Presbytery of the Inland Northwest

Mission Study

Fall, 2011

Mission Directions for the Presbytery of the Inland Northwest

A Rough Draft Presented by the Mission Study Task Force based on a presentation at the Presbytery gathering in May 2011

Mission Study Task Force Background and History

Phase 1 – Initiated in the Spring 2009

Presbytery Council Appointed Phase 1 Mission Study Task Force. This group was created with the awareness that the previous mission planning process that established three priorities for the Presbytery’s work (New Church Development, Church Transformation, and Leadership Development) had run its course, and that there was a need to refresh and renew our sense of direction going into the future.

Process

  • We initiated an Appreciative Inquiry process into our current practices and experience

as a Presbytery. This included Presbytery interviews and table groups at February 2010 meeting and interacting with that data in the Spring.

  • The Phase 1 team presented their report to Presbytery Council in Spring 2010.

Key appreciative themes identified in Phase 1:

(These represent areas of involvement in the current practice of the Presbytery that people most value and want to nurture as we look to the future.)

  • Evangelism/Mission/Outreach
  • “Better use of our combined resources as a Presbytery and each church to spread the gospel”
  • Cooperation/Collaboration/Working Together
  • “shared mission, share resources, shared worship, and shared conversations.”
  • Opportunities for Discussion
  • “listening, sharing, discuss theological, ethical, and social issues.”

Phase 2 – Initiated in the fall of 2010

The Assignment:

Build on the important work of Phase 1 inquiry into our Presbytery’s unique identity and assets

Offer a candid assessment of challenges the Presbytery can expect to face in next five years (Cultural Inquiry)

Offer recommendations regarding core values, priorities, and strategies of shared mission going forward

Offer recommendations regarding how to staff and structure committees to support this shared mission

Offer recommendations regarding funding this mission

Cultural Inquiry Data

A Survey of Cultural Concerns

The MSTF did a survey of the Presbytery and identified the following areas:

First Tier Concerns

Changes in religion’s role in society

Changes in the nature of family and relationships

Morality and Ethics

Second Tier Concerns

Economic Impacts of Demographics

Changes in Interpersonal Dynamics

Third Tier Concerns

Sexuality and Sexual Practices

Economy

Social Diversity

Key Question from discussion around cultural setting:

  • What is our mission as a presbytery? Are we in maintenance/survival mode and therefore involved in a mission of self-preservation?

Key findings from Survey:

  • When it comes to responding to disorienting cultural changes, some look inward to shore up the church’s identity in Christ and in Scripture, while others look outward and advocate for engagement with the culture. These two perspectives shape the way people understand the Presbytery’s role, either to help churches shore up internally, or to equip them to step out into cultural engagement.
  • The social and cultural context of our Presbytery has changed dramatically over the last 50 years.
  • We tend to function as a Presbytery today in the same ways we did 50 years ago.
  • The diversity of cultural perspectives in our Presbytery is significant.
  • There is an underlying tension, in the midst of this diversity, when it comes to questions of how to function in this changed culture.

Cultural Inquiry Reading and Reflection

Book Resource #1 – Recreating the Church:Leadership for the Postmodern Age by Richard Hamm

Key Quotes:

There are three primary focuses for the faithful middle judicatory. The first is to help congregations be faithful and effective instruments of mission where they are. This will mean providing some services directly to congregations and, increasingly, networking and brokering other services. The second primary focus for the middle judicatory is to help congregations faithfully extend their mission beyond where they are. So, the middle judicatory helps the congregation extend its ministry across the geographic area of the middle judicatory….The third primary focus for the middle judicatory is connecting congregations to the wider church, broadening their identity and extending their mission to the whole world. The middle judicatory is thus important connecting tissue in the body of Christ.

The modern paradigms, which are the underpinning of our mainline systems, no longer work. Yet these systems and we who comprise these systems are loath to change much of anything about them.

FIRST PREMISE: Denominational institutions and their component organizations (including congregations, middle judicatories, national agencies, and so forth) must be able to change in response to their cultural context

SECOND PREMISE: Though organizations have a natural tendency to avoid needed change, change with integrity is possible, especially in response to vision.

Typically, the first response of an institution to shifting cultural ground is to seek to do what has been successful in the past but to "try harder." This is a form of denial and, since 1968, "trying harder" has been the primary institutional strategy of the mainline churches. The result is a focus on maintenance rather than on mission.

Key Concept - Technical vs. Adaptive Change

…"technical changes" are those "fixes" used to correct ordinary problems in a system as it is. "Adaptive changes" are those that address fundamental values and that demand innovation, learning, and changes in the system itself.

It is characteristic of institutions in denial to engage only in technical change rather than in the deeper adaptive change that is needed. Soon the purpose of the denomination, its congregations, and middle judicatories becomes survival rather than the mission for which God called it into being. Even younger leaders, who have grown up in post-modern times, tend to be drawn into this culture of survival. Their own fresh generational insights and instincts, along with their skills and energy, tend to get co-opted by the declining system. As available resources decrease, leaders have to work harder and harder till they finally become burned-out or unable to see outside the institutional "box" at all.

Summary of Key Distinctions between Technical & Adaptive

  • Technical Challenges:
  • Challenges we generally know how to resolve
  • The focus is on effective implementation of proven strategies and solutions
  • Generally reinforces the status quo
  • Adaptive Challenges
  • Requires new learning and understanding
  • Calls for innovation
  • Challenges habits, beliefs, values.
  • Organizational Culture and Values Must Change
  • Brings into question our sense of competence

Hamm identifies 7 key elements for leading adaptive change:

1. Understand the context of the institution, both internally and externally.

2. Focus on relationship and trust building.

3. Nurture the faith and spiritual health of the body.

4. Help the body to identify and understand their core values and mission.

5. Identify and address immediately needed technical change.

6. Lead in the development of vision.

7. Nurture the adaptive change that is needed to bring the vision to reality.

Book Resource #2- Governance as Leadership: Reframing the Work of Nonprofit Boards by Richard Chait

In this book, Chait identifies three core leadership capacities for non-profit guiding bodies: fiduciary, strategic, and generative. A quote from a recent interview from the author sums up these three categories as follows:

For example, a college board can ask, “Should we build a new fitness center for students and equip it with climbing walls and hot tubs?” The fiduciary questions are: “Do we have the money and the space?” The strategic question is: “Should we do this to keep up with the competition?” The generative questions are: “What produced this amenities arms race? Will it ever stop? Do we want to pass or play? If we play, what are our principles? Great Boards Newsletter, summer 2005

(

The core argument of the book is that all three modes of governance are vital and important, but most non-profit leadership focuses on fiduciary and strategic approaches. Chait writes:

Generative thinking is where goal-setting and direction-setting originate….Although

generative work is essential to governing, boards do very little of it.

Key Assumptions of the MSTF

that arosefrom the Cultural Inquiry Phase:

The Spirit of God is at work among the people of God.

  • We trust that God is at work in the Presbytery, and therefore we need to seek after and pay attention to the God who leads us; Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

It’s not the church of God that has a mission. It’s the mission of God that has a church.

  • The goal is NOT to preserve the institution. The goal is to pay attention to, participate in, and be responsive to the mission of God in the world.

Local churches are on the front lines of mission and are best equipped to respond to what God is doing in those places. If the task at hand is to be responsive to the leading of the Spirit of God, then the organizational focus of the Presbytery needs to be on the initiative of local congregations.

  • Innovation and change is going to best be initiated at the grassroots level vs. priorities set from the top.
  • The Presbytery needs to develop structures that empower and equip local congregations for this work.

The world is changing rapidly. Our churches and Presbytery must adapt. Some said along the way, “We’ve been doing things the same way for the last 50 years and yet the culture around us has shifted dramatically.”

  • The PINW is facing adaptive challenges that cannot be addressed by simple adjustments to the way we’ve been doing it.
  • There is a need for adaptive change in the structure and operations of the Presbytery.
  • The PINW needs move from maintenance of the status quo to innovation and experimentation on the mission frontier.

Given the adaptive nature of the required change, there is no way to prescribe the needed changes from where we sit today. The Presbytery needs to initiate an open-ended, intentional process of learning how to adapt and change.

  • “We need to build the airplane while we’re flying it.”
  • “We need to build the bridge while we’re walking on it.”

Effective bureaucracies are necessary.

It is the opinion of the MSTF that the appropriate response to our current circumstances is not to “dis-establish” the Presbytery, rather there is a need to re-establish and adjust the important role this connectional organization plays in the unfolding mission of God in the Inland Northwest.

Recommendations for Consideration:

1. The MSTF recommends that the PINW adopt the following mission statement:

“God’s mission in the world calls the Presbytery of the Inland Northwest to unleash, empower and equip local congregations as living witnesses to the Spirit’s work in Jesus Christ.”

This statement affirms our convictions that:

God takes the initiative in mission and we respond.

The Presbytery structures exist for the sake of local congregations.

Local congregations exist for the sake of the gospel, living witnesses to the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.

To go along with this formal statement of mission, the MSTF recommends that the Presbytery develop a working list of values statements that will compliment and expand on this declaration.

Here are some values statements that emerged in the MSTF conversations. They are offered here as a starting place for this task of the Presbytery.

Networks and partnerships among PINW churches are a cornerstone of our efforts to organize, innovate, and move forward in mission.

Equipping leaders to facilitate adaptive change and initiate generative thinking is a priority.

We see our shared work as primarily relational. The primary measure of the health of the organization is the health of the relationships of the people in the churches that make up our Presbytery.

We believe that the new shape of the Presbytery will emerge as we initiate experiments and make adjustments going forward. It’s likely that new discoveries along the margins will spark the transformation we hope for at the center of our organizational life.

We value:

  • Experimentation
  • Innovation
  • Creativity
  • Imagination
  • Freedom to try and fail at new ways of connecting

2. The MSTF recommends that we change the PINW organizational structure from the current centralized structure to a simple structure based on the core leadership functions of fiduciary, strategic, and generative.[1] The chart below shows our current organizational structure as of Fall 2011.

Proposed New Structure:

The chart below shows our proposed new structure of leadership and governance including how the work of past committees will fit in the new structure.

Additional notes on proposed structure:

The Council would be comprised of the following individuals:

  • Executive Presbyter (moderates)
  • 2 members from each of the three teams (6 total)
  • 2 at large members
  • Current moderator of presbytery
  • Stated Clerk
  • No ex-officio members
  • At large members would be chosen by the Nominating Committee and elected by the Presbytery

You may have noticed that the work of some standing committees from the old structure are not specifically assigned here. For example, the proposed new structure would disband the New Church Development committee and does not specifically assign the tasks of the NCD committee to one of the three leadership teams. This doesn’t mean that we wouldn’t do NCD work under the new structure, rather it means that the initiative of this work will arise from grassroots networks among churches and leaders in the Presbytery. The Strategic committee will be there to encourage and facilitate these networks and partnerships, the Administrative Team will be there to provide support in the area of personnel and finance, and the Generative team will be there to nurture this work through Presbytery meetings and equipping initiatives.

The new proposed structure is a rough draft that will need refining and adjusting in the coming years. There are unintended consequences of this shift, both positive and negative, that will have to be addressed.

3. The Mission Study Task Force recommends that we maintain the current staffing structure to support and lead the leadership transition outlined in this document.

This may seem to contradict some of the previous conclusions regarding the need for dramatic shifts in the leadership status quo. The MSTF did explore the option of combining the clerk and executive role, but our conclusion is that we are already functioning with a bare-bones staffing model. For some Presbytery’s with large staffs and outsized personnel budgets, major structural adjustments to staffing is necessary. In the PINW with a minimal staff, major changes are better facilitated through transforming job descriptions of existing staff, especially that of the Executive Presbyter.

Ideas for changing the Job Description of the Presbytery Executive: The following ideas are offered as helpful guidance for re-writing the job description of the Presbytery Executive.

  • Move from Reactive to Proactive
  • Move from Manager to Networker-In-Chief
  • The MSTF talked about this shift in the role of the Executive as moving from setting priorities to setting identity and purpose. The Executive should be actively engaged on the frontier of what God is doing in PINW churches, building networks, connecting leaders, and identifying needs for training and equipping. The question they need to be asking is, “How do we empower and equip congregations to respond to the work of the Spirit in their churches and communities.”
  • This is in many ways what a Pastor is called to do in a local congregation. This led the MSTF to use the phrase, “Pastor to the Presbytery” in describing the work of the Executive. The MSTF thinks it’s worth considering this as a potential new title for the role of Executive in the PINW.
  • As the PINW looks to the future these are some of the skills and gifts that we consider to be important in the Executive.
  • Communication and Vision casting
  • Maintaining Good Boundaries
  • Respect for pastoral authority and session authority
  • Gifted at relational networking – connecting people and churches
  • The MSTF considers the following training important for the Executive role.
  • Leadership Development Training
  • Interim Training is helpful
  • National Training for New Presbytery Leaders
  • Organizational Management and Development
  • Conversant in Missional and Postmodern conversations
  • Conflict Management

4. The MSTF offers the following recommendations regarding finances and funding:

Concentrate all financial responsibilities in one team. (See proposed Administration Team in Org. Chart.)

Shift the focus of mission giving to fund mission churches and shift away from other mission funding with the exception of Camp Spalding where we would maintain funding from the pool of Presbytery mission funds and encourage local churches to support as well.

  • Given the impact of this shift on organizations like Liberty Park Child Development Center, such a transition in funding should be done carefully and over time to avoid damaging the viability of these organizations.

The role of Presbytery Executive should be seen as mission not administration, therefore the funding to support Executive salary should be seen as mission funding.

5. The MSTF offers the following recommendations regarding Presbytery Meetings:

  • One of the questions that drove the conversation around Presbytery Meetings is, “Why don’t people attend?” The MSTF identified a series of technical and adaptive challenges that relate to the Presbytery gatherings which included:
  • Technical Challenges
  • Geographic
  • Time
  • Busyness
  • Schedule
  • Over-commitment
  • Boring
  • Lack of effectiveness in communication
  • Adaptive Challenges
  • The communication of information has changed dramatically in the last 50 years and yet our Presbytery meetings still dedicate substantial time to outdated methods of communicating.
  • The MSTF identified a need to shift from informational meetings to relational gatherings.
  • Ideas to address these challenges:
  • Centralized, common location for all meetings
  • North/South Meeting once a year at two different locations
  • Afternoon meetings
  • The MSTF recommends that the Presbytery initiate a two year cycle of experimenting with new, more effective ways of gathering as a Presbytery that address the adaptive and technical challenges presented by the meetings.

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