United Methodist Church
Morgan Hill, California

A Church's DNA

Pecot's Putterings A few years back we split apart our Charge Conference into two sessions – one took care of business but the second one was with the District Superintendent and there we finished up our long range planning process, talked about who we were, where we were going, and how we were going to get there.  It was the best Charge Conference I have ever been to.  As we get ready for Charge Conference, I am struck, once again, at the need for change in our structure.  Our question, once again, is what system supports us working on that which is most important.  Who are we?  What are we doing?   An exploration for this hit a wonderful peak during the Taste of Morgan Hill.  There were enough of us around wanting to advertise our church that we began kicking around the new statements about our core values.  Wording, rewording, questioning, changing and changing back.  Probably fifteen to twenty people were part of the reformulation process.  At first the discussion centered around key words and phrases – why do we have four values about love?  What does celebrate mean, really?  But, the bulk of the discussions dealt with “I will, I commit, I have committed, I commit together with, I value, we value”.   At points in the discussion this seemed like nit-picking.  But the more we just did it, the more I saw that what we were talking about is how to make the values a force in our lives together.  Not just what are our values, but how can we help make them come alive in us. Is our value something we affirmed in the past or is it something we are exploring all the time?  Is it something individual, or is it a corporate journey?  We decided that I will is too weak.  Commit carries the weight of a life path.  But not “have committed”.  That is too much in the past.  We make individual commitments because we have agreed together – from that foundation our life takes off.  These reworded statements have a life force that the value statement affirmed in June just didn’t give us.   I have been doing a lot of thinking about that.  How much of what we do just doesn’t go far enough.  How much do we call each other to a new life in God, and then beg out at the last moment giving each other easy ways to slip back into our old patterns.  The question for us each year is how does what we do at church gives us tools to live a life of faith.  What we decide becomes a path to live.  Insights drawn from consensus spurs us to grow closer to God and each other.  And perhaps, our goals help us to better understand God’s call in us.    After getting somewhat finished with these newly worded core values, Dennis thought he wanted to have some gatherings to figure out how to do them.  He was wondering “What do these things mean?”  Even what we value most is, at times, a mystery.  I am excited by this, will wait expectantly while his groups gather, and feel like we have made our church come alive.

Ted

A Church’s DNA

The main speaker at the Spiritual Leaders conference in Asilomar this year was Tom Bandy of Easum/Bandy Associates, a church growth consulting firm.  This group, while not directly at work in our church, has been one of the organizations that has informed our goal setting a number of years back.  For this consulting group church growth is not measured in numbers of members but in ministry and mission.  Is the church alive with the power of Christ and living that out in the world?  They suggest that we evaluate a year (like in our Charge Conference) with three questions: Is everyone in ministry?  Are all the “publics” (everyone around the church in all its diversity)  related to the church? And Is the world any different because of us this year?  Wow!

This group’s starting point is a description of a church organization not as a system or structure but as an organism.  The church’s original organic description of itself was not a “business” but a “body”.  Bandy uses the image of a redwood tree which grows other redwood trees from branches that break loose and take root. 

In their image a chaotic form of growth develops which allows people to quickly follow the call of God and get to work serving God in the community.  They call this a permission giving organization – because the group trusts that the directions of its members will be following a call of God.  But then, anything could happen!!

What keeps it all together is the DNA of the tree.  Redwoods don’t grow Oaks, or fish.  They grow redwoods because of the DNA inside every cell of the plant.  The DNA is not who you hope to be but who you are. 

There are five elements to a church’s DNA.  

• Core Values:  a consensus of values most important to the life of the church. 

• Bedrock Beliefs:  the faith we fall back on, what we would find helpful in crisis.

• Motivating Vision:  an articulation of the direction and style of the congregation

• Mission Statement:  A brief, memorable statement of the goal of the congregation.  

• Administrative Limits: A couple of very specific no-nos  What we never do!

The key to the DNA is that it should be immediately useful in following the call of God.  The genetic code is the responsibility of all the members of the congregation all the time.  One doesn’t become an Oak when one leaves home

Core Values

We have done a lot of work on the core values.  The core values are not voted on, but descriptions of what a congregation holds most dear.   Not just what we want to be most dear, but what we hold most dear.  These are the behavior patterns we expect from each other in every part of our lives.  They become a sort of map for how to live each moment.  Here are our top nine or ten. 

Together with our Church Community,

We value new life, so,
I commit to live a spiritual life.

We value the ongoing dialogue with Spirit, so,
I commit to be challenged to grow.

We value joy, so,
I commit to celebrate.

We value compassion in many forms, so,
I commit to love in four ways:

--  to comfort folks who are in trouble.
--  to open my heart when people are in pain.
--  to develop friendships with church folks. 
--  to serve the world God calls me to. 

We value diversity, so,
I commit to seek inclusiveness.

We value the power unleashed in community, so,
I commit to work together with others in teams

One of the questions that people have brought to the discussion of core values and how to talk about them was on all the ways to love.  Why not just say, that we commit to loving.  But that simplicity robbed us of some of the focus.  In fact, probably all the values had to do with how to love in the world, why not just say that and be done with it?  (Maybe that the mission statement.)  We don’t just do that because the values spell out territories that we think are particularly important for our church to enter.  There are millions of ways to love, but our church is going to try to comfort folks when they are in trouble.  We are going to stretch our hearts by developing our empathy – but this is internal to address how callous we could become, it doesn’t necessarily take us to any action at all, but prepares us for it.  We want to encourage each other to be friends inside our church.  And finally we want everyone to pray about where God calls them so they can act in love in the world.  These are very particular statements and map a growth in love in ourselves and in the world.  Certainly the value of inclusiveness spells this out in one more context.  

Bedrock Beliefs

Tom Bandy describes this as “a principle belief or story to which people turn when they are in trouble”.  We haven’t done much with this one.  What is there in our faith when things hit the bottom?  What do you say or do, or what story do you tell with someone who has just lost their job, or is just going in for cancer surgery?  What guides our faith and our action in these times?  Unlike the core values, Bandy says, we need a more trusting group to talk about these because some of the things held most often may be a little embarrassing, or not.  Some examples: at almost every funeral held at the church for the last 800 years or so, families request the 23^rd psalm and the hymn “In the Garden”. 

We haven’t done much work on this.  But, once we begin, we are starting a training process for every member on how to handle hard times.  If the bedrock beliefs are shallow, then our ability to care for one another, and to be cared for will lack the depth needed to carry us through.  But, if we find what really helps, a basic trust will build and we will be able to be much more courageous in our ministries.  Zoe Secord has been

exploring this in the congregation, helping groups in the church learn and practice some basics as they meet. 

Motivating Vision

Tom Bandy suggests that the vision is probably not a statement, but an image or a song, something that has gotten under the skin of the members of the congregation that draws them ahead. 

Bandy suggests that we can have leaders take us through a process to come up with the core values and bedrock beliefs, but here one must wait for the Spirit.  The motivating vision is not created but revealed as we explore our DNA.  We haven’t really asked for this search yet. 

On the other hand, maybe we have already done this.  Two strong images that form us come in songs: Raggedy Band and Lord of the Dance.  These are songs that we have sung almost every week for four years.  The congregation breathes a sign of relief if the children don’t ask for them, but if it goes longer than a couple of weeks, an adult will ask.  And look at how they describe who we really are: people going through all the ups and downs in the dance of life with Jesus.  Not a bad description of us as faith-filled storytellers.  But, Raggedy Band may speak our vision even more closely – a rag tag group of folks from all over who begin singing and walking together to the promised land, led by people who hardly know what they are doing but creating a beautiful walk and parade as we go.  Isn’t that what we have said we want to become? 

Mission Statement

We formed our present mission statement four years ago.  There probably aren’t three people in the church who know what it is.  This isn’t to say it is worthless, because it has formed the goals and programs of the church for the last four years.  And it is actually a pretty good statement

We invite the Spirit to encourage us to deepen our compassion, to inspire our faith community into new and kinder ways of living, and to enlighten us to a greater awareness of the world around us.

We widened this statement in a full page of hopes that spelled out four main directions we go from this mission.  We celebrate.  We offer comfort.  We open our hearts.  We reach out in love.  Lots more words than that, but it still is the foundation of our consensus of values now so we probably did a pretty good job. 

Bandy: a good mission statement is three words and a logo. 

Administrative Limits

There are a certain few things that an organization does not do that are not spelled out in the DNA.  Bandy suggests they are like this:

• Can’t deploy resources over $1,000,000 without asking the Board first.

• Can do anything with kids as long as there are at least two adults in the room. 

• Can’t use any technology over 5 years old. 

We have some of these.  Our church will be a place where children are safe.  We have also said that we will not discriminate on the basis of race, age, sex, or sexual preference, and that everyone will be afforded every right of every other member. 

What does this all have to do with Me?

It is surprising that in the past we have gone through all this work and made a package of written documents that goes on the website (it’s all there) and that the Administrative team may or may not use to assess our ministry.  For the most part it is forgotten till next year when we spend hours of time reviewing it.  How sad. 

Tom Bandy didn’t say, how sad.  He was more aggressive saying that this is wasting precious time of all the 241 ministers in our church.  The DNA of our church should help you live each moment of the day.  If you are deciding how to be when someone cuts you off on the freeway ask “is my action consistent with the core values of my church?”  If you are trying to figure out if your job makes sense in the overall scheme of your life, look at the church’s DNA and ask yourself if it fits with what we are about as a church.  And, if you don’t know how the DNA helps you with questions from what to do right now, to what new job should I take, then you have a right to come to church to say “why not”.  Our job is to equip each member to live according to our DNA. 

As we finish this stuff, write them down and have them at the office, live and learn about them, we expect two things.  Your faith will be deepened.  And you will live the life that God has for you in the very particular way that God call you.  Your life won’t look like anyone else’s life in the church, but we will be from the same tree. 

The Permission Giving Church

Once we have the DNA figured out, and not only agreed to but accept it as a guide for our entire lives, then we are ready to become what they describe as a permission-giving church.  A permission giving church is one that thrives when people move after their calls by God.  It asks if someone feels called to do something, then if it is consistent with the DNA, and if it doesn’t violate limits.  And if both those criteria are satisfied, then a permission giving church says YES.  Not later, now.  The permission giving church does not wait to check it out with everyone – it moves with the energy.  Not everyone will do it.  And the important work is done with the DNA.  The church isn’t going to worry about funding or schedule or staff, it assumes that the folks working on it will figure that out.  The permission giving church is going to say yes and make sure it’s members are trained to move with the Spirit.  They will help the different groups figure out how not to tromp on each other’s toes.  This church assumes and hopes that most of what is done happens outside the building where God is most at work.   

The question for a permission giving church is one of faith.  Do the people in it know what they are about, trust one another to follow God’s calls in their lives, and believe they can not only make a difference in their own lives but in the life of the area in which they live?  After that massive question, then the rest is just mechanics. 

Originally published in the November 2001 Good News Letter of the Morgan Hill United Methodist Church.

Last update: 1/17/03WG