Oregon SynodLeadership & Ministry Plan2013
Leading with our Values
•Data from religious institutions, including the ELCA, shows rapid declinesin religious attendance and financial support. These trends areaccompanied by the "greying" of congregations. The Oregon Synod,situated as it is in the "None Zone," is certainly not exempt from suchtrends. Our region is, in fact, something of a poster child for a new culturalarticulation of "spiritual but not religious."
•The question before us is whether these trendsprophesy death, or herald a new,spiritual, awakening.
Leading with our Values
The ministry plan outlined here makes several conscious choices:
•We believe that the Spirit is leading both our church, and our culture, in awholesome direction. Where the Spirit leads we will follow.
•We believe that death is not defeat and chaos is opportunity.Death leads to new life and chaos encourages reorganization.
•We observe that the dynamics of change require new forms of leadership skillsand practices.
•We recognize that old patterns of behavior are both a gift and an impediment.
•We choose to risk radical reorganization and new behaviors in the midst ofuncertainly, trusting the Grace of God to lead us.
•We choose to invest in new tools, techniques, and experiments in faith.Our children and grandchildren await a Church that speaks to their realities.
Leading with our Values
Leading with our Values
Mission: A Working Definition
The Crowd icon symbolizes thelived ministry of Oregon Synodcongregations and alliedinstitutions. Synod Leadershipis tasked with SupportingVibrant Communities ofFaith for the sake of theGospel. This remains ourprimary focus.
The LIFT task force recommends that:
That congregations and synods in partnership developa mission plan that will strengthen the congregation.
Shared Ministry
The Triangle icon symbolizes anetwork of arenas in which SynodLeadership is called to work withindividual congregations andministries. Honest, CourageousEngagement in such arenas isessential, and a gift to all.
The Foundation
The Foundation icon symbolizes thenew work to be undertaken for effectivesupport of vibrant communities of faith.Five building blocks are highlighted.Each provides opportunities for newlearning, action, and growth.
Building Blocks
Mutual Discernment
•Mutual Discernment is about patterns ofwork undertaken by Synod Leadershipwith congregations and individualministries.
•Local faith communities face challenges ofsustainability, relevance, and access in themidst of changing cultural realities.
•Synod staff has found that whether theyare working with congregations in callprocesses, in response to crises, aroundmission planning, or staffing andgovernance, there is a startling similarityin the work to be done.
•It is time to articulate a central, adaptiveprocess for the similar work being done intraditionally separate venues.
Convening Leadership
•Convening Leadership is vital todeveloping and deploying new patternsof engagement.
•Interim pastors, ethnic specific leaders,Cluster Deans, and Rostered leaders arealready convened on a quarterly or annualbasis.
•Convening congregational presidents,advocacy groups, ecumenical partners,youth, new ministry leaders, and similarnetworks offers great benefits.
•Such groups share challenges andopportunities, lift up new leaders, identifyresources, provide feedback on commonwork, and evidence the Spirit's presencewith us through prayer and creativeimagining.
Building Blocks
Communication Strategies
•New Communication Strategies are calledfor both by the nature of the new work,and the radically transformedcommunication patterns of our culture.
•Face to face conversation, personalrelationship building, phone calls, thepassing of paper, and committee workcontinues to be vital for effective ministry.
•Email, websites, listserves, cyber dropboxes, and shared documents allow forongoing, a-synchronous work. However,such tools create redundancies andinformation silos.
•Social networking, such as Twitter andFacebook, can aggravate the multiplicityof information silos. Social networkingalso provides opportunities for communi-cation and collaboration in ways neverbefore possible.
•An investment in the tools and ways wecommunicate to support common work isessential.
Building Blocks
Capacity Building
•Capacity Building refers to the work ofequipping congregations and ministries tocapitalize on the opportunities beforethem.
•Capacity building is developing acongregation's (or the synod’s) depth ofrelationships, leadership, financialresources and understanding so that theycan maneuver effectively in the currentculture.
•Each of the prior three building blocks isabout capacity building. Honestconversations about financial stability,institutional sustainability, grant writing,and shared facility uses are also aboutcapacity building.
•When local challenges and opportunitiescall for individualized, adaptive solutionsand strategies, the work of the synod mustshift from resourcing to capacity buildingand networking. Solutions emerge fromtheir context. They cannot be imposedfrom other venues.
Building Blocks
Incubating New Ministries
•Incubating New Ministries is exciting andrewarding work. When looking for acommon thread between thrivingcongregations, this seems to be it.
•Ministries that are incubating creative,new approaches to service andproclamation display an infectious spirit.The result is not always "success" in atangible sense. Rather, what is gained islearning, trust, comfort with risk, witness,willingness, time limited but importantministries, and sometimes ideas thatendure.
•Meaningful experiments of this typeemerge from collaboration, newpartnerships, investments in relationshipbuilding, creative financing, public,transparent processes, accountabilitypartners, prayer, courage, and joy.
•Incubating new ministries is dependentupon each of the building blocks listedhere; that is, mutual discernment,convening leaders, strong communicationnetworks, and deepening capacity.
•Effective incubation is birthed out ofcooperative work between congregations,Synod Leadership and our denominationaldepth.
Strategic Engagement
The Strategic Engagement icon symbolizes theneed to be pro-active, rather than re-active, asSynod Leaders. Institutional instincts need to becarefully evaluated. "One size fits all" solutionsare not effective in dynamic, effervescent,environments.
Strategic
New Work - Examples
Mutual Discernment
•Susan, Michael & Glenn have discernedthat they are now doing essentially thesame work with congregations at differentpoints in their life cycle – interim ministryvs. mission planning or stewardship.
•They see a need to develop one, newprocess built around:
–Gathering Data
–Assessing Data
–Forming a plan
–Supporting follow through
•Building and implementing such a plan isnew work. It requires greater integrationof individual work and support people todeal with various steps.
Convening Leadership
•Glenn, Believe & Travis have begun toconvene leaders around the MacedoniaGrant process and Money, Leaders andCongregations workshops.
•This work asks new questions aroundcapacity building in new ways.
•These workshops are “member led”rather than taught by “experts.”
•This work shares challenges andopportunities, lift up new leaders,identifies resources, and re-framesshared concerns.
New Work - Examples
Communication Strategy
•Ryan, Edwin & Jan are already workingto integrate data bases, email lists andprocesses with a new web presenceand Soul Café.
•Staff is reorganizing the ways andfrequency with which we consultand collaborate with each other.
•Through convening leadership andfocusing congregational processeswe anticipate greater face to faceengagement through the synodbetween more people.
•Building and implementing such a plan isnew work. It requires greater integrationof individual work and support people todeal with various steps.
Capacity Building
•Jan has worked with two congregationslooking at systemic staff re-orientationsin light of their own sense of “new work”on the congregational level.
•In addition she does a significant amountor processing with congregationalleadership on the phone. This is all newwork she brings with her own uniqueskill set and job description.
•As synod staff builds our own, internalcapacity we are increasingly working withboth synod and congregational leaders todo the same. When everybody engagesthe work and leaders apply their deepestskills – change happens.
Strategic Engagement
•New work requires new measurements to fuelus on as a learning institution.
•Worship numbers and budget figures are notsufficient information to gauge institutionalcapacity or progress.
•New metrics for tracking our work and adaptingour strategies are required.
Strategic
Strategic Engagement
New metrics might include:
•Numbers of congregations working intentionallywith other congregations or institutions;
•Numbers of congregations involved in convenedevents offered through our new work plan;
•Numbers of leaders displaying follow throughwith plans and local strategies;
•Numbers of leaders involved in focused learningof new skills;
•Gleaned insights and feedback from evaluationsand “soft” feedback sources being put to use.
Strategic
Summary
•This new work has already begun.
•Synod staff is collaborating to create new procedures for interim ministryengagement.
•An ELCA Macedonia Grant has been secured to allow for newconversations around mission funding and congregational sustainability.This work is being taken out to congregations.
•The Believe Team has been a conveningorganization, and the primary locus ofcreative imagining.
•Soul Café, a new communication andcollaboration technology, has beendeveloped to allow for work never before possible in the same way.
•The Building Blocks are already taking shape.
Summary
•New ministries such as the Leaven Project,Wilderness Way, New Rivers, EcoFaith andThird Space show hope and creativity inlocal contexts.
•A lay school of theology is under develop-ment to train Synod Authorized Ministersfor support for dwindling congregations.
•For the first time, consultation for congregations undergoing staffrealignments is being made available.
•What is needed now is a conscious commitment by Synod Leaders, andthe synod as a whole, to this new ministry strategy and approach.
End Note
The new work described here requires not only expertise, cooperation, andleadership support, but a financial investment as well. The Oregon SynodFinance Committee has develop a budget proposal appropriate to the needsand possibilities outlined in this document.
Investing proactively in the future is the right thing to do at this junction ofour Oregon Synod ministry. Thank you for your prayers, energy,understanding, and expectation as we move forward together.
