SPE Program Spotlight
SHAPE Helps Church of God Pastors Keep “First Things First”
At age 63, after 40 years as a pastor, it would have been easy for the Rev. Kendall Hendrickson to just let it go. Proud of the newly remodeled and expanded fellowship hall at Donica Memorial Church of God, his board wanted to restrict its use only to official church functions. Under their proposal, no one outside the church would be able to use the hall.
But Hendrickson thought the suggested policy was wrong, and he told them so. Located in rural southern Indiana, seven miles from Bedford, the nearest town, the church and fellowship hall were the only public meeting space for miles around. The new building, Hendrickson argued, would be a great place to hold family reunions or training and classes by the local emergency management authority or other organizations.
God had given them this beautiful new facility, out in the middle of nowhere, Hendrickson told the board. The church needed to open it and share it with the community, he said. Because of Hendrickson’s objections, the board held off on the policy, agreeing to postpone a vote until the next meeting. But the next month, and the next, and the next, the same scene was repeated, with Hendrickson making the same objections all over again until, finally, the board voted down the policy.
“I just said ‘You can’t do this,’” says Hendrickson. “I knew it would have been wrong to adopt the policy, and I was determined not to let them make the wrong decision.”
A self-described introvert, quiet and shy, not easily given to confrontation, Hendrickson says he probably would have let the whole matter slide a few years ago. He would have objected at that first meeting, he says, but after that, he would have stepped out of the board’s way.
What made the difference, he says, was SHAPE—Sustaining Health and Pastoral Excellence, the Sustaining Pastoral Excellence initiative of the Church of God (Anderson). Before going through SHAPE—a three-year program of peer group meetings, coaching, and life and ministry planning—Hendrickson says he “pastored by the seat of my pants,” taking matters as they came along, day by day, crisis by crisis. But now, after SHAPE, he’s more focused on what’s important in ministry, more willing to speak up and to lead.
One rural church pastor, prodding his congregation to “do the right thing,” Hendrickson’s story may not look like a big deal in the overall life of the church, says the Rev. Arthur Kelly, coordinator of SHAPE. But it’s a small and powerful sign of a broader cultural transformation that is underway throughout the Church of God (Anderson), says Kelly.
Through SHAPE, pastors are learning that excellence is not about “doing” but about “being,” says Kelly. It’s not about being consumed by the myriad tasks of pastoral ministry, but focusing instead on being a pastor with a strong sense of mission and a willingness to do what it takes to be faithful to that mission, says Kelly. It’s about being primarily focused not on the congregation and its needs and wants, but on God.
“That’s very powerful, to say to a pastor, ‘Your primary responsibility is your relationship to God,’” says Kelly. “’Your primary responsibility is to grow in that relationship, to keep your priorities focused in that way and to not let the day-to-day of congregational life drive you to the extent that you are not keeping first things first.’”
To date, 120 pastors have been through SHAPE, along with 51 pastors who were trained and served as peer group coaches. The program started in three regions of the country and has since expanded to six: Florida, Tennessee, the Midwest (Indiana, Illinois, Ohio, and Michigan), Oklahoma/Kansas, the Northwest (Oregon, Washington and Idaho), and northern California. In the program, small groups of pastors meet in monthly peer groups, under the guidance of trained coaches, and over time develop a Life and Ministry Plan, or LAMP, that identifies and addresses needed areas of growth and change in both their personal and pastoral life.
In general, Kelly says, SHAPE is intended to change the culture of ministry within the Church of God, moving pastors from autonomy to interdependency; from isolation to connection; from fragmentation to common direction, and from a crisis-driven to a broader missional orientation.
While such shifts would likely be a healthy development in all U.S. churches, the need is particularly acute in the Church of God, in part because of its unique history, according to Kelly. Considering itself a movement and not a denomination, the Church of God (Anderson) was founded in 1881 as part of the Holiness revival that was sweeping the nation. Rooted in the radical reformation and influenced by both Wesleyan pietism and the Anabaptist traditions, the church rejected any form of denominational hierarchy and formal creeds, emphasizing instead the leadership of the Holy Spirit.
As a result, the church has a congregational polity, with only a small national office, Church of God Ministries, Inc., and extremely strong local congregation autonomy. Nationwide, the church has 2,215 congregations, with a reported attendance of about 250,000. Worldwide, the movement has about 7,300 churches and more than 750,000 believers in 89 countries and territories.
Stressing the believer’s personal relationship with God through Christ and a deep distrust of any organizational authority, the movement’s initial emphasis on independence has inadvertently fostered a sometimes unhealthy hyper-autonomy, says Kelly. Contrary to an early emphasis on the connectedness of all believers, Church of God (Anderson) in many ways has become more like a loose-knit confederation of independent congregations.
“One of our primary goals with SHAPE was to address some of the harmful aspects of that extreme autonomy and independence, which most of our pastors were beginning to feel was not always a healthy thing,” he says. While all pastors experience isolation, that loneliness can often be more intense for Church of God pastors, Kelly contends. For many, there is often a lack of any sense of involvement in the larger life of the Church of God and a lack of common goals and direction.
For SHAPE, the challenge was to help foster this major cultural shift to connection, interdependence, common direction and mission, while remaining faithful to the church’s distinctive heritage as a movement.
“Even as we work to make this cultural shift, we feel strongly that our calling in the larger world of Christianity is to be a movement, to be open to wherever God might call us,” says Kelly.
So far, it looks like it’s working. Surveys and other feedback indicates that almost 100 percent of participating pastors say SHAPE has the potential to positively affect the culture of the Church of God movement and that they would recommend it to other pastors.
“Pastors are telling us that, yes, these are all fundamental cultural problems we have in the Church of God, and SHAPE is directly addressing them,” says Kelly. “Pastors are saying they are experiencing these changes and they are living them out in their lives and ministry.”
Hendrickson says he was first drawn to SHAPE because, after 40 years in ministry, he wanted to finish well and not get into a rut in ministry.
“I had read research that said the longer you’re in ministry, the lower your self-esteem becomes and I didn’t like that prospect,” he says. “The idea of sustaining pastoral excellence was something I thought would be good.”
Hendrickson confirms that being a Church of God pastor can be very isolating. Although Donica Memorial is in a county with three other Church of God congregations, he and the other pastors rarely see each other, meeting only once or twice a year. And while Hendrickson does have an associate pastor at Donica Memorial, they were each so busy, they rarely had time to talk. As result, being in a pastor peer group was extremely valuable, he says.
“I trusted this group with everything,” he says. “I could tell them everything about my life and my ministry.”
Working on his LAMP was also beneficial, Hendrickson says, helping him to figure out for the first time where he wanted to go in ministry and to identify and address needed areas of growth and improvement. One of those, of course, was the need to speak up.
“My coach said, ‘I’ve never told a pastor this before, but you need to talk more,’” Hendrickson says. “And I’m doing that. I’m talking more and speaking up more, trying to give the church better direction.”
As part of the LAMP process, Hendrickson developed his own personal mission statement—“connecting the world to Christ, and Christ to the world.” That statement, he says, helped him to realize what was at stake when his church board considered closing the new fellowship hall to outsiders.
The Rev. Trent Freed, minister of Christian education at Donica Memorial, also went through SHAPE—indeed, he and Hendrickson are the only pastor and associate pastor to go through the program.
Even though he serves in the same congregation with Hendrickson, Freed also felt that same sense of isolation. Though he has served on various statewide boards and committees, he had never been part of anything that cultivated deeper relationships with other colleagues. He wanted more than just casual connections with other pastors.
“I sensed that I needed other ministers around me who understood who I was and who understood the ups and downs of ministry,” Freed says.
Freed says SHAPE has helped him and Hendrickson work better together. They now make a more concerted effort to communicate and coordinate with each other about the church and its ministry.
“For both of us, SHAPE opened our eyes,” says Freed. “It helped me realize that we are both going through a similar journey and that we needed to talk more with one another and share our plans with one another.”
For more information, visit the SHAPE Web site.
