BECOMING THE CHURCH PEOPLE THINK WE ARE (AND EXPECT US TO BE)

When church leaders begin to reflect about what it means to be a “successful” church, they are often tempted to look first at the things that are easy to measure: Attendance, Membership, the size of the Church Budget, the results of the Annual Stewardship Campaign, and the amount of the Average Pledge. These are all good benchmarks of institutional growth, but if they become the ONLY benchmarks they also tend to start driving the entire organization, and in the process the less tangible things that make churches authentic faith communities sometimes get lost or fall by the wayside.

This is why it is also important to consider what some church consultants call “Incarnational Growth” – how effectively does our congregation embody our Mission as a community of faith, and how can we grow in both maturity and expertise as people of faith in order to make our vision real? At the risk of oversimplifying the process, the challenge of Incarnational Growth essentially involves thinking about "roles, not goals," while examining three successive questions regarding the seven core areas of our church program.

• What is our definition of excellence in this area?
• What would that look and feel like if we actually achieved it?
• What do we need to learn and do in order to make that happen?

Just as a reminder, the seven core areas are:

• Worship
• Lifespan Religious Education
• Fellowship
• Hospitality
• Faith in Action
• Community Outreach
• Pastoral Care

This is an invitation to avoid impatience, and to dream big dreams. We are in this for the long haul, and planning for an era, not just a year or two down the road. If we know where we want to go, with persistence and tenacity we will eventually get there. Or to paraphrase Thoreau, until we draw the blueprints for our “Castles in the Air,” we will never be able to put the foundations under them.