You ever had an injury? Something just stops working like it’s supposed to. You wake up one morning with a pain and you may not even been sure where it started but now you know something is not right. But you decide to wait. Just see if it takes care of itself. Making the doctor’s appointment feels like too much. It’s not that bad, right? And you keep limping around in pain hoping it will take care of itself or just go away. Maybe you even take some anti-inflammatory pills, stretch or ice the area but still the pain persists. And when you finally go to the doctor, the one with the tools to adequately diagnose and the one with the resources to help you heal, the situation is worse than it was in the beginning.
This is a lot like an all too common trend we see happening in congregations today. There’s a problem, maybe it is lack of knowing what it next or being able to communicate your congregation’s core values. Perhaps it is not knowing what to do with the buildings that keep getting older or a congregational leadership structure that no longer serves you.
More common lately, it is a staff concern. It is a staff that feels they are over stretched in a culture of quickly declining lay leadership. Staff are required to do more and more with less and less resources. It is also often that due to these factors or due to transitions in leadership, the staff are in conflict with one another. The tension that change brings, or the tension or depleting resources can easily manifest into tension amongst the staff.
The problem with postponing handling these issues with professional help is that too often these days, we see situations escalate more quickly than ever. In the last eighteen months, we have had four congregations that have reached out but by the time we were hired to help, staff had left and/or conflict had erupted.
If the HVAC unit were to go out in the summer or dead of winter, your church would find a way to pay for it to be fixed immediately. If the roof started leaking, you would pay to have it fixed or replaced. If the kitchen stove were to go out, your church would find a way to replace it or fix it in order to continue providing those weekly meals.
The same logic should be applied when the church is in a crisis or face challenges that are more people oriented. It is just as important to invest in the people of your congregation, including your staff. As my colleague Beth Kennett tells congregations, if you could fix the issue or handle the process yourself, you would already have done so.
Congregational life and leadership is more challenging today than it has ever been. As congregational consultants, we are equipped to help diagnosis the problem, speak truth to the challenges, offer tools to gain clarity or to navigate conflict. Your church cannot afford another staff transition. It cannot afford to spend money on buildings that are no longer serving it. It cannot afford to continue spinning its wheels on programming that does not align with its values and mission. It cannot afford a leadership structure that is no longer serving the congregation and is only creating frustration.
The trend of postponing professional congregational help is not serving you. See this work as an investment in the future of your congregation rather than just an expense to avoid. Problems will not get better by just ignoring them and no amount of hoping they will work themselves out is going to fix things.
When you are ready to make the investment in your congregation’s future, we are ready to help.