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By Diane Ney
Washington Window
Vol. 73, No. 8, July 2004
 Last
summer, the Rev. Carol Cole Flanagan began work as the Diocese of Washington's
canon for congregation and mission development. Here she shares her thoughts
on her role with writer Diane Ney.
What do we mean when we talk about congregation
development?
We're speaking of a number of different things. We're speaking about the
kinds of support and resources congregations need, for instance, if they
have a new mission initiative. We have lots of congregations that are
thriving and are interested in new ministries or interested in becoming
intentional about growth. We've begun to discuss the establishment of
new congregations. And we always have some congregations that are experiencing
stress of some kind.
Such as?
Well, it might be financial. It might be that they are in a changing neighborhood
and have to figure out how to retool themselves in order to renew their
relationships with the neighborhood. It might be that they're having some
kind of conflict at the moment. And some want to reverse a pattern of
decline.
So your job encompasses development and support?
Right, I'm the point person on staff for congregations, wardens and parish
clergy, a kind of go-between. I brief Bishop Chane on developing situations,
and prepare him for his Sunday visitations.
In a growing diocese.
Yes, nearly every part of this diocese is growing,
in terms of population, so the church is beginning to think about how
it's going to reach out to those new communities.
How do you help congregations deal with changes
like that?
We ask them to consider how their neighborhood is changing, and then how
can they can reconnect with that neighborhood. For example, we've been
talking to St. Mary's in Foggy Bottom. Their primary neighbors are George
Washington University, GW's Medical Center, and the State Department.
So they've been exploring some ideas that include campus ministry and
an expanded weekday ministry for State Department people who frequently
come over for weekday Lenten programs. While I don't know that they have
made any decisions yet, these ideas suggest a different ministry than
would have been true even 10 years ago, but one congruent with their changing
neighborhood.
Are there other ways of revitalizing congregations?
We're offering a new program called Via Media, which is designed to attract
and incorporate seekers, people who are new to the Christian faith or
may be nominal Christians but are new to the life of the church. We're
also considering developing a process that would help pastoral size congregations
(those with an average Sunday attendance of 50 to 150) become program
size congregations (an average attendance of 150 to 300). In terms of
growth, this is the hardest hurdle to clear and congregations have to
be structured differently if they're going to accommodate a larger size.
Our thought is that if we had several congregations that wanted to work
together on that process, we could support them with consultants and encourage
them to network and share resources and ideas.
What about missions as part of the process
of congregation development?
Diocesan Council will be considering 'new start' standards in light of
the responses we received at the Diocesan Convention. Those should provide
clarity in terms of what kind of average Sunday attendance and funding
it takes to establish a mission, what kind of leadership skills, and what
sort of training might be needed - for both clergy and lay people. We
discovered recently at a national conference that several new congregations
have built $20,000 a year and more into their budgets for marketing. That's
not part of how we've customarily built parish budgets; that's a new consideration.
What is the mandate of the new Task Force on
Congregational Development?
There are three things that the Diocesan Council has requested: one is
the establishment of new start standards, one is to develop an overarching
mission for congregational development, and one is to develop a process
that will allow the council to respond to proposals and requests for new
initiatives. We have some wonderfully creative people and congregations
and I think it's quite likely we'll have more great ideas than we'll have
money, so we need to develop some sort of a process that invites people
to approach us and that also establishes reasonable criteria for the council
in making funding decisions about those ideas.
You've been here a year. How's it going?
It's exciting. I'm still learning, but I hope that I'm always learning.
I don't ever want the work of this office to become stagnant and routine.
We still have a lot to learn about congregational development and what
kinds of things nurture churches. I hear people say quite frequently,
"How do we define a healthy congregation?" And I'm not quite
sure we entirely know that yet, but some good work has been done in that
area. Peter L. Steinke's "Healthy Congregations: A Systems Approach"
comes to mind. I think these are good questions to ask and that we will
continue to wrestle with them for some time.
I would imagine this is something all churches
ask? You have to grow in order to sustain.
Yes, although I'm not sure that previous generations had to discuss it
or to become intentional about it in the way that we do. Previous generations
guaranteed the membership and the leadership of the congregation by passing
the mantle to the next generation. It's really only been in our lifetime
that people have become so transient and that process has broken down.
I was at a suburban adult forum a couple of weeks ago and I asked how
many people would identify that church as the church of their childhood,
and nobody raised their hand. A member of one of our congregations was
saying the other day that they have 30 nationalities represented in their
congregation. That wouldn't have been true in earlier times. So now we're
having to really think about dealing with these changes. Our children
grow up and move half-way around the world and join other congregations,
so we have to think today about how to welcome other people's children
to our congregations.
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