Don't Revitalize. ReMission.
A Worksheet to Unpack the Truths and Tools that Can Bring Life Back to Your Ministry
From Pastor/Leadership Expert Josh Hayden's Field Guide for Church Leadership
by Phil Miglioratti @ Reimagine.Network
PRELUDE
- I have clustered several components from the book that will assist you in determining if your congregation is in need of remissioning and has the leadership to lead the vision to remission rather than merely try to revitalize.
- May I suggest you begin with a prayer for discernment and courage to lead change
- Order books for key leaders
- Share this worksheet with your ministry team in a Pray/Talk/Pray/Next interaction session to introduce them to the concepts and the book. Plan a follow-up to discuss the 1st four chapters.
- Investigate Coaching and Consulting for Remissioning Church and Centering Discipleship
OVERVIEW
From IVPress: Rediscover Your Church's Mission!
Many churches are struggling to connect with their communities and are facing a decline...But there's hope!
God is inviting His church to be reborn from the inside out, transforming into a new missional presence that brings life and flourishing to their neighborhoods.
Using inspiring vision, practical tools, and field-tested methods, Pastor Joshua Hayden offers church leaders solutions for resurrecting their congregations.
If you're a church leader longing to bring your declining church back from the brink, Remissioning Church is your essential companion that outlines the path of inside-out transformation through discipleship while focusing on serving your neighbors and the world.
God is inviting your church to a new beginning. Remissioning Church is the guide you need to answer that call and lead your congregation into a future filled with purpose and mission.
Josh Hayden: a doctorate in leadership and organizational change... helps leaders lead change... in various denomination and global networks... experienced in nonprofit organizations, church plants, and established congregations
From: "Creative Destruction: Towards a Theology of Institutions" * A Dissertation by Josh Hayden
Creative destruction is the institutional (ie, church, congregation) process of dying so that new life might flourish for the sake of others. Reimagine, sparked by the cross and shaped by the hope of the resurrection.
When an institution practices creative destruction, it learns to remember, imagine, and be present so that it might cultivate habits of faithful innovation (discipleship). As institutions learn to take up their cross a clearer "telos" (end, purpose, completion) comes into view and collaboration across various organizations becomes possible for a greater good.
Institutions that take up the practice of creative destruction can reimagine, reset, restart or resurrect themselves through a kind of dying so that new life can emerge. Creative destruction is an apologetic for an institutional way of being-in-the-world for the sake of all beings-in-the-world.
The Remissioning Process: A Field Guide to Bringing a Congregation Back to Life
Core Competences
- Being a Disciple - {Phil's notes: transformation over information}
- Creative Destruction - {i.e., "unLearning"}
- Traditional Innovation - {reimagine via Romans 12:2}
- Discipleship Pathways - {eschew motivation by "fear, fact, or force"}
- Remissioning Leadership - {reimagine, reset, restart, resurrect...rejoice}
Quotes To Apply To Your Situation
{ As you read each quote ponder these questions: }
• "What?" ... does this reveal about our church/mission? {Information}
• "So What?" ... is the implication we need to consider? {Implication}
• "Now What?" ... should we set as our action step? {Implementation}
• And/Or ... "Agree/Disagree & Why?"
*And/Or... Rate: 1 (content with status quo) ... 3 (concerned but stuck) ... 5 (critical; we must act now)
"Many churches put their hope in quick-fixes and updated strategies, yet they still struggle and fail. They don't need revitalization. They need remissioning."
"The starting point in the remissioning journey is the commitment to a central idea: people can change."
"My hope would be this: you and your church would commit to making disciples who imitate Jesus and break the generational pattern of waiting until dropout, decline, or death to pursue a clear mission again."
"Remissioning churches wrestle with a question: 'If our people gathered in our building and our building fell into a sinkhole, would our community notice we we're gone?' Revitalizing churches ask: 'What can we do to bring more people to our programs and events.?'"
"How would repeating those same programs, events, and ways of being church yield different results further down the road? What would suddenly cause those programs to yield different disciples?"
"Remissioned churches understand that if they are thriving while their neighbors are barely surviving, then they aren't really thriving after all."
"Conceptually stuck systems cannot become unstuck simply by trying harder."
"Remissioning is the process of inside-out transformation of the church through discipleship for the sake of our neighbors and world. Remissioning is much different than revitalization."
"Many of us hope for a grow-your-own-church-with-a-game-plan.
"Many established churches are sick and the disease (like cancer) is spreading in their body, threatening their existence. To remission a church is to learn what unhealthy cells must die and seek healing for the local church body so it might live again."
Congregations "are regularly going into hospice care, closing their doors, and fumbling the handoff to the next generation."
"To focus our efforts on revitalization is to put a Band-Aid on a large wound that needs stiches and healing from the inside out."
"Revitalization is like receiving rest results showing only partial remission and trying to convince everyone it's good enough."
"To remission a church is to ask what kinds of relationships, programs, events, and shared ways of being good neighbors are necessary for God's kingdom to flourish and transform the surrounding community."
"Instead of asking the community to adjust to the congregation ... (churches need to) make tangible sacrifices to serve their neighbors."
"Remissioning ... is a slower process than revitalization."
"I'm passionate about remissioning; empowering stuck, struggling, dying churches. I am more hopeful for the Church today than when I first started."
"Remissioning... a movement of churches and leaders willing to do the death-and-new-life work that unleashes the power of the resurrection in our local communities so we can experience a mutual transformation through relationships, justice, and grace."
"Remissioning established churches from the inside out is not the easy road. It relies on leaders who cultivate a spirituality of weakness while stewarding their churches while not trying to own them."
"Remissioning involves creative destruction - the intentional disruption, pruning, and death of programs, resources and activities - to make room for new life."
Field Guide Chapter Topics
Part 1: The Journey of a Thousand Miles Starts Somewhere
1.The Gift of Remissioning
2. Remissioning Through Descent
3. Finding Ourselves in the Remissioning Story
4. Remissioners Shift from Ownership to Stewardship
Part 2: Practicing Resurrection Through Creative Destruction
5. Creative Destruction: Remissioning from Death to Life
6. Remissioning with Fresh Eyes
7. Pruning for Growth in the Remissioning Garden
8. The Nature of Change in the Remissioning Journey
Part 3: Traditioned Innovation
9. Remissioning Starts with the End
10. Remissioning and the Work of Remembering
11. Burying Preferences for the Sake of Mission
12. Everything Is Liturgical (So Remission on Purpose!)
Part 4: Developing Discipleship Pathways
13. The Four Spaces of Belonging in a Remissioning Context
14. Creating Shared Experiments to Grow a Remissioning Imagination
15. Movemental Discipleship for Remissioning Churches
16. Race, Class, and the Kingdom of God Are Essential for Remissioning
Part 5: Remissioning Leadership
17. Habits + Vision = Remissioning
18. Embracing Conflict as Remissioning Leaders
19. An Open Invitation for Remissioning Leaders
20. A Remissioning Path Requires New Metrics
21. Four Pathways for Remissioning
22. Dying to Live
Tools: Resources in the book to help your church team:
- Exegete your church and community
- Prune for new life
- Lead through change
- Identify gaps
- Grow intercultural intelligence
- Begin with the end
- Remember well
- Create shared experiments
- Structure for mission
- Embrace conflicts
- Develop healthy metrics
- Identify your church on the life cycle.
So ... get started!
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