When the Numbers Aren’t Enough: Finding Realistic Hope in an Uncertain Future – Transcript

Jim Latimer  00:08

Welcome to Coaching for Interims. We are about empowerment for interim ministry, best practices, and quick help, wisdom from the field. This is our collaborative Wisdom from the Field project, featuring short interviews with transitional interim ministers and others with practical help and wisdom to offer those engaged in transitional ministry and ministry more broadly. Thank you for tuning into this episode of Wisdom from the Field,

Jim Latimer  00:40

Today, we have the joy of having with us again Reverend Quentin Chin. Quentin is a long-time friend, and is one of the wisest pastors I have the privilege of knowing. He has served in many different ministry settings, including hospital chaplaincy, and of course many forms of congregational ministry – interim ministry and settled ministry. In particular, Quentin has depth experience in guiding congregations that are struggling to discern their future, and the essential role that hope plays in that process. So, Quentin, please, if you would share your thoughts with us about hope, in particular realistic hope, and how a congregation can locate it for themselves.

Quentin Chin  01:22

Well, good. Thanks, Jim. It’s good to see you. Just a quick little correction, I haven’t done settled ministry, but I’ve done basically everything else, including chaplaincy with homeless veterans too. So, the realistic hope thing. Just the other day I ran into the moderator, one of our local congregations. Now, I’ve known this moderator for at least a dozen years or so, and where this congregation, I’m pretty familiar with it last year, I did some extensive supply work with them over a few months, and over time, because they’re very active in our association, I’m pretty up on, you know, what’s been going on with them.

Quentin Chin  02:15

And so, she said to me, We’re starting work with Partners for Sacred Places. And for those listeners who don’t know, Partners is a group out of Philadelphia that works with congregations, and not limited to Christian congregations, so work with Jewish congregations wherever, basically seeing houses of worship and helping the congregations find ways to leverage, is that a good word for this one? I mean, Jim, you know about them too. How they can use their facility more creatively with partners.

Quentin Chin  03:03

So, this congregation has as a partner in loose terms, that is a food project that serves over 100 luncheons Monday through Friday. So, it’s a pretty extensive ministry. This project food thing has been going on there for like 40 years in the church. It is certainly a mission focus for this church. And so, bringing in Partners for Sacred Places, what she said to me was, It seems like a natural fit, but we do need this consulting company to help us kind of make it fit. And so that’s what they’re looking at, because as she said, In 12 to 15 years we likely will not be here as a congregation,

Jim Latimer  04:09

As a worshipping congregation in the way that they have been…

Quentin Chin  04:11

Yes, right. And so, what do we do? They’re being proactive about it; that’s an aspect of realistic hope. I mean, sure, there’s the hope that we hear in from many of our churches, Oh, we just need more people. We really need younger people. Our finances are really stretched, and somehow, we got to do more fundraising to boost the finances. Or the good one is, We need more children. More young people. And that’s certainly legitimate hope, but is it realistic?

Quentin Chin  04:57

That’s really the question. And just for your listeners who are not familiar with who I am, this is Berkshire County, Massachusetts, the westernmost county in Massachusetts, primarily rural. We have a total of about 140 to 145,000 people across the county. We stretch from Connecticut all the way up to Vermont. And so, here’s the thing, and this gets to what is realistic, right? In Berkshire County our median age is 47.3 years. This is not anecdotal; this is coming from the five-year American Community Survey done by the St Louis Federal Reserve. A median age means that 50% of our population is below 47.3 and 50% is above 47.3 So we are an aging county.

Quentin Chin  06:15

And so, the idea of getting young people, young families, is a challenge in this context. The other thing is, internally we begin to look at our churches and go, Yeah, we tend to be on the older side. And so, when I hear congregation saying, like, there may be two or three kids in the congregation, and people saying, Well, we just got to grow our Sunday school. And so, one question from the external is, Are there enough children, or younger families? because it’s not just the kids, it’s going to be the younger parents who have these kids. Are they going to come? That’s a really good question. Are they there?

Quentin Chin  07:08

And implicitly, this is probably a different podcast, but for the people in the who are sitting there, are you willing to make the changes to accommodate younger families? that’s a whole different thing. And then the internal becomes, What are the resources we have for this? If we’re going to grow the Sunday school, do we have enough people to run a Sunday school? And we also know that in today’s climate, it’s not simply and matter of getting some of the older members of the church to do it, we also have to get them Cori checked and all that other stuff.

Jim Latimer  07:55

Criminal background check…

Quentin Chin  07:56

And it’s not going to be one adult for the kids in the Sunday school, it has to be at least two, all the time. So, you really need three, because if one kid needs to go to the restroom…

Jim Latimer  08:11

That’s very different than it was 20 years ago. The resources required are a lot more, even for the same number of kids.

Quentin Chin  08:19

Yes, resources and the demands. This is not a denominational thing that says, Well, you got to do it. No, this is the insurance company saying, You’ve got to do it. So, this is the reality.

Jim Latimer  08:36

The contextual reality, yep.

Quentin Chin  08:38

Contextual – internal and external. And then there’s always the financial commitment too: do you have the financial resources to do what you want to do? And it doesn’t necessarily have to be growing a Sunday school, but nevertheless, whatever you are planning to do as a congregation, is that realistic as well? So that’s why I mean by realistic hope. We need hope. Hope is in our DNA as churches.

Jim Latimer  09:12

Sure, right.

Quentin Chin  09:12

But is that hope realistic? Is that hope to fill this sanctuary with people again when the sanctuary is not even 20% full? Is that realistic? And another realistic question is, How long do you think it will take to get there? One of the questions I like to ask, is to ask people, and not for the general congregation, but really for each individual, Where are you going to be five to seven years from now?

Jim Latimer  09:54

Where are you personally going to be?

Quentin Chin  09:56

Yes. Where are you personally are going to be five to seven years from now? If you’re 68 years old, you’re still working, but five years from now, you’re going to be 73. Are you still going to be working? Are you going to kind of cut back? Maybe your kids have moved away from the community, and you have grandkids. Would you take time away from your home location, and maybe spend a month with the grandkids?

Jim Latimer  10:33

That’s very tempting. So, Quentin, let me just push you a little bit. Where is the hope in this context, which is realistic, as I understood it? I’m serving a congregation that’s similar to that. Where is the hope? Is there realistic hope for that context? What is it?

Quentin Chin  10:35

So, the bumper sticker answer in this is to be the best church you can be. What is it that you have now? From the internal, what is your financial situation now? Who are your people, and what are they capable of doing now?

Jim Latimer  11:12

Now, okay.

Quentin Chin  11:14

And then look at what’s going on in your community, and saying, How do we serve them now?

Jim Latimer  11:23

Now, with what we have.

Quentin Chin  11:25

Yes. With what we have right now.

Quentin Chin  11:28

And be content with that. We don’t need congregations trying to figure out how they’re going to build that Sunday school or do this grandiose mission project that takes more money or takes more labor than they’ve got. I would say in many communities the idea of affordable housing is really prominent, but if you’re a congregation of 30 people on Sunday, and you may have even maybe $800,000 in endowment, is developing affordable housing going to be realistic for you? You might though be able to address some aspect of homelessness, if you think, Well, what do people who are homeless need? Maybe it’s possible to become just sort of in the winter, at least, a warming shelter, a place where people who are living on the street can just be warm. Maybe it could be a place where people who don’t have homes, could use the church as their mailing address, so they can get mail.

Jim Latimer  13:06

Yeah, but these things that you’re describing, just to back up a minute or so, because we live in a culture that says success means growth, right? And, for congregations, as we have described here in this context, growth in that obvious way really isn’t much of an option for them going forward, but they can still be “successful.”

Quentin Chin  13:29

That’s right!

Jim Latimer  13:31

From a Christian point of view, they can still serve to the glory of God. They can still serve that image of God that’s in every person. They can still locate that. And they can serve that with whatever human power they have, with whatever financial resource they have. They can do that, and they can celebrate it, because that also is the gospel.

Quentin Chin  13:55

That’s right. That’s really it! Being the best church you can be.

Jim Latimer  13:59

Right now. And celebrate that, and know God blesses it.

Quentin Chin  14:03

Yes. And that’s the realistic hope. We’re bringing hope in this community, because from a purely capitalistic marketing perspective, that’s what we sell. We sell hope.

Jim Latimer  14:26

From a Christian point of view, what I’m hearing you saying too, is for hope to be realistic and to really be God-centered, it requires that a congregation, an anxious congregation – being anxious in this context is pretty natural – to take your eyes off the horizon and just bring them right up into the present and look around you, and feel good about what’s here, and know that God’s blessing it and serve good Jesus ministry right now with this, and then plan accordingly. Or if you need to contact Partners for Sacred Places, or others, to plan out the future with what you have here and know that God is with all of this, yeah, and is smiling. These are my words, but…

Quentin Chin  15:14

Well, that’s it. I mean, here’s another piece from my ministry in the past. I served one congregation near here. A good Sunday there was 10 people, 10 to 12, people. I was with them for a little over a year and a half, and did a lot of discernment. Where it came out was that they had this building, this new church building that opened basically at the end of 2019. No pews. And the town in which this church is, there’s no downtown, there’s no public space, really, other than the firehouse in the village hall. And so, what this church wound up doing was becoming another social node for the community.

Jim Latimer  16:15

Nice.

Quentin Chin  16:16

It took a while, but they managed to engage with partners, not Partners for Sacred Places, but partners within the community, and they now are a site for respite care once a week.

Jim Latimer  16:24

Nice.

Quentin Chin  16:26

The community itself is skewed older, so this is the whole idea. They’re not trying to do anything spectacular. They’re giving hope to families who have elderly people with dementia, or whatever it is, and they’re using the resources they’ve got with the context of the community, and that’s realistic hope.

Jim Latimer  17:04

It is. And it’s deeply good, and it resonates with their values. It’s in line with their values. God calls us to stay located within those values and serve and be joyful about it for as long as God gives us to have ministry in this way, and we may need to change our model for ministry at some point, and God will bless that and be with us too.

Quentin Chin  17:25

Yeah!

Jim Latimer  17:27

Quentin, it’s been fun. Thank you so much. I always love connecting with you…

Quentin Chin  17:31

Yeah, same here.

Jim Latimer  17:32

and how you are in the world, and the many people and congregations that you have blessed. Thank you so very much for this on unrealistic hope, because it’s there!

Quentin Chin  17:42

All right. Thank you so much today.

Jim Latimer  17:45

Take care,

Quentin Chin  17:47

Bye now.

Jim Latimer  17:47

Bye bye.