith in conventional planning processes. It isn’t that I don’t believe in making plans, it is just that I think that most things that are labeled planning in the world of non profits are simply ways to have more meetings and wast time. For all of my career, various forms of strategic planning have been at work in the church. I was on a strategic planning task force in my college church and another in my seminary and I was trained as a church planner in strategic planning methods early in my career.
It is amazing that a process that was developed for the industrial world, adopted by the Rand Corporation during the Vietnam War and then filtered down to a variety of different organizations is still popular among churches. It is old theory. It didn’t work when it was new theory. People developed goals and strategies and benchmarks and then didn’t follow through. That has been the story since the beginnings of the strategic planning movement.
Yet is persists.
And I have suffered it again and agin in the church. After all it is not my role to tell the church what to do, it is my role to walk alongside the members of the church and enable them to lead - even when their leadership style is different than mine.
The truth is that I’m not much interested in planning. I’m more interested in producing.
Having said that, today is the day of the annual meeting of our congregation. I have a good 120 hours invested in the annual reports alone. I spend a lot of time doing page layout, choosing pictures, writing sidebar articles, printing, collating, and binding the reports. They are very important to me. I’d say that our annual reports are among the most attractive annual reports of any organization regardless of its size. They are important to me because they constitute the permanent record of of our life together. Every once in a while there is a geek like me who comes along and actually reads old annual reports. I read a lot of them when I first became the pastor of this congregation. They had a lot to say about what kind of church this is.
And today, at our annual meeting, we will once again have discussions about our vision for the future. This is the 135th annual meeting of the congregation. We’d like to make sure that the 185th comes along. And we’d like to invest in some things of lasting value that might support the ministries of 50 years in the future.
2014 is the centennial year of one of the buildings that was home to our church. It is now occupied by Faith Temple Church of God in Christ, but it has been in continuous use as a church serving this community for a century. Our forebears had great vision and insight.
The church we now occupy is 55 years old. The people who envisioned, raised funds, and participated in building this church made some good decisions. They did a lot right. They created a beautiful building that is clearly capable of serving for more than a century. But we are past the half way mark of that 1st century and the time has come for us to invest in a legacy that has a similar life.
Being the geek that I am, I’ve been reading some reports from 40 years ago in preparation for the meeting. I haven’t made any startling discoveries, but it is clear that there are a lot of things that I recognize in the reports of 40 years ago.
40 years ago, they wrote: “There appears to be a general lack of interest in church activities including indifference of many members in attending church services on a regular basis.”
They complained that: “During church activities we tend to visit with people we know rather than becoming acquainted with strangers.”
Hmm . . . it might appear that some of the problems of 40 years ago haven't been completely solved in our time.
There are a lot of other similarities and difference in that report. There are many places where it reads as if it might have been written for the congregation today.
But there is one goal in the document that really caught my eye: “Among other goals, we should consider making young people a more responsive part of the membership and be more cognizant of the needs of the older members inasmuch as they make up a large percentage of our membership.”
In other words, they thought that youth should serve the elders and stay in their place. It is as old as the church itself. We want young people in the church and we want them to do things our way. We want youth, but we don’t want them to change anything.
There are several references to young couples in the report. Since I was a newlywed 40 years ago, I think I have some expertise on what interested young couples back then. The report missed the mark entirely. It suggested that young people should do the activities that appealed to their parents and grandparents.
Allowing leadership to emerge is never an easy process. Existing leaders tend to be jealous of their power and often are unwilling to share. Again, this has been the story of the church for generations.
As we face our annual meeting, it is my fervent prayer that we might adopt a different attitude toward youth, young adults and the transition of leaders. I pray that we allow emerging leaders the authority to make their own mistakes and to do things their own way. I pray that we might recognize that the new thing that God is doing in our midst is truly different from the way we’ve always done it. I pray that we will not give way to fear, but dare to proceed in faith.
Fifty or a hundred years from now, those who follow us won’t remember our fears. They will remember what we had the courage and faith to accomplish. May God grant us the faith to explore the new road ahead.
It is amazing that a process that was developed for the industrial world, adopted by the Rand Corporation during the Vietnam War and then filtered down to a variety of different organizations is still popular among churches. It is old theory. It didn’t work when it was new theory. People developed goals and strategies and benchmarks and then didn’t follow through. That has been the story since the beginnings of the strategic planning movement.
Yet is persists.
And I have suffered it again and agin in the church. After all it is not my role to tell the church what to do, it is my role to walk alongside the members of the church and enable them to lead - even when their leadership style is different than mine.
The truth is that I’m not much interested in planning. I’m more interested in producing.
Having said that, today is the day of the annual meeting of our congregation. I have a good 120 hours invested in the annual reports alone. I spend a lot of time doing page layout, choosing pictures, writing sidebar articles, printing, collating, and binding the reports. They are very important to me. I’d say that our annual reports are among the most attractive annual reports of any organization regardless of its size. They are important to me because they constitute the permanent record of of our life together. Every once in a while there is a geek like me who comes along and actually reads old annual reports. I read a lot of them when I first became the pastor of this congregation. They had a lot to say about what kind of church this is.
And today, at our annual meeting, we will once again have discussions about our vision for the future. This is the 135th annual meeting of the congregation. We’d like to make sure that the 185th comes along. And we’d like to invest in some things of lasting value that might support the ministries of 50 years in the future.
2014 is the centennial year of one of the buildings that was home to our church. It is now occupied by Faith Temple Church of God in Christ, but it has been in continuous use as a church serving this community for a century. Our forebears had great vision and insight.
The church we now occupy is 55 years old. The people who envisioned, raised funds, and participated in building this church made some good decisions. They did a lot right. They created a beautiful building that is clearly capable of serving for more than a century. But we are past the half way mark of that 1st century and the time has come for us to invest in a legacy that has a similar life.
Being the geek that I am, I’ve been reading some reports from 40 years ago in preparation for the meeting. I haven’t made any startling discoveries, but it is clear that there are a lot of things that I recognize in the reports of 40 years ago.
40 years ago, they wrote: “There appears to be a general lack of interest in church activities including indifference of many members in attending church services on a regular basis.”
They complained that: “During church activities we tend to visit with people we know rather than becoming acquainted with strangers.”
Hmm . . . it might appear that some of the problems of 40 years ago haven't been completely solved in our time.
There are a lot of other similarities and difference in that report. There are many places where it reads as if it might have been written for the congregation today.
But there is one goal in the document that really caught my eye: “Among other goals, we should consider making young people a more responsive part of the membership and be more cognizant of the needs of the older members inasmuch as they make up a large percentage of our membership.”
In other words, they thought that youth should serve the elders and stay in their place. It is as old as the church itself. We want young people in the church and we want them to do things our way. We want youth, but we don’t want them to change anything.
There are several references to young couples in the report. Since I was a newlywed 40 years ago, I think I have some expertise on what interested young couples back then. The report missed the mark entirely. It suggested that young people should do the activities that appealed to their parents and grandparents.
Allowing leadership to emerge is never an easy process. Existing leaders tend to be jealous of their power and often are unwilling to share. Again, this has been the story of the church for generations.
As we face our annual meeting, it is my fervent prayer that we might adopt a different attitude toward youth, young adults and the transition of leaders. I pray that we allow emerging leaders the authority to make their own mistakes and to do things their own way. I pray that we might recognize that the new thing that God is doing in our midst is truly different from the way we’ve always done it. I pray that we will not give way to fear, but dare to proceed in faith.
Fifty or a hundred years from now, those who follow us won’t remember our fears. They will remember what we had the courage and faith to accomplish. May God grant us the faith to explore the new road ahead.