Tuesday, July 19, 2011

What Leaders Pay Attention To...Tomorrow

I used to love to plant a tomato garden in the back yard. Every year, I would till the soil, buy the young plants, place them properly in the ground, and nurture them over time waiting for the tomatoes to come. As anyone will tell you, there is nothing better than a tomato ripened on the vine. Those “vine-ripened” tomatoes in the grocery store? I’m not sure what “vine” they were ripened on, but it’s not the same kind of vine I used to grow.

Now, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to answer this question. What would happen if I did all the prep work, prepared the soil, planted the tomatoes, but left them alone once they were in the ground? Let’s just say I didn’t water them, care for them, or pay them any attention at all. I might get a few tomatoes, but the harvest would certainly suffer. Nurturing anything takes a lot of commitment over a long period of time. It’s one thing to put all your time and energy into starting something (is it fair to say many of us are great at starting things?), but it makes all the difference in the world how much time and energy is put into the long term nurturing. This is the essence of disciple making.

What we pay attention to, what we resource, what we value, and what we devote time to all reveal what matters to us. Over the long haul, leaders shape what really matters by what they pay attention to and by what they nurture.

I’ve been in ministry for almost 20 years and I have seen many programs brought to our attention by the United Methodist Church. Some of these programs and emphases were designed for a set period of time, say four or ten years. Any time a new ‘movement’ begins in the church, a lot of energy and effort goes into getting it off the ground. But the true, culture-shaping power of any program/movement comes only if the leaders devote themselves to nurturing it systematically over time.

I remember in the South Georgia Conference of the United Methodist Church we engaged in a huge study in 1991-1993 called the Futuring Document. Bishop Marion Edwards chaired a team of leaders in our conference. They met for almost two years revisioning how our conference could do things differently to reach the coming generations. They were ahead of their time on some things, like the role and responsibility of the District Superintendent. They addressed the nature of the Superintendency so superintendents could better help local church make disciples. They sought to connect more closely the local church to the conference and denomination – something the Call to Action report desires in 2011. We voted to adopt the Futuring Document in 1993 and I remember that as one of the most exciting Annual Conferences ever. Things were going to truly be focused on making disciples and changing structures to better allow that to happen. South Georgia Methodists would no longer experience decline – or so I thought.

A funny thing happened between Annual Conference 1993 and Annual Conference 1994. We approved the Futuring Document, put together an ‘implementation’ committee and the next thing we knew, the Futuring Document was never heard from again. A very few items led to change, but not many. For the most part, it just sat there. In 2001, not even a decade later, someone referenced the Futuring Document on the floor of the conference and not only could no one remember what the document said about the particular issue…no one could even put their hands on a copy of the Futuring Document. It was the talk of the town with untold hours and effort put in the front end. It ended up doing very little.

All that said, now the leaders of the United Methodist Church have engaged in a massive study called Call to Action spending over $500,000 to study vitality in congregations and what drives vitality. The leaders (Bishops, Connectional Table) are calling for churches to begin measuring worship attendance, membership, professions of faith and missions giving/engagement in addition to other things. The leaders also desire more focus on the drivers of vitality (dynamic worship, leadership development, etc.) The verdict is out on whether the metrics and initiatives will lead to greater vitality or not, but one thing is certain. If the leaders of the United Methodist Church refuse to consistently and systematically pay attention to these metrics and initiatives over time, they will end up accomplishing very little.

So, here is an important question. Will leaders in our denomination make this a long term priority? Or, like many other ideas, will they put massive amounts of time and energy into creating it only to let it phase into another level of statistical tables or programs to be included in a Charge Conference report. We may continue to argue ‘what’ the numbers mean and ‘how’ they contribute to vitality, but one thing is certain. If Bishops and other denominational leaders don’t consistently pay attention to and nurture this focus, the culture will not change. What leaders systematically pay attention to communicates their major beliefs – whether they like it or not.

We love the newest and the latest. We love to be early adopters. We love to have our name on the list of pioneers and founders. But what we really need now are healthy tomatoes. What kind of tomatoes we get, and how many, remains to be seen.

Monday, July 11, 2011

Why Kentucky Will Regret Monitoring Facebook

So I hear tell that the Kentucky Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church wants its pastors to sign an agreement so the conference can monitor all pastor's social media (at least they list Facebook and MySpace, but I don't really know of anyone who uses MySpace anymore.) At first I was very mad about this. After all, can the conference force me to include them as my friends on my Facebook so they can monitor all my posts? What do they actually think I put on Facebook?

Many of the comments by pastors across the country point out how silly this is (see link above) and also point out that whoever came up with this in the Kentucky Conference doesn't seem to really understand social media at all. I have decided that whoever came up with this idea is supremely ignorant (yes....I said it) for more than the many reasons I have seen on many pastor's blogs. My argument for the level of ignorance reflected here can be boiled down to simply this...do they even know the kind of stuff people put on Facebook?

Now, I am friends with many pastors on Facebook. I also am friends with many church members (of my church and other churches), so I can't really tell you what a hard-core, hedonistic, non-Christian might post on Facebook (I only have a few of those kinds of friends and we don't fellowship by Facebook). As a part-time Facebook junkie, I can share with the Kentucky Conference the level of interesting stuff they will find on Facebook.
Here is my list of what the "watchers" in the Kentucky Annual Conference will see when they observe pastor's Facebook accounts:
  • Pictures of pastor's kids (on vacation, at restaurants, riding bikes, hanging out on the beach, sleeping on the couch)
  • Pictures of pastor's grandkids (on vacation, at restaurants, riding bikes, hanging out on the beach, sleeping on the couch)
  • Pictures of pastor's nieces and nephews (you guessed it, on vacation, at restaurants....)
  • Links to great YouTube videos like the Annoying Orange, Charlie Bit Me, and the Chewy, Chewy, Chewy, Chewy Bubblegum Song
  • Quotes from long dead theologians that people will "Like" but not really understand or try to live out.
  • Status updates that tell where the pastor is, what they are eating, how great the fried chicken was at potluck, or how bad they need a cup of coffee (seriously, doesn't everyone NEED a cup of coffee in the morning...and another thing - why are you posting anything on Facebook before a cup of coffee???)
  • Links to pastor's blogs, which...let's face it...is really boring stuff. This is why pastor's blogs don't make money. Snooze fest - this one is no exception.
  • Self-portraits (where people take their own picture with their cell phone) at really exciting places like Applebees and Lowe's.
  • Happy Birthday wishes in as many ways as one person can imagine without actually having to say, "Happy Birthday"
  • Pictures of pastor's new running shoes. Seriously Benny???
  • Comments on the day's news that turn any mild mannered pastor into "Captain Obvious". "Wow! Did you see that goal????" "The world is really messed up!!!" "I can't believe it!"
  • 2,435 family vacation photos from the trip to Tuscaloosa, Alabama or Boise, Idaho.
  • An announcement about how super duper excited the pastor is about church tomorrow! It's gonna be scrumdiddlyumptious awesome and you don't want to miss it! (By the way, no one in South Georgia does this Tom Carruth!)
  • Obvious comments about the weather. "Wow, who turned on the heat????" and "Please rain, we need you now!!!"
  • Google+ invites
  • Continuous observations about what's wrong with the world. (After all, it's everything but us, right?)
  • Pastors who need materials for Farmville or have a poor puppy that you need to adopt.
  • The occasional, "I clicked here and found out who's stalking me on Facebook. Click here to see who's stalking you!!" (You do know that's a bug, right??)
  • Pastor's run, bike, or swim time. How come no one puts how long it takes to eat an 8-ounce filet? Next time I eat one, I'm posting my time!
  • Narratives of family vacations...along with pictures.
  • Pictures of dinner and dessert. After all, you can't post a picture of dinner and not post a picture of dessert, right?
  • Scripture quotations, and not the obvious ones. It's like pastors think they might find one no one ever heard of before, like, "Then Zipporah took a flint and cut off her son’s foreskin and touched Moses’ feet with it and said, “Surely you are a bridegroom of blood to me!” Exodus 4:25
  • Vacation countdowns!!! Yay!!!!! "Only 1 Week til Bahamas!!!" "Only 6 days til Bahamas!!" "Only 5 days til Bahamas!!" I'm sorry, where are you going again?
  • What a pastor is watching on TV. "Really fascinating Special on the Secrets of the Secret Service on Discovery!"
  • Not just narratives of the weather....but....wait for it.....PICTURES of the weather!
  • And for the overly ambitious, "I need a pat on the back" pastor, a list of all the work they actually did that day. "Woke early for hospitals, wrote sermon, changed tires, visited nursing home, prayed with mission team, worked on Habitat house, and served lunch in Soup Kitchen." All before lunch.
  • And finally.......pictures of kids.
There you go, Kentucky. This is what you get after thousands of hours of combing through Facebook posts. If by chance this makes it down to South Georgia, let it go on record that I do not want to serve as one of the watchers! I get to see this stuff everyday! (Where do you think I got the list?)

And one more thing...Can't church folk police this themselves? Logic dictates if I have church folk on my Facebook page, they will keep me in check. If I don't have any members or other pastors, then what is the worry about what a pastor puts on Facebook? Who's gonna know?