"How do I get them to change" is not the question to ask.
... and other church re-imagination advice you can 'Ask Father Cathie'
It was a great party.
Laughing, dancing, eating good food (and a little wine), catching up.
Then a friend of a friend - someone I’d met only once - grabbed me and said,
‘You’ve got to help my congregation’.
I immediately sat down. (My husband was not thrilled.)
She poured out a story I’ve heard a hundred times (not an exaggeration):
church looked fine on the outside, but nothing was working the way it used to. Too much work. Not enough people. Budget woes. Exhaustion. Conflict. Leadership confused, stressed, unsure what to do.
I gave her my best advice. Then I went back to dancing.
At the end, I told her: have them call me - the leaders who are afraid.
Of course the call never came.
Bite-sized ways that YOU can re-imagine ministry. Right now. Today.
Become a paid subscriber to re-discover ministry JOY.
This is the joy and the challenge of being ‘Free Range’.
Everyone wants it to be easier to be in ministry today - clergy, lay ministers, congregations, denominations, dioceses, etc.
I get weekly calls, emails, texts, social media messages, smoke signals, the works. People launch into their stories of ‘stuckness’.
At the same time, the big, systematic changes required to really move into the Future of Church are scary.
They seem like too much work. We don’t really want to do things differently. We’re too exhausted - and have too few resources, to muster this kind of transformation.
(Incidentally, if you’re organization really IS ready for this, call me! I really can help. Or better yet, sign up for 30 minutes on my calendar…)
So here’s some advice for free
(and some advice you have to pay a lot less for than traditional church consulting…)…
#1:
WE have to be the change.
The most common question I get:
’How do I get my congregation to change?’
(also insert ‘priest’, ‘bishop’, ‘denomination’, ‘church board’, etc).
The answer: You don’t.
We cannot get others to change (repeat that as your mantra).
Institutions are not built for change - so they aren’t going to (or if they do, it will be very slow)(repeat this, too).
The change has to come from us, individually - and most of it is changing our perspective, our vision. (‘Be the change’. Repeat as needed).
And we can change our vision.
We can learn to see what is the Gospel and what is the institutional ‘stuff’ around it.
And we can learn to lean into one and have the courage to let go of the other.
#2
You don’t have to grab my arm at a party.
(though BLESS the brave person who did!)
I really, really want to talk with everyone - all the time! - about how to re-imagine ministry. But it’s seriously not practical.
Which is why I’m extremely excited to start:
‘Ask Father Cathie’
advice for those experiencing church ‘stuckness’ and ministry that feels ‘caged’ by institutional collapse.
Once a month - the first Wednesday of the month, starting May 6, I’m going live at 3:30pm Eastern to answer your questions.
It’s for paid subscribers only - both the submission form and the livestream - but you can get a whole year of Free Range Priest (all the articles and the advice, plus discounts on mini-courses) for $80.
Completely affordable - and doable - bite-sized church consultation.
One small change of vision at a time.
So pretend we just bumped into each other somewhere, or take the email you were about to send me, and instead, submit the form below and send me your worst place of ‘stuckness’…
(and if you haven’t upgraded to paid yet, do that now and then submit the form…)
