Category: Legacy Churches / Church Closing

Posted in Change Management, Church Decline, Church Growth & Vitality, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Pastoral Care Tagged with

15 min 23 s

Rev. Lindsey Peterson

The church needs non-church people – and not on our terms. We need non-church people on their creative terms;

Partnering magic is an inside / outside dance;

Helping folks see the bigger landscape where the magic of partnering is happening;

Magic happens when the church is lovingly shaken out of its habitual way of being by the freshness of creative spaces – arts and culture, movement, visual arts;

We agreed on the vision that our building will become a community center – but we’re in the middle of knowing what that will actually look like, how it will turn out, what it will really mean for people…how will it actually happen?

Helping the congregation to recognize that there’s wisdom and capability outside of the congregation that our vision needs for it to succeed;

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Posted in Buildings and Property, Change Management, Church Decline, Church Growth & Vitality, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Pastoral Care, Stewardship Tagged with

12 min 41 s

Rev. Lindsey Peterson

Questions to direct us from a spirit-lead, and justice lead-perspective around how we are being nudged to use or give away material assets and resources;

Parsing the question of What is ours to give away, now?

What is ours?

What is ours?

What is ours to give away?

What is ours to give away now?

How to know when you’ve really released something – given it away?

  • there’s space in you;
  • there’s a lightening of your load;
  • you breathe deeper;
  • you feel a little lighter…

The opening of emotional space created by the release can breed hope;

You can never lose a thing if it belongs to you.

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Posted in Buildings and Property, Change Management, Church Decline, Church Growth & Vitality, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Pastoral Care, Stewardship Tagged with

12 min 48 s

Rev. Lindsey Peterson

Is your church in that anxious place of diminished vitality where folks are throwing out ideas left and right in a desperate effort to right the ship – “We ought to do this?” or, “We could attract young families again if we just did that!” etc.?

If so, the Holy No! can help clarify what is ours to do at this time – and what is not. In this episode, Rev. Lindsey Peterson takes us inside her own congregation and how they are using the Holy No! to focus and to empower.

Questions to direct us from a spirit-lead, and justice lead-perspective around how we are being nudged to use or give away material assets and resources;

Parsing the question of What is ours to give away, now?

What is ours?

What is ours?

What is ours to give away?

What is ours to give away now?

How to know when you’ve really released something – given it away?

  • there’s space in you;
  • there’s a lightening of your load;
  • you breathe deeper;
  • you feel a little lighter…

The opening of emotional space created by the release can breed hope;

You can never lose a thing if it belongs to you.

Listen or Read Now!
Posted in Assessments and Evaluations, Buildings and Property, Change Management, Church Decline, Church Growth & Vitality, External Relations, Faith Formation, Healing / Grief Work, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Managing Expectations, Mission and Vision, Stewardship Tagged with

16 min 07 s

Rev. Dr. Rochelle (Shelly) Stackhouse

  • Does your church have more property than it needs? Is much of your building unused most of the time? If so, you have lots of company! Many churches have significant real estate that’s fallow – unused – and yet they continue to pay for its upkeep. Of course, no one likes this situation or planned for this reality, yet churches often have difficulty moving forward. Put differently, churches often struggle to incorporate their property into a realistic understanding of their current mission and purpose as a faith community. Rev. Dr. Shelly Stackhouse, a long-experienced interim minister and now the Senior Director of Programs for the non-profit, “Partners for Sacred Places,” offers some key questions and a process to help such churches move forward in this episode titled, “Your Church Property Has a Mission Too.”

Does Your Church Have a Mission Statement for Its Property?

Interim ministers have the opportunity (obligation?) to help a congregation begin to assess their situation with their property;

  • How is our property being used?
  • How often?
  • Who’s using it?
  • What spaces could be used more fully?
  • What property should we offload? How and to whom?

Developing a mission statement for your property;

Understanding property as part of your mission – start by going room to room…

There are people in the wider community who are stakeholders in your property;

Honoring the grief in letting go of unused property;

It’s in the telling of stories that people come to feel the past has been honored, and then are open to a different future;

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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

12 min 19s

The four paths are: revitalization, transformation, legacy building and ministry completion (that’s one option), and road closed ahead.

Description of each path and what is involved;

Why 1 path is much harder (a mirage really) than it may seem and why;

Why another path is the one congregations in denial often fall into (and I wish didn’t exist!);

The 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.

Metaphor of the church as a ship coming into harbor and completing it voyage.

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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;

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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

15 min 25s

How a physician or a statistician might look at someone and assess what their health was and their life expectancy – parallels with a congregation;

Examples for churches: Acute, life-threatening illnesses,

Chronic illnesses;

Toxic behavior by members;

Parallels for churches of what we’d look for in people such as diet, exercise, social connection, sleep or rest, family history, mental health;

Like people, some of the things that influence life expectancy can be changed, some cannot & which is which;

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Posted in Boundaries, Change Management, Church Decline, Contracting and Negotiating Before Beginning, Entering and Engaging the Congregation, Interviewing for an Interim Position, Leadership Development, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Managing Expectations, Self-Care Tagged with

12 min 07s

Book came out of my experiments, failures & successes of a more laid-back approach to ministry;

Laidback means pastoring from the sidelines rather than from center court.

My Aha! moment after season of being burned out came when I wasn’t insisting on being in the center of everything & the church was still doing just fine;

I know I’ve done well equipping them when they own the ideas, not saying “Pastor Liz said we should…” As a transition pastor, key to be able to very quickly say: This is who I am. This is what you will experience working with me.

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Posted in Boundaries, Entering and Engaging the Congregation, Leadership Development, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Managing Expectations, Self-Care Tagged with

For a pastor who admits having been burned out early in ministry, embracing the bonfire metaphor for her ministry now seems dicey. Yet, Rev. Liz Miller offers this bonfire metaphor to describe a vibrant new stance and perspective for her ministry where she’s close to the heat of things, but no longer consumed by it; paying full attention, yet not holding tightly to particular outcomes. Listen to her lessons learned and new wisdom in this episode titled, “Moving from Burnout to Bonfire.”

For a transcript of this episode, please visit the Coachingforinterims.com website. In addition, subscribe to this podcast series if you want to be notified when additional podcasts are available.

I moved from burnout in ministry 5 years in, to bonfire now – bonfires require constant tending, yet don’t want to over tend; find a rhythm that works;

And for me that’s what ministry feels like in the local church, keeping a close enough eye on things that you are connected and can respond when something needs you, but not being so close to it that you’re totally consumed and absorbed by what’s happening that you can’t respond when there’s a change.

Yet, it’s not about balance, per se; it’s more about having an awareness, a willingness to be off kilter a little bit and to just accept that you have to come and go and move in and move out as needed.

Laidback is very different from not paying attention. You are paying attention very much in the moment, yet laidback in the sense of not holding on tightly to a particular outcome;

The laidback approach is about being more attuned to the people and their gifts and their possibilities, rather than being attuned to expectations of a certain outcomes.

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Posted in Boundaries, Change Management, Church Decline, Contracting and Negotiating Before Beginning, Entering and Engaging the Congregation, Interviewing for an Interim Position, Leadership Development, Legacy Churches / Church Closing, Managing Expectations, Self-Care Tagged with

12 min 28s

I’ve come to realize that transitional ministry in a church in transition feels very similar to a settled position, but it’s a lot more honest about the transitions that are happening there at the forefront, rather than in the background;

Avoid giving in to the sense of urgency by doing too much myself; rather, staying on the sidelines for equipping and empowering people;

A lot of helping the congregation reframe ownership for existing things or new ideas so it’s really coming from them, not just what a pastor said they should do;

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