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True Costs of PMC Click here to return to the Church Innovations web site. Every time we begin gathering a Partnership for Missional Church (PMC) cluster with persons who have not done it before, we rediscover how deep is the change we are asking these systems to make. It is patently cultural and not organizational change. It is painfully adaptive change, change that requires the system to make a serious adaptation, not a technical change (the sort of change the system already has the competence to do). Because of this serious challenge, it always is harder and takes longer to gather the 12-16 congregations to start the cluster than the leadership imagines. Of course the presenting issues in a congregation seldom immediately reveal the challenge to the culture in a congregation. Normally these presenting issues are clearly technical problems. They include cost in time, money, and personnel. Sometimes there arises the objection that the terms of the Partnership are not in the terms of the theological and ecclesiology tradition. Occasionally the threat to church culture does show itself and a moment for positive conflict may present itself in these presenting issues. Mostly, though, the presenting issues are technical issues. Cost in time, of course, is on the surface a technical issue. PMC takes time to set up and put into place. Making the adjustments to existing program, practices, and patterns of ministry initially looks like a matter of adding PMC to the already full agenda. While this approach seems best, it will, in time, prove most exhausting; I have rarely met a congregation who isn’t already trying to do too much. So adding PMC will usually exhaust the system and create a crisis along about the second year. Then, the deeper cultural question will come forward, showing the need to confront deeper adaptive change. Cost in money almost always is a presenting issue. Some congregations, indeed, are truly challenged to add the $3,000 per year congregational fee to their budget. Often in these instances, joining PMC becomes a more confrontational crisis upfront. More often than not, most congregations can add PMC onto the budget. Some use special gifts; others put it into the “missions” budget. They take their time doing this, but eventually they sign on but do not address the deeper questions of how their financial resources are related to God’s mission and their congregation’s place within God’s mission. Cost in personnel rightly holds up the decision making process since, once again, it is a rare congregation that has staff that can add this work without paying a price elsewhere. And, of course, the primary focus of PMC is not on paid staff but on the role of a diversity of leaders in the congregation. So very early on the intelligent congregational leader will see the cost in personnel, including wider leadership, as an issue in their decision. Once again, as with financial cost, this personnel cost becomes much more challenging as the PMC journey goes on. For PMC increases the leadership base committed to being a missional church and eventually confronts and takes on the organizational and power patterns that are not committed to being missional. The emerging pattern is, I hope by this time, clear. The presenting issues slow the decision making process down more than is expected by most of those attempting to gather the first cluster. The presenting issues, alas, are mostly technical and are fixed by adding on to the existing patterns and practices. In the long run, these quick fixes become a part of the crisis that causes the congregational and judicatory system to either do the deep cultural and adaptive work or drop out of PMC. In contrast and by way of hope to beginners, the second cluster (or second generation) in a church body is usually much easier to gather. The word of mouth from congregations in the first cluster helps the most. Further, the emerging new standards and patterns for ministry from the first cluster set a new horizon for other leaders who seek to be ahead of the curve of change. This struggle with the first cluster turns out to be a blessing in the long run, but when you are busy gathering that first cluster the blessing is clearly in the future. Peace, Pat Keifert |
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