From Obligations to Experiences
By Lyle E. Schaller

What do you believe is the most significant change in the parish ministry during the past half century?

Depending on one’s experience and perspective, a strong case can be made for each of two or three dozen major changes. That long list could include (1) the emergence of scores of nondenominational and denominationally affiliated Protestant megachurches, (2) the enthusiastic acceptance by the laity of sermons presented by projected visual imagery rather than by a live preacher in front of the congregation, (3) the replacement of the small-to-midsize neighborhood congregation by the large regional church and the resulting increase in the competition for future constituents, (4) the raising of that stained glass ceiling over the role of women in both congregational and denominational positions of leadership, (5) the reduction in the number of good paying jobs with excellent benefits for blue collar workers and the impact on what had been known as "blue collar congregations," (6) ditto the disappearance of thousands of congregations in what once were communities designed to serve an agricultural or mining constituency, (7) the reversal of the interfaith migration of the laity from the majority traffic being Protestant-to-Roman Catholic in the 1950s to the majority Catholic-to-Protestant traffic in recent years, (8) the shift from congregations depending on denominational agencies for resources to congregations turning to parachurch organizations, teaching churches, nondenominational publishing houses, and individual entrepreneurs for resources, (9) the recent rapid increase in the number and variety of multisite denominationally affiliated Protestant denominations, (10) the impact of television and the Internet and the decreasing number of hours adults spend in the typical week reading books, newspapers, and magazines, (11) the replacement of the old pattern of new immigrants to the United States coming from Europe with the new sources being the Pacific Rim and Latin America, and (12) the changes in the American culture regarding marriage and divorce.

What Do You Think?
Invite the leaders of your congregation to add another dozen changes since the 1950s to that list. Circulate that list of two dozen or more changes and ask each policy maker to rank the top six in terms of the impact on your congregation from that expanded list. Ask a volunteer to "count the votes" and report the six that were ranked No. 1 most frequently, No. 2 most often, and so on to six. That could help the leaders of your congregation reach agreement on the contemporary context for planning for ministry over the next few years in your community.

What Would Schaller Rank First?
The answer to this question is based largely on two sources. The first is drawn from living in a free country for all of my life on this planet and from experiences in working with congregations on their agendas over several decades.

My memory bank reminds me that as recently as the 1980s an almost universal pattern in American Protestantism called for congregations to collect money and send those dollars to a denominational agency or a parachurch organization that would recruit, enlist, equip, send, and support career missionaries, both American-born and indigenous, who would preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and convert nonbelievers into Christ-followers. Hundreds of millions of American dollars were collected by congregations and sent away to fund these missionary efforts all over this planet.

One trend in American economic history has been the collection of money, often through taxes, to enable people to fulfill obligations. These obligations ranged from going to school, to serving in military service in time of war, to paying off mortgages, to going to a hospital to give birth to a baby, to taking care of one’s aging parents, to sending missionaries to foreign lands, to sacrificing to send teenagers to college, to helping finance denominational agencies, to paying earmarked taxes to fund Social Security and Medicare, to building new schools and new churches to serve younger generations, to gathering with fellow believers (or with kinfolk) for the corporate worship of God, to paying the salary of a resident minister to help fulfill other obligations.

My second source is illustrated by conversations with a 67-year-old faithful church member named Hank. One Sunday morning, an invitation was offered by the pastor asking for volunteers to spend 15 days, including travel, as a short-term volunteer missionary on a team to work in ministry with fellow Christians in a sister church in Peru. Five years earlier, this suburban congregation, organized in 1958, had created a sister church relationship with a congregation in Russia. That turned into a two-way annual experience for members of both congregations. Each year, a team of 12 to 18 Americans travel to Russia for two weeks. Last year, a dozen Russians, plus their pastor and his wife, came to America for nine days.

I happened to talk with Hank a week before his scheduled departure. He explained, "I won‘t see you for a couple of weeks, I’m going to Peru as part of our mission team." After a speechless moment, I asked Hank, "You’re going to Peru as a part of this mission team! Have you ever traveled outside the United States before? Why did you volunteer?"
Hank replied, "On the way home from church a week after our pastor asked people to volunteer, my wife told me to sign up. She said that if Stanley Green, who is two years older than me, is able to go, I should be able to make the trip. So I signed up to go."
"Great!" I replied. "I’ll be interested in hearing about your experience after you return."
Three weeks later, after church, I went over to Hank and asked, "Well, I see you’re back. Tell me about your trip."

In a remarkably serious tone of voice to be used in a conversation between two old friends, Hank replied, "The first thing you need to understand is you are not talking to the same person you talked with three weeks ago. This trip has transformed my life. A month ago, I assumed the two basic obligations of a church member were to tithe and to go to church every Sunday morning. This trip has transformed my identity from church member to Christ-follower. Three weeks ago I didn’t understand there was such a distinction, much less know what it meant, to be a Christ-follower. At my wife’s urging, I went to Peru to help others. Today I know I was the one who benefited the most from that trip."

Later, I had a brief opportunity for a one-to-one conversation with Hank’s wife. Her response to Hank’s trip was, "I got back a completely different husband than the one I sent, but it was a great improvement!"

If one turns to statistics as the frame of reference, several denominational mission boards report each year a new record number of short-term volunteer American missionaries serving with sister churches on another continent. Many are the result of direct congregation-to-sister church relationships rather than through denominational channels.

A more useful frame of reference, however, can be found in a book, The Experience Economy by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore published in 1999. They contend the old classification system that divided the economy into such categories as manufacturing, retail trade, the service sectors, etc. has become obsolete.

One example on the parish ministry scene is the old adult Sunday school class organized around age, marital status, and the personality of a long-tenured teacher with a focus on teaching is being replaced by new adult peer-led learning communities. A second example is the high school youth group organized around the magnetic personality of a 27-year-old ex-teenager, plus fun, games, and trips are being replaced by a variety of meaningful and memorable experiences. To pick up from the subtitle of this book, which focuses on the secular economy in America, "Work Is Theater and Every Business a Stage," a growing number of congregations have abandoned the old pattern of scheduling the same worship service every weekend at two or three different hours. It is being replaced with a variety of different worship experiences. One facet of that may be the distinction between a presentation approach to a worship service and the focus on a participatory worship experience.

A different response is to replace the old sanctuary constructed before 1990 with a new facility that resembles a theater designed for stage plays. Everyone’s attention is focused on the stage, not on one of the three large screens designed for projected visual imagery. That worship experience resembles a stage play with several live participants and appropriate time for the congregation to participate via hymns, responses, and laughter. Sometimes, the message or sermon resembles the third act in a play. More often, it is a dramatic monologue that creates the illusion of a series of unspoken reflections delivered by the preacher. A couple of times a year, that soliloquy may be interrupted by a preplanned challenge by one or two skeptics walking in from an offstage location. The design of the physical environment plus the design of that worship experience prepare the worshippers to anticipate an attention-grabbing drama that becomes a meaningful, moving, and memorable experience.

A more common physical design for that place to worship God eliminates the traditional chancel and replaces it with a raised platform that becomes the focal point for most of that worship experience. Instead of one person reading a passage of Scripture to highlight the biblical lesson of the day, it is replaced by a brief drama involving two or three people who act out that passage. The congregation is seated on a flat floor with wide aisles that enables the preacher to forget the absence of a pulpit, walk among the worshippers, create brief moments of eye-to-eye contact with 50 to 200 different individuals, and deliver a challenging message on what it means to be a fully devoted disciple of Jesus Christ. Instead of using the communication style of an orator speaking to a large crowd, the messenger may rely on a cordless microphone and speak in a one-to-one personal conversational style. After two years of this type of worship experience on Sunday morning, one 40-year-old husband explained, "For 17 years I went to church every Sunday morning with my wife to worship God. Now I go to church to discover how to be a devoted Christ-follower for another week while I’m at work in a job I hate."

Why Number One?
Why is this emphasis on experiences offered here as a candidate for being the most significant change in the parish ministry in America since the 1950s?

One big reason is a shift from the 1950s’ emphasis on "reaching the unchurched residents of our community" to a growing emphasis on challenging contented church members to volunteer to be active participants in deeply meaningful and memorable experiences designed to transform believers into fully devoted disciples of Jesus Christ.

A second reason is the value of the shared group experience is a more effective strategy than concentrating on changing individuals. Military leaders have known and practiced this for generations. What is the most effective way to transform civilians into warriors? The memorable, carefully designed, high-expectation, intensive, meaningful, and shared group experience is No. 1, especially if the participants are expected to make personal sacrifices as one of the price tags for their involvement.

Third, this is both an expression of the ministry of the laity and an affirmation of the role of the laity. In today’s affluent American economy, many churchgoers find it easy to respond to pleas to give money. In those religious traditions that have a long tradition of being dominated by the clergy, this is especially important! That old tradition called for collecting money to fund schools of theology. This new emphasis calls for raising money to help finance transformational experiences for groups of laypersons.

Fourth, one consequence of this change is the emergence of a new system for classifying congregations. Back in the 1980s, a widely used system for classifying Protestant congregations relied on theological categories such as liberal, conservative, fundamentalist, and middle-of-the-road.

One of the newest institutional systems for classifying Protestant congregations in America draws the line between single site and multisite churches. Among younger churchgoers, however, that line of demarcation may be drawn between (a) those congregations designed to enable churchgoers to fulfill their religious obligations and (b) those churches that have placed a high priority on the transformation of Christian believers into fully devoted disciples of Jesus Christ.

What is the central organizing principle in your congregation’s ministry plan? Is it to persuade non-believers to accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior? Or to collect and send away money to help fund the ministries of other Christian organizations? Or to enable Christian believers to fulfill their religious obligations? Or to challenge and equip Christian believers to participate in meaningful and memorable experiences designed to transform believers into fully devoted disciples of Jesus Christ?

Lyle E. Schaller is a retired parish pastor and parish consultant. His most recent book, From Cooperation to Competition, was published by Abingdon Press.

Copyright 2008 Lyle E. Schaller