In a recent meeting of the association Vision Team, the concept of a "Covenant Church" agreement was proposed and agreed upon by the group. Though the ingredients of the Covenant Church agreement are still being defined, I want to introduce you to the concept.

First . . .

I need to answer the question, "Why a Covenant Church agreement?"

The intent is to provide a more intentional avenue for the association to partner with TCMBA churches and resource vision needs. Our efforts, over the past several months, to hear from churches concerning their vision needs that we might respond in some way toward meeting those needs have been too nebulous, and thus not much headway has been gained. Therefore, the Covenant Church agreement will define what a church will do and what the association will do in a partnership agreement aimed at helping churches move forward in accomplishing its vision.

A covenant agreement between church and association will have expectations on both sides of the agreement. However, the expectations are all aimed at helping the church. The benefit to the association comes through helping a church accomplish its vision. The vision of the association, to ‘Develop Communities of Missionaries,' is accomplished by resourcing church vision. We believe when churches fulfill a Great Commission vision they will become ‘Communities of Missionaries.' Therefore, the benefit to the association in a Covenant Church agreement is a church fulfilling its vision.

Be anticipating more details about this agreement between churches and the association. The focus of this year's Annual Meeting, October 13, will be directed towards this Covenant Church agreement.

In this article last month, I encouraged churches to plan for an assessment for their church sometime in the next year.  The purpose of such an assessment to be clarification of vision direction and determining what functions in the church need work to move more aggressively in this direction, what functions need to be implemented, and maybe what functions no longer serve their purpose.

Out of an assessment of this nature, a church can develop better plans and strategies to go forward in accomplishing their vision.  With a renewed focus on vision and plans to accomplish that vision, a church is also better equipped to communicate what resources it needs to implement its vision plans.  This helps the association do its job of resourcing churches.  Then we want to come alongside pastors to provide coaching to help them stay on course with these plans.

Clint Calvert, Church Health Director for the Minnesota-Wisconsin Baptist Convention, will be at the May 21, Pastor’s Lunch Fellowship.  He will share information about a church assessment process he can provide your church.  The fellowship is at 11:00 A.M., at Roseville Baptist Church.

In last month’s Focusing the Vision article, we asked the question, “Can we help you discover the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of accomplishing your vision?”  This month I want to take this question a step further.

Over the past several months I have been asking churches: 1) What are your key vision issues, 2) What are your plans to address those issues, and 3) How can the association resource you in addressing those issues.  As churches have answered these questions my response has been two-fold:  1) Respond directly to specific requests or suggestions for resourcing key issues, 2) Provide training and ‘think tank’ events to help with the top two key issues churches have identified - evangelism and leadership development.

Now I want to propose the next stage which will go a little deeper.  If it has been a while since your church has formally done an internal health assessment, or if maybe your church has never done such an assessment, I want to offer the opportunity for your church to do an assessment sometime in the next year and one-half.  This offer includes any or all of the following:
•    Serve as a consultant for an assessment
•    Coordinate with partners outside the association to serve as a consultant for an assessment (MWBC, NAMB, others)
•    Provide financial assistance for costs involved with an assessment
•    Provide coaching for outcomes resulting from an assessment

If it has been three years or more since your church has had an internal assessment I want to encourage you to seriously consider scheduling an assessment sometime in the next year and one-half.  Even if you have done an assessment more recently but it was not related to assessing church health, a health assessment could still be beneficial in identifying areas in your church that need attention to increase the health and growth of the church.

‘Resourcing Church Vision’ ---- that is what the association is about.  Another way to come at the purpose of the association is to ask the question, “What is your church about?” However you answer that question, you have touched on what the association is about.  It is to help your church do what it is about.

All of this seems simple enough, but simple and easy are not always the same.  Usually stating a church vision or purpose to explain what the church is about is the easy part.  Not so easy is to grasp how to do what the vision or purpose statement says the church is about and put it into practice in an effective way.
We have been asking churches, “What are the key issues related to accomplishing your vision?” As churches have provided some answers to that question, we have tried to provide help with those key issues.  But not many churches have provided answers to that question.  This may be in part because they have not taken the time to respond.  But it may also be in part due to the difficulty in grasping what to do and how to go about it in accomplishing the vision or purpose.

Unless one grasps the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of accomplishing vision, one does not have a clear idea of the issues that need to be addressed in accomplishing that vision.
We have asked the questions:

“What are your key issues to related to vision?” and “How can we resource you in addressing those issues?” Now we ask the question, “Can we help you discover the ‘what’ and ‘how’ of accomplishing your vision?” 

My practice is to track several streams of thought regarding the health and growth of the church. One of those streams is the Easum and Bandy Associates organization. Maybe its just the name that attracts me to their organization, but I do enjoy their ideas on growing churches. It is out-of-the-box stuff for us Baptists but I think well worth the exploration and gleaning for useful ideas.

One of the features of the Easum-Bandy Community is a weekly online coaching seminar in which either Bandy or Easum will put out some thought on church growth and then respond to the questions and comments that come from the online community. I don't always follow the seminar, but the topic this week caught my attention - "Only Four Things Grow a Church." So I checked it out. Bill Easum expresses some ideas I think are worth sharing and pondering. The complete discussion is too lengthy to include here so it will available for download from the web site for those who might be interested. The link is - http://www.tcmba.org/4things.pdf .

Easum began with these words which laid the foundation for the seminar: "Sometimes I think we make pastoring a church seem to be far more difficult than it really is. When I survey the great Christian leaders of today I notice one thing that stands out above all others – they focus on a few things and never many. So I've distilled those few things into four key focus points. If a church focuses its time, energy, and money on the following four things their church will grow in numbers and their people will grow in spiritual stature. Every exploding church I work with concentrates on prayer and inviting, worship, small groups, and Children and youth - in that order."

As one who is often a victim of the tyranny of the urgent, I know how easily one can become distracted by urgent matters that are not necessarily important to the purpose we are about as church leaders. Agree or disagree, Easum gives us an important focus to consider for our own efforts in leading churches to be more effective as Great Commission churches.

Wayne

January, 2007


Can you name the two greatest issues impacting TCMBA churches as they attempt to fulfill the vision God has given them?  I suspect you will get at least one of the two if not both.  But just so you can be sure you guessed correctly, I will give them to you: evangelism and leadership development.   The majority of TCMBA churches have identified these as the top issues they face in accomplishing their vision.  Most churches that named another concern as the top issue, still included evangelism and leadership development as number two and three.

How will your church address these issues in 2007?  They are worthy of significant priority and attention.  Do they have the level of priority in your plans and activities they should have?  With the multitude of urgent matters that fight for our time and attention, it is difficult to keep these two concerns at the level of priority they need.  That is why we need to work together in addressing these concerns.  We need the encouragement of others helping to keep these at the forefront of our thinking.  We need to take advantage of the fellowships and other gatherings that give attention to these topics and keep fresh ideas before us.  And we need someone to come alongside us and coach us to help keep these where they need to be among our priorities.

I want to encourage you in this new year to resolve to avail yourself of the opportunities to join with other leaders in the association for gatherings and events that will enhance your ministry.  

Wayne

December, 2006


A November newsletter article titled, “Hitting the Bullseye,” mentioned the need for churches to more clearly define issues related to accomplishing their visions and plans for addressing those issues.  In so doing, churches will help themselves map out a journey that will move them forward, and will give the association a bullseye at which to aim in resourcing those vision issues.  

A tool for communication of vision issues and plans for which the association can provide resourcing is the monthly Key Indicators report.  Though the primary reason this report was initiated was to track key indicators of church growth and health, an added piece to the report includes questions about vision issues, plans to address them, and ways the association can resource those plans.  This provides a handy means of reporting plans and requesting resources.

Churches are asked to report key indicators every month, but in most instances churches will only periodically have key issues information to relay.  Thirteen churches have reported their key issues and plans, stating what resourcing is needed.  This is a good start.  I encourage the remainder of TCMBA churches to get on board.  The Key Indicators report can be found on the association web site at www.tcmba.org.

Wayne

We hear quite a lot these days about having personal coaches. What does this mean, and what are the benefits? Definitions of a coach that we are accustomed to are: "A person who trains or directs athletes," or "A person who gives instruction, as in singing or acting," or "A private tutor employed to prepare a student for an examination." In the world of personal or professional coaching, a different definition is given the practice of coaching. Though there are various types of personal or professional coaching arrangements and various purposes, in general, a personal coach "helps a person get from where they are to where they want to be."

In this context, the coach is not an expert. That is more the work of a mentor. A coach who is an expert on the subject around which coaching is taking place may actually be a hindrance. How is this possible? Because the first element of coaching is to draw upon the strengths an individual already possesses. The coach does not give advise or do problem-solving with the person being coached. Instead, he or she helps the person discover solutions out of their own know-how and experiences. If the coach is an expert on the subject, he may be tempted to bring his own solutions to the situation rather than helping the other person discover his own solutions. The second element of coaching is to seek the gaps a person has for which he does not have strengths or experiences to inform him. Where there are gaps, the coach leads the person to decide how to address them with training or with mentoring or whatever else is appropriate.

Coaching is a ministry or service I wish to provide interested pastors to help them get from where they are to where they want to be, or where God wants them to be. During my sabbatical during 2005, I learned the value coaching can bring to leaders and determined I wanted to bring this value to pastors in the association. As a result, I sought training and am now completing certification with the Green Lake Coaching Center as a coach.

I invite any TCMBA pastor who is interested to contact me for more information or to discuss a possible coaching arrangement. A pastor may desire help working through a project or getting over a hurdle in his leadership. He may want help setting a new vision with his church or developing a strategy for the vision the church already owns. Whatever the need, I welcome the opportunity to provide this ministry in the association.

Wayne

September, 2006

Vision direction for the association and our efforts connected with Strategic Focus Cities are running very much in parallel these days. Why? Because the thrust of SFC connects very closely with the association vision to resource church vision that they might become communities of missionaries.

SFC has two Phases, and within the first of those two phases there are three steps. The first of these three steps, church diagnoses, took place this past May as church leaders were interviewed so we might learn what the vision needs are in the churches. Step two, prescription, began in July with a meeting between association, state convention, and North American Mission Board leaders to review the diagnoses from the interviews and also begin to outline a prescription to fit the diagnoses.

This prescription process continues in September as pastors are involved in small group discussions to help us arrive at specific ways to resource needs surrounding church visions. Discussion groups will meet on Monday, September 25. One group will meet for lunch in an 11:00 A.M. to 1:00 meeting. This meeting will be hosted by Northwoods Church. A second group will have a dinner meeting from 6:00 P.M. until 8:00. Details of both meetings will be sent to pastors.

Information learned from these discussion groups will equip us to lay out a plan which will move us into step three and serve as the treatment for the diagnoses.

Wayne

July/August 2006

We have talked a lot in the association, within the last year, of developing communities of missionaries and we have said this involves church transformation and a mission passion. Within this context I want to share some exerpts from a new book being written by Bill Easum, a consultant to church leaders. Easum's stated vision for his ministry is "Guiding Christian leaders for ancient mission in the contemporary world." This book, titled, "The Second Resurrection," is still being developed and is not yet in print. In it, Easum has some strong words for us about the mission of the church that I want to share with you. I believe they are very appropriate for us as we consider transform in our churches.
Under the heading, "Revitalization Is Not the Answer," he begins, "For much of the past three decades denominational officials have been promoting seminars and programs aimed at revitalizing the church. I know because I have been the speaker or consultant to many of these groups. For many of these leaders, their goal was to breathe new life into churches experiencing declining memberships and lack of commitment. Yet after years of trying to revitalize these churches the vast majority of them are still declining. What gives?"

Having raised that question, Easum offers an answer: "Based on the conversations and actions of the thousands of Protestant leaders with whom I worked over the years, I have concluded that most of them are spiritually dead and their institutions have ceased being the church. They have the form but not the substance of what it means to be the Church. What do I mean by "spiritually dead?" Spiritually dead churches

•  Have lost their sense of mission;
•  Exist only to provide fellowship for the "members of the club;"
Easum goes on to say, "The only solution for spiritually dead congregations is resurrection. They cannot be turned around through revitalization; they must be brought to life again! And that is resurrection. Revitalization is a waste of time. You can't breathe life into a corpse. Only God can do that and that is resurrection. And if resurrection happens our behavior will change;
•  Jesus, not the institution will become the object of our affection.
•  The Great Commandment will become our mandate and we will measure everything we do by how many new converts we make rather than whether we have a black bottom line."

I concur. If we are to see God do what He wants and what we say we want, we will need to be spiritually alive to finding ways to spread the Good News to those outside the church.

Wayne