 So, I'm going to again say welcome to folks. This is the weird church or really the focus here is on transformational visioning. And I do want to point out there are no handouts that were part that came to you through the Hoover app, because everything actually is on the website if you go to SME UCC.org. And we're to go into the search box that you find there and simply type the word weird into it. And we'll take you to a weird or transformational visioning page on our website. On that website, you will find a recording of this material it's about three years old. And if this recording comes out well actually this recording will be on that website in its place. In addition, the PowerPoint that I'm using is on the website so you don't need to worry about too much about taking notes you can review the PowerPoint later. There are a number of handouts that are linked on that web page I'll refer to some of those, but you can look at those handouts as well they're great resources for you to bring back to your church for information on that. So just be aware that there are a lot of material it will be out there. Because there's a lot of information in this session. This began as a one hour workshop that was not enough time we went to an hour and a half that was not enough time. We went to the two and a half hour extended time and I did this last week and got through only two thirds the material. But I also did that intentionally I'll do it again intentionally because because we're a good sized group here. It allows us a bit more conversation. And because the questions you're asking this morning like the last group did focus on the first part. You can review the second part later the second part really gives you some examples of ways in which church are doing churches are doing some innovative things I'm not even sure we call it churches. I would say it's ways in which the Holy Spirit of God is doing innovative work, creating new ways of being communities of faith in the world. That's great to look at. But I before you look at that I want you to sort of get grounded in the material which is what we'll do first, but it's a bit like a drinking from a fire hose one of my favorite illustrations. I apologize for that because the beauty is the PowerPoint in the video are available. You can go back and review all of this later if you want to receive it. Look at it more deeply. And because we are in the midst of this COVID pandemic we are now nine months in, and we're encountering a new surge of it, which means that we're adapting again to what we have to do is we as we almost get through one entire year of a church season in a cold. And at the same time there's a cumulative level of exhaustion among us. So this is a really intriguing moment for that so I will take some of the material we're using here and and shifted a bit around some of the insights we're getting from you. I'm going to share my screen and begin showing you the PowerPoint you will also notice that Sue has placed in the chat box a link to the web pages and as we talk about some materials, you'll see other links and information popping in there feel free to grab that information and write it down for you or cut and paste it if that would be helpful. I've written down my presentations before you will either certain things I share everywhere I go because I really really like them. And this is the beginning again the book, do I reference their weird church. There's a picture of it. It is by Beth and I can't even read that but Paul Nixon is also one of the authors of that. So we're on our time with some of our introductions and again, part of my focus here is to bring you through five or the sort of foundational and fundamental and I think essential concepts and the understanding of how to get a church from where it is to where God wants it to be and how to travel between that distance from here to there so there we are five primary concepts in it and one of those deals with this particular video. This individual is called Michael junior he's a comedian he has his own website web page and podcast, and this particular image if you were to Google Michael junior and know your why this will pop up it's become a very popular video of his, and I'm going to let you watch it. So what did you see. What did you observe. What did you hear engagement. I can clearly see the connection that was made to the people who were here in the same. Now his performance was much more vivid and clear, once he knew is why, and that was really very attractive to all the folks around deeply engaging powerfully moving. People were enjoying it not only were they enjoying it themselves but they were actually interacting with each other in new ways. So another person I'm going to go back to a share screen, there is another individual who I typically would have used at this point called Simon cynic S I N E K Simon cynic. It has done a TED talk, and I believe the TED talk is entitled how great leaders inspire. But if you were to simply Google Simon cynic TED talk, most likely it will pop up, because it is one of the most popular TED talks out there and Simon cynic. shares the concept of getting to know your why. And uses this image come on go slow for me uses this particular image and he says people don't care what you do until they know why you do it. And so he talks about this concept here. And I will say often that in most of, so I have worked in the area of church growth and evangelism for about 40 years in some way shape or form. And I'll say for most of the 40 years. The question raised around church growth, church revitalization church energizing church transformation church revitalization has all centered around one particular question. What do you think that question is when people call in someone to do church growth help us grow our church. What are they asking where they're looking for any any any ideas, you all know the answer go ahead. I bet they want to focus on how, how do we grow, how do we change. What do we do. And they want to go there right away without going to the why. Exactly. The question is always some form of how do we get more people in the pews and pledges in the plate. And typically they'll also share that we're looking we're focusing on young families as a piece of that. And the challenge of that is people don't really care what you do until they know why you do it and if you're driving force. What really surprises your congregation to move forward is to get more people in the pews and pledges in the plate, you are not likely to accomplish that, because people don't want to come into the church to satisfy your needs, but they will be powerfully driven by your So if you're trying to transform your church if you're trying to bring vitality church. The first thing you want to work on is to discover what your why is and I put the heart in here because the why cannot come from the head it has to come from the heart. And it has to come from the heart in connection with God, and we use the language for the why. And your values your beliefs your identity and purpose now all that can come from the head. But if I want to discover a compelling why a powerful why I want to go deeper than that. In my experience, every church has a mission statement. Most of his mission statements sound pretty generic. In most of the time people can't quote to me what the mission statement is. And when they do, there's no energy behind your quoting. I'm looking to discover the why I'm looking for people to say something back to me that they that I can hear in their voice is tapping into a deep enthusiasm and a deep passion. So it will also come from God. If it's truly a place of identity and purpose. I believe that comes out of your relationship with God and it comes out of relationship with God that has been transformational for you. It is what energizes you in the congregation, it is life giving and passion, you voking. When you engage in doing the things around this why time flies, time goes by quickly for you and the congregation. I often find that the why has been true throughout the history of the church. We vary a bit from time to time so I worked with one church and we were doing some work around, you know what is our identity what is our purpose what is it that is passion, evoking life giving for you, and they began talking about working with with you. Not just getting more young families into the church, but working with you being a present to you. As I dug into the history of that church. They were one of the first churches to have a scout troop. They were one of the first churches to have an educational system in their church and in their community. They were instrumental in forming the town library for the education of children. And some of their previous pastors had served either on the local or the state board of education, something in their DNA that touched upon their why had been true throughout their history. It's not always the case, but I often find that I'm looking at the DNA as well as if I find a life giving piece. It also points to it to the history and DNA. But here's the key point. When you find your why, when your church finds its why, when everyone in the church can enthusiastically quote, but they feel that why is it is the kind of energy that will move you out of your comfort zone, because you're drawn into putting that why to life in the world around you, who you are is defined by what you are willing to struggle for. So the why will take you into that place. It again, I want to keep emphasizing the why is not an experience of analysis would come back to that a little bit later. It is an experience at the level of heart at the level of soul. Once you know what your why is once you know what is your core identity and while it may have certain commonalities with other churches. Part of your why is something that only you can uniquely do or only you as a congregation are uniquely called to once you have that sense of your why you're going to begin to craft for yourself a narrative or a story. So what will the future look like three years five years 10 years 20 years from now, if our church truly stepped out of its comfort zone and authentically deeply passionately lived its why. So the why gives one piece of energy, because it tells you who you are what what you want to be. The future story gives you the other piece of energy that will draw you forward into the future. And I've worked with groups and organizations that crafted a future story, it was pretty it was nice it was lovely but it wasn't energizing, and within a month they had forgotten what the story was and moved on to other things. So the point is to look at a story that is drawing you forward. I'm going to come back in a little bit later to some of the brain and neural neurological science behind those two concepts. Let's go from yoga bearer. You got to be very careful. If you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there. That's part of the point of finding that future story a clear story. And when I describe a future story. What I invite people into is to share a story that is vivid, compelling and uses language that touches upon all of our senses. I want you to describe what the future will taste like I want you to describe what you can smell in that future. I want you to describe what you can hear within your congregation and within your community. I want you to describe what you can see. I want you to describe what you can touch and feel and sort of grasp and understand about that future. I want to create the story that uses that kind of vivid language that helps you grasp it and be drawn into it more deeply. That sort of vivid or visual concepts behind this. The bottom of foundational piece is your why it is the foundation of what drives you forward that's the life giving energy that values the beliefs that the identity and purpose up here in the roof is the what that's that compelling scene of impact and change and transformation that you will experience. That's where you use that vivid language, they'll experience when you accomplish that sense of vision. And that's what churches, when they're asking the question, how do we get more people into the pews and people in the pews and pledges in the plate are going to spend their time focusing here on the how, how do we do this. Most churches have developed strategic plans and this is the area of strategic plans. If you develop a strategic plan without a future story, and without a why, like most strategic plans it will gather dust on the show. It may be well done. It will not get you there. So, I say before you even think about what you're going to do how you're going to implement something. Start first at a level of prayer and soul and getting to the why and again I'm going to come back to that throughout the presentation. In every one of these principles there are some common wisdom that reminds us of the dangers. If I encounter a church that has more memories than imagination. I know I'm in a place where there's going to be some challenges. If your future story is how to get back to the church of 1950 or 1960. Then you are unlikely to do anything that truly is transformational because you're trying to stay within your comfort zone and within your familiarity. God is always going to call us into a place of imagination and into a place of possibility. So if you're, if you're talking more memories than imagination. It's time to step back and engage the why more deeply engage and prayer more deeply and let God begin to shape an imagination that might take you beyond the familiar and beyond the comfort zones into 2060, not the church of 1960. And again I'm going to touch upon this a little bit later. So again the first concept, discover your why, essentially discovering your why as a spiritual practice and a spiritual activity as is the future story. It's not just the story that we want for our church 1015 20 years from now. It's the story that we know will delight God 10 years from now five years from now 20 years from now. And you can see on the bottom here again some of the elements we just talked about. So, let me pause the share screen and ask you a question. What of this. Do you want to bring back to the conversations in your church. I want to ask you to think about that and say it out loud but also write it down. What part of this is it important for you to bring back to your church and into your church's conversations. Yeah, yeah. Sure, sure. We have a church that's. Well, we've grown a lot over the last 78 years because we have a dynamic new pastor with Reverend Helen Nablo. So, we have a group of folks who've been with the church 3040 years, right, and then we have all these new folks who come in. In the last 70 years, and I don't think at this point without a lot of work, we have the same wise. And so I wanted to ask, what's the best way to handle that when you've got two groups one. Love the old keep the old and then one. Gosh, we see an evolution for the future. How do you get to a why I love the way you said it, you know, have your congregation get their why. But what happens when you have multiple wise. So, yeah, I, I'm in part talking about principles here I'm going to touch upon and answer that question but part of the answer that question is actually going to go in in some cases beyond this. Because I have not typically discovered any church that can do this work without an outside individual coming into accompany them on the journey, who can walk them through the kind of conversations that will help. My guess is while there may be two different wise, when there's two different wise is usually something deeper you haven't gotten to beneath those wise. And as you go to that deeper level you're going to start to find commonality. So the trick is how do you engage in how do you find the right sort of conversation that will help to lead you into the deeper exploring. The language I use is, let's say, you know, we would love to have more young people in our church. Well, why will you gain by that. Well, we'd like to have the energy had 1960 but why, why, why was that helpful to you why why did that where is that connected you and just sort of keep asking what you gain from that why is that important until you get to a deeper level of value and often the deeper level of value is a place where you all share a commonality. How you get there. If you stay up at the surface on competing what you think is competing wise, then you're going to have competing house. The question is how do you keep going deeper into the deeper place and Mike, this is a theological premise of mine. And I'll say it here because I'll say it a couple other places as well. My suspicion, my guess in my observation is that the deepest level of why will center around Micah six eight. What does God require of you. I don't think it's God's requirement I think it's God's wisdom that tells us where we most deeply connect with what people long for. So you all have Micah six eight memorized no doubt but just in case you don't. What does God require of you but to do justice love kindness and walk humbly with our God. We have three separate pieces do justice means we want to have we want to have a meaningful impact on the world. I may want to have a meaningful impact by doing this. I might somebody else we want a meaningful impact by doing that, but we both want to have a meaningful impact that's our common ground. We want loving kindness, we want a community we can walk into that feel safe, welcoming. We feel we belong there and we're missed if we're not there, and we can share our love and care with each other we want that loving kindness that grounding of community that grounding and belonging, and then walking humbly with our God, which I think lies beneath both of those, which is I want to walk into a church where in this church in this community of faith. I am drawn into a deeper relationship with the mystery of the Holy whatever that means to me, not because someone's trying to tell me what to believe but because we can share common experiences of God. One guess is that that energy underlies all the other energies we express it in different ways I want to get down there. And it's also my premise that every church will find its own unique way to do loving kindness to do justice and to do the walking humbly with God. There's not one universal the concept universal but the approach may differ. And so again going down deeply will get you there. Often it's going to be helpful to bring an outside person in. Some resources available and I'm going to refer you to your conference staff for that. There may be some particular pieces of documentation or worksheets that can help guide you. But you'll see again in a few moments why it's often helpful to bring somebody in to help you think through that. Thank you for the question. If there's more please add it. So I'm going back again. You just had another piece of this. What are you bringing back to your church that you want to make sure you include in conversation. I just had this unbelievable recognition that something that I did was courageous, but it didn't have a good why. And that is, there were people who said well where will we get our points and I want my pecans for Christmas and so the whole question of what is it that we do in a Christmas bizarre that we can do. We started with the what, and we started crossing off the things we couldn't do because of COVID or because we're not gathering and we, you know, and then, and I thought to myself but the why, you know you just, you, you, you energize me to go to the why. I have to write something for next week, you know, because you know I did all the things I got the funding proposal in we got plans in for a silent auction we got people bringing stuff in we're going to take pictures going to have a silent auction. But the why of it wasn't explained in until but because we had gone through all of this and we needed to follow our mission in order to do a fundraising project. We, you know, I should be saying because our mission is that we need to grow in faith and this will help us grow in faith together. We need to be courageous and seeking justice we need to do this not just for ourselves but for others. And we need to generously care for people so we need to figure out ways for those people who care about getting their pecans to get them. I didn't do it right so I'm already writing my, you know, email for tomorrow for tomorrow to get out on Tuesday, because we have some people saying, oh, we shouldn't be doing this we should be worried. You know, we decided to give to a, a, a, a Wyndham area interfaith ministry because they have set up like a fund which is catching people who are in all different areas of not just poverty but people who are caught without jobs without food without. So, so that fund is what we're making the money for usually we make the money for the church as a whole and we at the end of the year we're always the people that give the money to the church and that saves them from going into deficit, you know, but we made the decision that in order to do fundraising we have to have a why. So that was there, but it forced us into choosing it but I haven't told people that's why. Great. That's excellent. So I'm going to take a moment and build upon that for another part of the COVID conversation. We're exhausted by COVID right now, which makes it difficult to even think about these questions. But one of the, one of the beauties one of the powers in this moment with this pandemic when we are forced to do worship and do community and even do some of the traditional things differently, particularly now with the Thanksgiving Advent and Christmas season approaching is to begin asking the question. What was essential about all of this. Maybe we can't do the longest night that we always did the longest night maybe we can't do the town's Thanksgiving Eve service. We always did maybe the Christmas Eve and Christmas pageant can't be done the way we always did. But what is essential now what is the why beneath those. And once you go down to the why which are which are wrestling with the pecans. Then you can come back up and say well how might we do it differently in this time, so that the why is accomplished, not just the tradition. I'm going to move on to just to be mindful of time and give you the second concept. Once my computer catches up and let's make it. So, the second concept has to do with the church lifecycle or the lifecycle of any organism or organization, everything has a place of beginning and a place of ending. And in the current theory of church lifecycle which is drawn upon a theory of organizational life cycles. The observation is that the point from the beginning on the far left side hand side of the here of this bell curve over to the end is about 80 years. Now, I always say, most of our churches have been around for longer than 80 years. But if you look back 80 to 100 years prior to this moment, you will see the church operated very differently than it does today it has gone through a cycle. So this cycle is not simply one time advantage is where it keeps going on and on through time. In this cycle the horrors on a line here everything below the horrors on a line indicates that the organization is not self sustaining. It doesn't have enough money or resources or people or energy to sustain itself by itself but need some energy from the outside. Above the line it is self sustaining has enough people enough energy, enough finances enough resources enough building for to be self sustaining. On the left side of the line here, you have growing an energy. There are more people coming in there's more enthusiasm coming in there's more dreaming happening there's more imagination happening. There's more programming and relationships are being built on that sideline. On the other side of the line, all of that is declining relationships may still be prevalent towards the end, but you're beginning to have less energy less people involved less enthusiasm. Less financial resources, etc. There's a Lutheran pastor whose name I have forgotten who uses a euphemism for this he says this first quadrant. Here it's called a new church, he calls it the movement quadrant. There's a movement of energy that's building around around sort of a core set. And that it's not self sustaining yet but it's energizing. In the second one we have the monuments quadrant, you begin to build a structure around that movement to sustain it and to support it. In the third quadrant this one called the declining church we call the museum quadrant. And I'll come back to that word in a second in the last quadrant would be called the morgue quadrant in his particular way of saying, statistically speaking about 60% of main line Protestant churches are in this last quadrant. Primarily because so many of them are drawing upon existing endowments to sustain their current budget, or they may be drawing upon outside renters, which is a real problem here in the pandemic time. 80% of churches are somewhere from here on down to it. But the key here I want to look at in life cycle is when I walk into a church and listen to them describe what they're looking for what they want what they're worried about. Something tells me what happens up here that is the shift from this side of the quadrant of the solvent healthy church to this side of the bell curve whereas in the declining church. This is not a moment in time is typically a plateau, but I'm curious if you can name for me, what the language is that tells me that the church is on the decline side. What is their focus. Do you know, managing managing what's going on. There you go. On this side of the creation, most of the conversation is on maintenance and management of the institution. Most of the conversation and most of the fights have to do with how to maintain the building, how to balance the budget. How we how we write our bylaws because bylaws are all about management and control controlling process controlling decisions. How do we get more bodies into our building back to the, you know, pledges in place when the language is focused on that I realized that the church has shifted its focus from the movement energy to the maintenance and management energy. So if I want the church to thrive. I have to shift them back. I have to shift them from our primary focus is to maintain what we were from that what we're familiar with getting it back to a mission or component which is based upon the why naming and claiming your why is the avenue to shift from maintenance into back into so here's the other language I listened to some churches operate as though the pastor is the performer. The question is the audience and God's job is to prompt the pastor. I also done a workshop on whole church evaluations and most evaluations are based on the concept of is the church and the pastor are the church and the pastor, satisfying my needs as a member of the congregation. The last question is like we like the sermon you like the pastoral care. Are you getting enough out of worship. How do you what do you think about the church quotes it's a consumer based concept. And that's a man maintenance management side conversation on the missional side, when the church knows it's why it's going to shift all this around for healthy faithful and effective church is the congregation that's a performer, and they're professionally and enthusiastic living it's God given why stepping outside his comfort zone. The pastor is the prompter and the partner, they come alongside the church, the church is a primary actor, and the pastor's job is not to do it for them or give it to them. The pastor's job is to help walk alongside them with the insight and the train to pastor has, and God is the audience. The audience from the framework that we walk company with God, God is the audience in terms of our praise and our worship of God, God is also the audience in terms of the least of these when Jesus said, when you have done this release to these you have done it for me that's sort of the justice side of things. I need to add that God is not a passive recipient audience, God actually is an active prompter and partner in the whole thing. God comes alongside the congregation God comes alongside the pastor, in order to help the congregation move into that God given future. So here's the danger in this concept. If the last one was more memories than imagination this one is more bids than aprons. And by that if you can pick up the imagery, do most of your congregation come into worship or into the church or into your congregation into your whole church experience with a bib on. I'm here as long as you feed me, or they come in with an apron on. And my proviso here is, there are times in all of our lives when the world is exhausted, exhausting and wearying and painful, and we need the bib on. Because we need to have the love of God given to us through our congregation and our pastor through our scripture and through our worship so that we can be healed and renewed. The problem is when we stop there and don't take the bib off and put the apron on. Most of our time should be spent in the apron world. If most of our time is spent in the bib world, we're on the management side, we're not on the management side. So the second concept here is how do we help the congregation shift its attitude and his thinking and his recognition from being a maintenance based organization, trying to preserve what was what is dear to us into a missionary side. The missionary side does not mean you ignore the building. It doesn't mean you ignore the budget. It doesn't mean you ignore the bylaws. It just means that every time you talk about the building and the budget and the bylaws, you always add the comment to what end. Why do we have the budget? Is the budget serving our why? What's the value of our building? Is our building serving our why? Is it serving the way that God is calling us into the future? Those are still important elements. A church can't thrive in that second quadrant if it doesn't have this sort of institution around it, but the institution exists to serve the mission, not to be served by the mission of the congregation. So what is most valuable, most impactable church at the level of the deepest human needs? You're trying to tap into that in this. I'm going to skip that slide and go back into our sharing. What from this, and Sue has written the question here to the side in the chat, and it's going to be the same for each of these pieces. What from this is important for you to bring back to your congregation? It should be just a second to think about that. What from this conversation, from this concept you want to make sure you bring back to your congregation in the next week or two or month? And you're welcome to write that in the chat. And I'm going to say again, the reason I keep pausing is it's our discovery that when we write something down and share it out loud, we are more likely to bring it into reality. So I'm going to invite you to think about that. What concept do you want to make sure you bring into the congregation, into your leadership, into your church in the next week or month? An easy first step. You may not do it all, but an easy first step. This is rich. I'll, I'll bring actually a reinforcement of something that Reverend Jonathan knew said in 2016 at a Hampshire Association meeting. He said that mission is from the Greek word missio, meaning send, not convert. And essentially it was about stewardship, but essentially he said, you will become what you are. Which, and I've taken that back and I've, I'm a drummer when it comes to the message, how well it's being a sword, I'm not sure. At great risk. I'll tell the risk K into the meeting at great risk. There was discussion about tie the equivalent of tithing and, and myself and others are shaking there had no we don't do that. And a voice from the other end of the room said, do English talk about sex lives before finances. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And Kate I'm seeing your comment in the side as well. Part of the challenge of the day. Yeah, and even the challenge of this workshop in the midst of the pandemic is in many of our churches there's already an exhaustion level and energy challenge for our folks. It's magnified in the COVID time. I also want to say to you that there is no quick fix easy formula. Again I've been in the church growth church revitalization field for a couple of decades, and people are always looking for the quick methodology that will get me from here to there real transformation takes time. I'm going to come back to this concept later I keep saying that, but I will say the quick rule of thumb if I really expect a church to go through transformation and come out on the other side. I'm anticipating a five to 10 year process, not a five to 10 month process. But it begins by planting seeds. Don't feel the burden that I have to make this happen in the next year or two. But here the concepts and begin planting those concepts into the heart of the congregation, like the yeast that you hope will leaven the entire loaf. It begins as a process in which I want to plant seeds now faithfully spiritually plant seeds now, and keep it present in people's minds. So that that transformational work can happen over time, not try to force it to happen in a short time frame. I'm going to move on to the next concept just to watch the time but I also want to encourage you to keep looking at the comments here on the side. As well as from Jim. So, I'm going to share a little bit of information around changing landscape because this is the context in which we're working. And again, this is about a 10 minute version of what ought to be a two year course. So I'm going to give you highlights. And I will also say, we don't know the answers yet. So changing landscape is changing so rapidly around us. And the pandemic is adding a whole new to make a whole new dimension to that change that these sort of trend lines that I'm talking about are important to know. But I'm not trying to teach you the concepts I'm trying to get you to think about what else do I need to know, how do I begin to frame the conversation, because our church is living in a different landscape now. We're living in an even more different landscape now because we're in COVID time, and that landscape is not yet clear it's still evolving and changing around us. So, to take you back to the story of the 1960 church that we are most familiar with is a church that I grew up in. And when I was trained as a pastor 40 years. This was a church I was trained to lead. I was trained to lead it as a professional religious leader of a congregation at mostly at a management level administration level and leadership level and secondarily at a spiritual level. So here's the church that we are familiar with the church was the center of social educational religious and political life in the community. Back before we gave up on the Sunday limitations around sports and around economic activity. The church was the place to be on Sunday mornings. Sunday was sacred church only time nothing else happened on Sunday mornings. Typically, everyone was a church member. In fact, if you go back 100 150 200 years ago, the only way for you to vote and have influence in town politics was to be a member of the parish a member of the church. You also typically had to be white and male and a land owner. When you moved into a community joining a church was one of your first actions, because that is not only how you built your social network. It's also how you built your business network. It was important to have relationships in the community to in order to carry carry out and conduct your business, and it was a place in which we got to know each other on church activities, or typically community activities, everybody stopped everything to come to the church bizarre, or they stopped everything to come to worship or any sort of social or fellowship event. None of those is true anymore. Let me say that again, none of those points is true anymore, and it's not coming back for a number of years we fought about Sunday mornings, can we change our community. So they stopped doing sports on Sunday mornings. I think it was in a second for one of the reasons why that well the reason that doesn't happen is because on Sunday morning, maybe only 1% of the population may be involved in your particular church, and the entire community is not going to shift its life around a small percentage. Come back to that. In the new world. One of the things we're encountering is a loss of faith and trust in institutions. This is in general. There's a lot of faith and trust in authority. You heard a little bit of that from the speaker this morning at worship. There's a lot of faith and trust in experts. This particular election cycle with this language around fake news, and the language around the echo chambers of social media like Facebook is teaching people that we can't trust the people who claim to be experts out there. The community is lumped together. You may see stories on the news of extreme behaviors amongst people of faith. And it may not only be Christians it may be all religion, but in the world today. Many people are lumping all Christian churches in all religious institutions into the same sort of categories based on that all religions lumped together. We don't even see the church at all. We used to presume that if I could hang a sign out in front of my church, people would drive by and say oh that's really cool I want to go to that church. The reality is most people drive by the church and don't even see the church don't even think about the church and are not likely to see or care about the signage out front. I don't want to eliminate that that I don't want to say that's not a valuable tool to go forward with, but I don't want you to presume that people are watching church the same way that we are thinking of watching church, it's not in their minds the same way. So, I often will quote some statistics, and I want to be cautious here that the statistics keep changing. So I'm going to give you some generalized language here. And I'll point you to some of the resources on this, but the numbers themselves are in shift and depends upon which particular research you look at with that caveat in mind. Back in 1962 a survey was done at religious in this country. Three primary questions were asked, do you believe in God. Do you have a regular prayer life, and do you affiliate or attend church back in 1962 about 95% of the people said they believe in God. About 8090 95% said we have a regular prayer life we pray roughly once a week, or a little bit more often that perhaps. And most all of them 9095% said they had some connection or affiliation with a church or religious institution of some kind, they were members somewhere or they thought of something as their home church. We have seen the decline of church, particularly mainline white Protestant churches not all churches have been a decline but particularly main mainline white Protestant churches and for a while the more evangelical churches were growing but they've plateaued and begun to shift as well. So we began to ask the questions again, well what's happening in our world. Do you still believe in God, do you still pray regularly and do you affiliate with the church. So in 1962 about 95% of the people said they believe in God, what percentage of people today claim to believe in God. Do you know. Shout it out, unmute yourself and shout it out. No idea. Go ahead. 70%. So will depend on the way the question is asked. If they think by God, you're asking do you believe in the God that the church has tried to promote. It goes down. I simply asked the question, do you believe there's something out there that can relate to it's still around 95%. 94% still a very high percentage of people that have a belief in the reality of something beyond them back in 1962 about 98% of the people prayed regularly roughly once a week. What percentage of people have a spiritual practice on a regular basis today. That has not changed. So the belief in God has stayed fairly consistent in some form of spiritual practice that connects us with something outside of ourselves has remained somewhat consistent. Our definitions have changed, but the longing has not shifted. But what percent of people on any given weekend are going to attend a service of worship in their community and some religious institution. What percentage would you say 10%. Some statistics put it at around 8 to 17%. Some of the research will indicate 21 to 41%. However, when you actually look at church attendance numbers that are counted. It's not that high. So some people report going to church you apparently never showed up in the building. I only went back and began to ask them so why don't you come to church. You know, we, those who answer was say to us because they believe churches are hypocritical. They say one thing but their behavior is very different. They're concerned that churches are going to impose doctrines and morals. If I walk into your building you're going to force me to believe and behave the way you believe and you behave. I don't want that anymore I'm done with that. They believe churches are meddling in politics. I want to be cautious here. They are longing for churches to be actively involved in making a difference in the world. And we'll see a little bit later some of the focal points of that. They don't want churches trying to force their opinions their doctrine and their morals into the law of the land. They don't want people being partisan, but they want people being political. And there's a difference between those two. They don't want people forcing bipartisan politics, doctrines and morals, but they do want churches in political ways changing the world for the better. They are under the impression that churches are vitriolic and toxic, particularly on moral issues, particularly on issues like same gender homosexuality and abortion. They may be in different places themselves and what they believe about that, but they are concerned that the church in its behavior is vitriolic and toxic, and they are done with that, and therefore done with church. But mostly they describe that churches feel out of touch with the world that they live in and the concerns they have, and that churches are boring. That's their primary thought. I would add to that the language of they think churches are simply irrelevant is one of the most common phrases. Now here's what people are looking for but my caution here is don't take this. Do remember it's not what you do that matters it's why you do it so don't take this as a prescription for how to succeed. What they're looking for is that doing justice loving kindness what come we talked about before the looking for a place where they can have conversation and dialogue, not a talking head telling them what they should believe. They want to be engaged in conversation. They want a place that accepts them in where they can be long for who they are I talked about that before as well. And here's the place where they're particularly looking for the church to have an impact. They're looking for a more peaceful less violent less dangerous world. They're looking for a place where there is not such a huge gap between wealth and poverty. There's a place where the dignity of people as people are who they are in their beliefs in their lifestyle. It can be much or embraced but can be accepted and and and received more fully, and they're looking for a place that cares about a more sustainable planet around them. Those are those are areas in which they have a greatest concern, and they're looking for a place that will help them experience a mystical encounter with the Holy. Not only in the building but also outside in the sacred world. And finally this is an interesting piece. For many years in the whole church growth movement we all said you know abandon your traditional way of church start doing contemporary worship. And then we discovered that the difference between tradition and traditionalism I have this quote that came from somebody I can't remember who it was. This person said tradition is the living faith of dead people and traditionalism is the dead faith of living people. See the difference. Traditionalism means we've always done it that way. It has to do with maintenance of what is familiar and comfortable. It has to do with people who have walked a journey of faith, struggled with life, encountered God experienced the Holy and the power of the Holy to transform and heal and have passed on their learnings to others. Tradition is a living faith of dead people. Traditionalism is the dead faith of living people. Longing for the tradition, because it is the collective wisdom of generations before us who have wrestled in life and encountered a God who has been a powerful presence for them their longing for those stories that we can pass on from previous generations, and our own stories of that encounter with God their longing for that. Whether it's in tradition or that you abandon contemporary, it means you go to authentic within both of those. When we talk about the number of people show up in church on Sunday mornings, a number of people affiliated with church is also interesting to note that there's a trend difference that's changing. These are the six different generations. Now, who could all be in the building at the same time that they actually all came to church, and you'll see that each successive generation is less likely to affiliate with the church. So it's not simply that we're down to 21 or 41% who claim an affiliation with church is that that 21 to 41% is primarily an older generation. And based upon that, if that older generation ages out of life and church, there's not a lot of people coming in behind them, because the people behind them have lived in a different world, and are looking for a different experience we just talked about with God. We're also seeing a dramatic shift in the demographics of this country and again most of what we know as mainline class and worship, and even mainline Catholic Church in this country is based upon a culture that evolves out of the white dominant culture. And as we have an increasingly diverse culture around us, the generations growing up are growing up in a different diversity of culture than the generations that crafted the church. And if you look into this slide, the church was built by and for this upper generation, the builders the silence and the baby boomers. And it operates out of the mindset in the framework that they are most familiar with the generations below this line have experienced a different world. The church doesn't express that different world they grown up in, which is this world of diversity, along with others, and they're unlikely to find the church as relevant or meaningful in their lives. One more example of that if you take out English and Spanish. These are the different languages which are the third most prominent language in each of these regions and you can see that diversity. Come back to it later so here's the danger. My favorite quote of mine. It's attributed to Einstein he never actually said this, but he taught this concept all the time. No problem can be solved out of the same level of consciousness that created it. When a church comes to me and says, what do we have to do to get more people in the pews and pledges in the plate. One of the dangers is, if they can only view the world through one level of consciousness, the one they grew up in, they may not be able to solve that problem, because no problem can be solved are the same level of consciousness that created that problem. So here's the third concept. It is a different world, and you've just got a snapshot of it in these moments. It's a believing institution religion, but God is active in the world, and people are actively looking for God, or at least the spiritual we use that phrase spiritual but not religious. And this comes from a book by Todd bolsinger called canoeing the mountains. It's a great sort of view again it comes out of the white dominant culture perspective but it still has some great wisdom in it. And for the church will not look like the road behind the church of 2060 will not resemble the church of 1960. And that would have been true anyways, but it's even more true, because of this changing landscape that we're now in in our world is the time of profound change. Alice tickle in her book the great emergence will say, once every 500 years we have a major shift and we're in that major shift, we won't see the end of it for a decades of not a century, but we're in that shift. And this pandemic of coven has accelerated that shift for all of us. Okay, once again, a lot of stuff coming away I'm watching the time. And I know that have been some comments off here to the side just making sure that we pause for a second. Before I go on. I want to have a moment to pause and let some of this settle in. And I'm going to give us a five minute break. And in that five minute break I'm going to invite you to write something down. One takeaway from that last section that either you want to explore more, or you want to bring into your congregation. So in the next five minutes I invite you to do a takeaway, let it down for you hold on to it, and then get up and scratch get a cup of coffee do something to kind of get yourself moving again. We'll come back for the next two concepts. I will see you I'll start talking again at about 1127. Thanks. So folks, if you are joining this and watching this later as recording I actually paused recording during that break. So you wouldn't be sitting here watching five minutes of break. But if you are watching the recording I would encourage you to pause recording now and give yourselves that five minute break just to kind of let your brain settle in just a little bit. Thanks, welcome back. I'm going to keep moving on with this just because I want to get through the material, and then come back and have a little chance to do a little processing and thinking around it. Because there are two more concepts to go in this next one is a couple of your questions have been around methodology, how do you get from here to there again this is the concept here by a person named auto Sharma, who has developed what he calls theory you based upon the you shape that you're looking at on the screen. His book is theory you a model of transformational change. You can also find a lot of his work. If you were to Google auto Sharma or theory you, there are some very good videos on this content. I would also point you to a book by Susan Beaumont. I'm going to ask you to look it up you may know Susan better, I think it is how to leave you don't know where you're going, I believe is the title of the book Susan Beaumont be a you m ont and she has a nice section in there on the theory you concept. While you may not be familiar with the concept. I say this is nothing more than the wilderness story. The theory you was embodied in the story of the Exodus. We were slaves once in Egypt, and God led us into the promised land we know that metaphoric concept. But I like to point out to folks at the distance on this map between Egypt, and the eventual promised land in which they settled is about four hours by a jet. And it might be four days by a car, if even that long, and it might be four months if you're using the old wagon train caravan or camel caravan of that day. And yet it took them 40 years in the wilderness. And the reason for 40 years in the wilderness is because this is not simply getting to the destination. It is getting into and through the journey. And that there's something about the journey that requires time. It's why I said, you can't do transformational visioning or really bring your church in a place of vitality vitality, and five to 10 months you better plan on five to 10 years. And I will say, and once you get there, I'll come back to this anyways I don't say it just yet. Once you get there there's more work to be done. We just live in what we call our comfort zone our status quo the place that is familiar the place that is safe, the place we know the rules, the place that cares for us and feeds us gives us a place of satisfaction comfort and security. It is not easy to leave that that place of security in the story of Exodus that status quo was slavery in Egypt. There were times in the wilderness where they wanted to go back to the slavery in Egypt, because it had security and stability and predictability and familiarity. It is very difficult to get off status quo. So since you've listened this far. Let me share with you a relatively scary statistic. The studies have been done around people making changes and I believe this comes from the medical world where they did some research on people who had had a heart attack. They were told by their doctor that if you want to live. If you want to avoid another heart attack, you have to change your lifestyle, eat less salt, eat less fat, eat a healthy diet, get out there and get some exercise. Take care of your life stop smoking, etc. They found that nine out of 10 people could not sustain that change. The love death was not enough to get them to make the kind of changes that would preserve and save their lives nine out of 10. It is very difficult for an organization to go through a substantial change. Few of you helps understand the only why it's difficult, but how to get beyond that difficulty. What had to happen in the story of Exodus was the 10 plagues. I don't I think that if God had the 10 plagues in the Bible, describe what it was required to force the powers of Egypt to let the people of Israel go. My guess is, it was equally required to have the 10 blagues in order for the people of Israel to be willing to step out into the wilderness. There needs to be some sort of crisis or energy that will allow people to say we need to leave the status quo. In that life cycle theory that energy typically comes to us as conference staff when they suddenly realize we have about three to five years left in our endowments before we burn through the principle and can no longer sustain our budget. Please help us. In that is a compelling place, but it typically drives us to quick solutions. That's why, for me, this red circle this place of change has to do with reconnecting with your why, and then developing that compelling a future story from it, because it takes a great deal of energy to get past this place of status quo to break out of the conference resistance. In theory you the observation by auto-sharmer and others is most people when they hit that place of crisis where the red circle is here, try to solve the problem. What do we have to do to get more people in the pews and pledges in the plate? They focus on the how to do this, and they create a strategic plan, all of which comes out of the head. This is the strategy, and in the head they will attempt to cross the wilderness quickly and painlessly, and they will not succeed. The work of transformational change, which is really the work that God is always calling us to, is to go from our head into the place of heart where we begin to look at, own, and name the feelings, not only of what we hope for and what we need and long for, but also the feelings of grief and shame and anger and fear that come with all of that, the sense of loss. I'm talking a bit more about that. You have to go into the heart and the emotions that are evoked by change before you can get to the deeper level, which is the soul level, the level we encounter God and let God show to us the future. It was Mark Twain who said, the only human being that likes change is a baby with a wet diaper. That's the uncomfortable piece. And naming that helps us say, we can't just solve this problem. We have to begin looking at the heart and at the soul. And this is the challenging piece that I find in transformational visioning. I will also say it's the challenging piece about faith formation and about discipleship. I think where God is most active is in what Susan Beaumont knows will call liminal space what I will call the wilderness wanderings. That is a place where you sit with the heart and the uncomfortableness and you sit with the soul with complete openness and surrender to God. It's the most uncomfortable place for human beings and human organizations to be. And if we don't know how to live in that place. Our tendency will either be to rush forward into the future or rush back into the familiar, neither of which will get us there. So part of the work is learning how to live in this space. I'll skip that piece. I'll come back to this is the concept of the diffusion of innovation model. There's not enough time to talk about this except to briefly say some people will jump into the wilderness quickly. Some will follow the early jumpers. Some will take a long time before they're willing they're going to watch everybody else go out first before they jump in. Some people are going to watch everybody else first and then are some people who just aren't ever going to go there. I find in churches that the people that rule the process are the laggards, because that's what happens when you stay in your head. You try to keep everybody happy because you're afraid that if we don't keep people happy they'll leave if we don't keep people satisfied they'll leave. And so we reduce all of our activity to that which keeps the laggards happy. I'm being a little bit too crass here a little bit too, too challenging I'm going to come back to the concept in a second, because they don't want to blame the laggards for the lack of energy. They don't want to label people as laggards neither of those is helpful, because in the laggards is still a deep longing for something different. They just may have a higher level of need or fear. So the work is not to blame them the work is how do you work as a whole to move you forward, which comes to this slide. We have not yet discovered any place that defies this all transformation and the organization and the church in the institution begins with the transformation of the leaders. I'm not going to focus on the resistors. Initially, I'm going to focus on getting leaders who are prepared to walk into the wilderness and hold that uncomfortable space with the resources of God, the resources sources of each other, and the resources of good knowledge, soul, heart and head. They have to be there before everybody else can be there. And the caution is, which I've encountered and actually done myself. It's another one of my favorite quotes. When you have a transformational leaders you have to caution them, don't get so far ahead of the troops, you start looking like the enemy. The fine line between getting so excited about the compelling story and so excited about the why you get so far everybody else that they can't come with you and they start shooting at you. You become a lightning rod for them. You need to both be transformed and hold that space this is not an easy place and you're not going to learn it here in this webinar. I will refer you back to the book by Susan Beaumont and there's some others we can lead you to, and again to say, if you want to engage this process, have a conversation with your conference staff and help them lead you into it. Because in truth transformation will not happen, unless the leaders are themselves first transformed. That includes the pastor, the staff and key leadership in the church that everybody can look to and trust and respect. I'm going to go back to the question you asked earlier about the two different wise change evokes resistance. That's just normative. And resistance is exhibited in typically three different categories, either active oppositional rebellion, or passive aggressive sabotage or withdrawal. Not for all three of those not as things to avoid, but as indicators that we've engaged something because resistance is almost always I was going to say always resistance is almost always the fear and the grief of losing something. So back to the question about competing wise. I'm going to jump into this at that point but I'll jump into it here. When you have competing wise, only need to get below the deeper needs you have to begin to talk about the fears and the grief. I have this why, because it takes me someplace that satisfies me. And if I haven't dealt with and helped the congregation and membership deal with their place of grief, and fear and loss. I'm going to stay in the head where we'll fight. And I won't get into the heart they takes me down into the soul. And it's not as simple as naming this but at some point you have to name that if we're going through change there's going to be resistance that resistance is not curmudgeons and laggards, it's people with legitimate fear and legitimate grief that if we don't deal with that name it on it, pray for it and hold it, we're not likely to get through change would like it to get into conflict. And here's the other piece that's interesting in the brain neurology. We, you all know we have different layers of our brain from a primitive layer to to the more cognitive and develop brain layers, but we are driven by the primitive layers. The limbic brain the reptilian brain has different kind of names behind it. That brain had to learn that you're either the diner or the dinner you're either the, you're either the predator or the prey. And you learn very quickly that if danger comes and you don't avoid that danger, you're going to be dead. And if you avoid the danger you've learned to avoid it in the future, you're driven by fear fear in the human psyche and the human energy as a motivator behavior is five times more powerful than any other emotion in our body which is why in this current election cycle and every election cycle, people are preaching fear. They want to change they want to they want to motivate you to vote and behave a certain way and they use fear as the tactic, because they know fear is the most powerful motivator of human beings. If you don't name and deal with the fear and bring that into the conversation which is a spiritual task. I'd like you to get through transformation which brings me to this point conflict is inevitable, but combat is optional. So when I work with a congregation in transformational visioning one of the things I encourage them to read as a book called crucial conversations. It's written by a number of people based on 25 years of research in the business world, looking at the ways people could engage in conversation. They have conflict that allows conflict to be transformative and resilient, as opposed to destructive combat is optional conflict is inevitable. If you want to go through deep change, you want to bring in or work with some of the elements of how do we do conflict well in the congregation, because actually conflict is one of the energies that can evoke transformation or destroy transformation. You want to be able to have transform leaders who know how to recognize conflict, rebellion sabotage withdrawal and go beneath it into the place of fear grief and loss, so they were not driven by behaviors that come out of fear. So this wraps all the different concepts together into one lovely image, which I'm sure as time evolves will itself change. Here's the old model. It's been 30 or 40 years. And when I've done work in church growth. The primary focus of church growth has been the attraction model how do we get more people in pleasures play we have some great things. And they're still great ideas for getting people to come into the church, but they fail because they don't do the transformational work. So we begin to see decline and we try to figure out what do we have to do to get more people in the pews and pledges to play good advertising good networking in the community get out and form relationships. Good advertising good do the good programs don't get people to come your way. All of that typically does not succeed because it's driven from the wrong questions. And the further down you are in decline. The heart of the work is to change things around if you're on the basis of the transformational model. This model is no easier than that. It's a recognition that at some point, we're not going to go back, we're going to take a break, make a break from what we're at we're going to leave Egypt. We're going to engage in the process that creates both conflict and opportunity in order to take us deeply into our hearts and our souls, where God can help us see God's future. It is a spiritual transformational process and somewhere in here I'm looking for a slide I didn't see it. It will come here. So visioning is a spiritual transformational practice it's not a strategic plan it's not about problem solving. You can't do surface tinkering or you can't figure out the right methodology the right program. You have to begin by bringing you and the congregation do a place of God to this place. How do you get to the place where we are genuinely and authentically opening ourselves to holy indifference to the outcome. I don't care where the church goes I do care. That's not I'm not eliminating that care, but I'm what I want to get to is a future church that delights God, not a future church that delights me. Getting the congregation to that place is the work of fear use worker transformation so work of going from head to heart to soul. And it's also true in every faith tradition in the world. In our primary prayer we have the phrase thy will be done. And that is the essence of holy indifference to outcome, the Buddhist tradition will talk about surrender or other traditions talk about sacrifice. AA says let go and let God. It's it's in all those different concepts and it is one of the most difficult concepts for us as humans to get to. It is also the heart of our faith, holy indifference to outcome. If you have received yet another massive dose of information, let me pause and let's sort of integrate some of that thinking collectively together. What are you hearing what are you thinking what are you wrestling with. And thank you, Sue for capturing the Sue Beaumont book. It's there in the chat room if you haven't seen it yet. What's from this that you want to bring forward, or are you all zoom exhausted, or are you all like sort of I'm proud I can you looks like you're processing more than you're exhausted. Now go ahead. And maybe this gets back to the earlier question. I want to say this is so wonderful to hear because I've got new ears I have new eyes. I feel like in some ways, our church is either in an interim time or all of a sudden we're a new church start. And my takeaway is the importance of sharing this information again with our people because we're not the same people we were last year we're the same people we are, you know, five years ago. I have. We also in this COVID period and here's something that's amazing to me. We've had 11 new people join our church during this COVID period. And so the hunger for meaning making is still there. And I think where I have this information is convicting me that I need to share this again. This is not a one and done. This is information of not just information but this is good stuff that needs to be reminded to people it's the same way that we go through the lectionary you know every three year cycles we tell those stories over and over again, because we're different people so that's my takeaway and I'm very excited as I'm always excited when I'm hearing about this but very excited to share that with my folks again. You know, I'll reinforce, you know, new years new eyes that's constantly who we are we are constantly learning and growing. You use a language of the interim. Again, I grew up in the world where the interim was. This is another one of those key metaphors they were the cheese between two slices of bread. And we endured the interim in order to get back to the bread. The real and I've also heard people say I'm a pastor in an unintentional interim. I would like to change that concept to say, again, if you look at that liminal space in the middle of the theory you, we are all intrams, and even the interim language is not the appropriate language. This era is particularly challenging both pandemic era and this cycle and the global change in religion. If we think that we can be a settled pastor or a settled church. We need to understand what the gospel has taught us and feeling to understand what God has taught us God is more prevalent in the wilderness than either Egypt or the promised land. And it was really only about one generation into the promised land became before it became its own new Egypt stuck in its ways and had to be pulled out again. We're calling us into that place than wilderness, because it's the only place will be deeply learn how to trust God, but we as human beings wants to ability and so those are always going to be intention. So taking the material learning it over and over and over again is is a lifelong journey for all of us. And I think right now, the Holy Spirit is profoundly calling our church to wake up in a new way to being a wilderness and not a promised land people. And it's not we've been taught it's not we've learned it's not we've thought about. Yet it is what God calls us to. Yes, so I see the concept of fertilizer that often needs to be reapplied to our growing and changing churches over and over and over again. I'm going to move on, because I like the fun of this next piece. So this is a concept. I was going to say it's mine but it's not by mine, none of this material is really mine. All this material is a compilation of lots and lots of things pulled together. But I like to use this particular construct that right now our churches are have three paths that lie ahead for them. These are three alternative choices, even though the numbers go from two to 2.6 to 3.0 this is not a linear progression. It's three distinct choices or three distinct categories of church of choices of churches. You can either remain as you are, which is church 2.0. And if those current statistics are accurate that the primary membership, particularly in the mainline Protestant and some of the main the mainline traditions all across. If you ask us out loud, what's the average age in a mainline Protestant church? Do you know 60. I've been saying 65 for five years, which tells me the math has changed is probably close to 70. I remember from that chart or the unaffiliated folks that most of the above the line are were affiliated with the church, most of church point to 2.0 is an older generation they're not drawing in younger generations for all the reasons we talked about. They are still doing faithful and good work is not as though there's something wrong with them it's not that 2.0 is not faithful. It's just that 2.0 has about 20 to 25 years left before there's either not enough people or not enough energy to sustain it or not enough money to sustain it either 2.6 is a church that has gone through that process of transformational and has discovered a new way of being church within the resources that they currently have. And then church 3.0, which is what's described in the book Weird Church and a few others out there they're doing some work on this is the church where the Holy Spirit is moving in the world and gathering people together. And what I would call church they would never call it church they just saying we're having a we're having a fellowship event or in its spiritual or it's meaningful, they use a lot of different terms that are not our classical language but are the same thing as our classical concepts. These are new ways in which the Holy Spirit is bringing together communities of people can use a faith all over the world around us. So our workers to make shoes difference and here are the markers of those three different categories. So church 2.0 and this is a document you'll find on the website. The primary focus in church 2.0 is satisfying its membership and maintaining the organization the institution the building all those things we talked about in church 2.0 they still view the pastor as a performer. If they failed to perform the right way and satisfy the congregation or annoy the congregation we had to replace them. The pastor spends 100% of their time serving the congregation that's the expectation. Don't be strict on the numbers here I'm just trying to get the concept across the bulk of the time for the pastor is expected to be spent the congregation. 2.0 has more memories than imagination they want to go back to the hey day of the church which is when the baby boomers brought their kids to church back in the 60s. Budget cuts when budget cuts come which they inevitably will come typically hit mission and program first. Before they tackle staff and building, but typically you'll start seeing a reduction of programs we reduction of mission outreach. Vision if there is one is a strategic plan focused on what do we have to do to get more people in the pews and pledges in the plate. And the maintenance preservation protection of the institution is prominent in their conversations and in their struggles in their wrestling. The primary focus is on fulfilling God's vision they know their why and they have a compelling future story. Faith formation is for all ages and it's intentional. And again don't quote me on numbers but I'm trying to say is that the majority of people in the congregation are actively and intentionally engaged in some form of spiritual practice. Opening their hearts to God in such a way that they can get to that place of holy indifference to outcome. The pastor spends half their time at the church and half the time out in the community, getting to know where the Holy Spirit might be calling the church into the community. And the pastor is leading the way they're not doing that work for the church, they're doing that work with the church. So 50% of the leadership's time is likely to be spent in a community, forming networks relationships partnerships listening and learning from the from the community. The building the budget and the bylaws are still important functions but they are designed to be aligned to accomplish the vision. We are maintaining the building in order that the building can be used in this way to accomplish our vision, our vision. We are looking for our budget and maybe we're making some physical sacrifices in order for us to accomplish our vision congregation understands that it is the performer carrying out God's will and success is not measured by numbers. It's not measured by people in the pews and pledges and the plate success is measured by the impact the church has on its memberships whose lives are being transformed and on the community where they're making a meaningful difference in the world. They're looking at their success and they're measuring their success as church leaders as church members and as staff based upon impact. And they are intentionally forming community partnerships. We talk about covenant partnerships and networks that help them live into and accomplish their vision. Then you have church 3.0. Again, the primary focus is on encountering God in new ways in the world. In doing so, all the people are there because encountering God faith formation they wouldn't use a language of faith formation, but they will lose a language of spiritual impact spiritual growth spiritual spiritual learning. The legislature spends very little time with the congregation and most of the time out in the community, embodying living and learning around their mission and their why the budget's growing, because more people are coming in with their energy and resources to help the congregation meet its why the congregation intentionally remains fluid and adaptable. We haven't done it that way is rarely heard in this congregation. And if it is it's also heard with a caveat, but maybe there's a new way to do this. We've always done it this way but maybe we is a new way maybe God is leading us somewhere else. Again success is measured by impact not numbers. And again church point 3.0 is birthed out of its why coming with that energy, and often church 3.0 is not building centered it could be, but it's not focused on a building and location. It means to an end but it's not their focal point. Here's the danger. Listen for this concept. If we, or the right pastor can just try harder, we can figure out how to get more people to use and pledges in the plate. But there must be a successful model out there somewhere that tells me. I'm in 2.0 thinking in the concept it's just made us thinking. So again, the fifth concept there are three choices, each is faithful in its own way and each will have a predictable end point to it. But each can be faithful. I want to say this again, for some churches. It is so difficult to make change that the most faithful thing may be not to annoy the congregation, but to make sure that you are faithfully living within the way in which you're living now. It may be that church bazaars still aren't and they could be they could be very very important it could be that the pageant the way we've always done it is important to us because it feeds our soul. They're not likely to get you into a long term future, but I, but that's okay. None of the churches that Paul planted exists today, and the presumption that we have to exist forever is not faithful to God that comes out of human need and human ego. God is going to make sure the body of Christ lives on forever. That's that's the Holy Spirit's power in our world. That doesn't mean that every church has to live on forever. And there may be many points in which the most faithful thing for a church to do is to let go of its life in order for God to birth and resurrect something new. That's part of who we are in our story with Jesus, a death and resurrection people. It's okay to be faithful in what you're familiar with and let it go at his end. And then I will say one question to ask is, is it more faithful to burn through your endowments until you're gone, or go now and release the endowments to do some faithful work to God into the future. That may be one of the questions that we're struggling with in 2.0. God is facing faithful choices to serve God faithfully as best we know God in our way forward. And God is generous, and God is abundant, and God is loving and God is compassionate and God is understanding. If we give our hearts to God, God will help to guide us. I'm starting to preach now I'm going to stop. And before I go to this, I think I want to show, I do want to show this. If you're to Google the backwards bicycle and there it is right on the thank you so you're awesome. If you want to find that video clip you can you can download or grab that right now and pull aside it's a great one to look at. So it really kind of summarizes all the concepts are looking at here that if you're trying to engage in transformational work as a church. And if you really if you're looking to be faithful before God. You develop that spiritual plasticity that openness to the spirit that can take us out of Egypt, not into the promised land but deeply into the wilderness, where spiritual plasticity is learned and enables us to become a more faithful people before God is a lovely theological concept, the process for doing that is outlined in all the language around finding your why, making that shift from maintenance back into the mission. It's a process like theory you that takes you into that that change into the future, and then looking out beyond yourselves into a changing world around you that can both guide how you go into the future and help you understand to go more deeply into yourselves that work is a transformational work that I'm going to invite you into. And I'm going to think I'm going to show you one more slide and then we'll bring this to closing conversation. God is alive in 2050 waiting for us in our future a future of beautiful alliances this comes from the book weird church. And here's, here's one of my other little sort of adjustments to the world. I have that book on my Kindle I have no idea what page this is on. I can tell you it's on Kindle location 397 on my iPad it may or may not be the same location on yours. The best I could do for a reference point on this. God is already alive in 2050 waiting for us in our future of Kindles and not necessarily always on paper, a future beautiful alliances beyond our foggiest imagination. Does your church have the spiritual plasticity to journey to get there outside of your comfort zones and familiarity. And here's my story. I don't know if the story happened exactly this way. I'm not even sure the story is true, but I believe there is truth in the story. So the story is told of a zoo somewhere that had a famous gorilla. And it was the one of the key attractions for this particular zoo, and people would come from all over the area and even the world to come and see this particular gorilla. One day, the zookeeper arrived early in the morning only to discover that the gorilla had died overnight at old age and just simply passed away, but they had this huge contingent of dignitaries coming that day, and they couldn't open the zoo without the gorilla. So very quickly, they found one of their employees and asked the employee to throw on a gorilla suit and hop into the gorilla cage and start acting like the gorilla, which that person did they're paying him so he's happy to do it. He jumped in, he's beginning to hop around he's doing all what he thinks makes him look like a gorilla he's hopping around in this inside the cage, until he comes across one of the walls on the edge of the cage and so it's a wall about about two three feet high. He hits the wall walking backwards not paying attention and he falls over into the neighboring cage the neighboring enclosure, which is the lion enclosure. And he sees the lion from a distance, come bounding towards him, and he panics. He stands up and he starts shouting somebody save me somebody save me the lion's going to eat me somebody and the lion comes bounding over and people are looking at their gasping in fear they realize what's going on. The lion jumps up on top of him pins him down and says shut up, or you'll get us both fired. The point is, you can't put on a gorilla suit and pretend to be something you're not. If you're going to move into God's future, you have to be the church in the person that God has designed you to be that is found in your why it is found in that wilderness journey. It is found in knowing that that energy is what will lead you into God's missional future a story that you can begin to wrap yourselves around. You cannot focus on your what you cannot put on a gorilla suit. The rest of this presentation which I'm not going to get to but it will be it's on the website is the description of stories of churches and groups of people have come together in new and in novel ways. You can't look at that and say oh let's try this, you have to begin the journey between you and God at the soul level beneath the heart and beneath the head, where you find out who God has designed and created and called you into being, not the gorilla suit on the outside. I'm going to end the presentation there and invite us into a time of conversation at the time that we have remaining.