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January 4 - April 4, 2021
Notice how the congregation frames the story. It was a decision that was imposed upon them. They speak of this incident as a painful church split, which is typically language used to describe what happens when a faction of a church leaves during conflict. Here’s the rub. Cornerstone Church was not founded as the result of a split. It was a new church plant. The pastor, the one who has been vilified in the story, inspired thirty-five members to leave the safety of their prospering home church to move across town and open a new congregation in a rapidly growing part of the city.
every time members retell this version of the story, they reinforce a scarcity mentality.
The longer the story goes untold, the deeper the shame becomes. The more repressed the shame, the unhealthier the organization grows. To heal a spiritual or psychological wound, the wounding event must be remembered, and it must be remembered rightly.
double injustice occurs—the first when the original deed is done and the second when it disappears.”
The leader listens to how people tell the story of their own involvement with the organization, how they answer the questions, “Who am I? Why am I here? What are my hopes for the future?” Then the leader begins to frame a collective narrative that is truthful, value-laden, and hope-filled.
Telling and receiving stories breaks through illusions of separateness and activates a deep sense of our collective interdependence and the bonds that form us as community.
Appreciative Inquiry (AI). In AI leaders invite constituents to tell stories of their peak experiences in the organization. Participants are invited to reflect on who the organization is when at its best. Leaders use those positive stories to claim common themes and to identify the root causes of past success. Building on this positive core, the organization shares its hopes and dreams for an emerging future.
what makes AI an effective leadership tool in a liminal season. Confidence and trust can be built into an organization that is in liminal space by creating direct links between stories of the past, present, and unknown future.
six appreciative-based questions:[17] Reflecting on your entire experience at our church, remember a time when you felt the most engaged, alive, and motivated. Who was involved? What did you do? How did it feel? What happened as a result? What are the most important contributions the church has made to your life? Tell me when this happened. Who made a difference? How did it affect you? Don’t be humble; this is important information: Tell me about a time when you made an important contribution to our church—through your personality, your perspectives, your skills, your activities, your
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David Cooperrider, Diana Whitney, and Jacqueline Stavos, Appreciative Inquiry Handbook: The First in a Series of AI Workbooks for Leaders of Change
Thomas Merton said, “Humans have a responsibility to find themselves where they are, in their own proper time and place, in the history to which they belong and to which they must inevitably contribute.”
In the absence of meaning and purpose, people become fearful. Fearful people will attach themselves to anyone who promises to reduce their anxiety.
Strategic planning is not the best way to clarify purpose during a liminal season. Traditional strategic planning makes linear assumptions about how the future will unfold. We are standing here, and we want to get there. These incremental steps will take us there. In liminal seasons learning and logic are not linear. We build the bridge as we walk on it. Carefully crafted plans may inhibit the journey by locking us into decision-making rather than letting us discern our way to the other side.
We must trust that something important will be given to us that is worth the risk of letting go.
fundamental shifts are causing some congregations to mistakenly think that they serve the world. They seek to be all things to all people so that no one feels excluded. In fact, a congregation who believes it is serving the world, the nation, the denomination, or even the city in which it resides is a congregation without clarity of purpose. Clarity of purpose requires narrowing in on context. We don’t have unlimited resources. We cannot be all things to all people. So who is our neighbor?
Most mainline Protestant congregations are not able to get quite this clear about who they serve.
clarifying context is fruitful work for a congregation, particularly during a liminal season. Who do we feel called to serve, today?
Historically, the term touchstone referred to a physical stone that was used for assaying precious metals, for determining the purity of an alloy. The touchstone was a small tablet of dark stone such as fieldstone, or slate. The stone had a finely grained surface, so that a soft metal rubbed against it would leave a visible trace. A pure piece of silver would produce a recognizable color. Another alloy rubbed alongside the silver mark would leave a different colored trace. A merchant could compare the two colors to determine the purity of a piece of metal being offered for trade.
Mission statements tell us why an organization exists. However, mission statements are not specific enough to ground discernment or decision-making.
Core values are not descriptions of our mission, the work we do, or the strategies we employ. They are not things we do; they are principles we hold and beliefs we share. Well-written values reflect the distinctiveness of an organization. An outsider reading an organization’s value statement ought to be able to intuit attributes of the organization from what he or she is reading.
core values are those central tenets that are so primary, so central to the life of the congregation, that they remain stable through changes in leadership and shifts in the environment. The
If core values are going to be useful, then they must be rooted in the lived experience of the organization. We cannot simply create a wish list of how we would like to be seen by the world. We must describe what we are actively trying to embody, who we are when we are at our very best. This means that core values must be socially validated—drawn from the experience of the organization and affirmed by its constituents.
Another approach is to clarify core values after doing a history review of the congregation. Constituents create a decade-by-decade record of the prouds and sorries of the congregation. They record important events, milestones, and key players from each era of the organization’s history.[6] Once the story of the organization has been told, participants are invited to name the enduring principles and beliefs that have guided the organization across time.
Edgar Schein writes about the difference between the values we espouse and those we enact. Espoused values are the explicitly stated principles and norms that the organization claims for itself, the values we want others to believe we abide by. Enacted values are the beliefs and norms demonstrated by our constituents daily. When espoused and enacted values don’t align, we have an integrity gap.
In liminal seasons it is important for leaders to tend the gap between espoused and enacted values. The leader can adopt a wondering stance about the integrity gap. “We have a stated core value of ______, what do you suppose that requires of us right now?”
When a congregation isn’t acting out its espoused values, the gap is generally due to unstated assumptions held by constituents, unexplored assumptions that are at odds with the stated value.
“We are called to live the love of Christ” is a beautiful aspiration. It may be necessary to state this so that we all understand why we are here. Aspirational statements provide motivation for people who are seeking spiritual meaning. However, aspirational statements present targets that are much too big. They won’t significantly impact daily activities.
Gil Rendle writes that people need a proximate purpose: the next appropriate piece of work, the next necessary difference that a person or people believe God seeks in their lives or in their community.
good proximate purpose lies at the intersection of identity, context, and values. When our passions, skills, and gifts are deployed in service to a clearly defined target community, an organization that works at this intersection will find energy and create focus.
Congregations are most energized when they invest their limited resources in the small triangle of space that resides at the intersection of the three smaller circles: Identity, Context, and Values. An ideal proximate purpose is one that clearly captures our emerging identity, that addresses the context of our ministry now, and that honors the core values of our organization now.
“Concerning all acts of initiative and creation, there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then providence moves too.”
There are two major pitfalls that church leaders should avoid when helping a congregation clarify its purpose: pursuing growth for growth’s sake and adopting generic revitalization programs because they worked someplace else.
Hoping for growth is not a purpose, it is a desired outcome—attached to an unarticulated purpose.
most growth aspirations stem from constituents wanting more people, just like themselves, to help support the budget and existing programming.
I have only seen churches actually grow in response to the pursuit of authentic ministry tha...
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Chasing growth for the sake of growth is a knee-jerk reaction that lets a congregation avoid the hard work of clarify...
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At the end of the day, discovering our next best step, our proximate purpose, won’t magically resolve liminality. We will still be disoriented. We still won’t have clarity about our ultimate destiny. However, we will have created enough energy and focus to continue building the bridge as we walk on it.
Margaret Silf, The Other Side of Chaos: Breaking through When Life Is Breaking Down (London: Darton, Longman and Todd Ltd., 2011), 35–36.
Gil Rendle and Alice Mann, Holy Conversations: Strategic Planning as a Spiritual Practice for Congregations
Lawrence L. Lippitt, Preferred Futuring: Envision the Future You Want and Unleash the Energy to Get There
Gil Rendle, Quietly Courageous: Leading the Church in a Changing World
We are like Aaron, who faced a grumbling group of Israelites when Moses disappeared atop Mount Sinai. This newly formed community, which just days before had agreed not to worship false gods, begged for a golden calf they could worship. Aaron embraced the hero’s role by resolving the chaos, restoring the status quo, and giving the people what they wanted.
Rule of Alignment: Steer toward the average heading of your six closest neighbors. The swarm is not led. There is no centralized decision-making. The practice of steering in accordance with the movement of your closest neighbors is what keeps the flock aligned.
Traffic circles encourage slower speeds and greater awareness of surroundings, which accounts for their safety.
How many of you are screaming at the page right now, “But I hate driving through traffic circles! The chaos is unnerving.” Exactly. Welcome to emergence.
“People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them.”
As leaders, our challenge is to work with this natural disorientation to invite something transforming.
Liminal leaders must learn to manage the heat of disturbance. Heifetz refers to this skill as sustaining the productive zone of disequilibrium.[7] We must let the disturbance provoke, prod, and disorient. Let the flickering ember get some air so that it fans into a productive flame.
Jerry intuitively knows that his job is to invite the region into the next stage of emergence. He must allow the budget crisis to fully unfold, so that structures begin to fail. Only then will the region discover an innovative pathway forward. The trouble is that people are going to attack Jerry’s leadership when he does this.
