“The Church As an Ecosystem: A Model to Help Churches See How They Fit into Something Larger than Themselves – and Why This Matters for Legacy”

Posted in Buildings and Property, Change Management, Church Decline, Faith Formation, Healing / Grief Work, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Managing Expectations, Mission and Vision, Pastoral Care Tagged with

13 min 42s

The power of metaphors for helping church navigate their lifecycle;

Imagining the wider church as a forest, and individual congregations as trees helps churches see how they fit into something larger than themselves;

Reframing this last phase of ministry not simply as decline, which is often interpreted as failure, but as a natural part of a process that’s tied to a larger system of the wider church;

Questions to aid the struggle of balancing autonomy at the congregational level with covenant at the wider church level;

How resurrection language can help; A resurrected church, like the resurrected Jesus, has some features of what it was before, but it’s not the same thing – some new “benefits” too;

Charlie Kuchenbrod is the Legacy Church Specialist for the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ, a part-time consulting role.  He worked for almost twenty years for the SNEUCC and Connecticut Conference, serving in a number of finance and administration roles.  Charlie describes himself as a resettled refugee from the corporate world.  He has an MBA and worked for 18 years in health care management.  Charlie is the author of a blog series Building a Legacy – Learning, Discerning and Leaning-In which can be found at www.sneucc.org/legacy along with many other resources for legacy building and ministry completion.  Southern New England Conference churches interested in a conversation with Charlie should contact their Area Conferenced Minister for a referral.  Churches from other Conferences or denominations can reach Charlie at charlie.kuchenbrod2@gmail.com.

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