Values are a key component to any church’s revitalization process. A church’s existing values may stymie attempts to redirect a congregation in the future. But fresh, carefully discerned values can be the pistons that drive a revitalized ministry. Church Health Director Scott Foshie talked with Rob Peters of ReFocus, a ministry group that guides churches and organizations, including IBSA, in revitalization.
Scott Foshie: Pastors think about vision, mission, and strategy as they plan their church’s future. One thing they often overlook, however, are values. Why are values important in a church’s strategic plan? How do they impact the church’s culture?
Rob Peters: You know, Scott, values are essential within the church ministry and maybe hyper-essential within the revitalization ministry. A lot of people struggle with the idea of should the church have values. The answer is, of course they should.
In the Book of Acts, we are repeatedly told the values of the church in Jerusalem, Antioch, and of the church as it expanded around the world. Seven times, Dr. Luke paused the narrative of gospel expansion and said, “Hey, here are the values of the New Testament church.” We know them biblically as the seven summary statements of Acts.
Acts 2:42-47 says, “And they devoted themselves to the apostles teaching…” and all these other things: worshiping from house to house and at the temple, fellowshipping with one another as they were breaking bread together, doing ministry and meeting needs as anyone had need they sold their goods.
Evangelism: day by day people were being saved; they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching. Stewardship: they gave. Prayer: they met together continually praying. And on it goes, right? This passage is one of those very compelling places where you say, “Hey, this is very clear what the early church was really about.”
Has anything changed in 2,000 years?
At this moment for the American church specifically, being values-driven is really important, because most of Evangelical Christianity is on what we call the back side of the curve. On the front side of the curve, which is where the church growth movement resided over much of its existence, you’re asking things like “What’s next?” “What’s new?” and “Who do we hire?” But on the back side of the curve, we have declining resources and older members. We’re having to make different leadership decisions.
So, in that context, clarifying the values matrix for decision-making is the most important thing if churches are going to recover their vision.
So, you’re talking about a values matrix: Where the church is now versus where God is calling the church to go?
Well, you identify the tension there. Whenever there’s a declining situation and there’s a values discussion, you’re going to feel that tension. That’s very insightful.
Most pastors will feel this within their own congregation. There will be certain value categories that will be identified as actual value categories for the church. But the reality is that in a declining situation, those values categories have begun to express themselves in destructive ways. For revitalization to take place, there has to be a reset, a renewing, a refocusing upon the fresh expressions of those values.
A church may historically have had the value of missions and evangelism. They give to the Cooperative Program. They give an invitation at the end of the service. And that’s their local and global expressions of missions and evangelism.
A fresh expression of that value is probably going to arc them toward ministry that is outwardly facing instead of inwardly focused within the church, meeting the needs of the community on the basis of how they intersect the community with the gospel. It’s probably going to be things like missional engagement where individual people get involved in telling God’s story of salvation, such that the message of Jesus begins to be heard person-to-person. It’s going to be openness about who we are and how we’re broken by sin and living out the gospel narrative for ourselves. It’s inviting people into our lives instead of shutting people out with activities they don’t understand.
I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a church that didn’t say they were friendliest church in town or said they didn’t want to grow. But in many churches, the way they behave doesn’t match what they say they value. How can we uncover those kinds of unconscious values they might not want to admit?
What you’re describing is culture eating strategy. We may have values that are expressed in how we think we need to be doing ministry. For example, “We need to be sharing the Gospel with the next generation,” or “We need to disciple people into the likeness of Christ,” or “We need to gather people for worship so they can see a picture of a Good and Holy God.” But the challenge occurs when the culture of the church erodes what those actual expres- sions of their strategy should be. The values are arced in a direction that is culturally designed instead of designed with strategic intent. Most of our churches are struggling with culture.
Ronnie Floyd has said to the Southern Baptist Convention, “We have a culture problem.” I agree. The reason revitalization is so hard is because we need something that is powerful enough to move the culture.
Let’s say that we’ve uncovered some of those challenges in a church, and we’ve identified the direction that a church needs to go. How can we state values positively to call the people to a higher place, while also redirecting those whose values might be displaced?
In my own church, Sunday morning was a big deal, but we began to realize that it was all about the weekend. We realized that worship was a Sunday event and not a daily activity. So we pushed a lifestyle of worship over just Sunday experience.
That language of over or above calls the church to what’s next. We were still very much focused on worship. We were very much focused on discipleship. We were able to establish a baseline, but also set something in front of ourselves that was greater and that we were seeking to celebrate.
Now, that’s a little harder to do than to just say worship, Bible study, and family are values that are actual, and evangelism and discipleship are values that are aspirational. When looking at pairs of values, either one may be an appropriate way to express them. But when you use the concept of above or over to connect the values, every value has an aspirational aspect to it.
When you list out some as actual and some as aspirational, you have separated who you really are from what you’re saying you want to be.
What do you say to that group member who might say, “Why don’t we value everything in the Bible?” Why pick a few instead of saying we value all of it?
That’s a common discussion in church revitalization. A lot of people who want to make values out of their doctrinal statements. At Refocus, we would say there are certain things that belong in your doctrinal statements, that inform your identity as a church and inform your cultural identity as you express your faith in Jesus. We would also say make sure that the mission language tells us what we do, the vision language describes where we go, the strategy language tells us how we get there, and the values statements tell us who we uniquely are.
There are multiple categories of leadership. We call them the six irreducible minimums of leadership that every pastor and lay leader needs to be thinking in terms of. Those six directional questions are:
• What are we doing?
• Why do we do it?
• How do we do it?
• Where are we going?
• Where do we start?
• How do we know if we’re getting there?
What is the best way for a pastor to get buy-in from his key leaders and the congregation about the aspirational nature of the values and where the church needs to go?
That is one of the great challenges. Pastors have to be patient and they have to have a plan: patience for the Holy Spirit to work, for prayers to be answered, for conversations to be had. The plan involves understanding and observation, and it usually happens within the conversation.
Observation usually involves a “Revelation walkaround.” It is a Jesus visit. Each of the seven churches in Revelation got a Jesus visit. Some were commended and some were condemned because of their value struggles and value expressions. You might interview members, or hold focus groups, or walk around on Sunday morning asking, “How does Jesus see our church today?”
Studies tell us that 60 days after someone joins a church they stop looking around. That means most pastors who have been there for more than six months probably stopped looking around. For church members who’ve been there for ten, twenty, or fifty years, it might be deeply insightful if they just stepped back and looked at what they’re really communicating with:
• how they spend their money
• what they choose to fund
• how they spend their time
• what they choose to attend
• how the campus looks
• how they welcome (or fail to welcome) first-time guests
• how discipleship models function
• whether they’re an inwardly focused or outwardly focused as a church.
It doesn’t take much looking before those kinds of issues will stick out like a sore thumb.
How long does it take for new core values to take root in the congregation once the pastor and leadership begin articulating and sharing them?
Well, the actual design of the values takes a little bit of time as well. You usually identify your categories and capture the key concepts around those categories, and that takes about 30 days. Then you step back and reflect on those for another 30-60 days to hone the language–simplify and clarify. Then, you usually spend another month or two linking those together and making sure it is a powerful expression of your values.
In the revisioning process, it takes longer to deal with the issues related to your values than anything else. There’s a three-year early window that gets you from the place of being aware of those vision elements and appreciating those vision elements. It usually takes 85% of the congregation about three years to get there. In seven years, that value is usually being lived out in such a way that it is now an irrevocable value in that congregation.
If you’re talking up to seven years for a congregation to get on board, how long should a church keep one set of values? Is there a “shelf life” for values as they’re articulated?
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