Church Leadership

Written by: Anonymous

Created: 01 June 2024

What is it like to be the part-time minister of a church that was filled with children and families fifty years ago, with two Sunday school sittings per Sunday, Mother’s Union and much more, but as COVID plunged us into new territory in 2020, had an average of 20 attendees on a Sunday?

Where do you start?

There’s a story of three decades of decline with lightness and deep shadows. The current worship comprises four hymns, four Bible readings, a ten-minute reflection and Holy Communion. There are the faithful who have remained well, faithful, and are an inspiring ‘treasured possession’, ‘oaks of righteousness’.

Yet, everything I pray will happen, with the eyes of faith and imagination, seems so fragile and experimental. Then one Sunday morning when ten masked people are allowed to gather at some point in the twilight of lockdowns, I hear myself confidently say through my mask, ‘A church re-grows through small steps, micro actions’. This sounded comforting and manageable to me, in the first weeks, which became months.

I’d already found a puppet and as we live-streamed the second service I’d ever taken as the ‘priest-in-charge’, with a phone and laptop, I did a very average ‘kidult talk’ (kid+adult) in front of the phone, to set a tone of hope.

I bravely believed that somehow, our God was going to begin a new chapter and that a small suburban church could be a bright light for the kingdom. My missionary childhood had given me a love for people, challenge, and confidence that the gospel can do unexpectedly creative things.

So throughout lockdowns, I rang people, dropped off little parcels of cake if it was their birthday, and newsletters. That’s right – the old parish newsletter came into it’s own and was read! It kept us together! It was emailed to most and printed and mailed to the non-techy elderly.

We used a zoom option where you could dial in from your landline! One lovely senior told me, ‘I’m in my dressing gown in my comfy chair, listening on speaker phone, but when I close my eyes, I’m there, in church!’

As lockdowns ended, my garden produced roses in amazing abundance, so I picked them, removed thorns, wrapped them in wet cotton wool and foil (yes, micro actions speak) and presented each returning person with a rose and ‘Welcome back to church!’ I had not met them in person, though I picked quite a few from their voices!

The following list in no particular order, gives a snapshot of the variety of ministries in a small church that’s kept us focussed, joyful and yes, hopeful, over the past three years:

• Ministry to ageing saints, as their lives end and they go Home. This has become a ministry I cherish, both with them and their families, many of whom have lost faith. The care of the dying and their funerals, have grown me. I hope I’ve also sown lots of seeds in family and friends or thrown compost on the soil of dry hearts.
• Ministry to very competent and mature people as they retire and are the core volunteers.
• Re-starting church morning teas by baking cakes, especially for each birthday!
• Ministry to a small number of new members who have joined our worshipping congregation, including parents and families, mainly from Asia, and their preschoolers, children and young people.
• The start of ministries to young people on Sunday.
• Ministry to grow people who are gifted to lead these groups.
• Ministry to grow young people’s faith practice, through being on appropriate rosters: Bible reading, tech desk, welcoming-sides person, helping cook sausages after church for a simple lunch.
• Ministry to make every Sunday service a time of spiritual refreshment, through song, the Scriptures and the Sacraments.
• Ministry through weddings and baptisms.
• Ministry to the church building and gardens, needing repairs and refreshing – so fundraising and hard yakka.
• Ministry to the local community through fortnightly iGen (intergenerational) ‘Play’ Group, loosely based on the ABC’s TV series, ‘Old People’s Home for Four year olds’.
• Ministry to university students as an honorary chaplain at a nearby University.
• Ministry to two local retirement villages.
• Ministry to colleagues through Deanery.
• Ministry to become financially viable.
• Ministry to grow a paid lay leader to begin local missional activities.
• Ministry to pray for and financially support a missionary family as they travel overseas.

Caroline is Priest in Charge of a Melbourne Parish (name changed due to pastoral sensitivity).

Written by: Stephen Hale

Created: 01 June 2023

Keeping Faith: How Christian Organisations can stay true to the way of Jesus
Stephen Judd, John Swinton, Kara Martin
Acorn Press, 2023
Reviewed by Stephen Hale

This recently published book is an excellent resource for any who lead or serve on the Board of a Christian not for profit organisation or entity. The book is only 140 pages, but it is remarkably comprehensive and covers most of the ground you would want it to cover.

We all know of the organisations that started off Christian and are now very distant from the founding vision. So how do we ensure that doesn’t happen again? And even if you want to remain Christian, what does that mean and how do you make it a reality. None of these are easy questions to answer and the authors offer a very healthy perspective on what this might mean. This is especially important in the Australian context where a surprisingly large percentage of children go to faith-based schools and much of the welfare that governments fund is delivered by faith based organisations.

If you’re a Board member at some point you will be dealing with most of the issues covered in the book. At some point you with have to appoint a CEO and that will have significant on-going implications for the values of the organisation and whether it can stay true to the way of Jesus. A good friend of mine had a key role in a large health organisation which had thousands of staff. She worked with the Board to ensure that there was annual training for all staff (most of whom were not church goers) to enable alignment between their values and their practices. The outcomes were remarkable.

I strongly commend this book. It should be read and studied by all Board members as well key staff teams. It is a very useful resource to think thorough the hard questions that will enable the organisation to stay true to the way of Jesus. The book is thoughtful and challenging but also remarkably practical.

Stephen Hale

Bishop Stephen Hale is the Acting Vicar of St Mark’s Camberwell and Chair of EFAC Australia and EFAC Global

Written by: Mark Simon

Created: 01 March 2023

National Church Life Survey

Many Anglican churches in Australia have participated in the NCLS (most recently undertaken in 2021). NCLS has 9 core qualities that measure church vitality: 1 alive and growing faith, 2 vital and nurturing worship, 3 strong and growing sense of belonging (these three are grouped as internal qualities); 4 a clear and owned vision, 5 inspiring and empowering leadership, 6 openness to imaginative and flexible innovation (grouped as inspirational qualities); 7 practical and diverse service, 8 willing and effective faith-sharing, and 9 intentional and welcoming inclusion (grouped as outward qualities). Completing the NCLS gives a church leadership team some quantified measures of health in each of the core qualities.

NCLS provides notes and a suggested planning process for addressing weak core qualities at https:// www.ncls.org.au/articles/act/. This process is based on ‘appreciative inquiry’ and assumes that reflection on the church’s past, combined with a shared new vision, followed by strategy and implementation steps, will yield positive change. I’m not convinced. The NCLS planning materials are fairly thin on biblical priorities for church life and mission, and in trying to appeal to any Australian church from any tradition and any denomination, they feel too openended and theologically vague. Evangelical Anglican churches would likely seek a stronger ecclesiology and missiology (such as that found in Tim Keller’s Center Church, and which is incorporated into City to City Australia’s Church Revitalisation consultancy process).

Natural Church Development

Like NCLS, Christian Schwarz’s Natural Church Development (ncd-australia.org) uses a survey tool filled in by church attenders to produce a report on a church’s health. NCD has eight quality areas: empowering leadership, gift-oriented ministry, passionate spirituality, functional structures, inspiring worship services, holistic small groups, need-oriented evangelism, and loving relationships. NCD is better than NCLS at providing resources and strategies to address a church’s ‘minimum factor’ – that is, the area which scores lowest on the 8 health characteristics.

There is a series of books with titles beginning ‘The 3 Colors of…’ which each address gifts, community, spirituality, ministry, etc and provide tools to improve church health in that domain. NCD presupposes a pattern of Sunday services and mid-week small groups as the engine room of church life, and this would be familiar to most evangelical churches. Therefore, it won’t yield revolutionary change in ministry shape or priorities. Notwithstanding its conventionality, NCD has established itself as a reliable tool for church revitalisation.

Mission-Minded

Peter Bolt
Kingsford: Matthias Media, 2000

This brief book (70 pages) is short enough for every parish council member and ministry leader in the church to read and act on in one week. It provides a simple tool (a one page table) that leaders can quickly fill in to evaluate the extent to which the church’s current activities are contributing to evangelism or edification (with 3-4 stages specified under each broad goal). The tool enables a church to quickly see why it is not growing through conversions or not growing in spiritual maturity or in ministry impact. Mission-Minded can help a leader start a revitalisation process with some straight-forward analysis and a clear strategy for improving churches stuck in maintenance mode.

Written by: Evan Englezos

Created: 01 March 2023

Evan Englezos (Digital Team Coach and Digital Ministry Hub, left) interviews Jackson king (Digital and Music Ministry Support, Robina Anglican Church, right)

The COVID-19 pandemic, with its associated lockdowns and meeting limits, accelerated the use of digital technology in many churches. Many of these changes were hastily implemented during 2020-2021. The challenge and focus now is to make the most of new digital technologies to invigorate the church toward revitalisation.

Jackson King from Robina Anglican Church has generously shared his experience and observations of the role of digital technology as an encouragement to his brothers and sisters in ministry.

EVAN: WHAT DID THE DIGITAL SPACE LOOK LIKE WHEN YOU JOINED IN 2020?

Jackson: The digital space for Robina Anglican was nowhere near as imperative as it is now and during COVID-19 lockdowns. Pre-COVID, we had a functioning website, a social media presence, printed bulletins and online communications with members. During COVID we needed to redesign our whole communication strategy. We also needed a live streaming system that was easy to use and produce content with. We’ve made progress through trial and error, experimenting with both software and hardware solutions. We see a need for continual change in the year ahead.

EVAN: WHAT DOES DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY LOOK LIKE NOW?

Jackson: We now have a more integrated system where Planning Center Online provides a central, online hub for member data, events, check-ins, calendar, and service planning. We have a live streaming system that is smooth and easy to run on a limited budget. We’ve settled on The Church Co to create a new look for our church’s website and integrate with Planning Center Online. All our digital functions are more integrated and streamlined.

EVAN: WHY IS DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY IMPORTANT FOR THE REVITALISATION OF THE CHURCH?

Jackson: In one sense, COVID-19 was a blessing since it helped us understand how digital ministry can serve a lot of people. We have a lot of parishioners in our community who are immuno-compromised. Travelling out in a COVID-rampant world wasn't ideal for them and they still needed to be part of a spiritual community. With the revitalisation of digital space, we found that we were able to connect with people in all stages and could meet them where they were comfortable.

From a staff point of view, although it's nice to think that everyone can come here, through an online platform we can go to them where they are comfortable in their own homes. There are people in places all around the world who are wanting to receive content and find something that suits them. The digital space allows them to do that more quickly and efficiently, and do it from the comfort of their own home with their families. Digital platforms enable us to spread the good news to people who physically can’t come to us. Churches that revitalise their digital space are going to help more people. It's going to help more people feel connected to God, to the community, and to their families and it's absolutely imperative.

EVAN: HOW DO YOU MEANINGFULLY ENGAGE AND CONNECT WITH THEM AND HELP THEM HAVE A COMMUNITY WHEN THEY CAN'T PHYSICALLY CONNECT WITH YOU? HOW DO YOU OFFER THAT SENSE OF COMMUNITY WITH THEM?

Jackson: We have tried a multitude of approaches! At the moment, our key tool is called Church Online Platform which we use to livestream our services. It has chat functions, private prayer, online giving and many more features. The best thing is that it’s absolutely free.

Zoom was great during COVID-19. It helped to maintain community but there were limitations with reaching new people and moderating so many people with cameras and microphones. Church Online Platform helps to extend our reach and improves the quality of interaction by offering small and big steps for wherever people are at. Some people tune in from half an hour’s drive away, others are an hour and a half ’s drive away, and even a few from other continents. We’re thrilled at how this system brings people together and creates community.

Our previous experiences with Facebook Live and YouTube were okay. We found that there was limited communication and connection with those who joined online. By making the Church Online Platform our primary livestream platform, we could make better connections with this online community.

EVAN: HOW DO YOU HELP PEOPLE TO FIND AND ACCESS YOUR CONTENT?

Jackson: We’re continually trying to improve our communication. At the moment we're posting a lot of bible study resources on our websites. All of our sermons get edited and trimmed and republished as videos (hosted through Vimeo) on our website. We also have podcasts so content can reach people in a way that suits them. They feel spiritually connected by hearing the word and some commentary on it.

Social media is useful too. We do a lot of cross-platform promotion. We upload a sermon as a podcast or video, share that on Facebook, post an image on Instagram with all the links that they need. We promote this during the service for people and point them towards our website Resource page. On average, I spend 10 hours per week adding and monitoring content on all our social platforms. We don’t want multiple people posting content and so overwhelming viewers with mixed priorities, overlapping content or inconsistent quality. The goal is to make it as simple as possible for our viewers.

It's all about creating the simplest pathways for people to access those resources and promote it well so they can see

them.

It takes time to set up the pathways and the workflows but when we make it easier they're more inclined to come back and continue to connect and that's all we want.

EVAN: HOW CAN YOU MEASURE THE EFFECTIVENESS AND THE FRUITFULNESS OF ALL THIS DIGITAL TECH WORK?

Jackson: Raw numbers can be disappointing, but individual stories encourage us. We recently had a woman watch our service on Facebook, then she joined us on Church Online Platform and started chatting with us there, but left before the end of the service. She tuned in a couple more times then actually started to attend in person.

The digital space has largely replaced church foyers. People use online search engines to find churches near them, and preview the church experience through their online content.

Last week, a young woman from Canada moved here to study. She searched Anglican churches in our area and found us and three other churches within a 20 minutes drive. We met at our office and she is now interested in being a part of our church. That's all because we had an effective digital presence in online ministry.

We may not get the same numbers online as we do in person.

We care about fostering connection with individuals, or two or three people.

Evan: Can other churches start to replicate some of these simple pathways and workflows that you've been setting up?

Jackson: Definitely! Social media is a great tool for reaching people because that’s where many people are today. Most churches have websites. They can create resource pages and link a Word document or PDF with some reflection questions. These resources can be promoted on a Facebook page, which expands their reach.

We produce a weekly email newsletter and blog article.

There's a big button in the newsletter that takes subscribers straight to the blog. Again, we share that on Facebook, and through our website. It’s two clicks to get to the blog. For all our content, we aim to make it as easy as possible for different groups to access it. For example, how can Linda, who lives in a retirement home and gets access to the computer once a week, access the sermon?

Or how do we make it easy for Ben who is a Year 12 student, who loves listening to podcasts while he goes to the gym? Two different people in two very different scenarios, can both access our content in two clicks.

An easy and effective way for many churches to expand their digital reach is through links on social media platforms and promotion in email newsletters.

Intentionally target the types of communities you want to reach.

EVAN: IT TAKES TIME AND INTENTIONALITY TO SET UP AND MAINTAIN THESE SYSTEMS AND WORKFLOW. REALISTICALLY, WHAT IS REQUIRED TO GET THE DIGITAL MINISTRY OFF THE GROUND AND RUNNING EFFECTIVELY?

Jackson: Given the limited skills and time resources you have from both staff and volunteers, it makes sense to pay specialists for things like building and maintaining a website. We are now using a company called The Church Co for our website design and maintenance. It is tailored for churches and has features including sermons, podcasts, age-specific groups, weddings, baptisms and so on. Almost all of our media (photos and videos) for our website is taken by staff and parishioners.

The best websites I've seen are the ones that have fewer words on their homepages. Most people won’t read multiple paragraphs about everything that goes on. We like to use lots of images and big bold titles. For example, “our services are at these times, here’s the directions to our church, watch the livestream here, if you have any questions call this number or contact us here.”

If you spend the time creating the communication and being available to answer questions based on that, the best church websites are simple, easy to navigate and easy to find.

EVAN: MOST CHURCHES DON’T HAVE A PAID STAFF MEMBER WITH DIGITAL SKILLS AND EXPERTISE LIKE YOU. IF A CHURCH HAD A VOLUNTEER WITH ONLY A FEW HOURS EACH WEEK TO FOCUS ON DIGITAL OUTREACH, HOW CAN THEY HAVE THE MOST IMPACT?

Jackson: The most impact comes from good communication with your congregation. Newsletter emails, social media, and letting people know directly what is going on is a great start. When people know what's going on, they feel like they are welcome to participate and contribute. For example, small groups and Bible studies, and communicating that across multiple platforms: Facebook, Instagram, and newsletter emails. The social media platforms help to increase participation and enthusiasm, and spreads into the wider community in person and online.

To save time for posting and moderating, we use Meta Business Suite (which is free) to simultaneously work on Facebook and Instagram. There are lots of email newsletter tools. We have used subscription services including Mailchimp and Campaign Monitor and they’re both really good.

With all this, persistence and consistency is really important. We’ve had lots of roadblocks and made mistakes, but we are driven by our mission to reach people for Jesus. The digital space is a great opportunity to reach and engage people wherever they are. Work at understanding who you are trying to reach. Take the steps to make it easy for them to find you and access your content and create workflows that will make it easy for you to produce and share your content.

Evan Englezos Director of Digital Team Coach and Digital Ministry Hub - digitalteamcoach.com,  digitalministryhub.com

Jackson King Digital and Music Ministry Support, Robina Anglican Church - robinaanglican.com

Resources mentioned - There is no affiliation to any of these resources;

thechurchco.com

www.planningcenter.com

churchonlineplatform.com

www.facebook.com/business/tools/meta-business-suite

mailchimp.com

www.campaignmonitor.com