| Proposed plan aims at transforming churches
New office will make helping established congregations a priority
in the Florida Conference.
By Michael Wacht
LAKELAND — Delegates to the 2002 Florida
Annual Conference Event will be asked to consider a plan for a new
conference office that will help stagnant or declining churches
transform themselves.
The plan is to combine two existing conference
ministries into one office. The Office of Congregational
Transformation will replace Operation Evangelization and take over the
responsibilities for church redevelopment, which are currently part of
the Office of New Church Development and Church Redevelopment.
Operation Evangelization is the three-year-old
ministry begun by the late Bishop Cornelius L. Henderson and funded
primarily by the Foundation for Evangelism in Lake Junaluska, N.C.,
and the Florida United Methodist Foundation. The Rev. Roger Swanson
was hired to lead that office and is retiring this year. Swanson
spearheaded efforts to create the proposal for the new office and
worked closely with members of the bishop’s cabinet and the
Committee on New Church Development and Church Redevelopment.
Swanson said the proposed office is part of
Bishop Timothy W. Whitaker’s vision for the conference. “The
bishop was clear when he gave us the charge…he said in the Florida
Conference we will have redevelopment with an evangelical heartbeat,”
Swanson said. “The first word we used was redevelopment…but any
‘re-’ word indicates what we want to do is return to an original
state. ‘Redevelopment’ means the first development is what we want
to go back to. We want to develop new congregations in Jesus Christ.”
The new office will help churches reconnect with
the purpose of Christ, develop congregational leadership that reflects
the image of Christ and reform the systems within the body of Christ,
Swanson said. “There will be a lot of experimentation and learning.
There is no encyclopedia you can go to to learn how to do it. People
are learning by doing.”
Those goals will be accomplished by laity and
clergy in both churches that need transformation and those that have
successfully transformed. “We’ve got some wonderful models of
pastoral leaders who understood transformation and went and did it,”
Swanson said. “[The Rev.] Linda Mobley is doing this on a daily
basis in the Orlando District.”
Mobley is director of the Orlando District’s
Outreach and Revitalization (OAR), a four-year-old ministry that is
working with 12 churches and one mission. OAR’s goal is to help
churches become vital congregations and reconnect to their
communities.
Laity and clergy from throughout the conference
will be trained as “facilitators of change” and work as regional
coaches and consultants, Swanson said.
As many as two-thirds of Florida Conference
churches established before 1960 are either on a plateau or declining
in membership and will qualify to participate in the transformation
ministry. Swanson said a significant number of them will participate.
Some will not because they are not ready for change.
Swanson said there are four factors that signify
a church is ready for a transformational change. They were identified
by George Bullard, director of the Hollifield Leadership Center and
Lake Hickory Learning Communities, and include a sense of urgency or
crisis about the current situation, a spiritual readiness for change,
20 to 25 percent of the active adults in the church prepared to take
leadership roles, and 7 percent or a minimum of seven people who are
strategically ready to navigate the change.
“If there’s going to be a real
transformational change, it’s got to be owned by the congregation,”
Swanson said.
The Rev. Mont Duncan, director of the conference’s
office of New Church Development and Church Redevelopment, said this
proposal would move the Florida Conference into the forefront in
developing new and transformed congregations. “We’ll be the only
conference that has a full-time, cabinet-level person doing new church
development and congregational transformation,” Duncan said. “Both
are needed and both need someone’s full-time attention.”
Splitting the responsibilities of New Church
Development and Church Redevelopment will strengthen both efforts,
according to Duncan. “This will allow me to devote 100 percent of my
time to new church development,” he said. “We have plans to plant
11 new churches next year. That’s the largest number of new churches
in many years. When you’ve got 60 percent of existing churches that
need attention, it’s very difficult. Obviously one person can’t
work with 300 churches.”
Duncan said he sees his office working
hand-in-hand with the Office of Congregational Transformation. “At
some point, new churches won’t be new churches anymore,” he said,
adding New Church Development commits to working with churches for the
first 10 years. “We want to have our sensors out so we can detect
any major shift in churches before they decline, so we can help them
transform at the top of the downward curve.”
Swanson said the new office would also work with
other organizations to meet its goal. While no formal agreements or
relationships are in place, he also hopes the conference will learn
from the Strengthening the Black Church for the 21st Century
initiative and National Plan for Hispanic Ministry.
If the annual conference approves the proposal a
director will be hired by Sept. 1. That person will work with a
committee composed of one representative from each district and six
at-large members. Committee members will be “clergy and laity…who
have the gifts that can guide” the transformation process, Swanson
said.
People can offer their thoughts and ideas about
the proposed Office of Congregational Transformation by e-mailing
leadership at CongTrans@flumc.org.
More information may be obtained by contacting Swanson or Duncan at
1-800-282-8011, extensions 109 and 147 respectively.
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