Artificial intelligence is here, and someday the robots might come for us just as Sam Waterston warned. In the meantime, we need to figure out what AI can do and shouldn’t do for us.

This is true in the church world as well, so on a lark, I randomly chose an AI generator from a web search. This particular site produces mission and vision statements for a range of industries. All I had to type in was “church,” then choose a tone (inspirational), then select “generate.” Here’s what came back:

Vision:
To create a welcoming and inclusive community where individuals can find hope, inspiration, and spiritual growth, empowering them to make a positive impact in the world.

Mission:
Our mission is to spread love, compassion, and faith by providing a place of worship, guidance, and support for all individuals seeking spiritual fulfillment. Through inspirational teachings, uplifting music, and meaningful connections, we aim to inspire and empower our congregation to live a life of purpose, kindness, and service to others. Together, we strive to create a world filled with love, peace, and harmony, guided by the teachings of Jesus Christ.

It’s truth-telling time. How different do these statements sound from your church’s mission and vision statements? Probably not much. Most guiding statements tend to be aspirational and vague. And that’s why I’m becoming more convinced that they are not the most helpful touchstones for congregations. Leaders expend vast amounts of energy and time (and sometimes big money on a consultant) coming up with a vision and mission…and then the robots instantly manufacture something almost as good. This is one way AI is useful: it’s telling us we’re not putting our resources into efforts with the biggest impact.

Here’s what I’d like to see churches work toward instead:

A helpful story of our congregation. A church can have many narratives about how it arrived at the present moment, and they all might ring true to varying degrees. Not all of them will be useful in terms of seeing the congregation as part of Christ’s body and God’s ongoing work in the world, though. Often we need to be more thoughtful about how we understand and share about our church.

Core values. These can be lived or aspirational, as long as there is clarity about which is which. Brene Brown’s values exercise is a useful one for both individuals and organizations. Naming a church’s story can also illuminate what it is about. What are our non-negotiable commitments that without them, we wouldn’t be us? What ways of being are we trying to incarnate with God’s help?

Seasonal plans based on these values. Covid obliterated what little confidence I had left in 5-10 year strategic planning. Churches need to be more nimble and responsive. (Exceptions include such initiatives as capital campaigns. These too, though, must be deeply rooted in values.) What is God inviting our congregation’s focus to be for the next 6-18 months?

Another kind of AI: appreciative inquiry. Congregations and their surrounding communities are full of individual and collective blessings from God, some tapped and others untapped, that could be put to very positive use in the name of living out values and focus. These gifts change as people come and go and as circumstances change, so they need to be inventoried on an ongoing basis.

Means to assess whether the congregation is being faithful to its core values. This is everything from whole-ministry assessments to individual event debriefs to mutual ministry reviews with staff. How are we stewarding our gifts well in service to the nudges from God we’ve discerned? What adjustments do we need to make?

A congregational covenant. We are people of relationship, because our Trinitarian God embodies connection and also seeks kinship with us. How we interact with one another needs to reflect this, but as mere mortals we benefit from reminders of what healthy bonds look like. We can name and agree to intentional behaviors and attitudes, then establish regular opportunities to recommit to them.

All of these tools are more practical and customized than mission and vision statements, and we shouldn’t trust them to artificial intelligence. Consider how you might stock your congregation’s toolkit with them.

Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash.

Note: the blog is moving to Substack! I will cross-post articles here and there in September, then post only on Substack from October onward. You can find me here on Substack.

“Ministers have the privilege and responsibility of accompanying people through all kinds of joys and hardships. We can offer a comforting presence and serve as a guide in making meaning of all of life’s events. Sometimes, though, something so devastating happens that we might feel less equipped as we’d like. Sometimes we are struggling as others are reaching out to us for help. Covid-19 certainly gave us layer upon layer of personal difficulties and as ministers assisting church members who were hurting. The pandemic will not be our last encounter with crisis, so we could all benefit from a primer on trauma.” Click here to continue reading on the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship blog.

Photo by Susan Wilkinson on Unsplash.

I have been an avid reader since the first grade. I have the receipts: my Mom unearthed a note I slid under her door when I was very young, earnestly repenting for whatever sin I’d committed that had prompted her to cancel a trip to the library.

I read in church. I read in the car. I read on my beanbag in the closet under the stairs. I wouldn’t put a book down until I finished it, even if I didn’t care for the story that much. I was in seminary before I failed to finish all the reading for a class. I was driven in leisure and school reading to the point that my self-discipline sometimes (often?) tipped over into isolation and insufferability.

Over the past few years I’ve given myself more license to put a book down if I didn’t like it. Life is short, after all. The occasions when I quit on reading were still rare, though.

That changed a few months ago. In the second half of 2021, I kicked more books to the curb than I read to the end. I wasn’t sure what that was about until I returned a Fredick Backman book - a Fredrik Backman book, for goodness’ sake - with 1/3 of it still to go. It seemed clear that one of the teenage characters was about to die by suicide, and I said, “NOPE.” I opened my Libby app and clicked “return early” without a moment of hesitation. It was suddenly clear to me that my grief had been triggered. A year and a half of Covid fear and malaise, then the death of my father when Covid blew through his memory care unit and his already disease-ridden body couldn’t withstand the virus - it was too much. I was returning books left and right, either because I had no energy for them or they were just more sad than I could bear.

We think of grief as tears or fatigue or withdrawal or even anger. But it doesn’t have to look that way. Sometimes it’s the figurative throwing of a book across the room. How does your individual grief manifest? How does the collective grief of a congregation that has endured so much loss and change show up?

We’ve got to acknowledge and make room for our grief so that we can lament and offer our honest selves up to God. Otherwise, we’ll be mired in despair that keeps us stuck in a reality we no longer recognize, unable to imagine our way forward.

Do you need to throw a book across the room? Yell into the void? Cry so many tears that they carve salty riverbeds in your cheeks? It’s ok. God understands. God welcomes all of our feelings. God sits with us in them. And God invites (sometimes nudges) us into a future that might not be what we hoped or planned but that can be abundant and good and hard in a really holy way.

Photo by Lacie Slezak on Unsplash.

Over the past six months I have worked with several congregations and groups of ministers, and I’ve found it absolutely essential that participants process their experiences during the pandemic. Otherwise there is an isolating, suffocating stuckness, a desire to get back quickly to whatever is familiar instead of moving forward faithfully as individuals and collectives. Here's where I believe we need to spend some time during our regathering:

We need to break the ice. As I mentioned last week, in some ways we are semi-strangers to one another. For this reason, we won't be able to go deep if we don't have some sense of safety first. Play is one way to create that, and I suggested a few activities designed to take power back from the pandemic's hold over us.

We need to slow down. The temptation is there to jump right back into all the programming our churches had in the Before, when so many people were constantly on the go. School will start in the next month or two, so we need to gear up Sunday School for all ages! And weekday Bible study! And have a fall kickoff! And…and…and. Instead, we need to add things back in layers, after taking a few deep breaths and considering what we’d be gaining and sacrificing by re-starting each ministry.

We need to lament. There's no denying we’ve all lost a lot: people we care about, jobs, routines, sleep, a sense of security, time in community, places we frequented, and much more. Milestones passed without full acknowledgment. Events we long anticipated were cancelled. It’s important to name these losses and offer them up to God.

We need to express gratitude. Without denying the difficulty of the pandemic, there are some surprising graces for which we can give thanks. We’ve learned new things. We’ve shifted or broadened our perspectives. We’ve received notes and calls and porch drop-offs. And if nothing else, we’re still here, and that in itself is worth a party. Grief and gratitude are both prayerful, faithful acts.

We need to explore how we've changed as individuals. We are not the people we were in early 2020. Some of those differences are minor or temporary. Others go to the core of who we are and how we show up in the world, making us fundamentally new people in positive and challenging ways.

We need to think about what those changes mean for how we are community to one another. In some churches, relatively surface interactions were the norm. Now that we all need to re-introduce ourselves, we can go deeper. Since we've had a shared experience of difficulty (even though the intensity has covered the range), we can have a shared vulnerability in naming what that difficulty has done to and for us. Out of that willingness to be real, our relationships can grow stronger, and we can look at the gifts and needs of our congregations and contexts afresh. We’ll then be able more effectively to live the love of Christ for one another and the world.

But what does all of this good work look like? Some can be done during worship, with leaders helping us make sense of all that’s happened, preaching about the courage in vulnerability, and creating ways for all people to participate in liturgy (e.g., naming grief and gratitude during prayer times or hanging a prayer wall for everyone to write on during or outside services). There's processing that can be accomplished individually through prayer stations set up around the themes named above. Christian education classes and small groups could be given discussion guides. And congregational conversations in ways that feel Covid-safe (and as emotionally safe as we can make them) can unearth a lot of what needs to be said.

My sense is that we will need some amount of all of the above means in the early going - and that the trauma will continue to pop up in surprising ways for a long time thereafter. But if we can just start talking in real ways with one another and God, we can begin to forge a faithful way forward together.

Photo by Morgane Le Breton on Unsplash.

The most important ingredient in any process isn’t expertise or charismatic personalities or financial resources. It’s relationships. When the bonds are strong among the people involved, there can be productive disagreement, a full exploration of possibilities, deep investment in the work, and mutual support and accountability, all leading to forward progress.

The foundation of relationships is trust. Not simply predictability – I know your passions and hot buttons and how you’ll react to each being tapped – but shared vulnerability and risk-taking. Many congregational teams and committees start with some sense of predictability by virtue of the members attending church together for a long time. But most (if not all teams) will need to dig in before high-intensity work begins to develop the second-level trust that will allow for the most thorough and faithful process.

What does it look like to grow that deep trust? Here are eight Cs – from lowest to highest risk – to guide that essential work:

Clarity is getting straight within ourselves about our thoughts and commitments, then being honest with others about them.

Communication is putting our clarified knowledge and understanding out there, and in turn listening to others with open hearts and minds.

Curiosity is admitting we don’t have the whole picture and wondering about what we don’t know.

Compassion is showing care to and connecting at a heart level with others, believing the best about them as we do so.

Companionship is being present and authentic while still maintaining the boundaries that allow us to be clear and compassionate.

Consistency is showing up the same way every time and admitting when circumstances have thrown us off balance.

Conflict is being willing to disagree and to have our ideas improved upon.

Control release is relinquishing attachment to the outcome, trusting that the process will end up as it should so long as we bring our whole selves to it.

Jesus embodies each of these Cs in his ministry. He bookends his active period with a time of clarifying his identity and purpose in the desert and a prayer in the garden of “here’s what I want, but I’m here to finish the job.” His interactions with followers and adversaries alike are centered on getting his message out while asking about and listening to their hopes and fears. Time after time Jesus shows up for people, particularly the least of these, truly valuing them and radiating divine love for them. With those who want to hold on to what they know and have, he’s not afraid to offer a challenge. And in the end, he allows himself to be led to the cross so that he can expose all that is wrong with the hunger for power.

The eight Cs and the resulting trust can strengthen relationships not just within the team but between the team and congregation. The effects of deepened connections, in turn, extend beyond the process itself, cultivating beloved community with the Source of love at its center.

In a recent podcast with pastor/author Jen Hatmaker, research professor Dr. Brene Brown shared an insightful nugget from her work: shame is the enemy of innovation. When we believe that we are not worthy – of love, of belonging, of joy, of dreaming – we cannot think beyond our current circumstances. We cannot brainstorm new ways of being and doing. We cannot envision a future much different from our present.

I have noted this truth for myself. When I feel bad about how I look, it seems like making new friends is out of reach. When my inbox is not dinging, I worry that I’ll never get another coaching or consulting client. When I don’t have expertise about the topic of discussion, I’m certain my conversation partner won’t take my input seriously. It becomes hard to put one foot in front of the other, mentally and emotionally.

It’s no secret that many of our churches are stuck. They try to strategically plan their way out of the mire, but those plans often involve more of what the congregation is currently doing, has done in the past, or has seen work in other contexts. They cannot imagine a different way of being church, only returning to a day when attendance was three times what it is now and children’s Sunday Schools were bursting at the seams.

I think corporate shame plays a role in this stuckness. We think, what is it about our church that makes people want to leave, or not even come in the first place? Why do our regulars only come once or twice a month now, when a decade ago they were here every week? Why would a new pastor accept a call to a dwindling congregation with a shrinking budget? How can we draw in newcomers when everyone in this community knows about “the incident” that happened here twenty years ago? How can we call ourselves a vibrant church when our educational wing is a ghost town?

These are all questions of worthiness. And yet, our value does not come from attendance patterns or the weekly offering. Just because something bad occurred in our past doesn’t mean our story is irredeemable. There’s no need to sound the death knell when one part of the physical plant is lying fallow. We don’t have to earn our place in the whole of Christ’s body. We have significance simply because we were created by God and gathered together in God’s name.

How, then, do we push against this collective shame that prevents us from moving into a fruitful future?

First, we must unearth it. With a group of leaders – or possibly with the congregation as a whole – pose some discussion prompts. What chapters of the church’s life or which former pastors do we not talk about, and why? How do we think others view our congregation? What are our biggest worries about the church’s present or future? How do these worries affect how we do ministry?

Second, we must address the three Ps. Psychologist Martin Seligman writes that personalization, pervasiveness, and permanence radically impact our self-perception. In personalization, congregations think “we are not good enough” rather than “those members who went elsewhere needed something we don’t offer.” In pervasiveness, an issue in one area is generalized to all of church life: “our youth group has hit a membership lull” becomes “the church is dying.” And permanence prompts us to think that we can’t get off whatever train we’re on: “if we’re in decline, there’s nowhere to go but down.” Those big, shame-inducing Ps have to be shrunk down to their proper place as lower-case ps that focus on actions and circumstances rather than unalterable character.

Third, we must broaden the narrative. What are the stories that demonstrate the congregation’s uniqueness? How has this church changed lives for the better? What are the gifts of our current circumstances? What can we do now that we couldn’t do before? What are the non-financial resources we haven’t yet tapped? For whom would this congregation and its mission be really good news?

God did not make us – as individuals or churches – for shame. God created us for love, connection, joy, and innovation. Let us do the hard work of exposing and eliminating the shame that keeps us from embracing the worthiness that comes from our kinship with Christ, thereby becoming free to live fully into the purposes God has for us.

When I was in seminary, I became moderately obsessed with re-runs of the 80s tv show St. Elsewhere, a medical drama set in a run-down Boston hospital. My devotion made sense. It was fun to see current celebrities in their earlier iterations. I was fascinated by the ways medical and social issues, such as the beginning of the AIDS epidemic, were handled by the writers. And since an episode aired every day, the show was my nightly reward for plowing through my class assignments.

The series finale of St. Elsewhere is still – 28 years later! – one of the most polarizing in tv history. In it viewers find out that the entire run of the show has taken place in the head of one of the characters, a boy with autism. (For the record, I’m in the camp that thinks this is a genius wrap-up.) This is what folks in the comic book world call retroactive continuity, or retconning for short. It’s re-visioning the whole arc of the story in light of previously unknown facts. Via retconning writers can:

• add details, filling in important tidbits that explain how the characters got where they are,

• alter details, often through a narrative device (as in St. Elsewhere’s finale),

• or subtract details, basically ignoring elements that no longer work with the current direction of the story.

Does this kind of literary math strike you as familiar? While I’ve never heard the term “reconning” used in the church world, we do it all the time. Congregations are masters of revisionist history. Retconning can be a means of improving collective health. Dragging long-buried secrets into the light of day can allow churches to trace reactive patterns and to have honest dialogue about what’s keeping them from living toward God’s call. Re-interpreting tightly-held narratives can open up possibilities for growth where progress had previously been stunted. Retconning can also be a means of denial and disease. Ignoring unpleasant truths causes them to simmer, making them highly combustible.

As you consider the arc of your congregation’s story, where might a bit of retcon work move your people toward more authentic community and deeper discipleship? What retcons are holding your church back and need to be named and revised?

Healthy churches are much more likely to have healthy ministers. There’s a chicken-or-egg question involved, but the influence likely goes both ways. Here, then, are some thoughts on what clergy health looks like.

Taking care of self:

• Tends to own discipleship/relationship with God. A spiritual leader must continue to be formed by and connected to God.

• Knows when to call it a day/week. There is always more ministry to be done.

• Takes all vacation/professional development time. Those who can’t go on vacations take staycations. Those who can’t attend conferences plan their own reading or planning weeks.

• Attends to physical and mental health. Sometimes being healthy means tending to literal health by getting regular checkups, seeing a counselor as needed, and taking the advice (and the medicine!) prescribed by healthcare professionals.

• Asks for personal and professional help as needed. Requesting help is a sign of self-awareness and strength, not shortcoming.

• Asks for what he/she needs materially to be able to focus on ministry. Just wages offer freedom from the resentment and financial panic that distract from ministry.

• Has a peer support network. Isolation in ministry is the shortest path to burnout.

• Has a pastor. Many ministers who worry about gossip and politics look outside their denominations for a pastor.

• Has a life outside of church. All work and no play make for a tired, frustrated, dull minister. Make a friend. Find a hobby. Become a regular somewhere.

• Protects his/her family from the fishbowl effect. A less anxious family makes for a happier home.

Leading well: 

• Continues to feel called. Ministry isn’t just a job and a paycheck.

• Enjoys the challenge of ministry, even though not all ministry situations are pleasant. It’s a great feeling when gifts are being well-utilized.

• Doesn’t own issues/initiatives that shouldn’t belong to him/her. The triangle is my least favorite shape.

• Addresses conflict in a timely fashion. Conflict that isn’t addressed festers and then explodes.

• Sees the pastoral needs behind conflict. When people are behaving badly, they are usually acting out of their hurt.

• Identifies the line between being someone’s pastor and being someone’s friend. It’s very hard – if not impossible – to be both.

• Is transparent. Vulnerability breeds trust.

• Knows and owns strengths and weaknesses. Weaknesses can’t always be shored up, but strengths can always be built upon.

• Keeps learning and growing. The church is evolving, and so must her ministers.

• Is able to see when good ministry has been done. Even at the end of a hard or seemingly unproductive stretch, it’s helpful to reflect on where God was at work.

• Mentors, supports, and thanks leaders. Ministry is not done in a vacuum.

• Acknowledges when it’s time to move on. An appropriate level of challenge breeds effectiveness.

What would you add or remove from this list? What specific commitments do you need to make to your own health?

Churches are most able to focus on worshiping God and embodying the love of Christ when they are healthy. But what does congregational health look like? Here are some of my thoughts.

Leadership:

• Members trust lay and clergy leadership and vice versa. Mutual ministry is nearly impossible when trust is low.

• There is a balance of stability and turnover in lay leadership. Leaders stay in their positions long enough to get good at them but not so long that they stagnate.

• The leadership understands how the church’s size relates to its mission. The small church gets how its numbers allow it to be agile and responsive to the gifts and needs of the community.

• New lay leaders are identified, mentored, and empowered. Without some sort of process for training and placing new leaders, the face of leadership stays the same indefinitely.

• Leadership needs are revisited on a regular basis. The church assesses whether its structure is serving its mission well.

Mission:

• Everyone who has been attending for at least three months knows the church’s mission. The mission visibly shapes the life of the congregation.

• That mission is primarily about engaging the community beyond the walls. A church that exists primarily for its own sake is not Christ-centered, nor is it built to last.

• The membership claims the mission as its own. Church members know the mission and use it as a tool to evaluate existing ministries and to generate new ideas.

• The congregation revisits its mission on a regular basis. The specific shape of call evolves, not just for individuals, but for whole communities.

Life together: 

• People know how to disagree in healthy ways. The church values unity around decisions, even when there are varying opinions.

• The congregation gathers at least occasionally purely for fellowship. Laughter and play enhance worship and service.

• The different generations are invested in each other. Young and old teach and learn from one another.

• The church has clear processes and lines of communications in place. Everyone knows how to share ideas and address concerns.

• The congregation stewards its resources well – including its people resources. It neither holds them too tightly nor spends them too easily.

Spirituality:

• Everyone is growing in discipleship. People ages 0-99+ are actively learning about God’s love and what it means for their lives.

• People follow the leadings of the Holy Spirit instead of their own desires. There is an emphasis on true discernment: “not my will but thine be done.”

• Worship is part of everything the church does. At lock-ins and committee meetings people name God’s presence and greatness and call upon God’s power.

What would you add to or remove from this list? What are some specific ways you help your congregation attain health?