Category Archives: Reframing

Creating a safe place

Leave a reply

In my book, Moral Values: What I Learned Growing Up in Church, (available as an eBook), I ask the question: “Can the Christian church, divided over different beliefs about moral values, create safe places so people can live together in love?” My answer, in part, includes a “Safe Place Covenant” to guide congregations in learning how to create places where people will feel safe enough to talk through their differences with love and respect. You can find the full covenant here.

Emerging Church

1 Reply

The Church that is emerging in the 21st century will be different from the common tradition of the historical Church in many ways. What is happening cannot be identified simply with some network (such as the Emergent Village) or some semi-organized movement called the Emergent Church.

People around the world increasingly value compassion and acceptance of others and resist inherited traditions imposed upon them by force of institutional hierarchies of all kinds. Nonviolent activism that challenges traditional authority and demands direct voice …. read more

5 Movements of Changing Churches

Leave a reply

The Church changes in every generation, certainly in every century. There are pivotal generations, however, and I believe we are living in one of those times. The history of the Christian Church focuses on such things as Creeds, Confessions, and Common practices.  When people talked about “what we believe,” they most often meant what we can understand and explain – our doctrines and denominational distinctives, for instance.

As the Church moves farther into the 21st century, all that will change rapidly. We already see a deepening chasm between leaders and pastors who focus on these traditional foundations and those who focus on what I call 5 Movements of Changing Churches:

1.      Compassion
2.      Contemplation
3.      Community
4.      Connection
5.      Cooperation

“What we believe” becomes more about how we live and how we demonstrate to the world God’s gracious love for all creation. Faith becomes more a matter of relationship with God and the world than a matter of intellectual and organizational uniformity. The Church is changing. The question is whether we will change with it.

It’s about who you are

Leave a reply

When church leaders are faced with change, they often look around for some model for adapting to change that other churches have used successfully. In a time of declining congregations among mainline denominations, especially, pastors and other leaders wonder why some other church in town is growing and their congregations are not. A common reaction of leadership is to say, “We need a different style of worship” or “We need to add on to our building” or “We need to be a ‘missional’ church.”

The essential need, however, for responding appropriately to change – and the inevitable conflict – is for people who are personally and spiritually prepared for effective leadership. The 10 Life Practices we teach (see menu bar at the top) will prepare you for that kind of leadership.

When you are centered in God and within yourselves and aware of who you are and what you bring to this situation, you can be both empathetic toward other people and assertive in what you say to them. When you are emotionally mature – meaning that you respond rather than react under stress – and when you connect with the people and your surroundings in a holistic manner, you are able to lead people in a way they can trust. You can listen to their stories and tell your own and help everyone learn to reframe what’s happening and see things from a different perspective, and you can guide people in creatively imagining a new future together. And with an underlying commitment to nonviolent engagement – to actively engage other people in a way that will not harm anyone – you can successfully guide your church into the good future God wants for it.

What in the world is God doing?

Leave a reply

The mainline Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church that dominated American religious life in the 20th century have been in decline for over 30 years. The seminaries they founded and supported – and that trained most of their ministers and priests – have also been in decline and many are in serious financial trouble. For the majority of Christian churches in the U.S. during the 20th century, ministers could only be ordained in order to serve those churches following at least three years of study at one of the recognized seminaries.

Today many of the larger churches do not belong to any of those denominations, often growing up as “nondenominational,” independent congregations. Or they belong to other Christian groups without the same restrictive requirements for education and ordination. Other theological schools have grown up to serve those churches and/or ministers and leaders have been mentored and trained within the congregations they now serve.

In the past 15 years, more and more people who feel called by God to serve in ministry are serving in leadership in congregations where they feel called. Often they have other jobs and careers, families, and homes, and they want to serve where they are. They are asking for theological education to come to them, offered in an integrated model of education with online study, mentoring, local study groups, and similar options that will enable them to be more fully educated and trained for the ministry they are already engaged in. I believe this is part of the new thing God is doing in our day.

What in the world is God doing?

Leave a reply

The mainline Protestant denominations and the Roman Catholic Church that dominated American religious life in the 20th century have been in decline for over 30 years. The seminaries they founded and supported – and that trained most of their ministers and priests – have also been in decline and many are in serious financial trouble. For the majority of Christian churches in the U.S. during the 20th century, ministers could only be ordained in order to serve those churches following at least three years of study at one of the recognized seminaries.

Today many of the larger churches do not belong to any of those denominations, often growing up as “nondenominational,” independent congregations. Or they belong to other Christian groups without the same restrictive requirements for education and ordination. Other theological schools have grown up to serve those churches and/or ministers and leaders have been mentored and trained within the congregations they now serve.

In the past 15 years, more and more people who feel called by God to serve in ministry are serving in leadership in congregations where they feel called. Often they have other jobs and careers, families, and homes, and they want to serve where they are. They are asking for theological education to come to them, offered in an integrated model of education with online study, mentoring, local study groups, and similar options that will enable them to be more fully educated and trained for the ministry they are already engaged in. I believe this is part of the new thing God is doing in our day.

To read the full article, click here.

Everything is changing

1 Reply

“Could we today be facing a change in how human society is organized that is as revolutionary in its implications as was the invention of the printing press by Gutenberg over 500 years ago?” – Philip Clayton (Professor of Theology at Claremont School of Theology [See full post at TheOoze.com]

If he’s right, what are the implications for the church and for Christian leaders? How will that change the way we see the role of the church in the world? And our own roles as leaders within a church that is being totally transformed into something we have yet to imagine?

Can we reframe our conversation about changing churches creatively imagine a new way forward in such a world? In a Google world, people aren’t waiting for us in the church to tell them what to believe and do; in fact, they resist being told. If we become a community where our ways of believing and doing draw them in as they search for something they are not yet aware of, they will join that community in virtual ways and then face-to-face. It is a new day!

What is God’s dream for the world?

Leave a reply

As we talk with people who see things differently from us, we want to “reframe” the conversation. When taking a picture with a camera, as we look through the lens we “frame” the shot by what we choose to focus on. In the same way, we can shift the camera angle and find a different “frame” for our conversation by refocusing/reframing how we talk about the same topic, however contentious.

One way to do that is to ask what God’s dream is for the world. How does God see the world? What does God desire for the world? If the world – even this one small part of the world we’re involved with at this moment – could be what God wants it to be, what would that look like? And what would need to happen to create that desired “world”?

If I’m in conflict with someone, we obviously have different perspectives of what we want to see happen. Many people in that situation stay focused on their own interest or belief; when both people in conflict adamantly do the same, no resolution is possible. If one person could propose a new frame that both could see through the same lens, resolution becomes possible. One way to define that frame is with this question: What is God’s dream for us in this situation?