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Church budgets are often the hardest parts of a church to transform in a process of congregational change.  Budget categories are notoriously resiliant and resistant to change.  Even groupings of line items often stay together in configurations that must have made historical sense at one time but are now baffling to the present.  Even more significantly, it is hard to translate the traditional budget categories (personnel, building, utilities, office supplies and other operating expenses) into categories that reflect the vision of where the congregation is going matched to the ways in which the vision is going to be carried out. 

Today, I designed a model to help our congregation begin to measure our budget along missional lines.  At this point, all of our active programs and activities have generally fallen in line behind the vision:

Our vision is to be a community of disciples of Jesus Christ, who invite, equip and empower others to be Jesus’ disciples. 

We desire to be a community of disciples through seven basic areas:

Worship, Proclamation, Formation, Service, Prayer, Care and Fellowship.

Thus, I began to divide up my time and the use of the building along those seven lines plus Administration.  The math on the building use has been quite complex, but it ended up coming out pretty well today.  These numbers were all tied in with the more obvious stuff - like BIble study guide costs, etc., and linked to form a missional presentation of the budget. 

In the end, I was able to create a pie chart based upon the seven aspects of our mission plus administration, that showed our budget distributed according to our vision.  As we grow, we will make adjustments to the various parts of the budget to try to reflect our visionary priorities.

Any feedback?

Earlier this evening, I had the opportunity of going up on our church building’s roof with one of our maintenance folks to check on a few issues.  The picture you see above is looking out across our flat roof down Eastland Ave. in Warren. 

It is now almost cliché to talk about going outside the walls of one’s congregation into the community.  But what about going above them?  From the vantage point of the flat roof, the walls are relatively invisible.  Going above gives us the unobstructed view of the community in which we live: still distant, but much more clearly displayed.

“Church folks” are often challenged to find ways of relating to people outside the walls of the church.  From this vanatage point, it isn’t so daunting.  For one, without in any way neglecting the identity of who we are as a Body of Believers, we break down the us-them divide entirely.  With our identity securely in Christ, we can relate to others without fear of the loss of our Christian perspective, lifestyle and hope.  This is the essential piece of our outward view. 

For another, we see people from a different angle.  From the rooftop, we see backyards and roofs - a very different perspective from the street level.  Perhaps added perspectives will help us relate to people better.

Finally, we have risen above the business of being the church together and can look out at others without having to draw them into our politics.  That, perhaps, is the greatest asset to rising above the walls of our church.  Outsiders don’t care about our internal struggles any more than a dinner guest cares whether the oven is gas or electric, as long as the food is cooked evenly and throughly.  Rising above our structures allows us to stand upon them to gain a vantage point, instead of being locked in them. 

These are lessons I have thought about as I stood on the roof.  Any other analogies we can draw?

Today, I really think I connected with a large portion of the congregation.  At the end, someone stood up and told me it was the best sermon he’d ever heard me preach.  The congregation applauded.  I didn’t quite know what to do. 

All I can say is that God is at work to transform our congregation into a missional community of disciples who reach out to those who normally get left out of what God’s up to.  And that was the content of the sermon, basically.  Since that’s connecting now with the whole group, that means we’re on the right track.

Praise God!

Today was the first really nice day we’ve had in a while.  On my daily walk through the neighborhood this evening, I saw a number of people out, mostly kids and teens.  A lot of kids seemed to be finding good stuff to do, playing on playgrounds, riding bikes, throwing footballs around.  They were having a great time. 

The teens, on the other hand, seemed to lack useful amusing activities.  I spied at least one ankle bracelet on one 15/16-year-old courtesy the local corrections department.  As I crossed a bridge, some of them decided to throw rocks at me from a long distance - not close enough to actually hit me or do any damage, but, well, it was enough to ignore them and move on.

Prayer is my habit on these walks anyway, but this encounter pressed me deeper into prayer for the community, and I soon was led to consider the following idea: these are the children of the unchurched. 

Thirty years ago, the nation’s religious landscape was in a period of rapid change.  A few churches and church leaders (the “young evangelicals” of the late 70s - early 80s) picked up on this development and began a wide range of churches and ministries in response to these de-churching trends.  From the “megachurches” and “seeker-sensitive ministries” to the Vineyard movement and Christian brodcasting (both big-hair and small-hair formats), the young evangelicals worked to transform the approaches, styles and methods to ministry in the new religious context.

However, the rank-and-file churches did not, by and large, make the change.  To their credit, many churches made small or partial changes that integrated many of the new ministry styles and methods into their existing structures, and had considerable success.  Nevertheless, most churches did not make the systemic, systems- and structure-level changes necessary to meet the new ministry environment. 

Thus, the trends of de-church-ification continued unabated.  In fact, one could argue that such events actually accelerated the process.  Now, in the days of what Bob Webber called “the younger evangelicals”, the vast majority of churches are now realizing that something is missing.  Those that were unable to connect with the Baby Boom generation did not connect with Generation X, Y, or Z either.  Thus, the average un-churched child, teen or young adult is not just un-churched but a child of an un-churched person.  This compounds the ministry contextualization issues at work in our churches.

The first-generation unchurched person generally has a religious point of reference.  Often this is expressed in two attitudes toward church and “organized religion”: either indifference, as the church has made no significant impact on their lives so what’s the point; or rejection, usually via some negative experience in a church context or with Christians.  (No blame assessment here.)

Beyond the first generation, unchurched persons no longer have that point of reference.  Therefore, their responses to Christians and the Christian message are often much more nuanced.  Moreover, they do not understand even the most basic of the basics.  For instance, I recently was asked by someone how much it costs to join the church!

All of this presses home the need to engage the community at its level on its turf to discover how we may make connections with people in order that they may participate in the life of God toward discipleship and eternal life.