How we built the trust needed to face the reality of our decline and move forward – Transcript
Jim Latimer
Hello, I am your host Reverend Jim Latimer and today we have the privilege of hearing from Reverend Diane Kenaston. Diane is a United Methodist Elder with depth experience in leading and facilitating congregations as they conclude ministry of one form and then sometimes begin another form, be it relocating and merging, sometimes even restarting. She’s also part of an ecumenical group called the Good Friday Collaborative, which does similar work. To learn more about her or the Good Friday Collaborative, go to the Coachingforinterims.com website where you can see this interview and more details about how to get in touch with her and learn more about the Good Friday Collaborative. So that said, Diane, what would you like to speak to us about in this segment today?
Diane Kenaston
Hi, Jim, thanks so much for the invitation to be here. I wanted to talk about the beginning of realizing that the church I was serving was not going to have another full-time pastor after me. That was just a really hard reality. And then looking at how to shift from that into making decisions as a congregation about what to do next. So, about a month after I arrived at my last church, someone came into the room and sat down and said, We need to merge with the congregation down the street. We cannot continue to fund this big building with so few people. I have been saying this for decades. Why does no one listen to me?
Jim Latimer
Exactly.
Diane Kenaston
And I was like, Oh, I just got here. Let’s just see what else God can do. You know, we’re gonna see what happens. Let’s not make any hasty decisions. And at that point, I was one of the people I think in in denial. There were always people who were raising red flags and saying, We’re running out of money next Tuesday. And then there were other people saying, We just need to trust God more and keep on going. And within a few months, I found myself shifting from the, Oh, everything’s fine, to crying in my office, feeling like a failure. Messaging an older pastor that I really respected and saying, Hey, you’re in this historic congregation that’s dwindled in size. And yet you still are doing this vibrant, amazing ministry. And he messaged me back and was like, Yeah, it is vibrant, amazing ministry. And I have no idea how much longer the church is going to stay open.
Jim Latimer
Oh, wow!
Diane Kenaston
I was going, Okay, this church is doing good work in the community making a big difference. But it was a congregation that used to have 100 people in the youth choir. And when I arrived had 100 people in worship on a Sunday morning. And they had thought, and the bishop had thought, everyone had thought that okay, they’ve bottomed out, they’ve stabilized and now Diane will come in and help them turn around, and they’ll go into a beautiful new future.
Diane Kenaston
And that just wasn’t the case. The bottom kept sinking. So, I kept wrestling with myself feeling like a failure, not really wanting to name these realities, getting offended when other people were naming the realities. And yet, knowing that there needed to be some truth telling to both to myself and to the churches as a whole.
Diane Kenaston
So, the church actually set the goal that year of building trust between the leaders and the congregation, and to look at transparency, in particular as a way to build trust. I deeply believe that change happens at the speed of trust, which is an aphorism I learned from adrienne marie brown. We have change happening only when we can fully trust each other.
Diane Kenaston
So, about 10 years before I arrived, this congregation had had two full-time pastors, and they had to let one of those pastors go. It felt very sudden to the congregation because even though attendance had been sliding, and giving had been sliding, it still felt like, Well, one day, one day, we have two pastors, and the next day, we only have one. It was traumatic for the congregation and something they still hadn’t really worked through by the time that I arrived.
Diane Kenaston
So, we were afraid that by talking about the continuing budget problems, the continuing membership problems, and the continuing attendance problems, that people were going to freak out and get really worried. And so, there was this question of, How do we tell the truth without also predicting gloom and doom?
Jim Latimer
Let me just pause you there, Diane. I love that you’re saying that, because that’s where the real art of leadership comes from in any organization that’s in decline, right? Let’s just stick with churches, faith communities at the moment. How do you get people to be willing to talk about the truth? Like, what’s happening and name it, right? Without then necessarily taking that and going to the bank, Well, if we name that, then a bunch of people are going to leave! Oh, we’re dead for sure! It’s like, That’s gonna happen if we don’t do this. So, where is faith? Where is God in this process that we find ourselves in – this uncomfortable process? Where is God in this? And we know from our Scriptures, God is always around truth and trust. It’s your story, so, keep going.
Diane Kenaston
Yes, indeed. Well, that truth and trust and transparency, I think they’re so crucial. How can we trust one another? How do we tell the truth over and over again? And so, we decided there would be no secrets and no surprises about finances, membership, attendance, decision making processes – that everything was going to be presented clearly and truthfully. And not just one time. But over and over and over and over again, so that the congregation could trust that the leaders of the church were proactively communicating, that we weren’t making decisions without seeking input and consultation from the congregation in all things.
Jim Latimer
Let me pause you again, Diane. I just heard another real nugget there about no secrets and surprises. It’s one thing to say that, but what I heard you just did was you communicated that via multiple modes, right? Because some people won’t hear something unless it’s a pulpit announcement – they won’t understand it. Other folks won’t understand or hear something unless they read it in the newsletter. And so, you can do that in multiple modes if it’s an important message. And that’s what I heard you did. That was one of the key things. Great!
Diane Kenaston
Yeah, absolutely. And practically, we had volunteer auditors who looked at our finances, and they were the world’s best / hardest volunteer auditors that you could ever imagine. They had previously worked in the developing world with developing economies and would raise red flags about all of the issues that they saw. And then they kind of came in and did that in our local church too. So, sometimes we had to say, All right, these are the processes we need to work on, this is where we’re going. But we were always publishing the financial statements, sharing about, Okay, this is where we have weaknesses. This is where we need to work. Communicating the results. Working on those audit points. And in improving our governance as an organization.
Diane Kenaston
We also did work around membership and attendance. We use the curriculum, Caring for Inactive Members, which is from Stephen Ministries, just to learn how to reach out to people who are no longer active, and to recognize that sometimes our membership lists get very bloated. And they’re bloated because we’re not willing to face the truth about how people are in fact, still connected with the church. Oh, That person left probably isn’t coming back. Or, We’ve lost track of this person. How do we think honestly and truthfully about this?
Diane Kenaston
And then being honest about leadership. So, the transparency in leadership meant that we weren’t just gonna put names down on our leadership forms. So, in my tradition, you have an Annual Meeting in which you elect all of the leaders for the next year. And a lot of the people on that list didn’t feel like they could say no, because they knew the congregation needed them. But if you don’t feel you can say No, then you can’t really say Yes.
Jim Latimer
Nice!
Diane Kenaston
And so, we said over and over again, It’s better to have a blank line, and be honest about the fact that there’s no one who’s leading the evangelism committee, let’s say, than to pretend that we have someone leading an evangelism committee, and then get into this blame and shame game about why we’re not reaching out to the community in the exact way that structurally we think we should. And I think it’s common for churches to have a couple of over functioning leaders. So, making it clear that it’s okay to lay something down, that we can say No to things, and as a pastor modeling those boundaries and being clear about the limits of paid staff and what people can do.
Diane Kenaston
So again, just transparency and acknowledging when there isn’t something that maybe you think should be happening, but it isn’t. Just saying. This is a blank. This is a gap. Here’s where we are. And we’re not going to put on a yoke too heavy for anyone to bear in order to keep the congregation going. We’re just going to be very, very upfront about what it is that we are capable of at this moment, and in where we need rest and recovery.
Jim Latimer
Yes, Diane. That’s beautiful, what you’re saying. And really the sum of what I’ve heard you saying around being active with transparency and honesty, around membership rolls, around finances, around leadership, around boundaries is – and the reason that’s so helpful I hear you saying, and I’ll just say it from my own experience – is that it helps people avoid the trap of, We’re in decline because we aren’t faithful, or, We’re not good people, or, We sometimes failed. Look at my grandparent’s generation. They had all these people. They must have been such better Christians, or so much more faithful. And that’s not the case. The case is that our world has changed. That’s the case. It’s like somebody drove past your church and threw a bucket of paint on it. It’s not your fault, but it is your problem.
Diane Kenaston
I love that you’re connecting it to that larger story as well. As we started our formal discernment process about figuring out our next steps as a congregation, we actually graphed the membership of the church from its founding in 1910, until 2020, which was when we were doing this work. We’ve graphed the attendance. And we also graphed the population of our municipality, the denominational statistics in the United States. And the population and the denomination were the two big ones, and our trajectory, completely lined up with those other two things. So, the way that the denomination as a whole is trending, and the way that our municipality was trending, were almost exactly the same. And that was really comforting, I think, because it’s easy to think it’s your fault. Everybody puts that blame on themselves or other people. And yet with part of the story in which, Hey, this community – this church – was founded at the same time the city was. The city grew and grew and grew and grew for 40 years, and then it’s been declining in population since then. And our story as a congregation exactly mirrors that.
Jim Latimer
Wow, that is so helpful, Diane. Thank you so much for this. This is really rich wisdom from your own practical experience of congregations in decline and what to do next – what’s next, what’s the faithful thing to do? Right? Really keep our eyes open and learn how to trust the process through intelligent decisions around good leadership and stuff. So, let’s wrap this up here and I would look forward to doing another one and hearing more of your wisdom around this. Thank you so much, Diane, for being with us.
Diane Kenaston
Thank you.