95 Questions to Shape the Future of Your Church is a comprehensive commentary on systemic change for the church. It combines the spirit of Luther’s 95 Theses with depth of insight akin to Luther’s reformation catechism. This book will be essential for every congregational, denominational, and seminary bookshelf. Church leaders and members all yearn for a new Reformation that will realign Christian congregations with God’s mission. This book frames the right questions, and focuses the right answers. It helps church leaders do the hard work of assessment and planning. The next Reformation will be an extraordinarily practical endeavor. Leaders need to apply the tactics that will leverage the greatest change, and guide the church deeper into the mystery of Christ and further in companionship with Christ. We want to be faithful. Now we know how to be faithful.

95 Questions to Shape the Future of Your Church

By Thomas G. Bandy

Abingdon Press

Copyright © 2009 The United Methodist Publishing House
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-687-34374-4

Chapter One

Ninety-five Steps to a New Reformation

Many voices have been calling for a new reformation of the church. Unfortunately, Christians in the twenty-first century have far less clarity about what a revitalized church might look like than Christians did in the sixteenth century. When Martin Luther nailed his ninety-five theses to the literal and figurative "front door" of the church, there was really only one door. Today there are so many "doors," leading in so many directions, with so many competitive visions of church life and congregational mission, that it is difficult to build any consensus about reformation.

In the past fifteen years the number of "church consultants" and consultation tools to measure church "health" has increased exponentially. When I first began as a consultant, you could count on one hand the number of credible, nationally or internationally recognized church consultants. They were people with long and diverse Christian leadership experience, authors of many books, and respected among denominations and congregations across the theological, ideological, and cultural spectrum of church life. Today there are so many people claiming to be "church consultants" that congregational and denominational leaders are bewildered. Anyone with even modest success in one church, one location, or one culture can develop an impressive website or e-zine containing the latest church growth jargon.

There are so many assessment tools! There are so many people claiming expertise about solving the problems of the local church! This book is designed to provide a template or standard against which all other assessment tools and opinions about church health can be compared. You do not need to use my ninety-five questions exactly as printed. You can adapt and customize as needed. You can even use another tool, or blend several tools, to assess the health of your church. However, at least here you can comprehensively see what any worthwhile tool for church assessment ought to include.

The emerging reformation of the church is different from Luther's simply because our situation is not the same. There is not one unhealthy church to reform, but a plethora of unhealthy ways to reform. There is not one European context to reach, but a global diversity of many cultures, languages, and customs to reach. Twenty-first-century Christian leaders are going to approach reformation in two ways that are very different from Luther's strategy.

First, Luther's leverage for reformation was theological. Our leverage for reformation is missiological. The Christian church will not be revitalized, realigned, and reformed by resolving doctrinal debates or even by reconciling political differences. It will only happen when the church recovers its heart for mission. What does this mean?

? Twenty-first-century reformation is all about recovering directly and experientially the incarnation of Jesus the Christ. Luther could reform the church by exploring the nuances of the mass and the role of the priest. Today, in our emerging pagan world, Christian churches have lost the original closeness and companionship of Christ. Of course, there are many ways to experience Christ as healer, guide, perfect human, vindicator, promise keeper, and apocalyptic transformer. Unfortunately, established churches of all kinds, shapes, and sizes today actually experience none of them. This is not a matter of the mind, and expository preaching or popular translations of the Bible will not solve it. This is a matter of heart and gut and lifestyle, and only mentoring and relationship can solve it. Any consultation tool worth its salt will go beyond mission statements to explore the real heart and soul and identity of the congregation. It will look beyond the right elements of worship to discover if the Holy is touching people. It will go deeper than conflict resolution to break any control that blocks people from Christ. ? Twenty-first-century reformation is all about sharing clearly and daringly the welcome relief of the gospel with strangers to grace. Luther could reform the church building on a platform of Christendom. Today we have no such advantage. Most people (even church members) haven't a clue about Christian history or God's purpose. The church will reform itself only as a side effect of transforming others. Of course, there are many needs for which grace, and grace alone, will do. Perhaps only looking to the first century will we see people as broken, lost, lonely, anxious, victimized, and yes, grateful to "higher powers" and "unknown gods" as we find them today. Unfortunately, established churches often fail to address any of that. They are too preoccupied with protecting membership privileges and preserving comfort zones, making the church the "rock" and "oasis" that resources members' personal lives. Any consultation tool worth its salt will go beyond conflict resolution, generational differences, and the priorities and preferences of the members. It will explore the gifts and callings of members to give life away to nonmembers. It will explore how church members are equipped to reach out to strangers, and their ability to readily, articulately share the gospel. ? Twenty-first-century reformation is all about strategic social change. Luther could reform the church relying on the potential goodwill and political clout of princes and nations. Today, captains of industry and national self-interests are part of the problem. Reformation of the church won't happen unless the church also reforms society. Of course, the urgency of social reform in all sectors (government, business, manufacturing, healthcare, education, law, and media) is daunting. The prejudicial attitudes, self-destructive habits, and violent compulsions that have been allowed—or encouraged—are so advanced as to be beyond the power of merely elected bodies. The church of a new reformation must function as a chosen people. Any worthwhile consultation tool will go beyond program management to explore leadership development. It will examine the vital connection between worship, spiritual growth, and mission outreach. It will lay bare the truth that an "unnetworked" church is not really a "church" at all.

This is what missiology means. The leverage point of reformation today lies in recovering our mission to multiply disciples, who follow Christ into the world to do good stuff and make even more disciples. The church may well develop good theology and negotiate political unity, but without recovering its mission it will sink into irrelevancy. Mission is the key.

There is a second point of divergence today from Luther's strategy for reformation. Luther posted theses. We ask questions. The prescriptive approach to change doesn't work today as it did in the past. Change doesn't happen top-down. It doesn't begin with replacing the CEO, lead to a new strategic plan, require the recruitment of loyal soldiers, and end in a quest for quality. Change today happens bottom-up. It begins with transforming lowly amateurs, elicits visions and callings, requires empowered teams, and ends in a quest for authenticity.

In the messy, rapidly changing, ambiguous, crosscultural world of today, what matters is to ask the right questions—not to have all the right answers. The right answer today might be the wrong answer tomorrow. What works today might not work tomorrow. Congregational assessment tools that obsess over the "correct" ratio of parking spaces to worship attendance, or the "right" technologies for worship, or the "best" curricula for Sunday school will never succeed in reforming the church. You cannot measure a church against a universal structural blueprint or a single action plan. Prescription doesn't work.

But you can ask the right questions. You can encourage church members and leaders to face the right issues. You can assure churches that at least they have looked for all the skeletons in the closet and discovered all the hidden potentialities for renewal. There is much talk about systemic change, but most church assessment tools only really address programmatic change. There are, in fact, eleven subsystems that combine to make a church go and grow.

Say the word church and most church members immediately associate the word with images of crosses, clergy, and peculiar polity; keyboard instruments, programs for genders and generations, ushers and greeters, and nonprofit charitable activities; steeples, pews, colored glass, unified budgets, newsletters, and holy days. Say the words healthy church, and most consultants immediately associate making all these things better. The system of church life and mission, however, is bigger, deeper, and more diverse than any of these tactics. There are many ways to be a "healthy" church. Even the Bible doesn't provide a blueprint for a franchise. "Healthy" churches are loyal to Christ but indigenous to their context.

Luther only wanted to reform the church. He really didn't want to split the church and certainly didn't want to splinter the church into so many pieces. His terminology for "reformation" really didn't include any vocabulary for "healthy" churches at all. His terminology was all about "faithful" churches. He dreamed of churches, in every context and form, that were faithful to the presence and purpose of Christ. In this the reformation goal of yesterday and today is the same.

The trouble is that faithfulness inevitably leads to a church split of another kind. This is not the diversification of tactics. Reformation does not split churches because some people like to do things this way and other people like to do things that way. Indeed, if churches were really to experience reformation of the heart, there would probably be more opportunity for diverse tactics to exist equably under a single roof. No, the kind of split precipitated by true reformation is the division between those who want to be faithful and those who just want to be privileged. This is the real separation of the sheep from the goats.

Any consultation tool worth its salt will raise the stress level of church members in the congregation and the denomination. The primary goal of consultation will never be to produce mere harmony. It will never—and probably should never—make everybody happy. If some people leave the church because the consultation tool asks too many questions, probes too deeply into personal motivations, and challenges too honestly their hidden assumptions, that is probably a sign that it was a good consultation. Reformation has bite. It clears the air. It purifies the spirit. It focuses the church on who is important (the stranger) and who isn't that important (the member), and on what is essential (the sacred Christ) and what is nonessential (the "sacred cow").

Reformation today is a very practical affair. It is not going to be achieved by dueling theological scholars or high-level negotiations among denominational officials or restructuring the congregation's constitution. Real reformation is more mundane. It will be achieved by asking the right questions, challenging the hidden addictions, and empowering the lowly amateur Christian. Reshape the attitudes of the board and the trustees; open the eyes of weary church veterans to new opportunities; expand the imaginations of church leaders to learn new things from unlikely tutors; hold people accountable to the nitty-gritty of the spiritual life today and tomorrow and the next day. Reformation is a big thing. It is the accumulation of a lot of little things, done in the right order, for a single-minded purpose. Never expect reformation to begin at the center of church life. The status quo never births anything new. Why should it? Always look for it to emerge from the fringes, edges, and innovations of church life. That is where Christ, the great Reformer, is.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from 95 Questions to Shape the Future of Your Churchby Thomas G. Bandy Copyright © 2009 by The United Methodist Publishing House. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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