Pacing Church…Effectively

Mark Tidsworth, Team Leader

When? 

“When can we move to integrating the exceptional innovation, growth, and adaptation of our churches? We don’t want to miss this moment, perhaps even this Kairos time, of spiritual and paradigmatic growth. If we don’t hurry, our churches will snap back to what we were before, ignoring the church growth resulting from life disruption.”

Eager church leaders are ready to get on with it. We are ready to harvest the fruit growing from the great churning of the soil by this Coronavirus. Add the fear of church snap back and our eagerness to capture the gains skyrockets.

When? Not quite yet.

When we rush to reflection and integration, we inadvertently undermine ourselves, creating predictable resistance.

So, on the one hand, we don’t know the exact timeline of what’s coming. On the other hand, we do know what to expect as churches move toward re-opening. The following four charts give us language and diagrams for understanding where churches currently are and what the next few months will hold. There’s been enough research on disaster recovery over the last 30 years to predict with strong accuracy how groups will respond afterwards.

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Episcopal Relief And Development – Emotional Timeline Of A Disaster

(Thank You Rev. Andrew Waldo, Bishop, Episcopal Diocese Of Upper South Carolina)

 So what do we need from church leadership now?

Now is the time to identify your route for the journey to come. Key moves to include are

·      Reconnecting Church

·      Debriefing Our Journey

·      Choosing Growth

·      Sorting Our Experience

·      Integrating Our Gains

·      Launching ReShaped Church

You don’t need to know the details of each move, yet a strategy for helping your church run this race well is effective church-coaching from your church leadership.

These six moves are also the Six Practices For ReShaping Church, the heart of our ReShape book and process coming soon (July 2020). We are estimating that right around mid-August to early Fall is the ideal time to launch your church’s ReShaping process. We are considering using six e-newsletter articles to describe each practice over the next six weeks. Though we are describing these in the ReShape introductory webinars (register here: https://www.pinnlead.com/covid19-emerging-church-practice ) six descriptive articles would take us close to the ReShape publication date. Please let us know if this may be helpful to you. [Email us here >> (markt@pinnlead.com)]

For now, may we continue receiving the sustaining power of God through the Holy Spirit, that energy which brings us to each day for service in God’s vineyard. Blessings to all as we live into this current expression of God’s Church.

 
Helen Renew