Dan Smith & Mary K. Hucyke: CourageousSpace Newsletter: May 2007
Pacing
Congregational renewal is a creative process, with the pastor, the laity and God co-creating a particular kind of community - an embodiment of Christ in the world, for the sake of the transformation of the world.
As people who have watched and helped churches give themselves to the work,
we can tell you that it's normal for this enlivening and rewarding work to also
leave you and your leadership feeling exhausted. The journey of renewal - the
work a people re-claiming their missional heart - takes time. Often, a long
time.
So, if this is your work, remember to pace yourself.
What do we mean by that? The creative process has a rhythm similar to the learning
process – stretch/consolidate/stretch. Stretching is a time of stepping
into new places, crossing scary edges, developing new muscles, expanding capacity.
Consolidating is a time for reflecting, living with what has been accomplished,
and integrating new learnings so that they become a part of you and the way
you live.
Think of the inch-worm and the way it makes progress. It alternates between
stretching its front end out and letting the back end of it's body catch up.
And if you'll watch, there's a moment of stillness before the process repeats
itself, as if to re-set itself in its new position before continuing it's long
journey across the patio.
Stretch - consolidate - stretch - consolidate. Ignore the stretching and you'll
never get anywhere. Ignore the consolidation phase and you and the other leaders
in the church will end up working with a manic intensity that results in burn-outs
and burn-ups. In our work with churches, we see the latter, far more often.
Out of good intentions and a deep desire for the church to make progress, the
push for results becomes relentless.
Some of the symptoms are:
~ one “push” followed immediately by another “push”
~ having multiple priorities with nothing given priority
~ not taking a day(s) off, not taking vacations
~ concern for people to know how busy I am (earning my keep)
~ inability to celebrate victories.
The pastor and other leaders end up:
~ feeling frantic
~ always overwhelmed
~ fatigued (though often unaware of it until it overcomes him or her)
~ hearing internal negative voices (you never do enough, you never do it well
enough)
~ burning-out or burning-up
~ increasingly oblivious to the reactions of people (spoken and unspoken).
The church ends up:
~ with an increasing discontent between leadership and the people
~ engaging in more activity and but accomplishing fewer worthy goals
~ making little or no progress towards renewal
~ feeling disconnected from God's Spirit.
In congregational renewal you are asking people to significantly shift attitudes
and actions. It’s not that they don’t want the “new creation”
you and they envision. Rather, their ability for sustained stretching has a
limit. Ignore their need to have a time of consolidation and they no longer
authorize you to lead.
The time of consolidating creates space for personal renewal and for dreaming.
This doesn’t mean that you don’t always have a next place to go.
Even in the time of stretching you are already thinking of “what next.”
But the time of consolidation allows a clearer picture of what now is possible.
In that time of consolidation you will sense when the time is right to step
again into stretching, stepping into those even more challenging new things.
And, when you step into them it will be with eagerness and energy. Ignore a
time for consolidation and you no longer feel drawn forward but instead you
begin to feel like you are pushing an incredibly heavy load – and so will
your people
CourageousSpace 2007.