What does the next chapter of our church's story look like?
“How are these churches so vital and effective?” The interviewer asked.
1,600 words this time ~ 6 minutes. But worth it this week.
And a few special announcements
After 30 years of studying congregations, including the last 25 focused on those thirty times larger than typical churches, I had a good answer.
That answer is one lens or framework to understand not only effective mega-sized churches but churches, community organizations, businesses, and some educational institutions.
Like any framework, it is not perfect. Frameworks often provide a way of understanding a situation, generate potential solutions and find a way forward for an organization and its leadership.
The Four-Story Framework thinking influences our ministry approach and program at a deep, often unseen, level. As we work to call out the stories and their patterns, we can use them to help craft next chapter narratives and our ministries to sync up God’s unique purpose for this church at this time. There are more foundational concepts but this will get you started.
By “storycrafting” I mean the role of a narrator to shape a plausible, meaningful narrative in such a way that others can understand the story in a clear way across the various layers at play in the organization’s environment.
This is part of the consulting process I use entitled Storycrafting for Church Strategy with my clients. This process helps to guide the leaders and congregation to plan its next chapter.
Story Layer 1 – The Story God is telling to the World
God is always telling the world a story of redemption; the highest story God is telling to the universe. But different narrators call out different parts of scripture in sharing that story. As leaders, we need to teach the whole counsel of God, but often particular congregations focus on one aspect of the story.
My framework merely states that the ultimate story of a higher purpose and cause is one of the animating forces to drive organizational effectiveness. A congregation needs to know what it is for this particular setting and what that animates in them.
Story Layer 2 – The Leader’s Personal Story
For a church, the key leader is most often the lead pastor, charged with leading the church week to week in a variety of ways. They articulate the story of God in such a way to become relevant to the entire system. The way the leader communicates the higher purpose of the organization and their own responsibilities and tasks and of the congregation is critical for effectiveness. In some cases, there is a founding couple and both of their personal journeys and stories are enmeshed in this level of the story. In very rare cases there can be co-founders and their stories become intertwined with this level. For clarity of discussion, I will just reference “the leader.”
But it is not just communicating the story of God to the rest of the levels that is critical. How the leader’s personal story is wrapped up and embodied day to day could be the loudest and most prominent story that is being told to the entire system.
The two sides of this distinction at the leader level are “the lens” and “the life.”
The LENS is like the glass lens from which one sees through and voices how one should look at the rest of the system. It is the filter through which everything is interpreted. In most cases, the LENS is the aspirational ideal of how the leader views their own identity. The LIFE is the leaders’ own personal life stage and circumstance by which others observe and reflect the leaders’ authenticity and relevance. This is the reality half of the identity issue.
The way the leader interprets and voices the story of God through their life will always be imperfect but is crucial for the entire system if it is to move forward. The opposite is also true. A leader’s story can also direct the energy and thinking away from the story of God and lead to dysfunction in the setting.
For larger churches and organizations this level may include a small team of leaders “at the top” whose personal life stories and their communication of the higher purposes animate the whole of the organization. For founder-led organizations, the story of the organization is wrapped up intimately in the story of the founder and their family.
Regular listeners to the Great Things God Has Done podcast can hear how the personal stories of pastors have influenced their leadership and churches.
Layer three and four after these two major announcements
New collaborator at Church Leader Insider: This email is targeted at senior pastors and executive pastors of larger churches. My colleague Greg Ligon will be joining me as co-author of this venture in a few weeks. At the same time, we will move to a weekly Church Leader Insider format.
Greg and I have over 20 years of ministry partnership, first at Leadership Network and now at Generis. Greg helped pioneer the multisite movement and oversaw many of the innovation programs at Leadership Network.
Look forward to seeing some of his thinking in articles coming soon.
AND a new Executive Pastor Weekly Call session: A new weekly zoom session just for larger church Executive Pastors. Every week I do a free Wednesday Happy Hour call at 4 Eastern. As mentioned up above, these peer discussions trigger thinking, exploration, and new action.
We’re now starting a session exclusively for Executive Pastors of larger churches – or the key “second chair role” – whatever you call them at your church. It is reserved for larger churches. My Generis colleagues Greg Ligon and Jon Wright will help co-host these sessions each week.
Sometimes the sessions will be topically focused, but most will focus on the questions Executive Pastors send in where they need perspective, answers, and a feel of a peer group from across the nation.
If you know someone who wants an invitation to apply to attend, send them to me for now at dave.travis@generis.com.
The call is free but is reserved by invitation only. This call with start on March 24th at 3 p.m.
And if you are a Senior Pastor, send up an email as well to apply to attend those free weekly sessions.
Main story continues
The Third Layer is the Congregation’s story
Every congregation has a story it is telling. That story is told up to the leader and down to the larger community and system.
Congregations have unique stories. They may look like many other congregations in their area when it comes to race, economic status, and even some life experiences, but many times have a different plotline and narrative even when churches are located next to one another. This helps explain why there can be two new churches within a mile of each other with very similar theological points of view and both thrive because they are telling different stories to their congregation and community. Or there can be two very large churches within sight of each other and both very vibrant.
In addition, there are two sides to the congregation’s story. There is the story they tell each other internally about themselves as a body, and there is a story they try to communicate outside the body to the wider community. The more these two phases of their story are in alignment, the better the outcomes.
But often they are not. The storylines they tell each other are not the same ones that the community is hearing.
The Fourth Layer is the Community’s story
This is the larger layer that God, the leader, and the congregation are telling to try to influence, lead and connect to the other stories. In all communities, there are multiple storylines at play. These stories are a part of the fabric of the community members but they are not articulated. When identified and well-spoken, there is acceptance by the community that it paints a realistic portrait of reality. These communities can be predominantly geographic or tribal affiliation in nature.
For a geographical community, there is often a historical story of the community that reflects its past and influences its future. There is a story of those that have moved into the community within the past generation and their combined hopes, dreams, and fears. There are sub-group and tribal stories that have found resonance and connections among their participants.
Churches tend to think in geographic terms first. And while we tend to think in a concentric circle mentality, it is well understood that geo-coding participants in a church tend to produce odd-shaped maps. It is in this layer that a group of people living the geography identify with a story that tends to fit their aims in life. At times there are communities as well defined by the type of employment and work that most income earners are engaged in or that the geography tends to value and support. In some cases, there are smaller, special interest and need communities as well that have their own needs, desires, and hopes that are not as bound by geography.
Often larger geographic regional stories and narratives are at play. There are regions of the country and world that are seen as being “on the way up” and others that are “on the way down” and those narratives do influence the residents of those geographies.
Another part of the story is demographic or psychographic, not be bound by geography as much. This is pertinent in a more populated area. In that context, there are large enough subgroups that are alike in many factors such as race, income, family structure as well as aspirations for the future.
All of these stories overlap. Even within a single household, there can be multiple stories that unconsciously guide a person’s life, habits, desires, and aspirations. In given geography often 20 major story segments at play. Some of these segments are small, some are larger. Some are growing and some are shrinking.
In my observation, an effective leader and congregation sharpen focus to a very limited number of stories that the community is telling. For the present discussion, these are the life narratives that tend to describe the people they are trying to serve. These life narratives capture a bundle of interests, aspirations, and descriptions.
Syncing up the Four Stories
The proprietary storycrafting process I lead churches through helps them to identify, focus, and use the tools to plan and craft their next chapter story. We have over 40 tools we use to do this.
If you want to see a list of some of the tools, just drop me an email and I will send it along.
As we exit the pandemic season over the next few months, this is an ideal time to recraft the narrative for the next chapter starting this fall. (see the prior issue Focus on Fall 2021 here)
The next issue will revisit a few stats and add up a few new ones that point toward a fresh fall start.
This week’s podcast features Doug Walker, Pastor of Fellowship of the Parks.
Check out Great Things God Has Done podcast, the interview series with large church pastors here.