The Four Paths: Helpful Language for Congregations Considering Legacy – Transcript
Jim Latimer
I am your host Reverend Jim Latimer and today we have the pleasure of having Charlie Kuchenbrod with us. Charlie is a Church Legacy Specialist. He serves as a resource to all United Church of Christ churches that are transitioning to the legacy stage of their life cycle. Prior to this, he served various roles with the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ and stewardship investment management aspects and did that for many years. And before that, he had lots of practical business experience in the corporate world. So, Charlie is savvy around practical business aspects of organizations in general and congregations in particular, and is able to guide them in ways of faithful resource management. And for someone with an MBA rather than an MDiv, I am impressed by his well thought out theology that undergirds his ideas and consulting. This helps faithful people find the living God in this confusing and sometimes fearful legacy process, and helps them lean into the guidance of the Holy Spirit. So, Charlie, you talked about the four paths, and language for congregations, pastors, and lay leaders to talk about what you call the road ahead and the legacy process. So, if you could speak to that, that’d be very helpful.
Charlie Kuchenbrod
Thank you, Jim. I think of four paths as being open to churches that have been facing steady decline over a long period of time as measured by the traditional metrics of membership, worship attendance and financial support. So, if you’re in that situation, which is not unusual, I see that there are four options for churches to consider. And it helps discernment to have clarity about both your objectives and what your options are so that you can make wise decisions. The four paths that I see are revitalization, transformation, legacy building and ministry completion (that’s one option), and road closed ahead.
Jim Latimer
Road closed ahead!
Charlie Kuchenbrod
Let me say a few brief words about each one, and what I mean. By revitalization, I mean, reestablishing, rebuilding those traditional metrics, membership, worship attendance, and financial support, so that the church continues to be viable on an ongoing basis. So, it’s kind of a return to the strengths that the church had in the past. Transformation is reevaluating how you do church and doing church differently. It’s letting go of the traditional metrics for success, and finding alternative ways to be viable. So, to borrow from the Ron Heifetz book, Leadership Without Easy Answers, revitalization is a technical process where you use known tools to solve a problem that’s well understood.
Charlie Kuchenbrod
Transformation is adaptive. It requires learning, it’s an exploration. There aren’t easy and obvious solutions. Then there is legacy building and ministry completion, which is recognizing that the church is coming to the end of its ministry and looking how to do that process faithfully and well. And then there’s the road closed ahead, which is an option I wish didn’t exist. One of my colleagues called this prayerful denial. It’s not stepping up and trying to deal with the realities of the continuing decline and what that might mean. So, for an interim pastor working with a congregation to be able to lay out these options and help churches focus on which options are most likely to be fruitful for them is an important part of what they can bring and contribute to the congregation.
Now, in most cases, revitalization is a mirage, because of the changes in the world – broad social, cultural, economic, and even political trends at work. These are the forces driving decline in church participation, and other organizations that depend on volunteers for leadership. So, the decline that many churches are experiencing is not internally driven. It’s not because we have forgotten to do in church. It’s because the world has changed. And the way we do church is no longer attractive to people. So, it’s very difficult to revitalize the church, especially if you’re not in an area of favorable demographics, that is new growth in your community, and if you don’t have truly extraordinary leadership, it’s very difficult to pull off. And if you’re a mostly white church in a rural suburban area, that’s a very tough road to pursue. And so, churches need to be honest, and interims need to be honest and forthright in the churches that they’re working with.
Jim Latimer
Let me pause you there, Charlie, with the term revitalization. I remember a number of years ago when I was called into one, and it was really my first interim time too. And that was set up as a revitalization. This was in 2008-2009 when everybody was using that term. And in that congregation’s mind, it meant using the easy metrics, the easy to measure things – worship, attendance, money, and stuff like that. And it took us a while to figure out that that’s really hard to do.
Charlie Kuchenbrod
And, honestly, we didn’t have many successful examples that we can point to. And this is something that can be part of the education process for churches. The other branch to try to trim off quickly is the road closed ahead. That denying that there’s an issue, and perpetually kind of recycling through the same set of options without getting any traction on anything, is simply setting up a situation where fewer and fewer people are dealing with the challenges of the church and eventually becomes an unfair burden on those people. And it voids or eliminates the possibility of experiencing the blessings and benefits of the other options. So, to me, this is a process of shaping and narrowing down options and focusing on transformation, and legacy building and ministry completion, and discerning which is right for that congregation. A lot will depend on the energy and commitment of the members because transformation is hard work. It requires open mindedness. It requires courage. It requires the ability to relinquish and let go of things that we have really valued about the church in the past in order to move forward in a new way.
Jim Latimer
Transformation literally means to change shape, right? That’s what that means, you’re changing shape. And that’s really hard to do. Not impossible, but hard.
Charlie Kuchenbrod
So, an example of a transformative approach might be selling the building and property of the church and becoming a congregation without a building. And reimagining how you would meet and how you would interact with the community if you no longer had that building as the center of your identity. And that’s really quite important to some congregations, and that’s very difficult to let go of. But that’s an example of a transformative approach – a radically different way of being church. And then honestly, if there isn’t the energy, enthusiasm, capacity and skills for transformation, it is not a failure to focus on completing a ministry faithfully and well. And that means taking care of the members through the process. It means building a legacy. It means thinking about how the church as a congregation fits into the wider body of Christ. And how by redeploying its assets, its people, its property and other financial assets, in the church world, that they can continue to be aligned with God’s purposes, even though they have ended their ministry together and are now moving ahead in different ways.
Jim Latimer
I really appreciate your care in language there. It’s completion, right? As you’re describing this, it’s not failure. It’s faithfulness. It’s a completion of this shape or this format or model or way of doing ministry.
Charlie Kuchenbrod
Jim Latimer
Charlie Kuchenbrod
That’s a good summary, Jim.
Jim Latimer
Thank you, Charlie. This has been very helpful. Thank you.