In this issue:

Who is Visiting Small Churches These Days?

Two Views of Vision

The Right Question

Though we are skilled at creating hierarchical cultures, we are very unskilled at altering organizational structures that have outlived their usefulness.

Robert Quinn

Who is Visiting Small Churches These Days?
By Lewis A. Parks

When small church lay and clergy leaders gather, the first comments you often hear reflect an understandable anger, defensiveness, and dread of an imminent future. This is understandable given the challenges they face. But if you listen long enough, as I have done regularly for the last several years, you begin to pick up signs of hope – hope consistent with the empirical data showing that approximately 35 percent of small membership churches are indeed growing each year and hope consistent with the church’s own theological metrics for measuring the viability and vitality of a congregation.

So who needs a small church these days? What I hear paints a hopeful picture. Call it a work of prevenient grace. Call it a wooing by the Spirit. Call it a happy confluence of the new seekers and the congregations they seek. Whatever you call it, five types of persons keep showing up as visitors to small churches, whether those churches are located in cities, towns, or rural settings.

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Two Views of Vision
By Lovett H. Weems, Jr.

Margaret Wheatley distinguishes between a traditional “linear” view of vision and a “circular” view, which she sees as more compatible with today’s world. The linear view points to a future destination and the vision serves as a magnet pulling everything toward the dream. The classic illustration of linear vision is President John F. Kennedy’s announcement in the early 1960s that the United States would send a man to the moon and bring him back safely before the end of the decade. The things needed to achieve this great feat were not in place when he made that declaration. In a speech at Rice University on September 12, 1962, Kennedy said that the astronauts will travel in space ships “made of new metal alloys, some of which have not yet been invented.” But as the dream caught on, it brought with it the necessary money, innovation, and technology. That is the character of such a vision.

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The Right Question

Leaders do not need answers.
Leaders must have the right questions.

A question used once a year with a church staff can be modified to be used in a number of settings.

What makes you most proud
about being a part of this congregation?

Editors:  Lovett H. Weems, Jr. and Ann A. Michel
Production and distribution: Joe Arnold

Copyright © 2008 by the G. Douglass Lewis Center for Church Leadership. Leading Ideas material may be freely distributed with attribution (exclusive of material protected by separate copyright).