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The Fly in the Ointment: Why Denominations Aren't Helping Their Congregations...and How They Can
Essential guide to identify real-world issues and conflicts facing congregations and their leaders and strategies to adapt. The Fly in the Ointment is an important resource for churches and church leaders as they explore how to transform themselves into vital, flourishing organizations. That transformation requires deep, systemic change on the part of regional associations, such as dioceses, presbyteries, synods, and conferences―the bodies that are meant to help congregations live their mission in the world. This book addresses the challenging issues of coping with changes and conflict in congregations and denominations in the face of cultural changes.
178 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2008
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December 20, 2023
x - The capacity to see one season of your life as preamble to another is the critical factor for healthy change. It does not deny the preciousness of the previous season. But neither does it claim it as destiny.
12 - No 'wa-up' call is needed; I would urge that we cease upon that particular bugle. Church members are awake! They don't need more 'pow'! They need more 'how!' But where are the persons who will allocate the time, money, expertise, and spiritual juice to provide the 'how'? This, it seems to me, falls squarely in the lap of regional associateion leaders and is the opportunity that calls for the redevelopment of those assocations. There is a question here that screams for an answer: What does it mean that we have denominational leaders sounding wake-up calls for the church to become more concerned about reaching new persons, when all the research indicates that the number on concern for members i reaching new persons?
20 - What people seem to be saying to denominational systems is this: we are willing to sacrifice to make a better world in the name of Jesus; we are not willing to sacrifice to make a better world in the name of Jesus; we are not willing to sacrifice for ecclesiastical systems that absorb our time, our energy, our money and then seek to justify it as the price of being a 'community.'
38 - First, a regional association leader must value indirect success; that is, success through others. They must find their emotional paycheck through the achievements they help others realize.
39 It is the equivalent of that coach who keeps running onto the field and making magnificent tackles. What is needed is the harnessing of the strategic and tactical wisdom in the room for the sake of member congregations. But this is not effectively accomplished through oratory in large meetings. It is practice-based, discovery-driven, and perspirational. Any success is indirect, long-term, and generally unassignable to an individual. This is why most meetings of regional associations are useless as transformational components in the life of the regional associations. They provide a context that draws out the gifts of those who are most likely to value direct success and the kinds of activities that accrue to that value. They support a leadership culture that runs counter to what is needed at that level. Redeveloping regional associations will require a re-engineering of meetings, their agendas, process, and functions.
45 - Included in this skill is the ability to help internally focused, change-adverse congregations become aware of their strategic/tactical dissonance. Every seasoned pastor has experienced this: a congregation indicates a strategic priority of church growth, but is resistant to the changes that are required to produce it. Regional association leaders need high-quallity assessment tools to surface this lack of coherence so that they can spend their energy helping leaders respond to this issue, rather than trying to get them to see it.
73 Internally focused organizations believe that once they have met the high technical requirements of the job (which they set for themselves and others like them), nothing more should be required of them. Externally focused organizations realize that impression is as important as performance. ... If I am externally focused, I must realize that correctness does not impress people. What impresses people is how quickly I return phone calls, how patient I am at answering their questions, how deft I was at making the numbers tell their story and help them feel more confident.
81 Leadership requires more than management. Leadership moves the Body forward; it catalyzes change. The problem is almost all organizations, including (perhaps especially) churches, is that we have a scarcity of leadership and an excess of management. ... The maintenance culture within many churches is often an arid environment for folks inclined to a more dynamic understand of leadership; as a result, denominational churches tend to bleed out their catalytic leaders.
87 - It will be 'just in time' Adults tend to seek training opportunities that have immediate application in their lives. They will throw training brochures away until they have a need.
89 - Adults need to know up front how their investment in training will benefit them. Every training opportunity should begin by stating what the learner will be able to do at the end of the session.
101 - A customer is a body within the church that financially supports the services you provide to clients in the name of Church. It may be an individual or it may be a group of persons that has the authority assigned by polity to make that decision. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the governing body is funded solely by voluntary contributions from local congregations authorized by the church board. Thsi means that the church board is your only customer. You may have many cients who are important to the board. But you have one customer.
107 - Most people think of marketing as advertising. In fact, it begins with listening to people and where their pain is. Marketing also involves promotion; that is, it provides the customer with the right information at the right time at the right level.
128 - One of your tasks as a leader is working to insure that negative, dysfunctional behaviours do not sabotage the work of your regional association.
132 - Our message to the world tends to be more focused on the noble qualities of our church tradition, not on the power of the Gospel to transform lives. The quality of community that we offer to the world is ofter spiritually and emotionally unsafe. Nearly one in three staff members in regional associations agree or tend to agree that their work is making it harder for them to have a vital spiritual life. As stated earlier, inviting people into a church community where the research indicates it likely that they will end up feeling that they are just going through the motions is spiritually reprehensible. The deeper message is not that we must change or our churches will close; it is that we are failing one another, failing the world, failing our God, and betraying the beauty and wonder of the Gosepl by the way we are living.
142 - Servant-based fundraising is liberating because it does not reduce the leader to an attitude of begging or apology. Servant-based fundraising is based upton the principle that your donor needs you as much as you need him or her. Imagine for a moment that you had a person with an environmental mission in his heart to care for Fod's creation, but no organizations existed for carrying out that mission. Most people do not have the time, nor the talent, to create such an organization from scratch. Without the organization's existence, the expression of the donor's mission, and to some extent God's purpose for his life would be thwarted. ... I was actually offering them a gift as well: an avenue for concretely expressing their values in the world. This introduced an element of mutuality into the conversation. Contrast this with mono-optional-based fundraising that is characterized by: exclusivity - we are the sole legitimate option for your giving. Assessment - we are not going to demonstrate why you should give to us, we are merely going to inform you of the amount you owe.
12 - No 'wa-up' call is needed; I would urge that we cease upon that particular bugle. Church members are awake! They don't need more 'pow'! They need more 'how!' But where are the persons who will allocate the time, money, expertise, and spiritual juice to provide the 'how'? This, it seems to me, falls squarely in the lap of regional associateion leaders and is the opportunity that calls for the redevelopment of those assocations. There is a question here that screams for an answer: What does it mean that we have denominational leaders sounding wake-up calls for the church to become more concerned about reaching new persons, when all the research indicates that the number on concern for members i reaching new persons?
20 - What people seem to be saying to denominational systems is this: we are willing to sacrifice to make a better world in the name of Jesus; we are not willing to sacrifice to make a better world in the name of Jesus; we are not willing to sacrifice for ecclesiastical systems that absorb our time, our energy, our money and then seek to justify it as the price of being a 'community.'
38 - First, a regional association leader must value indirect success; that is, success through others. They must find their emotional paycheck through the achievements they help others realize.
39 It is the equivalent of that coach who keeps running onto the field and making magnificent tackles. What is needed is the harnessing of the strategic and tactical wisdom in the room for the sake of member congregations. But this is not effectively accomplished through oratory in large meetings. It is practice-based, discovery-driven, and perspirational. Any success is indirect, long-term, and generally unassignable to an individual. This is why most meetings of regional associations are useless as transformational components in the life of the regional associations. They provide a context that draws out the gifts of those who are most likely to value direct success and the kinds of activities that accrue to that value. They support a leadership culture that runs counter to what is needed at that level. Redeveloping regional associations will require a re-engineering of meetings, their agendas, process, and functions.
45 - Included in this skill is the ability to help internally focused, change-adverse congregations become aware of their strategic/tactical dissonance. Every seasoned pastor has experienced this: a congregation indicates a strategic priority of church growth, but is resistant to the changes that are required to produce it. Regional association leaders need high-quallity assessment tools to surface this lack of coherence so that they can spend their energy helping leaders respond to this issue, rather than trying to get them to see it.
73 Internally focused organizations believe that once they have met the high technical requirements of the job (which they set for themselves and others like them), nothing more should be required of them. Externally focused organizations realize that impression is as important as performance. ... If I am externally focused, I must realize that correctness does not impress people. What impresses people is how quickly I return phone calls, how patient I am at answering their questions, how deft I was at making the numbers tell their story and help them feel more confident.
81 Leadership requires more than management. Leadership moves the Body forward; it catalyzes change. The problem is almost all organizations, including (perhaps especially) churches, is that we have a scarcity of leadership and an excess of management. ... The maintenance culture within many churches is often an arid environment for folks inclined to a more dynamic understand of leadership; as a result, denominational churches tend to bleed out their catalytic leaders.
87 - It will be 'just in time' Adults tend to seek training opportunities that have immediate application in their lives. They will throw training brochures away until they have a need.
89 - Adults need to know up front how their investment in training will benefit them. Every training opportunity should begin by stating what the learner will be able to do at the end of the session.
101 - A customer is a body within the church that financially supports the services you provide to clients in the name of Church. It may be an individual or it may be a group of persons that has the authority assigned by polity to make that decision. For the sake of simplicity, let's assume that the governing body is funded solely by voluntary contributions from local congregations authorized by the church board. Thsi means that the church board is your only customer. You may have many cients who are important to the board. But you have one customer.
107 - Most people think of marketing as advertising. In fact, it begins with listening to people and where their pain is. Marketing also involves promotion; that is, it provides the customer with the right information at the right time at the right level.
128 - One of your tasks as a leader is working to insure that negative, dysfunctional behaviours do not sabotage the work of your regional association.
132 - Our message to the world tends to be more focused on the noble qualities of our church tradition, not on the power of the Gospel to transform lives. The quality of community that we offer to the world is ofter spiritually and emotionally unsafe. Nearly one in three staff members in regional associations agree or tend to agree that their work is making it harder for them to have a vital spiritual life. As stated earlier, inviting people into a church community where the research indicates it likely that they will end up feeling that they are just going through the motions is spiritually reprehensible. The deeper message is not that we must change or our churches will close; it is that we are failing one another, failing the world, failing our God, and betraying the beauty and wonder of the Gosepl by the way we are living.
142 - Servant-based fundraising is liberating because it does not reduce the leader to an attitude of begging or apology. Servant-based fundraising is based upton the principle that your donor needs you as much as you need him or her. Imagine for a moment that you had a person with an environmental mission in his heart to care for Fod's creation, but no organizations existed for carrying out that mission. Most people do not have the time, nor the talent, to create such an organization from scratch. Without the organization's existence, the expression of the donor's mission, and to some extent God's purpose for his life would be thwarted. ... I was actually offering them a gift as well: an avenue for concretely expressing their values in the world. This introduced an element of mutuality into the conversation. Contrast this with mono-optional-based fundraising that is characterized by: exclusivity - we are the sole legitimate option for your giving. Assessment - we are not going to demonstrate why you should give to us, we are merely going to inform you of the amount you owe.
February 26, 2016
There is a lot of good stuff in this book. There is also a lot of stuff that I have serious concerns about.
Crabtree is absolutely right when he talks about the obsolete institutional models and mindsets that are crippling the mainline churches right now. We act like we 19re monopolies when people actually have options and alternatives. We act as if the role of the congregations is to support the mission of the presbytery or denomination, when the opposite is the case. Officials are good at double-speak, which gives permission not to change, as in, 1Cwe 19re in a crisis 26 but on the bright side 26. 1D Crabtree mentions that breathtakingly ridiculous paper by Cliff Kirkpatrick, which pretends to be a 1Cwake-up call 1D to the church 26 in 2005! If we hadn 19t woken up by 2005 we 19re in a coma! (He doesn 19t mention Kirkpatrick 19s solution, which is to have more babies 26 as if that were possible given our average age, and as if one of the biggest areas of loss hasn 19t been our own offspring 26.)
Crabtree does seem to understand that we are in a death spiral, and drastic action, by which he means a change in culture, is necessary.
I am nervous when it is suggested that churches know what they want and presbytery needs to give that to them. What too many churches want is some version of 1956: pews full of people like us only younger, lots of children in the Sunday School, traditional worship, men in ties and women in dresses, and so on. They want Christendom restored. They want to keep doing the same things and get different results.
On page 58, Crabtree talks about coaching to a vision. But it is hard to find any criteria evaluating the vision. Is it even remotely realistic? Is it based more on nostalgia than actual potential? Is it just a fantasy about the way things should be? Churches want to attract more families with young children. Fine. But (1) is an attractional model still relevant to every church? And (2) what about everyone else (which is to say a huge majority of Americans) who is not part of a family with young children? Single people, handicapped people, empty-nesters, non-traditional families, Gays, and so forth.
More to the point: what model do we get out of the New Testament? Jesus did not sit at home and wait for people to come to him. He did not institute a marketing campaign. He did not talk about clients and customers, and he most certainly did not let the latter set the agenda for his ministry. Jesus knew himself to be sent into the world. When he gathered his disciples, after training them, he sent them out as well.
I am wondering if the form of the ministry shouldn 19t somehow be determined by the content of the message. Much of church growth literature, this book mostly included, is advice that would be germane to any organization that wants to grow. It comes down to basically have a clear vision and be able to articulate it clearly to the people you want to attract. This basic model will work whether it is applied to a bowling league, a Masonic lodge, a retail business, or a branch of the KKK. Crabtree talks about fostering 1Chealthy, vital 1D churches. I think we need to speak even more basically about faithful and committed churches. Too often we let the culture determine what constitutes 1Chealth 1D and 1Cvitality, 1D and this almost always happens quantitatively. But in the church, health and vitality can only be determined by Jesus Christ. We are healthy and vital when we are participating in his mission, when we are faithful and committed to him and the calling he gives to us. Instead of evaluating our ministry based on how many new 1Cfamilies with young children 1D we have been able to 1Cattract, 1D we need to lift up those places in Scripture where Jesus outlines his ministry and commissions his disciples.
Like when Jesus says, 1CThe Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 28because he has anointed me 28to bring good news to the poor. 28 He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives 28and recovery of sight to the blind, 28to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord 19s favor. 1D Let churches tell us how they are doing according to these categories. Nowhere does Jesus say 1Cgo out and attract new members. 1D He does say 1Cmake disciples of all nations 26 teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. 1D So, our first task is to cultivate communities that obey Jesus. Part of this is being sent out to express the good news in the world by our actions of service, healing, and liberation. That is our attraction.
Jesus himself did not seek to attract 1Cfamilies with young children. 1D That 19s because he wasn 19t trying to live up to the example of 1956. He was not trying to exhume Christendom. He went to the needy, the sick, the possessed, and the outcast. He didn 19t do that because that 19s what his 1Ccustomers, 1D ie. those wealthy women who supported him financially, wanted. He did it because it was what God wanted. And these women did not just mail in checks; they followed as part of his entourage.
When is someone going to write the book that says presbyteries should help churches (a) find out what Jesus wants them to do, and (b) obey him? That would be better than a 1Czero-based 1D mission model, it would be 1CChrist-based. 1D
Crabtree is absolutely right when he talks about the obsolete institutional models and mindsets that are crippling the mainline churches right now. We act like we 19re monopolies when people actually have options and alternatives. We act as if the role of the congregations is to support the mission of the presbytery or denomination, when the opposite is the case. Officials are good at double-speak, which gives permission not to change, as in, 1Cwe 19re in a crisis 26 but on the bright side 26. 1D Crabtree mentions that breathtakingly ridiculous paper by Cliff Kirkpatrick, which pretends to be a 1Cwake-up call 1D to the church 26 in 2005! If we hadn 19t woken up by 2005 we 19re in a coma! (He doesn 19t mention Kirkpatrick 19s solution, which is to have more babies 26 as if that were possible given our average age, and as if one of the biggest areas of loss hasn 19t been our own offspring 26.)
Crabtree does seem to understand that we are in a death spiral, and drastic action, by which he means a change in culture, is necessary.
I am nervous when it is suggested that churches know what they want and presbytery needs to give that to them. What too many churches want is some version of 1956: pews full of people like us only younger, lots of children in the Sunday School, traditional worship, men in ties and women in dresses, and so on. They want Christendom restored. They want to keep doing the same things and get different results.
On page 58, Crabtree talks about coaching to a vision. But it is hard to find any criteria evaluating the vision. Is it even remotely realistic? Is it based more on nostalgia than actual potential? Is it just a fantasy about the way things should be? Churches want to attract more families with young children. Fine. But (1) is an attractional model still relevant to every church? And (2) what about everyone else (which is to say a huge majority of Americans) who is not part of a family with young children? Single people, handicapped people, empty-nesters, non-traditional families, Gays, and so forth.
More to the point: what model do we get out of the New Testament? Jesus did not sit at home and wait for people to come to him. He did not institute a marketing campaign. He did not talk about clients and customers, and he most certainly did not let the latter set the agenda for his ministry. Jesus knew himself to be sent into the world. When he gathered his disciples, after training them, he sent them out as well.
I am wondering if the form of the ministry shouldn 19t somehow be determined by the content of the message. Much of church growth literature, this book mostly included, is advice that would be germane to any organization that wants to grow. It comes down to basically have a clear vision and be able to articulate it clearly to the people you want to attract. This basic model will work whether it is applied to a bowling league, a Masonic lodge, a retail business, or a branch of the KKK. Crabtree talks about fostering 1Chealthy, vital 1D churches. I think we need to speak even more basically about faithful and committed churches. Too often we let the culture determine what constitutes 1Chealth 1D and 1Cvitality, 1D and this almost always happens quantitatively. But in the church, health and vitality can only be determined by Jesus Christ. We are healthy and vital when we are participating in his mission, when we are faithful and committed to him and the calling he gives to us. Instead of evaluating our ministry based on how many new 1Cfamilies with young children 1D we have been able to 1Cattract, 1D we need to lift up those places in Scripture where Jesus outlines his ministry and commissions his disciples.
Like when Jesus says, 1CThe Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 28because he has anointed me 28to bring good news to the poor. 28 He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives 28and recovery of sight to the blind, 28to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord 19s favor. 1D Let churches tell us how they are doing according to these categories. Nowhere does Jesus say 1Cgo out and attract new members. 1D He does say 1Cmake disciples of all nations 26 teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. 1D So, our first task is to cultivate communities that obey Jesus. Part of this is being sent out to express the good news in the world by our actions of service, healing, and liberation. That is our attraction.
Jesus himself did not seek to attract 1Cfamilies with young children. 1D That 19s because he wasn 19t trying to live up to the example of 1956. He was not trying to exhume Christendom. He went to the needy, the sick, the possessed, and the outcast. He didn 19t do that because that 19s what his 1Ccustomers, 1D ie. those wealthy women who supported him financially, wanted. He did it because it was what God wanted. And these women did not just mail in checks; they followed as part of his entourage.
When is someone going to write the book that says presbyteries should help churches (a) find out what Jesus wants them to do, and (b) obey him? That would be better than a 1Czero-based 1D mission model, it would be 1CChrist-based. 1D
November 24, 2015
Even though at the end of each chapter there are questions for both church members and regional leaders, I think that this book is definitely aimed at regional leaders or people in management positions at local churches. Most of it I found confusing, boring, or outright disagreed with.
The book opens with a story about someone on a burning oil platform. They decide to jump 100+ feet into the ocean since potential death is a better choice than definite death. This metaphor apparently applies to declining church membership, which is actually what this whole book is about. By "helping their congregations" what the author really means is getting more butts in the seats. There is actually nothing in this book about helping the current members of the congregation. The author quotes several surveys about how congregations are generally unhappy, but nothing about why. And that is because the concern isn't for why they are unhappy but rather what they are going to do about it, i.e., leave the church themselves, or at least turn off potential new members.
Around chapter six the book tries to get technical with some new terminology. We are in a multi-optional culture, which means that people are no longer born into a particular denomination and feel loyalty to it all their lives. Because people have choices now, we need to sell them on being a member of a particular church or denomination or religion will benefit them personally somehow. Churches are also encouraged to be transformational (trying to understand the person and meet their needs) rather than transactional (trying to get resources out of the person). But none of this is applied consistently because the emphasis is still on increasing membership, which is goal for the church and not the person. It reminded me very much of my sorority experience in college. It was great hearing about all the good projects and supportive sisterhood and everything during pledging. But as soon as the membership was official, then all those goals took a back seat to attracting the next group of pledges.
The book says that churches need to “accept that people have choices and that they will have to be “good-news’d” into the faith. To “good-news” someone into the faith is to assume that the gospel of Jesus is new to them, and that it must be demonstrated to them that it is good.” No. Horribly bad advice. First, why would you assume that the gospel is new to the person you are talking to? It is terribly condescending to assume that people are incapable of making their own choices, and if they aren't a member of your church it must be because they've never read the Bible before. Second, you need to do a whole lot more than explain that Jesus died for their sins. You also need to explain why this necessitates their attendance at church - why their attendance at 10:30 every Sunday is more important than the second job they have to work, or their discomfort with some of the church doctrines, or their mixed faith family, or their current spiritual fulfillment elsewhere.
In spite of the lip service to considering the needs of the community, the focus is purely upon encouraging proselytizing efforts from your position in upper management.
The book opens with a story about someone on a burning oil platform. They decide to jump 100+ feet into the ocean since potential death is a better choice than definite death. This metaphor apparently applies to declining church membership, which is actually what this whole book is about. By "helping their congregations" what the author really means is getting more butts in the seats. There is actually nothing in this book about helping the current members of the congregation. The author quotes several surveys about how congregations are generally unhappy, but nothing about why. And that is because the concern isn't for why they are unhappy but rather what they are going to do about it, i.e., leave the church themselves, or at least turn off potential new members.
Around chapter six the book tries to get technical with some new terminology. We are in a multi-optional culture, which means that people are no longer born into a particular denomination and feel loyalty to it all their lives. Because people have choices now, we need to sell them on being a member of a particular church or denomination or religion will benefit them personally somehow. Churches are also encouraged to be transformational (trying to understand the person and meet their needs) rather than transactional (trying to get resources out of the person). But none of this is applied consistently because the emphasis is still on increasing membership, which is goal for the church and not the person. It reminded me very much of my sorority experience in college. It was great hearing about all the good projects and supportive sisterhood and everything during pledging. But as soon as the membership was official, then all those goals took a back seat to attracting the next group of pledges.
The book says that churches need to “accept that people have choices and that they will have to be “good-news’d” into the faith. To “good-news” someone into the faith is to assume that the gospel of Jesus is new to them, and that it must be demonstrated to them that it is good.” No. Horribly bad advice. First, why would you assume that the gospel is new to the person you are talking to? It is terribly condescending to assume that people are incapable of making their own choices, and if they aren't a member of your church it must be because they've never read the Bible before. Second, you need to do a whole lot more than explain that Jesus died for their sins. You also need to explain why this necessitates their attendance at church - why their attendance at 10:30 every Sunday is more important than the second job they have to work, or their discomfort with some of the church doctrines, or their mixed faith family, or their current spiritual fulfillment elsewhere.
In spite of the lip service to considering the needs of the community, the focus is purely upon encouraging proselytizing efforts from your position in upper management.
October 7, 2015
While the book is aimed at reforming middle judicatories, it has a lot of helpful thoughts for local churches. I appreciated the exploration of mono-optional vs. multi-optional cultures. We are living in the latter, yet too many churches want to remain in the former.
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