Crossing Thresholds: Breaking Through Invisible Barriers To Missional Movement

by Rev. Mark E. Tidsworth, Founder and Team Leader

It’s fascinating how processes for missional movement rise and take shape. Several years ago we received requests from multiple churches for assistance with managing their size transition. These churches were (are) numerically growing, experiencing the growing pains inherent in organizational development due to increasing numbers of participants. We immediately turned to our cadre of size transitions wisdom, finding this helpful… and not helpful.

Here's what we mean. Those who know size transitions theory and practice recognize the excellent insights and leadership principles this body of knowledge has provided for churches over the last forty years. At the same time, we all recognize that the size categories don’t communicate the same meaning as they once did, given the radical changes in worship attendance patterns. Forty years ago, an average Sunday attendance of 100 represented about 110-120 active participants. Now, an ASA of 100 represents about 150-175 participants, since there can be very different congregations in attendance from week to week. By the way, in our consulting, the typical answer we receive from active church-goers about their worship frequency is 1-2 Sundays per month. All this means the size categories, upon which size transition and theory are built, no longer hold in the same ways.

Even so, the churches aforementioned, though not fitting the classic size categories according to ASA, were experiencing growing pains. Through engaging with them, we began to call these struggles with particular areas of church life “pinch points.” Let me explain….

Pinch Points

When engaging this area of church life, we feel pinched, constrained by barriers that may be difficult to identify, yet are real. Movement slows or comes to a halt. There may not be capacity to do more than what we are doing. We may have run out of options or possibilities for movement in this area. There may be blockages in the way, preventing forward movement. However they are formed, pinch points are areas of our church life where forward movement is blocked, slowed, stopped, or constrained.

I would wager that every church leader reading this article could identify two or three pinch points in their church. Every church has them. But what we are describing is what happens when significant change, positive or negative, comes to churches. Invisible barriers are formed…

Invisible Barriers

When a single pinch point arises in a church, moving through it can be rather straightforward. Yet, as churches move forward missionally, functioning as the systems they are, multiple pinch points are often activated simultaneously. The power of multiple pinch points combines together, forming barriers that slow movement and drain energy. A single pinch point may create a single barrier to movement, yet when multiple pinch points are exerting their influence, they take on a life of their own, resulting in a barrier which everyone senses and feels, yet may be difficult to identify. This is how invisible barriers are formed.

Those who know will recognize this kind of thinking in traditional size transitions practice. Those who know will also recognize that where we are going in the crossing thresholds process is different. Rather than prescribe the nine key moves in transitions from a pastoral to program size church, we are going organic and contextual. We are inviting church leadership and the congregation themselves to identify their pinch points, which combine to form invisible barriers (how we get there in another article to come).

Our discovery with this approach is that some pinch points are similar to what size transitions practice includes, while others are very different, apparently less connected to the ASA metric.

This approach positions churches for designing their crossing thresholds ministry plan. Due to the length of this article, I will describe other parts of this process next time. Currently we are working with four fairly vitalized churches toward crossing thresholds, breaking through invisible barriers to missional movement. But don’t hear me saying that churches must be numerically growing or vitalized to experience pinch points and invisible barriers. “Stuckness” happens in churches because of many dynamics, not only numerical growth.

Soon, we will be ready to accept additional churches into this process who are ready to cross their thresholds. I look forward to sharing more with our e-news readers soon.