Alan McWilliam, a veteran church planter, Church of Scotland minister, and director of Forge Europe, urges all pioneers to stay connected to others.
I was reading an autopsy report recently. Not something I do often but it caught my eye and I was drawn into reading it. Does that seem a bit sad or sick? Well maybe, but I was surprised to come across it and so it intrigued me. The title was “Autopsy Reports of Failed Churches” and was written by Todd Hunter of the Association of Vineyard Churches. Follow the link and you can have a read. Join me in my obsession.
There were lots of fascinating things in the report but one that I have been reflecting on a lot is the power of connection. The top 4 characteristics (out of 10) for potential church planters were:
- Strong, visionary leadership.
- The ability to identify, recruit, train, deploy, monitor and nurture team.
- A proven track record under supervision.
- An indigenous support group or a solid lifeline to a regional church.
I wasn’t surprised to find the first two at the top of the list.
What did surprise me was how high in the list the need for connection was.
A proven track record under supervision is about being teachable and open to direction from others who are more experienced. This is a huge challenge in an environment, which by its very nature, is full of “go for it” spiritual entrepreneurs. But what the report points to is that the most effective planters are life-long learners. Just think of some of the people you look up to most in this area – I’d be willing to bet that every single one of them continues to learn and grow. Many of the most experienced planters I know have spiritual directors or soul friends. You will find them at the latest conferences still filling notebooks with the thinking of the latest thought leaders and practitioners.
Being connected as a humble life-long learner where we have someone else who is able to speak in to our lives is so vital for fruitfulness.
But so is having “An indigenous support group or a solid lifeline to a regional church.” Keeping connected to a group of people who know us, love us and who are for us is vital. Isolation kills church planters dead.
Planting is such a hard thing to do – physically, spiritually, socially, mentally and emotionally. It is too easy to get into the “real business” of planting and get so busy that we lose connection – but that never works. We need each other. We are designed to function as a body – we are only a part, not the whole. We need each other. It’s what Gordon wrote about in this blog at the end of June.
Coming together with other planters in a supportive environment creates a synergy – we are greater than the sum total of our parts. New energy and ideas come when we flow together or even clash. Resources that we didn’t know about on our own become available as we connect with others.
But perhaps the most important element of coming together is that we can encourage one another by fighting for one another. Planting is spiritual heavy lifting. We need people who get us, pray for us, champion us, cry with us. We need people that simply get us.
If you don’t have that yet then we would like to offer to connect you with a local Forge Support Network. These are local groups of church planters and missional project leaders who meet regularly to laugh, learn, pray and generally be there for each other.
There are currently groups meeting in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee, with new groups being started this year on the Ayrshire coast and possibly in Aberdeen. If you would like to connect with these groups then please let us know. If you live somewhere else then we may have other ways to connect you too.
So, get connected. Otherwise you might end up on an autopsy report!
So this is a fascinating bit of historic research, thanks for sharing. Much of positive value to chew on. I have 3 comments:
1) I find it telling that Vineyard in the mid 80s was trying to be a ‘learning organisation’. It was actively trying to evaluate and review best practice with regard to church planting, presumably because it wanted to reduce missionary attrition (and even economic cost!). To be a learning organisation is to be wise. To be wise with human and monetary resources. It implies direction and confidence. Sadly, to the best of my knowledge, no Scottish denomination has undertaken significant, comprehensive evaluation of pioneering since at least 2000, if ever in my lifetime. This reveals a profound lack of wisdom. Ironically, for denominations that seem to be dominated by the pastor/teacher mode, caring for pioneers and learning from their experiences is at the rock bottom of their priorities. This isn’t just hypocrisy: it reveals a puzzling dysfunctionality in which not even the pastor/teacher modes are functioning properly. If we can’t be bothered to formally learn from new initiatives and can’t be bothered to proactively care for those undertaking them, we aren’t learning or caring organisations. One seasoned commentator on and operator in the CofS that I know states categorically that this denomination, built on ‘semper reformanda’ principles is simply not a learning organisation. I think this is true of pretty much all other Scottish denominations, too. Why should pioneers entrust themselves to such an unwise structural situation, to such unwise denominational leadership? Why are we still calling pioneers into the chaos that exists because of this lack of wisdom? That’s pretty hard-nosed.
2) The document itself raises a number of important issues. But if we step back a moment we can see clearly that it reveals the usual massive gap in thinking that congregationalist ecclesiologies bring to their theology and research: the assumption of autonomy. Catholicty (connectivity to other churches) is not a core category of the framework or questions deployed (unless I have missed this). What do I mean? There are only two categories of reasons why a church could fail in this survey: A) the pastor’s own failure and B) the organisational failure in some form of the church being planted. What is completely missing is the idea that the *supporting structures of the wider church* have failed. Even when a regional church is mentioned, the implication is that its the church/pastors fault that they haven’t been proactive in connecting with it, rather than it, them.
In other words, even though a denomination has requested and paid for the research (big tick), it hasn’t postured itself in a self-reflective way to see whether *it* is part of the cause of the failed church plants. No categories of response are listed by which the local church/pastor might suggest that the wider denominational support structures have failed. Where is the financial redistribution? Where are the robust HR procedures? Where are the dedicated training courses *paid for by the denomination*? Where is the ability to critique the poverty of formal recruitment procedures of the wider denomination? In short, where is the ability to critique the wider denominations’ tendency to blame-shift failure on individuals and planted congregations? When you think about it, the gap here is extraordinarily telling!
But sadly, I can tell you that these assumptions and mindsets…the incapacity for denominational and structural self-reflection and taking corporate responsibility…are still common in contemporary Scotland among such groups. It is a profound ecclesiological and theological gap. And it is killing mission, and killing missionaries. If denominations actually organised themselves like they care for and want to learn from pioneers, and devoted resources to developing proper infrastructure, I believe we could reduce church plant failure rates from 80% to say 50%.
3) The call to relational connection. This is always an excellent thing to emphasise. However, in light of my above observations, I would encourage a strong humility in proffering such a call in the current context. We cannot overcome the profound lack of infrastructural support for pioneers with the sticking plaster of more kindness and personal pastoral care. These latter will always be important, but they are rendered far less effective when they are deployed as a stop-gap solution in the midst of a chronically bad situation of structural sloth.
When we say “if you have the gumption, drive and energy to create your own church planting infrastructure, we will step in and give you a place to belong and connect.” Rather than “we have created the infrastructural support context to recruit, train and pay you, and give you status and a proper HR backup, come and join us”, we are offering our children a scorpion when they should have an egg. This does not reveal the Father’s Heart.
We cannot make up for in relationality what is chronically lacking in materiality. We shouldn’t expect pioneers to make up for in their own relationships what is lacking in concrete, material organisational support. We cannot make up for a deep lack of organisational lack of pastoral care with a few slaps on the backs, hugs and prayers (important though that also is). To acknowledge this and still call them is, I believe, a very dangerous and possibly even callous or cynical thing to do. We are asking people to trust us and each other when we know fine well that the material context of those relationships is chronically bad and will quickly place untoward pressure on those same relationships. Pressures that those relationships are not designed to bear on their own. Why is there so much relational conflict, fall out and attrition among contemporary Scottish pioneers and their denominations? The Vineyard report from the 80s places all the blame on the pastor’s character! Not on the characters of wider denominational leaders (lack of willingness to lead, fear of loss of control, fear of failing resources, disorganisation). And not on structural failings that those leaders have clear responsibility for stewarding, but aren’t bothering to.
Is what we are actually doing damagingly creating an expectation that planters take on all these pressures and deal with them through relationships and personal character? When the inevitable structural difficulties and pressures arise for planters (low finance, team conflict, isolation, poverty of redeployment), we expect them to make up for that in their own character. This is a total mismatch, and creates the single greatest cause of missionary attrition, in my experience. Planter’s characters are knowingly and cynically placed under far greater pressure than other ministries because they don’t have status, a contract, a steady job, a settled existing congregation, etc etc. But in addition we place the burden of them dealing with that through their own strength of character and, perhaps, a relational hub. This is expecting, far, far too much. Its expecting planters, from the outset, to fill up in their own bodies with the fall-out of the wider church’s apathy around providing proper infrastructural support. We shouldn’t rightly expect it of them in the first place…and when things don’t work we blame them for it, not ourselves. And move on to the next fresh faced recruit because we don’t want to face the pain of our own failure.
Its like the expectations on Formula 1 drivers in the 70s. Yeah sure, you may well die – its just the way it is. Deal with it. You’re heroes! We’ll buy you a few beers afterwards and slap you on the shoulders. And we pay handsomely for it (her my analogy clearly fails!). This instead of redesigning the cars, and the race infrastructure, to protect their lives in the first place. We don’t want to spend the money to make it safe for our pioneers. This is sad betrayal at the heart of the current situation.
What Scottish church pioneers need is a Jackie Stewart to point out the shocking tragedy of the attrition of contemporary Scottish pioneers, organise pioneers to speak out, and challenge the system to change and start giving a damn about pioneers lives, rather than just giving them the sticking plaster of a few hugs and prayers when it all goes wrong.