What is in Kelvin's Head?

Nine things I learned on sabbatical about church growth

02/04/2014
I was prompted by someone yesterday on facebook to outline some of the things that I learned about churches and particular something about church growth that I learned whilst on sabbatical in North America. I came up with a quick list and thought that I would share it here too in a slightly expanded form.

The actual question that I was asked was regarding why people are giving up Mission Action Planning and looking for something else. It is indeed the case that I heard of people giving up doing Mission Action Planning. It is also the case though that lots of people in the States and Canada are still using that as a tool. The people who were giving up on it would say that they were giving up on it because it doesn’t work. The other reasons they might give would be these:
- It can make people feel guilty
- The risk is that it involves asking those who quite demonstrably don’t know what to do, what should be done.
- It can often lull people into thinking that if they just do what they’ve done with a bit more effort then all shall be well when perhaps it won’t.
In trying to think about patterns of church life amongst those who seemed to be doing well at helping congregations to grow, I would identify the following themes, which I’ve been thinking about since I came back:
1. The need to stop talking about mission – no-one joins a church that is so needy as to advertise that they are interested in “doing mission”. (Advertise in this context means any website, poster, church sign or magazine)
2. The need for strong high quality lay education – I was impressed by EFM http://www.sewanee.edu/EFM/
3. The need to train people in good quality congregational development – I was impressed by this: http://www.cdcollege.org/
4. The urgent need to think about quality in every aspect of church life. Especially worship. But not just worship.
5. Quality costs money and that means deliberate stewardship work to raise the money needed. Note that the giving at St Mary’s is currently 14% higher year on year than it was and that these are the austerity years. This is partly down to a lot of very hard work done by a small number of people and partly because of ways of talking about money that I learned on sabbatical. The moral of the tale is that sending clergy away on fabulous trips can pay off financially.
6. The need for leaders (mostly, but not exclusively bishops) taking a lead on hard issues like guns, drugs, gangs, marriage. This may mean talking to gangsters, taking a surprising opinion about drugs in public and joining the Pride parade.
7. The need for conscious work on teaching people a religious identity. Teaching people how to be an Anglican – what you do as an Anglican – how to keep Holy Week and Easter as an Anglican – how to say Compline etc
8. The need not to waste institutional and personal time trying to be ecumenical in a lowest common denominator way
9. The need to start things up as often as you close things down and do both deliberately and intentionally
church growth

8 responses to “More sermons”

ryan

25/07/2008

Listened to one of the sermons (the wife for Isaac one) and it struck me that the one thing all proper episcopal preachers that I’ve heard have in common is an attractive voice. Is this taught at theological college, or are prospective ordinands vetted, Simon Cowell on X Factor style?

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kelvin

25/07/2008

You are too kind Ryan. And the idea that people at theological college should be taught anything to do with preaching is delightfully charming.

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morag

25/07/2008

just read the kingfisher sermon,you really do have a beautiful way with words and imagery.I believe God is with us every day.I was walking with my dog in Kelvingrove park the other night and in the pond standing quite still and majestic was a large heron.He looked magnificent but nobody else seemed to notice they just walked on by.God is definitely in my local park,Victoria.There is a sort of semi wild section of large yellow Peace roses there and their scent is truly heaven “scent”I love to sit theredrinking it in and have quiet thoughts with God.This web page you have is truly unique and it is wonderful to come across someone in the church who so obviously has a living ,loving relationship with God

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David |daveed|

26/07/2008

And the idea that people at theological college should be taught anything to do with preaching is delightfully charming.

May I beg to differ, at least for this side of the pond.

Both of the seminaries which I attended in the USA, had a department with professors dedicated to teaching homiletics & worship. At Perkins School of Theology, SMU, we took two required semesters, which included writing weekly sermons to be delivered in class for critique by both professors and classmates. Each semester we also had three sermons which were videotaped at staggered points in the class for us to be able to witness and have record of our own improvements.

I was even asked to preach one of my three in my native Spanish and was critiqued by the hispanic community, staff & students at Perkins.

Preaching and Worship are pretty standard fare at seminaries in the USA & Canada.

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kelvin

26/07/2008

My apologies, David. I’d forgotten that we had gone global.

I would say that I learned a lot about liturgy and worship during my training, much of it from other students. I don’t think there was much more than 15 minutes devoted to homiletics in all my training.

I think that the theory was that this would be done whilst on placements in congregations. Although one can learn a lot in such placements, I think that preaching is something that everyone can always learn to do a bit better and that the church should not be shy of trying to teach.

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ryan

26/07/2008

I’m always curious as to whether preachers write out a full script of a sermon, actor giving a reading style, or if there is an element of improvisation. A 60 minute sermon,at average speaking speed, works out at 6,000 words which is surely a lot to write out in full each week.And what happens if there are pastoral crises that prevent completing the writing of a sermon? Do you guys have a folder of back-up material for such occasions? Are you allowed to plagiarise or is that a big a vice as it is in academia?

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kelvin

26/07/2008

Thanks Ryan. Those are good questions.

First of all, no-one in their right mind preaches for 60 minutes in the UK, do they? I think you will find on listening to mine that you get about 12 minutes. I think that if you are a regular preacher and you can’t say what you want to say in St Mary’s in 15 minutes you’ve probably started to preach next week’s sermon a week early. My recent one about dating strategies was just over 10, and there was a lot packed in!

The readings that we use come round in a three year cycle so quite often one may have as a starting point what was said three years ago or six years ago. Using a common lectionary also means that a lot of people are preaching on the same thing at the same time and there are a lot of websites with emergency resources and other people’s ideas.

I’d say that most preachers use other people’s ideas. Often it is nice to acknowledge them. Since putting all mine online, I’d say that I use other people’s material much less. I do sometimes use things that I’ve used before and in other contexts. If it was worth saying once, it might be worth saying again. Again, however, putting it online makes that kind of thing more risky now. They might have heard the jokes before.

In a good week, I will have been thinking about the lectionary readings all through the week even through the pastoral events that come along. They feed into it somehow.

Lots of my influences come from people I encountered when I was reading Divinity at St Andrew’s University. At the time I learned a lot from a prominent feminist theologian and have since learnt the importance of the Liberation Theologians that people were trying to get me to appreciate. At the time, it bored me silly. Now it is the stuff of life.

They key is to develop a range of ways of reading the Bible. A repertoire of styles.

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David |daveed|

27/07/2008

Ryan, there are many styles, and we all have to find which of them is a best fit for us personally. I know a few who preach from the barest of notes on a 3 x 5 card. Others who read verbatim from a type written manuscript. I think the majority of us type a manuscript and refer to it, however, certainly not slavishly, leaving room to expand or alter “as the Spirit moves.”

The axiom I was taught by both John Holbert and Marjorie Procter-Smith was that if you preach more than 15 minutes, you do not know what you are talking about.

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