The "Residential Village Church"

As I am winding up my association with Bay of Islands Parish and its long history of Local Shared Ministry, I can’t help reflecting on the congregation we had at Russell.

For more than two decades, leaders from Paihia have crossed the Bay to bring a weekly service to the small membership there. None of them was ever called to the Ministry Team. They did not participate in Parish Council Meetings and rarely joined in parish social events. But they faithfully turned up Sunday by Sunday even as the congregation gracefully dwindled through death.

Those who coin names for styles of churches might have called them a “Hospice Church”. They couldn’t do much for themselves but we ministered to them and supported them as they saw out their days as a congregation. 

Now I hear that one or two are suggesting our Paihia congregation is going the same way. True, they’ve suffered losses, too—and not all by the natural processes of death and dying. And as Bev and I leave to move nearer to family and a smaller home there are serious questions about who will do some of things that we have done as ordinary members of the congregation. It is a scary time for the special friends we leave behind.

But, if Paihia is to lie down and declare itself a Hospice Church so that everyone can just sit there on Sundays and be looked after, where are the people who will come from outside to minister to it?

A better model, from my personal experience over these past weeks, is what I will call the “Residential Village Church”. A residential village is also a place where people will probably see out their lives. But it is nothing like a hospice. It’s full of participants who are young in heart and mind, who are active in their communities, who are involved in the village’s affairs and who are dedicated to making the most of their lives. If they can’t add years to their lives they are certainly putting life into their years.

That seems to me to be the model for the small, ageing church. It won’t attempt to do all the stuff that more vigorous churches do. It will look for the things it can do best and it will put its limited energies into what produces the most results. It will develop its own spirit and ethos and lifestyle.

Local Shared Ministry may still be the model that enables this kind of life to flow. It will call people to do things they didn’t know they could do. It will enable every member to feel a vital part of what is going on. It will challenge but it will also encourage. And it will bring pleasure and strength to its members and its community.

LSM Error Message #4

    Employment of any salaried staff in small congregations tends to militate against effective work by volunteers.

    If the paid person has demonstrable professional qualifications for ministry there is usually no problem. It is normal for a skilled and sensitive stipendiary minister to be able to recruit an enthusiastic team of volunteers in a regular parish.

    Mostly, this working relationship can be effective in the small church where the paid person is not full-time but clearly has other responsibilities which will compete for energy and hours. Volunteers can see their contribution is meaningful and valued.
    But in the church of twenty or thirty families where there is no customary minister at all, a group of relatively unqualified people coming into ministry should not have to cope with issues of status. If a decision is made that one or other of them should be paid the others are likely to feel that their contribution is not valued to the same extent.

    It becomes easier for the paid person to be allocated the chores that others don’t want to do. And it becomes harder to recruit new volunteers to replenish the working team. There can develop a trend to pay more people to provide longer hours instead of widening the voluntary team to include more people offering shorter hours.

    Expenses should always be paid to volunteers in Local Shared Ministry, but not wages.

Head and Hands in the LSM congregation

Recent tensions in our small parish have highlighted for me the issue of the relationship between the Parish Council and the Local Shared Ministry Team. I've always argued for separation. It has seemed to me that the Council (the head) discusses policy and makes a decision; the Team (the hands) take the lead in carrying it out. Of course, one or two team members might be on the Council but, generally, the roles of the two bodies are separate and distinct. It's a good distinction. Our own difficulties were made worse some time ago when one Team passed a "resolution" opposing a management decision that was being made. They were seen by some to be intruding on others’ business. However, when the parish membership is very small, it is simply not practicable to have two or three separate bodies making decisions around the same mission and ministry. Perhaps the very small congregation could have a Calling for a team which would also exercise the powers of the Council. I wonder if this has been tried and found effective anywhere else in the LSM setting?

On Teamwork

I am just about the shut down the computer. In ten minutes we leave for Whangarei Base Hospital where am to have a “half-knee” replacement.

Last time I was impressed by the sense of teamwork in the theatre block, from receptionist through to the last nurse who counted the bits and pieces afterwards. Each person had a specific job to do yet they worked together to complement and support each other.

Apparently, though, there has been an exception. A survey last year reported that one in ten operations in this country hosts some kind of mistake, many involving the wrong operation or the wrong part of the body.

The solution, it was suggested, was for more of the theatre team members to take responsibility for the whole drama and to challenge the surgeons if a mistake seemed to be likely to be made.

Since I’ve already had one knee done, I guess I run no risk of coming out with the wrong knee operation today: “Hullo, the saw has jammed on a piece of titanium; what’s that doing in here?”

But it gives me confidence that my overall welfare in the next three or so days is in many hands and, generally, they are taking responsibility to work together towards a common goal.

That’s how Local Shared Ministry works in the small church.

The Dining Room and the Small Church

We stopped at a small country hotel for our meal a few weeks ago. The meal wasn’t bad but the service was. We waited half an hour for the only waitress, who was also managing the bar and attending to a few other dinner orders. Then we waited rather more than another hour for our meal although the place was not exceptionally busy.

Raised voices from the vicinity of the kitchen hinted at some kind of communication problem. Then some shouting was followed by the dramatic departure of the person who was apparently in charge. With warm apologies the waitress confirmed that there were some relationships difficulties. But our meal still took some time to turn up.

In a small establishment where only three or four people are doing everything there’s not much room for the luxury of storming off into the night if you get upset. Sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and hang in there.

It’s the same in the small church, especially where leadership is diffused among a team of equals instead of residing in a paid professional. We all have people we warm to instinctively and others about whom we feel less comfortable. But in the team setting of the Local Shared Ministry congregation, personal feelings and even antagonisms are a luxury that we cannot afford to indulge in if the work is to be done.

That’s how it is in the real world. That’s how it has to be in the small church.

Watching for the Signs

We’re used to it. We drive regularly across the Te Haumi bridge and know that, from the driver's seat, the bridge parapet covers part of the 50kph speed limit sign. The bit that's not visible says "In 400 m".

Because we're local, we know that we don’t have to slow down to 50kph for another 400metres. But strangers coming down the hill in front of us see only the top part of the sign and slow down, holding up everyone behind them. It’s very frustrating.

But it’s a bit like life. We not only have to watch for the signs. We also need to be sure that the signs we see are complete and that we are not missing some important piece of information.

I guess part of the business of the church is to help people look for the signs and interpret them. And if we don’t see them very clearly ourselves, our capacity for helping others is greatly reduced. Keeping our eyes open and interpreting the signs,
Congregations using Local Shared Ministry may have to work particularly hard at this. It can be too easy for them to be Ok on the practical stuff but sometimes a little hard to work at the visionary and prophetic elements of ministry.

Some of the news coming through from Canterbury after last weekend's earthquake reminds me of the fundamental principle of local shared ministry. Here are stories of people and communities getting on with looking after themselves... They know that the cavalry isn't going to solve all their problems for them.

Small churches, going through the earth-shaking business of finding that paid ministry is no longer available to them, have discovered the same reality. LSM is a way in which they can get on looking after themselves and their mission.

All the same there's a whole raft of responses to Canterbury's efforts as the rest of the country commits itself to support and reconstruction. And if Air NZ can offer a thousand free flights, our parish, which has got all its funds caught up in paid ministry, should be able to provide some free nights of accomodation for those who can get up to our airport.

We'll look into it...

See: The Cavalry Won't be Coming

http://www.centreforrecreation.org.nz/

"Church Possible"

Bev and I are just finishing a really great three days of challenge and inspiration. Our Paihia Church Centre has been the venue for a gathering of up to 35 enthusiastic people.
Several of the Methodist LSM workgroup attended, together with other contributors and participants from Northland parishes. We had really good sessions on different ways of being church, how churches change, creative worship, working as teams and dealing with conflict. In a session on how Local Shared Ministry actually works, our parish, with some 16 years’ experience, had an opportunity to tell its story.
Our modest facilities, not to mention some stunning weather, made a good impression. Rosalie served up excellent meals right on the spot, and most people were able to sleep on the premises in our two cottages or just over the road at the Youth Hostel.
Sadly, Beverley Deverell, who did a lot of enthusing for the event, was homebound with a very painful condition as a result of a probably broken ankle. We thought of you many times, Beverley!
The event could have come at a better time for Bev and me. We’d been on the road for two weeks and then very busy with a special video commission deadline and Sunday services. We plunged into this event without so much as a couple of hours to catch our breath. But it’s been great and, well, perhaps we will sleep in for a while tomorrow morning...With some things in life you just have to grab the moment and run with them and make the most of them. Perhaps the whole of life is like that. Maybe the very next thing I am going to do is the only thing that matters for the rest of my life. Carpe diem!