Issue No. 521 of Your Weekly Staff Meeting recommends a gutsy new book, by Nancy Beach and Samantha Beach Kiley, on the future of the local church. Must-read! And this reminder: click here to download free resources from the 20 management buckets (core competencies), click here for over 500 book reviews, and click here for John's new blog, Pails in Comparison (PIC), with shorter book reviews of his latest “PICs.”
Nancy Beach (a boomer) and Samantha Beach Kiley (a millennial) have a gutsy and honest dialogue about the future of the church. (Next Sunday is must-read!)
A Gutsy Dialogue on the Future of the Church
Gutsy! That’s my one-word description for the mother/daughter (boomer/millennial) conversation in the new book, Next Sunday: An Honest Dialogue About the Future of the Church, by Nancy Beach and Samantha Beach Kiley. Published last week in the InterVarsity Press Praxis series (“equipping leaders for ministry”), I’m guessing the authors’ thoughtful views will generate cheers and jeers. But good for them—these two gutsy women!
The authors bring significant street cred (“church cred?”) to the table. Nancy Beach served as the programming director at Willow Creek Community Church and is now on the teaching team at Soul City Church in Chicago. She’s also a leadership coach with the Slingshot Group and is a frequent conference speaker. Samantha Beach Kiley is the creative arts pastor at Austin New Church and is a “writer and performer at the intersection of art and faith.” Her writing is superb. I read her poem, “The Little Red Chair” (pages 33-36), to our grandchildren at our Father’s Day gathering last Sunday.
They wrestle with seven distinctives that the church should address. Each chapter includes Nancy’s perspectives, followed by Samantha’s insights. (If you’re a boomer with nailed-down convictions about most everything, it might be dangerous to read this millennial’s informed affirmations about the church. Yikes.) But you’ll appreciate their humility:
“Together we asked, What will be most important for local churches going forward if they hope to thrive and not merely survive? Others will no doubt point out distinctives that are not on the list (prayer!), and we offer our perspective as humble learners who care deeply about the church and, like so many others, are just trying to figure it out.”
They add, “We do not come at these questions with an audacious sense of confidence or think we possess the answers or the magic ticket for churches to reach their full potential for the next generation.” They describe themselves not as historians or academics, but “storytellers” and suggest that “this book is for every person who wants to believe that church still matters, even though so many of us have been disappointed, even wounded along the way.” (See Chapter 5, “When Harry Works With Sally.”)
Why read this dialogue about the future of the church?
#1. Boot Camp for the Church's Future. You’ll be hard-pressed to find another book, published in 2022 by a fairly conservative Christian publisher, that aggressively (yet humbly) takes on big and thorny issues. It’s a boot camp immersion experience for new recruits and burned-out vets. The seven distinctives: Creating Genuine Community, Being Kidcentric (must-read!), Having an External Focus, Concerning the Hour on Sunday, Men and Women Leading Well Together, The Church’s History of Exclusion and Oppression, and Creating a Healthy Culture. (For more on flourishing cultures, read this review.)
#2. External Focus: Yes or No? A church founded in 1980 (“with a very long name”—LOL!) honestly answered a penetrating question: “If our church suddenly disappeared, would anyone in the surrounding society even notice?” Their response: no. (So…yes…Chapter 3 is also must-read.)
#3. Doing Good…Without Sacrifice. Reflecting on the commitment levels required of seven-days-a-week Jesus followers, Samantha confesses, “I would like to do good and feel good. I would like to do good on my schedule. I would like to do good without sacrifice. I would like to look good while doing good. I would like to change someone’s life in one hour or twenty-five dollars a month. I would like it if afterward someone could show me what I fixed. I would like to imagine myself a fixer.”
#4. Easter: Hamburgers for the Homeless. Samantha and her husband landed at a church in Austin, Texas, because “…we saw on social media that instead of an Easter service, they grilled hamburgers for the homeless. This sounded like a church community that my justice-driven husband might feel at home in and that my megachurch-high-production-value self might need to recover in. (I thought you did twelve services on Easter, not zero!)"
#5. COVID Recovery. Nancy looks in the rear view mirror in the chapter, “Concerning the Hour on Sunday,” and reflects on Willow Creek’s seven-step strategy and suggests a wider range of strategies for this decade. She wonders how the church will authentically articulate the case for in-person worship on Sunday (and why in-person is a mandate) when online streaming during COVID (sweatpants with coffee) became so “…comfortable and easy, playing into the worst of our consumer tendences.”
#6. Managing Pendulum Swings. Nancy suggests, “While I have no crystal ball to forecast the future, I do believe that the gathering as we know it will die if it’s only about the delivery of content. Now that all of us can listen to a message from any pastor around the world on our little screens or even worship with a team of our choosing even if they are far, far away, why would we be motivated to physically show up at a specific time and place if only to hear a message and maybe sing a few songs? I don’t believe content will drive anyone to make the effort.”
The book provides solutions and offers a very thoughtful discussion on five tensions churches must address (“pendulum swings”), noting, “We often look at values or strategies as all-or-nothing rather than as tensions to be delicately managed." The tensions include: 1) attractional versus missional, 2) performance versus participation, 3) authenticity versus excellence, 4) unpredictable versus template, and 5) topical teaching versus biblical exegesis. (Did I mention: must-read chapter?)
NOTE: One of my bucket list projects is to wait until I’m about 85 (at that age, who cares what critics post on Facebook?) and then write a book titled, “If You’ve Only Got One Hour a Week to Give to God, Come and Hear Me Preach.” Thanks to Nancy and Samantha, I don’t need to write that book. Just read Next Sunday.
#7. “More Sales-y Than Soul-sized.” The writing and the practical ideas are memorable:
• How to leverage the question, “So what?”
• Samantha’s five core principles for next Sunday (she tags herself, “a recovering daughter of the megachurch movement”)
• The language of metaphor—and a parade of suitcases that punctuated a “forgiveness” theme one Sunday morning.
• Note to Christian camping leaders—you’re mentioned frequently. (Must-read!)
• Samantha: “And I think churches have overestimated the extent to which my generation would prefer to engage online, creating snack-sized content and a social media presence that feels more sales-y than soul-sized.”
When I read Chapters 5 and 6, “When Harry Works With Sally: Men and Women Leading Well Together” and “The Mess We’ve Made: The Church’s History of Exclusion and Oppression,” I was saddened once again. As Nancy writes about visiting a liturgical church, “We spoke beautiful prayers and were led in a time of confession. My only complaint was that the time of silence to confess our sins was way too brief for my list!”
Oh, my. These two gutsy women want you to take a big gulp and reconsider why Christ died and rose again. They want you to remember what Jesus said to Peter in Matthew 16, “You are Peter, a rock. This is the rock on which I will put together my church, a church so expansive with energy that not even the gates of hell will be able to keep it out.”
To order from Amazon, click on title for Next Sunday: An Honest Dialogue About the Future of the Church, by Nancy Beach and Samantha Beach Kiley. Listen on Libro.fm (5 hours, 19 minutes). And thanks to the publisher for sending a review copy.
YOUR WEEKLY STAFF MEETING QUESTIONS:
1) In A Diary of Private of Prayer, by John Baillie, the morning prayer for the 22nd day of the month reads in part, “Lord Jesus Christ, who bid Your disciples to shine as lights in a dark world, in shame and contrition of heart do I acknowledge before You the many faults and weaknesses of which we are guilty who in this generation represent Your Church before the world; and especially do I acknowledge my own part in the same.” So how can you and we, the church, “shine as lights in a dark world?”
2) Listen to the hymn, “I Run to Christ,” and then share a line from the lyrics that touched your soul.
The Results Bucket reminds you to abandon dead horses and sacred cows and focus on outside results.
Buckets Countdown:
The Results Bucket (#1) Insights from Mastering the Management Buckets Workbook: Management Tools, Templates and Tips from John Pearson, with commentary by Jason Pearson (2nd Edition, 2018) - Order from Amazon.
The Results Bucket Core Competency: “We focus on results. We are not activity-driven, we are results-driven. We measure what we value, so we celebrate both the writing and the achieving of team-blessed standards of performance for every staff member, board member, and volunteer. We also abandon dead horses and sacred cows.”
“Having an external focus” is one of seven distinctives in Next Sunday. Peter Drucker described this distinction as “outside results versus inside results.” Visit the Results Bucket and download Worksheet #1.1, "Where Are Your Priorities?" on the "Five Signs You Might Be More Focused on Inside Results Than on Outside Results" (Figure 1.1 from Chapter 1).
Bonus LOL! “Arrange to visit other churches to see how they ride dead horses,” is just one of 21 hilarious ways that teams often deal with “dead horses.” Visit the Results Bucket and download Worksheet #1.2, "When the Horse Is Dead, Dismount."
The 20 management buckets are perfect content for the lifelong learning segment in your weekly staff meetings (you do have weekly staff meetings, right?). Visit the 20 buckets webpage here.
BONUS! Listen to The Discerning Leader Podcast for Steve Macchia's interview with John Pearson (Episode 4, April 21, 2022). And click here to read John's review of Steve's new book, The Discerning Life.
EVANGELICAL EXODUS! A theologian/trend spotter writes, “Baptists are learning to love Mary” in the fascinating book, Evangelical Exodus: Evangelical Seminarians and Their Paths to Rome, by Douglas M. Beaumont (Editor). Click here to read John’s review on the Pails in Comparison blog.
JASON PEARSON: UNEXPECTED CREATIVE. Is your organization plagued with dead horses and sacred cows? Is it time for an experienced outsider’s view to help you regain your external focus and prioritize your attention on outside results? We can help! contact Pearpod Media (Design, Digital, Marketing, Social).
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