Mysteries to be Embraced:
“Flourishing Congregations”
What does a flourishing congregation look like? What are the marks of a congregation that is thriving and alive?
To 176 people who gathered last March in Indianapolis, a flourishing congregation is one that is welcoming and deliberate about forming lasting relationships. It’s open to new ideas and innovative change. It’s willing to take risks and focuses on the positive. It’s intentional about building bridges with its members, its neighbors, and others, even across the globe.
On and on and on. Sixteen attributes in all, collectively bubbling up from a group of Indiana pastors and lay leaders in two long and productive days of work. Sponsored by the Indianapolis Center for Congregations, the session, Flourishing Congregations: Moving from Dreams to Reality, used the processes of Appreciative Inquiry, Asset Mapping and World Café to help congregational leaders learn about and experience the power of positive change, says Susan Weber, the center’s director of evaluation and congregational learning and an SPE peer learning facilitator.
Flourishing Congregations are...
This is the list that 176 Indiana pastors and lay leaders came up with last March, at Flourishing Congregations: Moving from Dreams to Reality, a conference sponsored by the Indianapolis Center for Congregations. |
“Flourishing Congregations was about helping people become aware of a new way of talking and thinking about congregations,” she says. “More than just learning about processes such as Appreciative Inquiry or World Café, it was about changing our mindset about how we image, talk about, and feel about our congregations. It was about learning to see congregations not as problems to be solved, but as mysteries to be embraced.”
That vision of congregations as a “mystery to be embraced” is at its heart a theological and ecclesiological statement, a view of church that draws from a theology of hope, says Weber. Unfortunately, while hope is a prominent part of all Christian theology and faith, it is too rarely in evidence in the church’s practical theology, in the actual day to day life of most congregations, Weber says.
“In congregational life, it’s usually the opposite of hope,” she says. “Instead, we’re entangled in such things as long meetings to balance budgets, resolve staff conflicts, restore aging facilities, or to plan the next strategic plan. Everything becomes a downward spiral of negative energy. All of these activities while part of the reality of congregational life can easily diminish the energy, passion, and imagination of congregational leadership.
In last summer’s SPE Forum and in other gatherings, SPE project directors and participants learned about and participated in such processes as World Café and Appreciative Inquiry. In the Flourishing Congregations meeting, these and other processes were used together to help pastors and other leaders rethink and re-imagine congregational life.
The morning was spent in Appreciative Inquiry, with participants pairing off for one-on-one interviews, asking each other typical AI questions such as “What gives life in your congregation when it functions at its best?” and “Why did you choose your congregation as a spiritual home?” It was a time to hear and share stories about the best moments and times when participants felt a deep sense of belonging in congregational life. Later, the group engaged in a World Café process as a way of “debriefing” those earlier one-on-one conversations and distilling the essence of what makes for a flourishing congregation.
“Somehow, intentionally or unintentionally, it all worked,” says Weber. “Those 16 attributes bubbled up from the entire group. It represents the conclusion of one group of strangers from diverse faith backgrounds. Together, they learned what it means to be a flourishing congregation.”
The 16 traits that participants came up with are not intended to be the definitive list, says Weber. Indeed, no such list is possible. Every gathering, every group of pastors will likely come up with different lists. Afterward, each congregational team spent time discussing the traits and developing their own action plan for application back home.
“We’re not assuming this list will be the same every time we do a Flourishing Congregations session,” says Weber. “We’re curious how it will change with different groups. Over time, we are curious how a positive mindset can influence and change attitudes, behaviors, and practices in a congregation.”
Almost as soon as the Flourishing Congregations meeting ended, Weber’s office began receiving phone calls from participants wanting to know more about using Appreciative Inquiry, Asset Mapping, and World Café in their own congregations. Many have since done just that, using the processes to help evaluate the effectiveness of church ministries, expedite fundraising for a new building, and to encourage intergenerational dialogue. One congregation, for example, conducted a “Giving Café” to help design a capital campaign while another congregation conducted a World Café to evaluate the Rite of Christian Initiation (RCIA).
“The important thing about these processes is that they work best with large groups of people,” says Weber. “Good group process asserts that every person’s participation and contribution is valued and honored. That is essential here.”
Last spring’s session was so successful that two more have been planned for 2008, one in Ft. Wayne on April 30 and another, Sept. 24, in Evansville. In addition, the Center is preparing an instructional DVD and workbook on AI, World Café and Asset Mapping, based on the meeting last spring.
Ultimately, Weber says, all these processes and techniques are ways to help congregations ask themselves “What is God’s plan for our congregation?”
“Rather than questions like ‘What do we want for our congregation? What is our vision?’ we are moving toward questions like ‘What is God’s vision? What is God calling us to do?,’” says Weber. “If your congregation was fulfilling all its promises to God and the community what would be happening?”
When a congregation allows itself to be open to those kinds of questions and uses a participative process that allows all members to respond appropriately and collectively, what they are really doing, says Weber, is completely letting go and listening to and honoring the will of God.
“Imagine what great things can happen to a faith community when they engage in this kind of deep listening,” she says.
