Frequently
Asked Questions About the Partnership for Missional Church
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1.
Why is PMC so long, 3-5 years?
PMC is
about the long term adaptability of a congregation, not quick fixes.
PMC builds a congregation’s capacity to deal with the adaptive
challenges they face in today’s world. Deep cultural change
takes time. PMC is built on an action/reflection model enabling a
congregation to learn new ways of being and doing, which lead towards
God’s preferred future for them. This cycle of action and reflection
takes time. A more thorough explanation of the PMC process is given
in the book, We Are Here Now, by Patrick Keifert. The change process
also takes time, because the goal is to lead change that impacts the
entire congregation, in a way that resistance and conflict is minimized.
(See Appendix A for outline of PMC).
2.
Why are churches clustered together?
Learning
Methodology:
At Church Innovations, we do everything in partnership. Experience
has shown that churches people learn better when they find support
for this process of spiritual discernment and experimentation. It
is psychologically very helpful for people to know that other churches
are going through the same struggles, and to process the changes needed
together. The idea that people are more willing to try new ideas when
paired with others in similar situation is based on a body of social
science research called, diffusion of innovation. People are more
willing to risk and try new ideas when they see and hear of others
like them trying. Also, long term learning happens best when the entire
system is involved. Through our research we have seen that to effect
lasting change, we need to involve both denominational systems and
the congregations in the process together.
Accountability:
The process builds in accountability to others, each group knows that
another cluster event is coming up, and they are accountable to do
the work given to them by the next event. This accountability is crucial
to long term learning and effective change within the congregational
setting.
Theology:
And lastly, if fits with our understanding of God and the church.
God is a trinity, of three in one, a community. We get to know God
through Christ, and Christ through the Spirit. We need each other
and we learn best through each other.
3.
Why the number 12-16 churches?
Research
shows that 12 is the ideal number. It can be less than 12, and will
work with as few as 8. Less than 12 churches it becomes less economically
viable for both the churches and for Church Innovations. So it’s
best to start with 16, because a few churches may drop out.
4.
What if you can’t get 12-16 churches to form a cluster?
The costs
would be higher per church.
5.
If there are big and small churches together in a cluster, would the
little churches get lost or overpowered?
No. Each
church sends a team, who come for the training and learning. They
take the learning and the assignments back to their congregation to
work on between cluster events. So the team sent would be about the
same size. There are always two consultants at these events, and part
of their job is to make sure some congregations don’t have more
power than others. Some churches think that the large church can’t
learn from the smaller, or vice versa, but we have found that this
is not true. Churches learn much from the other.
6.
Is it ideal to have churches within one denomination within a cluster,
or churches across the denominations?
It can
work either way. It might make it easier to estimate judicatory costs
within one denomination, but that can be dealt with. There can be
a richness added in meeting across denominations, but there can be
an appeal to being with all churches from one’s own denomination
and presbytery/district/synod, what have you.
7.
Why have two consultants working with each cluster?
Church
Innovation’s work is built around Dwelling in the Word of Luke
10: 1-12, where Jesus sends out the 72 disciples in pairs. Thus, everything
we do is in pairs. Two consultants provide a greater richness in experience
and wisdom. Many people relate better to one person than another,
there is that variety built in to this crucial role of consultants.
8.
What are the costs?
The costs
are $3,000 per year per church, and $25,000 per year for the judicatory
for each of the 3 years. These numbers are based on having 12 churches
per cluster. The cost per year would start for the first phase of
PMC, the discovery year, and would not start the year of gather churches
into a cluster.
9.
If churches are clustered across different denominations, how do you
assess the judicatory costs?
Cost
would be broken up by percentage of churches involved.
10.
What are the outcomes that can be expected?
The Partnership
for Congregational Renewal helps congregations grow by developing:
- A
God-centered, biblical vision for mission
- A
greater sense of God’s activity in their congregation and
community
- Ownership
of the mission of the congregation by more members
- Members
committed to and capable of making disciples
- Both
a vision for mission and a practical plan of action to achieve it
- Strengths
of the tradition of the congregation
- Practical
skills for managing change and attending to conflict
- Dramatic
expansion of lay involvement
- Higher
participation in continuing education
- A
decision process for planning activities and budget
- A
faithful and hospitable congregation
- Beneficial
long term relationships with other Partner congregations
Church
Innovations also learned that congregations who stay in through all
phases of the partnership showed a:
- 17%
median growth in worship attendance over a 5 year period
- 77%
correlation to the longevity of pastorate
- 64%
correlation to growth in adult conversions
- 74%
correlation to increased lay leader base
- 73%
correlation to increased participation of young adults after confirmation/high
school
- 62%
correlation to developing a new constituency base in situations
of high social change
11.
What if one church is further along in the missional conversation than
others, will that impeded those further along from making progress?
Our experience
has been that churches further down the road learn so many new things
that they soon forget that they are further down the road. Clusters
will always have churches at different points in their journey, and
at their different points they learn from each other. Most churches
who have engaged in a dialogue of how can we….become a missional
church….grow our church…etc… have a committed core
who are engaged with this discussion, but a majority of members who
do not. PMC is geared toward reaching the entire congregation, and
helping each congregation develop practices that can help them keep
the conversation and growing vital for the years after the PMC process.
12.
What do you mean by “missional church”?
The word
mission in “missional” refers to the mission
of God in the world (all of creation). Thus, missional church
refers to the position and role of the church as participants
in the mission of God in the world. This use of the word “missional”
is different from how people in years gone by have understood mission.
The popular understanding of mission is for the church to send missionaries,
or to be involved in mission work outside their immediate context
(their own country, immediate neighborhood). That has changed with
the realization that the church in the western world cannot take its
own context for granted as “Christian” anymore. Therefore,
the focus of the missional church is especially within a
congregation’s own context of the culture and community
in which God places it and calls it to participate.
Those
wanting a further picture of missional church could read Treasure
in Clay Jars: Patterns in Missional Faithfulness, which examines
9 congregations of different size and denomination to see how they
live out missional patterns. The book seeks to answer these questions:
- How
would you know a missional church if you saw one?
- What
in the life of the church indicates that a congregational is missional?
- How
can our congregation find enough encouragement to move toward becoming
missional?
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